TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalFederal Official Gives States Deadline To Pass Colorado River Drought Deal
LAS VEGAS – Water leaders throughout the West now have a hard deadline to finish deals that would keep the Colorado River’s biggest reservoirs from dropping to deadpool levels – the point at which water no longer can be released.
The nation’s top water official is giving leaders of the seven states that rely on the river until Jan. 31 to finalize a Drought Contingency Plan. The combination of multistate agreements would change how reservoirs are operated and force earlier water cutbacks within the river’s lower basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada as reservoirs drop.
To a gilded Caesars Palace conference room of more than 1,000 attendees of the annual Colorado River conference, the message from U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman was simple: Finish these deals before the federal government is forced to step in.
“We are teetering on the brink of shortage today,” Burman said Thursday. “And we see real risk of rapid declines in reservoir elevations. We all know it is high time to wrap up these efforts.”
Read more: https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2018/12/14/federal-official-gives-states-deadline-to-pass-colorado-river-drought-deal/
Saudis Buy Huge Arizona Farmland After Sucking their own Aquifers Dry
Fifteen years ago, the Saudi government told its farmers to grow wheat and paid them 5 times the market price to do so. In a country without a single lake or river, they told farmers to drill as deep as they wanted for water.
Flash forward to 2011: the aquifers were sucked dry. Totally depleted. Bone dry in a country with scant rainfall. What did they do next? The Saudi dairy Almarai came to western Arizona and bought 15 square miles of farmland. They are sucking our aquifers dry by planting alfalfa for export, which requires 4 times more irrigation than wheat.
This is how climate change is bringing competition for water to Arizona, according to a new book, This Is the Way the World Ends: How Droughts and Die-offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on America. Author Jeff Nesbit says, “This $47.5 million transaction is an example of the Saudi’s efforts to ensure the country’s dairy business as well as conserving the nation’s resources.”
Secret plan to buy farmland
Almarai bought 9,834 acres of farmland in Vicksburg, Arizona, in La Paz County through its subsidiary Fondomonte, Arizona LLC. “Water for Almarai’s irrigation efforts come from the same source of fresh water — the Colorado River –that provides drinking water for cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas,” Nesbit writes. “The Colorado River reservoirs have been experiencing all-time lows, creating a volatile local political situation.”
Read more: https://blogforarizona.net/saudis-buy-huge-arizona-farmland-after-sucking-their-own-aquifers-dry/
Rep. Celia Israel files bill to ban reparative therapy
Austin Rep. Celia Israel filed a bill for the upcoming session of the Legislature to ban reparative therapy in Texas.
“Yesterday, I filed HB 517 to protect LGBTQ youth who need love and support, not conversion,” Israel wrote on Facebook. “Bans on ‘conversion therapy’ are bipartisan and have been upheld in federal court.”
Reparative or conversion “therapy” uses torture to persuade children who are gay or lesbian to become straight. There’s no evidence it has ever worked, but has caused teen suicide. This torment is also used with transgender teens to persuade them to change their gender identity. Again, this is done with no evidence of success.
The bill makes no bones about the danger of the practice of reparative therapy. The intro line reads: “Relating to unprofessional conduct by mental health providers who attempt to change the sexual orientation of a child; providing penalties.”
The bill has no co-sponsors yet.
https://www.dallasvoice.com/rep-celia-israel-files-bill-to-ban-reparative-therapy/
(no more at link)
Beto O'Rourke says Julian Castro's likely 2020 presidential bid won't affect his own plans
By Julian Aguilar, Texas TribuneEL PASO — U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke said Friday that his political future won't be dictated by fellow Texas Democrat Julián Castro's decision to seriously consider a run for the White House.
“I think it’s something positive for the United States that he can offer and share ideas,” O’Rourke said of Castro, the former San Antonio mayor who also served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama.
Castro has said he is likely to run for president, and announced Wednesday that he has formed an exploratory committee to consider a bid. He will make an announcement about his decision Jan. 12.
O’Rourke lauded Castro’s service to Texas and the country and said he was proud of the former mayor.
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/12/14/beto-orourke-talks-john-cornyn-2020-julian-castro/
'How Can You Do This to People?': After Rural Hospitals Close in Milam County, Residents Scramble to
‘How Can You Do This to People?’: After Rural Hospitals Close in Milam County, Residents Scramble to Find CareShan Wilson’s surgery will have to wait.
The 64-year-old retired Marine was scheduled to have his prostate removed in early January at the only hospital in Rockdale, a town of 5,600 between Round Rock and College Station. Wilson had it all planned out: He’d drive his motorized wheelchair the four blocks from his home in west Rockdale to the hospital for the operation that day. Then, he’d take it easy at home for a week or so, finally putting an end to months of painful, recurring urinary tract infections. The surgery had been scheduled for months.
Then, last week, Wilson was hit with a bombshell: Rockdale Hospital abruptly shut down, taking with it his primary care physician, urologist and surgeon. Wilson said he was shocked by the closure, partly because he received no notice from the hospital. Instead, Wilson said, he heard about the situation by “word of mouth” at the Rockdale Senior Center, where he eats lunch most days, plays bingo and does crafts.
