County Magazine

Just in case you can't get enough about county government in Texas, there's a magazine dedicated to them.

Its published by the Texas Association of Counties.

- Click here for their current issue.
- Click here for archives (I know you'll want to read them all)

From the Houston Chronicle: Municipal Utility Districts in Texas have sweeping power to sell bonds, levy taxes

MUDs are among the smallest of the special districts, and are primarily a device used by developers to fund infrastructure, like "water and sewage systems, drainage, parks, recreational facilities, roads and fire stations." The Chronicle reports that their numbers are increasing, which increases the amount of debt held in the state - a state like likes to brag about not having any. Multiple other complaints about them exist as well, as this story lays out.

- Click here for the article.

Across bright-red Texas, where many politicians tout small government and low taxes, MUDs and other so-called special purpose districts are proliferating - and selling bonds - at a rate many experts inside and outside government find increasingly problematic. They cite high indebtedness, insufficient state oversight, cozy relationships with developers, a lack of responsiveness to citizens and potential conflicts of interest. MUDs can be created either by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or the Legislature.

Their spread throughout the prairies that once surrounded Houston and other municipalities has helped fuel "growing unrest" about the property tax burden in Texas, said John Kennedy, senior analyst for the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a nonprofit group based in Austin. Many taxpayers like Gay find it hard to track all the property tax bills they receive from counties, school districts, MUDs and other special purpose districts, Kennedy said.

"Those special purpose districts sort of operate in kind of a semi-netherworld out there," he added.

There are 1,751 active water districts in Texas, a class of special purpose districts tracked by TCEQ, ranging from large river authorities to tiny irrigation districts, including 949 MUDs, according to the state.

The epicenter of water district financing: Houston's suburbs.

Forty-four percent of those 1,751 districts are in Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. Sixty-five percent of the 949 MUDs are in those three counties - 389 in Harris County, 146 in Fort Bend County and 85 in Montgomery County.

MUDs are the most popular type of water district in Texas with developers, in large part because they hold enormous sway over how they're created and because MUDs are empowered to issue tax-exempt bonds covering the developers' infrastructure costs.
Taxpayers' advocates increasingly view them as a problematic way to pay for infrastructure in the face of climbing local government debt, given their sweeping power to sell bonds and raise taxes.

 

Why not?

From the Texas Tribune: Unholstered - When Texas Police Pull the Trigger

Among the criminal justice reforms that might be considered in the 85th session of the legislature is shooting by police. The trouble is that very little data exists about these incidents. It's tough to solve a problem little is known about.

- Click here for the report.

From the intro:

Police officers in Texas unholstered their guns and fired at suspects in at least 656 incidents between 2010 and 2015.

At least.

That total is undoubtedly incomplete. It includes only 36 of the state's largest cities from which The Texas Tribune was able to obtain information, often by prying it out of reluctant departments through public records requests. The level of detail provided for individual incidents varied by city, and some said they don't track data on shootings in which no one is hurt.

If information is key to understanding when and why Texas police officers shoot at people, the public, police officials and state lawmakers are working with woefully incomplete facts and figures, and are left to guess at the realities of police use of lethal force. Because there is no consistent, statewide effort to collect such data, discussions and policy debates are largely driven by the most recent, most controversial shootings.Shelby TauberA police officer patrols downtown Austin.

Anyone interested in knowing, for instance, whether Texas police disproportionately shoot at minorities, or are good at de-escalating situations without resorting to lethal force, are flying blind.

“When we don’t have a really solid knowledge base or data to pull from, people will tend to fall back on anecdotal cases they hear reported in the media,” said Kevin Buckler, a criminal justice professor at the University of Houston.

The Texas Tribune spent almost a year attempting to collect information on police shootings from departments in the state’s 36 largest cities, which have a population of 100,000 or more, and was able to confirm 656 fatal and nonfatal shooting incidents involving 738 individuals that occurred between 2010 and 2015. Those 36 cities make up almost half of the state’s population.

From the Texas Tribune: Austin Poised to Become First "Sanctuary City" In Texas

A look at an issue likely to dominate the next session of the Texas Legislature.

It also allows a look at the complications that result from our federal system, including conflicts involving the fact that county sheriffs are elected, and implement the law in accordance with the desires of the local community. If the community if Austin, then those decisions can put you in the cross hairs of the much more conservative state legislature.

