TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalDefense attorneys protest Houston judge's procedures
More than a dozen of the city's best criminal defense lawyers converged Friday on the 11th floor of Houston's criminal courthouse to meet defendants and hand out bright yellow 3-by-5 cards explaining their constitutional rights.
It was a part of a protest by the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association against the way Michael Fields, a misdemeanor juge, handles initial appearances in his court.
What he's doing is unethical, it's unconstitutional and it's illegal," HCCLA president Carmen Roe said after passing out several fliers. "When he starts trampling on the rights of defendants, that's when we get involved."
In the unusual action, a dozen members of the area's largest organization of criminal defense attorneys spoke with defendants and gave out "public service announcement" cards in front of Fields' court, one of the county's 15 misdemeanor courts.
"We believe he's coercing defendants to either waive their right to a lawyer or enter a plea of guilty without their lawyer being present" said JoAnne Musick, a past president of HCCLA who was handing out fliers. "We've had complaints from people who asked for a lawyer and instead he handed them plea papers and had them enter a plea of guilty."
More at http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Defense-attorneys-protest-Houston-judge-s-5584669.php (subscription required).
[font color=green]Michael Fields is a Republican judge--surprise![/font]
Henri the Cat - "Call for Submissions to The Friskies 2014"
Okay, it's commercial advertising, but Henri is still funny. There is also a $25,000 grand prize!
Dallas County judge announces plan to house up to 2,000 children from Texas border
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Saturday that the county would house and care for hundreds of unaccompanied children in the country illegally from Central American and Mexico.
Jenkins told delegates at the Texas Democratic Convention that the federal government would pick up the cost for the effort, which would be centered in Dallas and another city inside the county.
The unaccompanied minors could start arriving here at the end of July, Jenkins said.
“My hope is that when Dallas County steps up, the state and others will step up as well,” Jenkins said in a news conference after his convention speech.
More at http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/clay-jenkins-announces-plan-for-county-to-house-up-to-2000-children-from-texas-border.html/ .
Caturday Cat Naps—Teh Paws Dat Refreshuz
Catmospolitan maguzeen emfazizes dat n ordr tu manetain uh yuthful appurrance itz impurrtant fur kittehs tu getz @ leest furteen hrs uv slepe efurryday. Wee paws tu chek n wif teh DU aria kittehs tu lern teh secrutz uv strayn yung.
Wendy Davis: ‘Absurd’ to suggest she can’t overtake Greg Abbott
DALLAS – Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis said Saturday it’s “absurd” to suggest it’s too late for her to overtake Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott in the race for governor
Davis, pausing to speak to reporters after a breakfast speech at the Texas Democratic Convention, said her campaign will have the resources to compete with Abbott.
He has a substantial war chest, years in the making, and his campaign recently confirmed to the Express-News that he has reserved $10 million of airtime in October ahead of the general election. Davis, however, has raised millions since announcing last year, and observers are eagerly awaiting the next campaign finance report to gauge her firepower.
Davis said she’ll have money, but more than money, for the campaign to November.
More at http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2014/06/wendy-davis-absurd-to-suggest-she-cant-overtake-greg-abbott/#24648101=0 .
At the Convention Tonight: Texas Democrats Rally Around Davis, Van de Putte
DALLAS — Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte shared the spotlight at the Texas Democratic Party convention on Friday night, promising to change the direction of the state, ripping their Republican opponents and imploring Democrats to break the GOP’s two-decade grip on state government.
Davis attacked her Republican opponent, matching his attacks at the GOP convention in Fort Worth earlier this month, and talked fighting insiders in Austin.
“I’m running because there’s a moderate majority that’s being ignored — commonsense, practical, hardworking Texans whose voices are being drowned out by insiders in Greg Abbott’s party, and it needs to stop,” she said.
Davis spoke about her background, her kids and her grandmother, all as a way of establishing her Texas roots and values.
More at http://www.texastribune.org/2014/06/27/texas-democrats-rally-around-davis-van-de-putte/ .
The Rage And Anger Of… The Wealthy Class?
How does this sound to you? "If these profit-earning companies decide they can make more profit by adopting a technology that has the unfortunate result of polluting the air or the water, corporations will typically do that because the profit is more important to them than the social consequences that they basically don't have to live with and they don't have to pay for…The lip service as a nation we give to equality, to democracy, to equal opportunity are radically undone by the reality of the class structure… Here's a perfect example of the profit motive creating a housing boom that becomes a bust and that now, to recoup the money the minority who invested in it, requires millions of people-- the majority-- to, literally, lose their homes, producing in the United States in 2010 and 2011, a society that has millions of empty homes side by side with millions of homeless people… Over the last 30 years, [American capitalism] hasn't raised the wages the way it had for 150 years before. The confrontation with the inability of capitalism to deliver the goods was postponed by having Americans work way more hours than other people in other countries and by having American workers take on a level of debt no other working class ever, anywhere, had ever seen before. But we've now run out; we can't do more physical hours of work and we can't borrow any more money because we're not able to pay what we've already borrowed. And we're now going to have to face it and I think what we're going to see is an American working class that is going to rediscover class and realize that they have to question a system that works this way. They are going to demand fundamental changes-- and when they do, and as they do, they will rediscover the language of class, re-learn it from the working people in other countries who never forgot it and it will re-enter the discourse and debates of American society and probably with a vengeance."