“I thought, ‘Who’s running the Mickey Mouse railroad?’” Wilson said over a plate of barbeque on Friday. “You can’t even tell the patients the hospital is closing? People depend on the hospital. How can you do this to people?” Wilson would later discover that Little River Healthcare, the hospital’s parent company, also closed three satellite clinics in the county and another hospital in Cameron, the county seat 18 miles away. The closures leave a gaping hole in health care access for Milam County residents; the five facilities together averaged about 3,000 visits a month, providing a wide range of services, said John Weed, the hospital’s former medical director. “We’ve had health care jerked out from underneath us,” he said.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/how-can-you-do-this-to-people-after-rural-hospitals-close-in-milam-county-residents-scramble-to-find-care/
Texas Republicans Fail to Kick a Million People off Food Stamps After Trying for a Year
The $867 billion Farm Bill passed by Congress this week did not include stricter work requirements that would have pummeled food stamp recipients, but it wasn’t for lack of trying by Texas’ Republican delegation.
The effort, spearheaded by Midland Congressman Mike Conaway, would have taken a hard line on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries, forcing poor people up to age 59 and parents of young children to lose food assistance for two calendar years if they lost their job or didn’t meet new work training requirements.
To hear Conaway, the outgoing chair of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee tell it, the proposed rules would’ve helped America’s working poor by “offering SNAP beneficiaries a springboard out of poverty to a good-paying job, and opportunity for a better way of life for themselves and their families.” So strong were Conaway’s convictions that SNAP recipients are “trapped in dependency” that he refused to agree to a Farm Bill without new work requirements for most of 2018, letting the 2014 bill expire and causing commodity, conservation and rural development programs to lose baseline funding and budget authority.
Congressman Jodey Arrington, a Lubbock Republican who also sits on the ag committee, said he was called by a higher power to take food out of the mouths of laid-off folks. “God … expects personal responsibility and he expects us to have responsible policies that pull us up and out of a cycle of dependency,” Arrington said in an impassioned speech on the House floor in April. Both Texans in the Senate, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, floated similar work requirements in the upper chamber but the proposals were non-starters.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-republicans-fail-to-kick-a-million-people-off-food-stamps-after-trying-for-a-year/
Texas Has Just Five Dry Counties Left. Why Is That?
On Election Day in Stanton, just north of Midland, Ron Black was skeptical that a particular measure on the ballot would pass.
“Well, I think at first it was - uh, nobody thought it would go through because they’ve tried it so many times, you know? I can’t tell you how many times it’s gone to the ballot,” he says.
Black manages the Lawrence Brothers grocery in Stanton. The vote was whether to keep Stanton dry – that is to prohibit the sale of alcohol – or to allow the sale of beer and wine at stores like Black’s. But to his surprise, Stanton went wet after all. And it’s part of a long-term trend that’s washing over Texas.
To put it in perspective: in 1996, there were 53 dry counties in Texas. By 2011 that number dropped to 25. And as of Election Day when Stanton, the seat of Martin County went wet, there are now just five dry counties in Texas – in a state whose attitudes toward alcohol have always been complex, but tended to be more conservative than the country as a whole.
Read more: http://www.tpr.org/post/texas-has-just-five-dry-counties-left-why
We're still waiting for Borden, Hemphill, Kent, Roberts, and Throckmorton counties to catch up with the times.
Jimmy Kimmel Live: Trump Denies Telling Michael Cohen to Break the Law
Donald Trump canceled the annual White House Holiday Party for members of the Press, tweeted about Michael Cohen's sentencing – denying he directed Cohen to break the law, is being investigated for misusing inauguration funds, and he might hire Jared Kushner as his Chief of Staff. So, everything is great.
Expansion of Medicaid for Georgia's poor on the table, with a twist
A leading Georgia state senator voiced full-throated support for expanding government health coverage for the poor under a federal “waiver,” similar to what Vice President Mike Pence did when he was governor of Indiana.
The comments came Friday during a testy study committee hearing about hospital financing. The committee’s chairman, state Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, had proposed draft legislation that would roll back regulations that protect hospitals. Watson said he supported rolling back the regulations, but he also backed the idea of the waiver.
Under such waivers, states tailor Medicaid expansion to cover those who make less than the poverty level in the state’s own way.
“I think it is the responsibility of our Legislature, of our society, that people have coverage so that they can be seen,” said Watson, a doctor.
Read more: https://politics.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/expansion-medicaid-for-georgia-poor-the-table-with-twist/Egz5un3nFraHNWi9AXTNSM/
Ossoff strikes populist tone as he mulls Senate bid
Cornelia – Jon Ossoff’s bid for Georgia’s 6th District brought him to all corners of Atlanta suburbs, but late Thursday he arrived at a new setting: A crowded library meeting hall in deeply-conservative Habersham County.
The investigative journalist raised $30 million in last year’s special election for the U.S. House seat, which he lost to Republican Karen Handel. Ossoff is now considering another run for office, perhaps a challenge to U.S. Sen. David Perdue in 2020.
And so Ossoff’s town hall meeting in rural northeast Georgia took on special significance as a chance to test his appeal to an unfamiliar crowd. And he unveiled an urgent, populist message railing against the corporate influence in politics and a national economy “built on debt and consumption.”
“There’s more and more cynical politics. Student debt is skyrocketing. We’re still maintaining this unfathomably large empire that costs trillions of dollars,” said Ossoff. “We’re doing nothing for crumbling infrastructure at home. And we wonder why there’s so much anger.”
Read more: https://politics.myajc.com/blog/politics/ossoff-tests-populist-message-mulls-senate-bid/bIpRZiYK1OfKztFpk7HxXL/
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
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Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
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