- Click here for the article.

Conservatives already love to bash Austin — that bag-ban loving, Uber-hating, Democrat-electing enclave in the center of the most Republican mega state in the country.

Now the Texas capital city is poised to get the biggest target yet on its back: it is likely to become the first true “sanctuary city” in GOP-ruled Texas.

In a move that would defy not just Republican orthodoxy but also the Obama administration’s policy on deporting criminal immigrants, the county where Austin sits is on the verge of ending cooperation with the federal government on immigration matters.

That’s because the Democratic candidate for Travis County sheriff, Constable Sally Hernandez, has promised to get U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, out of the county jail. More specifically, she says she won’t hold inmates for ICE when the federal agency seeks to remove them from the country.

“I just don’t think you solve the criminal justice process by deporting them,” Hernandez told The Texas Tribune during a sit-down interview in her office this week. “We talk about being progressive. I believe we need to lead the way.”

Hernandez has a GOP opponent, Joe Martinez, who favors cooperating with ICE by holding immigrants the agency wants, as does the current sheriff of Travis County, Democrat Greg Hamilton. But with Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ballot and local politics being what they are — i.e., heavily stacked against anyone with an R next to their name — Hernandez is all but a shoo-in.

For his part, Martinez said if elected he would tweak current rules at the jail and only hand over the worst offenders to ICE, so changes are coming no matter which one of them is elected.

Groups mentioned in this article

- Travis County Sheriffs Department
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- Sheriffs Association of Texas
- Texas Legislature
- Austin City Council
- Travis County Commissioners Court

From 538: The Polarization Of Red And Blue States From McGovern To Trump, In One Chart

A different take on political polarization.

- Click here for the article.

From Vox: Democrats really might have a shot at taking the House. Here's the math.

Still a long shot though, despite indications that they are on track to take back the Senate.

- Click here for the article.

Even though most analysts think it’s unlikely — Democrats would need to pick up 30 seats, including in reliably Republican territory — there is one political analyst who has a theory of how it could happen.

Geoffrey Skelley, who closely tracks congressional races at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, suggests there’s a crude shorthand for evaluating the battle for the House: Look to see if Clinton can beat Trump by 6 points or more in the presidential race. If that happens, Skelley projects 50 seats would be in play.

If Clinton wins by 6 points — and current polling suggests she might — it would mean Democrats could have a real, genuine, honest-to-goodness shot at pulling off whatlooked impossible just a few months ago.

By most projections, Democrats look more likely to get closer to 15 or 20 seats, not the 30 they’d need. Many states have gerrymandered safe Republican seats that would require an extraordinary landslide to do the trick. In 2012, for instance, Democratic House candidates won 1.7 million more votes than their Republican foes — and still ended up with 33 fewer members of the House. This is why even many Democrats believe taking the House is unlikely.

But unlikely doesn’t mean impossible. Here’s the math behind how Democrats’ long-shot dream might just become a reality.

From the Atlantic: Medical Marijuana Won’t Become Legal Anytime Soon - A recent notice from the Drug Enforcement Administration denies a petition to have the drug accepted for medical use at the federal level.

From our discussion in class this evening.

- Click here for the article.

The Drug Enforcement Administration announced Thursday that it would reject petitions to reschedule marijuana as a Schedule II drug or lower. As a Schedule I drug, marijuana use is strictly prohibited outside of research. A Schedule II classification would have allowed its usage as a federally-approved prescription medical therapy.The rejection, according to a Federal Register notice, was based on an analysis by the Food and Drug Administration and recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services.

According to NPR, in a letter sent to several petitioners and governors before the official notice, DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg characterized the decision as one not rooted in moral concerns or even lingering doubts about the dangerousness of marijuana, but about the legal obligation for Schedule II drugs to have medical efficacy. “This decision isn’t based on danger,” Rosenberg said. “This decision is based on whether marijuana, as determined by the Food and Drug Administration, is a safe and effective medicine.” Rosenberg, who has acknowledged the “promise” of some cannabinoids in medicine, has also called the prospect of “smoking the leaf of marijuana”—its most common usage—a “joke.”

