METRO | Sunshine Williams : Austin’s illustrious mayor likes them ‘bad boys’

Posted on August 9, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Hizzoner fetes ex-Louisiana governor and ex-con Edwin Edwards, who joins the rarefied company of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and noted doper Lance Armstrong.

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Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell (left) with former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. August 7, 2014, was “Governor Edwin Edwards Day” in Austin. Photo courtesy of  Edwin Edwards for Congress.

By Sunshine Williams | The Rag Blog | August 9, 2014

AUSTIN — Mayor Lee Leffingwell is almost as embarrassing to Austin as Gov. Rick Perry is to the state of Texas. According to the Austin American-Statesman, the mayor honored an ex-governor, ex-con from Louisiana by declaring Thursday, August 7, 2014, “Edwin Edwards Day.” This after Edwards spent nine years in prison for “bribery, racketeering, extortion and fraud — involving a riverboat casino licensing scandal.” (Also see Ken Heman’s column in the Statesman, “Honoring the dishonorable in Austin.”)

And last October, during the Austin City Limits Festival, he named controversial Toronto Mayor Rob Ford an Honorary Citizen of Austin. I suggest the mayor go to his dictionary and look up “honor” and “honorary” or just Google them. Those terms don’t include those “bad-boy” acts of Edwards nor Ford’s drugging, alcoholism, and alleged sexual harassment of his employees.
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METRO PODCAST | Thorne Dreyer : Community activists Bill Oakey & Roger Baker on Austin transportation politics

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Affordability blogger Oakey joins The Rag Blog’s Baker in a lively discussion of the city’s proposed billion dollar transportation bond election and other community issues.

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Roger Baker, standing, and Bill Oakey in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas. Photo by Tracey Schulz / Rag Radio.

Interview by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | August 7, 2014

[Also read Roger Baker’s in depth analytical article, “Is Austin’s ‘Strategic Mobility Plan’ smart planning or a billion dollar boondoggle?” on The Rag Blog.]

On this Rag Radio podcast, Austin community activist and affordability blogger Bill Oakey and transportation writer and Rag Blog contributing editor Roger Baker discuss a number of community issues affecting Austin, including affordability and gentrification, but they focus primarily on Austin’s controversial proposed billion dollar transportation bond election.
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Rachel Roth :
Are Texas jails safe for pregnant women?

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Jails in the state are endangering pregnant women and their fetuses, despite the state’s professed interest in ‘unborn babies.’

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Jessica De Samito. Image from National Advocates for Pregnant Women / #JusticeforJessica

By Rachel Roth | The Rag Blog | August 7, 2014

What’s going on in Texas? Jails in the state are endangering pregnant women and their fetuses, despite the state’s professed interest in “unborn babies.”

In May, a woman named Nicole Guerrero filed a lawsuit against the Wichita County Jail for ignoring her when she was in labor. Locked alone in a cell, Nicole gave birth on a mat on the floor to a premature baby who died.
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Ken Wachsberger :
Academic publishing is destined to fail without a publisher-author partnership

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Publishers have to show that they give a damn about their writers because writers are paying attention.

wall of books

Publish or perish. Image from 08. Twenty Three.

By Ken Wachsberger | The Rag Blog | August 7, 2014

In the May 26, 2014 issue of The Nation, Scott Sherman wrote about the precarious state of academic publishing due largely to pressures it faces, including from declining library budgets, the rise of commercial publishing conglomerates, and especially the growing popularity of electronic publishing, seen by some university press directors as “a decisive rupture from the past” (“Under Pressure: Incrementalists and futurists battle over the mission of the university press” — online version had a different title).

He provided an insightful look at the inside of the university press system. However, his solutions didn’t go far enough because they omitted the needs of a key player, namely writers.
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METRO | Roger Baker : Is Austin’s ‘Strategic Mobility Plan’ smart planning or a billion dollar boondoggle?

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

What most voters probably don’t know about Austin’s upcoming big bucks transportation
bond package.

monster ate austin crop

Don’t feed the monster! This cartoon by Dan Hubig illustrated an article entitled “Mopac: The Monster that Ate Austin,” in a 1975 issue of the Austin Sun. Different century, same monster.

By Roger Baker | The Rag Blog | August 6, 2014

[Roger Baker joined Austin community activist Bill Oakey and host Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio, Friday, August 1. They mostly discussed issues raised in this article. You can listen to the podcast here.]

*The last section, ‘”Strategic Mobility Plan” bond details and documentation’ is rather long, takes a deeper look at the major bond problems, and has additional background documentation, links to click, video clip sections, and more.
 

Introduction

On June 26, 2014, the Austin City Council unanimously approved a billion dollar “Austin Strategic Mobility Plan” (the Plan).  This plan and its bond proposal are expected to become the basis for a $1 billion dollar November transportation bond election, when the Austin City Council decides on August 7 just how they want to put it on the ballot, likely to be titled “Proposition 1.”
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METRO | Alice Embree : Texas stands with Gaza

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Thousands march in Austin protesting the Israeli invasion and demanding an end to U.S. complicity.

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Thousands march in Austin in support of Gaza. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | August 6, 2014

gaza march Rami Janoudi

Rami Janoudi / ICPR.