A couple of year ago, we shared a short TED Talk on income inequality by Nick Hanauer, an uber-successful Seattle-based entrepreneur who asserts that rich people don't create jobs and aren't entitled to the tax advantages Republicans and corporate Democrats bestow on them (in return for legalistic bribes known as campaign contributions and career insurance)-- this TED Talk:
Today, Hanauer, writing for Politico, has a lengthy memo "to my fellow zillionaires," warning them-- as one private jet owner to another-- that he sees pitchforks in their futures. And he's raising the specter of guillotines and Madame DeFarge.
But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.” We think we’re immune to the same forces that started the Arab Spring—or the French and Russian revolutions, for that matter. I know you fellow .01%ers tend to dismiss this kind of argument; I’ve had many of you tell me to my face I’m completely bonkers. And yes, I know there are many of you who are convinced that because you saw a poor kid with an iPhone that one time, inequality is a fiction.
Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That’s the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.
The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression-- so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks-- that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer.
The model for us rich guys here should be Henry Ford, who realized that all his autoworkers in Michigan weren’t only cheap labor to be exploited; they were consumers, too. Ford figured that if he raised their wages, to a then-exorbitant $5 a day, they’d be able to afford his Model Ts.
What a great idea. My suggestion to you is: Let’s do it all over again. We’ve got to try something. These idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base. And yours too… If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.
…Most of you probably think that the $15 minimum wage in Seattle is an insane departure from rational policy that puts our economy at great risk. But in Seattle, our current minimum wage of $9.32 is already nearly 30 percent higher than the federal minimum wage. And has it ruined our economy yet? Well, trickle-downers, look at the data here: The two cities in the nation with the highest rate of job growth by small businesses are San Francisco and Seattle. Guess which cities have the highest minimum wage? San Francisco and Seattle. The fastest-growing big city in America? Seattle. Fifteen dollars isn’t a risky untried policy for us. It’s doubling down on the strategy that’s already allowing our city to kick your city’s ass.
…The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.
What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?
My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.
Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.
- See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-rage-and-anger-of-wealthy-class.html
State agencies investigating huge 'pasture party' in East Texas
Ben Wheeler, Texas - A party in an East Texas pasture where thousands of people gathered earlier this month is under investigation by a slew of state and local agencies, including the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission.
Van Zandt County officials have estimated between 3,000-5,000 people, many teenagers and some from out of state, attended the shindig in a mowed pasture behind a tree line in Ben Wheeler on June 14. Organizers charged a $5 admission, police say, which adds up to $15,000-$25,000 based on crowd estimates, according to KLTV.
Teenagers organized the farm fiesta via social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #PB3, which stands for "Project Beall 3", according to flyers posted on social media. Two officers were the first to respond, and, unsurprisingly, had trouble controlling the situation.
"We found many, many liquor bottles. We found many, many beer cans. We found that potpourri that people smoke, K2 type substances. We found condoms on the ground. We found packages of those Cigarillos that they use for blunts, loading them up with marijuana. Just hundreds of these type of items on the ground," Van Zandt County Constable Pat Jordan told KLTV.
Gunfire was reported, assaults, and fights causing obvious injuries in photos posted online, according to KLTV.
Local law enforcement, as well as the TABC and the Texas Comptroller's Office are investigating the party throwers, who had no permit, no bathrooms, no security or emergency personnel.
More at http://www.chron.com/news/local/article/State-agencies-investigating-huge-pasture-party-5584882.php#item-30535 .
Follow-up: Austin man pleads guilty to aiding overseas terrorists
One of two men charged this month with supporting overseas terrorists pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in Austin, admitting he had plans to travel to Syria “to engage in violent jihad.”
Michael Todd Wolfe, a Houston native who officials said lived in the Austin area, faces up to 15 years in prison. No sentencing date has been set.
An undercover investigator told Wolfe that he had helped individuals wanting to travel for jihad in Somalia and Syria. From August 2013 until this month, Wolfe had worked on preparing for the trip, securing birth certificates and passports for himself, his wife and two children. His plan was to travel under the false pretext of going to a concert in Europe, a complaint states.
Wolfe was arrested June 17 at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where he had been attempting to board a plane to Toronto, Ontario, according to the complaint.
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/crime-law/man-pleads-guilty-in-austin-to-aiding-terrorists-c/ngTZW/
Related thread:
Two men charged in Austin with providing support to terrorists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/107818928
Obama coming to Dallas and Austin for 2-day fund-raising trip
WASHINGTON – President Obama will make a two-day trip to Texas next month, a White House aide said Friday. He’ll visit Dallas and Austin to raise money for Democrats.
On July 9, Obama will start in Denver with a morning fundraiser to benefit the party’s Senate campaign arm. He’ll be joined by Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Mark Udall, who is up for reelection this year.
Then he’ll come to Dallas for a fund-raiser at the home of Dallas lawyer Marc Stanley, as reported a month ago. That event will benefit the party’s U.S. House campaign arm.
Obama then travels to Austin, according to the White House, where he’ll stay overnight.
More at http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/obama-coming-to-dallas-and-austin-for-2-day-fund-raising-trip.html/ .
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
Number of posts: 120,899