The notice from the DEA spelled out three reasons why marijuana would not be rescheduled: a potential for and history of abuse and addiction, lack of accepted medical use, and a lack of safety information. The last two reasons are part of the drug’s failure of a five-part FDA test that states that for a medicinal drug “the drug’s chemistry must be known and reproducible,” “there must be adequate safety studies,” “there must be adequate and well-controlled studies proving efficacy,” “the drug must be accepted by qualified experts,” and “the scientific evidence must be widely available.” The clinical data that could even meet the FDA’s review standards was subject to intense scrutiny. In the end, the FDA could only find 11 research articles that met its review qualifications of being randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical studies.

From NPR: Republicans Consider Lasting Impression Of Trump On Their Party

A few leading figures in the party offer their thoughts. Will "Trumpism" survive Trump?

- Click here for the article.

Some highlights:

. . . without Donald Trump, Trumpism falls flat. Without the showmanship, the TV star personality, Trumpism a dead letter.

The establishment in Washington, in my view, has increasingly grown out of touch about where it was getting its votes from. Donald Trump, I think, understood where our votes were coming from. . . . whatever happens, I think it's going to be very hard for the Republican Party to go back to the agenda that it had before.

I see the Republican Party as a conservative party that has a stronger populist strain than it's had since the Bushes. Whether Trump wins or loses . . . the GOP will never again be the party of entitlement reform, open borders, nation-building and big trade deals. But in order for this new Trumpist agenda to appeal to a broad range of Americans it has to appeal to young people, minorities and suburban women, all groups that Trump himself has alienated with his raw appeals to white identity politics.

. . . if you break Trumpism away from some of the toxic comments about immigrants, some of the race-baiting comments, at least when it comes to birtherism - if you break it away from that, does it still have the same appeal?

More on Trumpism:

-  TPM: Will Trumpism Survive Trump? (Hint: Yes).
- Washington Post: Why Trumpism could be with us for a very long time.

Campaign Update - 8/30/16

For 2305 students looking for material for their essays.

Mostly Trump, but he's sucking all the air out of the room. I'll add content on Hillary soon.

Expect more soon.

- Donald Trump has a massive Catholic problem.
- Inside debate prep: Clinton’s careful case vs. Trump’s ‘WrestleMania.’
- Donald Trump broke the conservative media.
- What In The Hell Is Trump Doing On Immigration?
- A top Democratic group is testing its 2016 campaign strategy with an eye on the next cycle.

“a crack-brained zealot for democracy”

That's what the author of Plain Truth called Thomas Paine - the author of Common Sense, and (more or less) the founder of our current understanding of liberalism.

- Click here for The Deceiver Unmasked; Or, Loyalty and Interest United:In Answer to a Pamphlet Entitled Common Sense.

While we're at it,

- Click here for A Loyalist’s Rebuttal to the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Not everyone in the colonies supported independence. The authors challenge to the grievances listed in the DoI are worth reviewing.

From Inside Higher Ed: U Chicago to Freshmen: Don't Expect Safe Spaces

This licked up a lot of dust last week. Some top colleges are creating "safe spaces" for students who are members of marginalized groups, primarily due to sexual identity though it an covers others as well. Supporters argue it allows for freedom from intimidation and other practices which compromise the ability to learn, while opponents say it does exactly the opposite by insulating students from contrary points of view. It may also run afoul of the freedom of speech.

The University of Chicago - which is regarded as the most conservative of the elite universities -  refuses to establish them. 

- Click here for the article.

Looking for safe spaces on campus or trigger warnings on a syllabus?
Incoming students at the University of Chicago have been warned they won't find either in Hyde Park.

They all received a letter recently from John Ellison, dean of students, which went beyond the usual platitudes of such letters and made several points about what he called one of Chicago's "defining characteristics," which he said was "our commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression." Ellison said civility and respect are "vital to all of us," and people should never be harassed. But he added, "You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort."

To that end, he wrote, "Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own."

The letter referred to a website where Chicago maintains a report on academic freedom and its centrality to the university.

On social media, the letter spread through sites such asIntellectual Takeout received widespread praise from critics of what they see as political correctness. Those wanting views defending safe spaces might consider the essays here or here. And trigger warnings may be less common than critics of the practice assume. One Facebook post about the letter asserted knowledge of a Chicago professor who had used a trigger warning, but another comment pointed out that this would have been the professor's decision to make, under principles of academic freedom.