AUSTIN — Thousands convened at the state Capitol in Austin on August 2nd for a rally to protest Israel’s horrific assault on the population of Gaza and demand an end to U.S. complicity in the siege of Gaza.

The rally and march had statewide participation with thousands coming from Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth, to join the Austin turnout. Six busloads of people came from Houston. The march from Congress Avenue to the Austin City Hall was spirited and diverse.
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METRO | Bruce Melton : Is Austin Energy now against alternative energy?

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

The future is bright and breezy, not black and dirty. Whatever is going on with Austin Energy misses some very important and fundamental news.

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The light at the end of the tunnel is not a coal train. Photo by Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog.

By Bruce Melton | The Rag Blog | August 5, 2014

AUSTIN — Really? Austin Energy is against alternative energy? A report in the Austin American Statesman on Friday, August 1, says just that. Why? Austin just signed a contract for 150 Mw solar for 5 cents per kilowatt-hour (KWh) — likely a new world record! The cost was so cheap that Austin tripled the size of the new facility from 50 to 150 megawatts.

That Statesman article says Michael Osborne, chair of the Generation Resource Planning Task Force and a former Austin Energy executive, said this is half the price of energy from natural gas. The July report from the Austin Generating Task Force has new coal at 5.5 cents per KWh, new nuclear at 10.4 cents, and new natural gas at 2.9 to 10.8 cents per KWh. The cheapest energy in Austin today is from a contract for wind signed by Council in February for 2.6 to 3.6 cents per KWh.
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METRO EVENT | Austin friends to celebrate
the life of John Muir

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer
Event: John Muir’s Wake
Place: Shoal Creek Saloon
Address: 909 North Lamar Blvd., Austin
When: Sunday, August 24, 2014
Hours: 4-6 p.m.
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John Muir at 2009 reunion of the 12th Street Law Office, an Austin movement law collective. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.

AUSTIN — Friends of John H. Muir will gather at Shoal Creek Saloon on Sunday, August 24,  to remember him and celebrate his life. The Melancholy Ramblers will provide music.

John was a long-time Austin resident and social justice activist, widely-known and well-loved. He died of natural causes in his home on June 23, 2014, at the age of 68.

John Muir graduated from St. Mark’s School in Dallas, attended Columbia University in New York from 1964-1966, and the University of Texas at Austin from 1968-1969.
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Ron Jacobs :
BOOKS | ‘Technocreep’ and how we are seduced by surveillance

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Thomas Keenan has written a helpful description of the kinds of surveillance undertaken by corporations, governments, criminal enterprises, and just plain creeps every second of every day.

technocreep

The use of the word “creep” is a play on its multiple meanings.

By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | August 5, 2014

[Technocreep: The Surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of Intimacy by Thomas P. Keenan (Sepember 2014: Greystone Books); Paperback; 224 pp; $17.95.]

We live in a world overwhelmed with intrusive technological gadgets. Most of us have learned to live with this fact and many of us have even embraced it. The latter are those who have apps to close their garage door and check the lights at home while they wait for their plane in an airport a thousand miles away. They are also those who post everything they eat and do on social media apps that then store this information for eternity.
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Posted on August 5, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer
monster ate austin crop
METRO | Roger Baker asks, ‘Is Austin’s “Strategic Mobility Plan” smart planning or a billion dollar boondoggle?’ This one’s a must-read.
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METRO | Alice Embree : A moving memorial for the victims of the UT Tower shootings

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Whitman survivor Claire Wilson James said, ‘It was so important to me that a student group organized this event, and that a younger generation is carrying these stories forward.’

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Living Memorial in front of the Tower at UT-Austin, August 1, 2014. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | August 4, 2014

AUSTIN — Students at the University of Texas held a Living Memorial for the 1966 UT Tower shooting victims on Friday, August 1.

Under a hot August sun, the students led a gathering across the campus from Littlefield Fountain to the Main Mall, the West Mall, and then to an area adjacent to the Turtle Pond on the north side of the Tower. Six times they stopped to hold up photos of the dead and read to those assembled a few words about the 17 lives that were lost. One of the victims recognized was David Gunby who died from injuries years after the event. His death was ruled a homicide.
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Thomas McKelvey Cleaver :
Tonkin Gulf: The event that changed my
life forever

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

I was a fly on the wall. I was a member of the staff of the operational command under whose authority the destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy would enter the history books.

uss Maddox

USS Maddox.

By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver | The Rag Blog | August 4, 2014

[Thomas Cleaver will be Thorne Dreyer’s guest Friday, August 8, on Rag Radio, 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas, and streamed live here.]

Fifty years ago, on August 4, 1964, an event happened that turned my life inside-out, upside down (or so I thought at the time; in retrospect it was turned right-side-up), and 180 degrees from what it had been. As I came to deal with it, I would question everything I thought I knew about the history of my country, and my relationship to that country.

History knows the event as the “Tonkin Gulf Incident,” the beginning of formal American combat involvement in the war in Vietnam, that would spread to Southeast Asia, the causus belli that would send half a million of my fellow Americans into combat, leading to the death of more than 58,000 of them over the next nine years. More than a million Asians would die as a result. The United States would nearly be torn asunder, its future changed irrevocably.
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