Chicago isn't the first institution to try to set a tone on these issues early on.
In the fall of 2014, Peter Salovey, Yale University's president,used his welcome speech to freshmen to encourage them to respect free expression.

"In the last year or two, we have seen more than the usual number of events on college and university campuses across this country in which the freedom to express ideas has been threatened. Invitations to provocative speakers have been withdrawn; politicians, celebrities and even university presidents invited to deliver commencement addresses have -- under pressure -- declined to speak to graduates; student protesters have had their signs destroyed by other members of a campus community," Salovey said. "In the most troubling of these 'free speech' incidents, speakers of various political persuasions have been shouted down and rendered unable to deliver remarks to campus groups who had invited them. Although we have not seen these kinds of episodes at Yale in recent decades, it is important on occasions like this one to remind ourselves why unfettered expression is so essential on a university campus."

1000 Word Critical Essay - Fall 2016 - GOVT 2306

For easy access: 

Along with the presidency, Texas voters will select a new Texas House and half of the Texas Senate this year. I want you to research the campaign so far and determine what issues are dominant. What does this tell us about what issues will preoccupy the next session of the Texas Legislature and how – or if – they will be resolved?

Here are few items that have been newsworthy: - The impact of oil and gas prices on the Texas Budget - Education funding - The cost of higher education - Criminal justice reform - Federal court orders on foster care in Texas - Sanctuary cities - Further expansions of gun rights

Other items are topical as well, so do some searching and see what comes up.

The basic requirements of the paper are:
- 1000 word minimum length - At least three references - Proper formatting – use what you are comfortable with, MLA is popular - General legibility

I've posted quite a bit on the subject - and will post more.

Click here to get them:

- 85th Session.

Recently published: America's Failing Experiment How We the People Have Become the Problem

More on the anti-democracy movement.

The guy sounds like Madison.

- Click here for order it if you wish.

Here is the official blurb on the book.

Written in a provocative, jargon-free style ideal for stimulating classroom discussion, America’s Failing Experiment directly challenges would-be reformers who believe the solution to our current political paralysis is more democracy. Kirby Goidel finds that the fault for our contemporary political dysfunction resides not with our elected officials but with our democratic citizenries. He argues that our elected officials are overly responsive to public opinion which is often poorly informed, incoherent, and uncertain. The result is a more polarized political system, rising inequality, and institutional gridlock. Though not new, these concerns take on deeper political significance in a digital age where information flows more quickly and opportunities for feedback are virtually unlimited. If the diagnosis is too much democracy, the counter-intuitive solution runs against our cultural norms—less citizen involvement, greater discretion for political elites, and greater collective responsibility.

From Ballotpedia: 2016 ballot measures

A look at the 153 ballot initiatives that are up for a vote in 35 states this November. None in Texas - we do not have them statewide, though they can happen on the local level. The dominant issues are marijuana, gun control, health care and minimum wage.

- Click here for the article.

Texas does regularly place constitutional proposals on the ballot. Some laws passed by the legislature can only take effect if the Texas Constitution is amended. As we will see in class, it often is.

- Click here for Ballotpedia's list of Texas ballot measures.

1000 Word Critical Essay - Fall 2016 - GOVT 2305

I'm posting the assignment here for convenience. You can also find it on Blackboard.

Since this is a presidential election year, I’d like you to develop a topic related to it. The campaign for the general election is underway and it’s an interesting one. You will have little problem finding a worthwhile angle to pursue. Here are some possibilities:

- What impact is each candidate having on their respective parties? - What are the major issues each candidate is running on? Where do they agree and disagree? - What are the polls telling us about the competitiveness of each candidate? - What impact is each candidate having on other races on the ballot this November – think about the House of Representatives and the Senate. You might want to consider state races as well – state legislatures and governors. - How is each candidate conducting their campaigns? Think especially of Donald Trump’s unusual campaign so far.
- Where is the money coming from to fund these campaigns? What impact is that likely to have on how the winner of the race will behave once in office?

You can develop your own, but please stick to the 2016 race.

The basic requirements of the paper are:
- 1000 word minimum length - At least three references - Proper formatting – use what you are comfortable with, MLA is popular - General legibility

I've posted items related to the topic over the course of the year, and will continue to do so. You can access them by clicking on the following:

- 2016 campaign.
- 2016 election.
- 2016 primary election.

From the Washington Post: FBI probes foreign hacks of state election systems

Photo ID is of no use in this case.

We might just want to go back to pen and paper.

- Click here for the article.

The FBI is investigating a series of suspected foreign hacks of state election computer systems and websites, and has warned states to be on the alert for potential intrusions.

The Aug. 18 warning, issued after two states suffered intrusions into their systems, comes amid heightened concern over Russian hacks of Democratic Party organizations and possible meddling in the presidential election.

The FBI “flash” alert, which is not intended for general public release, listed Internet protocol addresses and other technical fingerprints associated with the hacks.

“The FBI is requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any similar activity to their logs, both inbound and outbound, has been detected,” said the FBI alert, which was first reported by Yahoo News.

The warning did not name the states that were targeted. But in June, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office shut down part of its website after the FBI found a potential threat to its state voter registration system, according to the Arizona Republic.

And in July, the Illinois Voter Registration System suffered a cyber-intrusion in which hackers were able to retrieve voter records, according to a message from the Illinois State Board of Elections.

The intrusion led the state election board to shut down the voter registration system for a week.

“This was a highly sophisticated attack most likely from a foreign (international) entity,” said Kyle Thomas, the Illinois board’s director of voting and registration systems, in the message.

The FBI declined official comment other than to note it “routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators” it turns up in investigations.

The FBI has told Illinois officials that they’re looking at possible foreign government agencies as well as criminal hackers, said Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois elections board.

The system has long been targeted by hackers, he said. But this hack “is to our knowledge the first time anyone has gotten in,” he said. “It’s not for lack of trying.” He added: “We’re highly confident that nothing was added, deleted or altered.” The amount of voter data that was accessed was “a fairly small percentage of the total,” he said.

For more on the subject: How Electronic Voting Could Undermine the Election - As foreign hackers target election data, voters may lose faith in digital ballots.

From RT: Shooting the messenger: Citizen journalists jailed for recording police

This is a little scary. I imagine a Supreme Court case is likely in the near future.

- Click here for the article.

Police practices are under fire as more and more recordings of excessive force and racist behavior surface. Some police departments have responded by trying to work with communities to regain trust lost, while others try to silence whistle blowers.

The availability of smartphones and cameras has empowered citizens to become guerrilla journalists who feel protected by the First Amendment. However, many have been shocked to discover revealing police misconduct may result in being targeted and harassed by law enforcement.

Filmmakers David Felix Sutcliffe and Laura Poitras have asked the documentary community to show their solidarity for civilian journalists by signing a petition. So far, the petition has at least 306 names, including multiple Academy Award-winning and nominated documentarians.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has endorsed their petition, saying in a statement, “Arrests of grassroots journalists who record police activities implicate not only the 1st and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, but also the very legitimacy of our legal system, which grounds its claim to power in impartiality. Yet, around the country, the law has subjected to penalties people pursuing constitutionally protected activities that enhance transparency, while turning a blind eye to the violence prompting residents to place themselves at risk.”

The petition asks the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the arrests of civilian journalists who film police actions. This shouldn’t be a difficult request, because the DOJ has acknowledged it as a problem in prior investigations.

In the DOJ’s 2015 report on the Ferguson Police Department (FPD), they wrote, “FPD officers also routinely infringe on the public’s First Amendment rights by preventing people from recording their activities,” and “the federal courts of appeal have held that the First Amendment ‘unambiguously’ establishes a constitutional right to videotape police activities.”

Despite this, citizens who record police often find themselves in the crosshairs. For example, the day after Chris LeDay filmed the death of Alton Sterling, he was detained after police told him that he “fit the description” of someone wanted on battery charges. He would end up spending the night in jail for unpaid fines, Complex reported.

From the New York Times: Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

We're pretty easy to figure out it seems.

- Click here for the article.

You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site.

And now, it is easy to find out how Facebook has categorized you — as very liberal or very conservative, or somewhere in between.

Try this (it works best on your desktop computer):

Go to facebook.com/ads/preferences on your browser. (You may have to log in to Facebook first.)

That will bring you to a page with your ad preferences. Under the “Interests” header, click the “Lifestyle and Culture” tab. Then look for a box titled “US Politics.” In parentheses, it will describe how Facebook has categorized you, such as liberal, moderate or conservative. (If the “US Politics” box does not show up, click the “See more” button under the grid of boxes.)

Facebook makes a deduction about your political views based on the pages that you like — or on your political preference, if you stated one, on your profile page. If you like the page for Hillary Clinton, Facebook might categorize you as a liberal.

Even if you do not like any candidates’ pages, if most of the people who like the same pages that you do — such as Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — identify as liberal, then Facebook might classify you as one, too.

From Ballotpedia: Preemption conflicts between state and local governments (2016)

We'll discuss preemption in both 2305 and 2306 soon - it is a key part of federalism. Here's a look at the major areas of conflict currently. Texas is not listed, but I have a hunch that's because the legislature is not in session. Next year will be very different.

- Click here for the article.

- And click here for detail about the conflict over preemption across the nation - including Texas.

A tug-of-war between cities and state governments has developed behind the scenes of the 21st century's biggest policy debates. Interest groups advancing policy reforms ranging from bans on fracking to higher minimum wages have led local and state officials to tussle over appropriate responses. Mayors, city councils, and community activists are passing ordinances and initiatives on wages, gun control, and LGBT issues in order to fill gaps perceived in existing law. Governors and state legislators have pushed back against these local responses, citing their interests in creating uniform policies across all local governments in their states.

This struggle continues the decades-long evolution of preemption, a legal concept that allows a state law to supersede a conflicting local law due to the state's power to create cities as granted by state constitutions. The term is also used to describe a similar exercise of power by the federal government over states, but this page only deals with preemption at the local and state level. Preemption jumped into the national spotlight in 2016 as friction increased between cities and states. These tensions are due in part to a common partisan divide: Democrats tend to control large cities, while Republicans tend to control state governments. Entering 2016, Democratic mayors oversaw 67 of the nation's 100 largest cities by population. This contrasts with Republican state government trifectas in 23 states and Republicans holding 30 out of 50 governorships in 2016.

ARGUMENTS

Legislators and governors argue that preemption allows states to create consistent laws across all municipalities. State officials also suggest that they are in better positions than cities to protect the rights of individuals by virtue of a larger view of policy debates.

Mayors, city councils, and county officials argue that preemption takes away local control necessary to respond to specific issues. Local officials also suggest that they are more attuned to the needs of the public given the relatively small number of state officials.

From the Texas Tribune: In Fight over Surprise Medical Bills, Some Lawmakers Target Insurance Regulators

On more item that might end up on the agenda of the next legislative session.

- Click here for the article.

On April 15, 2015, Ed Hagan spent a sleepless night trying to cope with a sharp pain in his back.

When morning came, Hagan, then a teacher at a Dallas middle school, was too sick to work. He headed to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, which he knew was in-network for his health insurance company, Aetna.

Medical tests revealed Hagan had kidney stones. But the news quickly got worse: Doctors suspected Hagan had a rare form of leukemia, and told him he needed to be hospitalized immediately to get tested.|

It was the beginning of more than a year of intensive cancer treatment for Hagan, now 66 and in remission. But the very first day of that ordeal left a lasting — and costly — impression: thousands of dollars in surprise medical bills.

Despite choosing an in-network hospital, the emergency room doctor who treated Hagan wasn't in-network. Neither was the anesthesiologist who worked on Hagan’s bone marrow sampling. Combined, their bills totaled $2,000.|

“Most people don’t know to fight this stuff, or how to write a letter, or how to kick it back at them, saying, ‘You guys got a scam going,’” Hagan said.

State lawmakers have long sought a solution to surprise medical bills — also known as balance bills — as doctors, insurance companies and patients argue over who is responsible for the phenomenon.

Plyler v Doe

This illustrates a few points in class including access to education and how the Supreme Court interprets (and reinterprets) the 14th Amendment.

- US Courts: Access to Education - Rule of Law.
- Oyez: Plyler v Doe.
- Wikipedia: Plyler v Doe.

From Vox: The alt-right is more than warmed-over white supremacy. It’s that, but way way weirder.

Welcome to the world of the neo-reactionaries.

These people do not like democracy - which some refer to as "demotism" - and would prefer a return to some form of monarchy. Their complaints echo those of the Constitution's framers.

- Click here for the article.

. . . the core contention . . . is one that's been common in technolibertarian circles for a long time: Democracy is a failure.

"Democracy is — as most writers before the 19th century agreed — an ineffective and destructive system of government," Moldbug writes. Moldbug doesn't actually like the term "democracy." He prefers "demotism," or rule of the people, a label under which he sweeps modern-day developed democracies like the US or Western Europe but also the former Soviet bloc, Nazism, and fascism. "Universalist lawful democracy is the least demotist of demotisms, Demotism Lite if you will," he writes. "Compared to Communism and Nazism, there's much to be said for it. But this is a rather low bar."

The purpose of government, in the view of neoreactionaries, isn't to represent the will of the people. It's to govern well, full stop. "From the perspective of its subjects, what counts is not who runs the government but what the government does," Moldbug explains. "Good government is effective, lawful government. Bad government is ineffective, lawless government. How anyone reasonable could disagree with these statements is quite beyond me. And yet clearly almost everyone does."

And democratic government, the neoreactionaries insist, is not effective, lawful government. Because the will of the people is arbitrary and varying, it cannot have the consistency of real, durable law, and it creates incentives for wasteful and, worse still, left-wing government. Moldbug started as an Austrian-school libertarian, and most neoreactionaries have general small-government sympathies and express a fear that democracy inevitably leads to ever greater taxation and redistribution, and otherwise encroaches on individual liberty.

"Democracy and ‘progressive democracy’ are synonymous, and indistinguishable from the expansion of the state," Nick Land, the next most influential neoreactionary thinker after Moldbug, writes. "Since winning elections is overwhelmingly a matter of vote buying, and society’s informational organs (education and media) are no more resistant to bribery than the electorate, a thrifty politician is simply an incompetent politician, and the democratic variant of Darwinism quickly eliminates such misfits from the gene pool." The result is a government that grows larger and larger.

From Politico: The 1965 Law That Gave the Republican Party Its Race Problem

For 2305 - and 2306. It wasn't just the Civil Rights Act that set the stage for the current political environment.

- Click here for the article.

During the long, three-year debate over the immigration act of 1965, members of Congress debated the wisdom and morality of removing 1920s-era quotas on immigration to the United States. Not far from the center of this debate was the nettlesome issue of race.

“The people of Ethiopia have the same right to come to the United States under this bill as the people from England, the people of France, the people of Germany, [and] the people of Holland,” griped Senator Sam Ervin, a conservative Democrat from North Carolina. “With all due respect to Ethiopia, I don’t know of any contributions that Ethiopia has made to the making of America.”

President Lyndon Johnson, hoping to tamp down concerns about the immigration act at a time when Congress was engaged in an even more ferocious debate over the voting rights act, sought to downplay the implications of the proposed immigration law: “This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” he said upon signing it. The president, like many other of the law’s supporters, sincerely believed that Europeans were most likely to take advantage of less stringent U.S. immigration policy.

He was wrong.

The Hart-Celler Act, so-called after its co-sponsors New York Congressman Emanuel Celler and Michigan Senator Philip Hart, opened the floodgates to new immigrants when it went into effect in 1968. But the vast majority of them didn’t come from Europe; they came instead from Latin America, Africa and Asia. In 1965, non-Hispanic whites comprised over 85 percent of the American population. Fifty years later, that portion is just 62 percent, and falling.

This is also why, 50 years later, Donald Trump is winning 52 percent of the white vote (to Hillary Clinton’s 40 percent) on a platform uniquely unappealing to minority voters—but losing the election, according to almost every poll. The Hart-Celler Bill of 1965 turned out to be not only revolutionary, but perhaps also the most revolutionary act of the 1960s. It is certainly the piece of Great Society legislation that has had the most impact on the presidential election of 2016.

From the Houston Chronicle: Shell Oil helped ignite the growth of Houston's downtown skyline - Oil company's consolidation supported city's claim as world's energy capital

This helps underscore a claim we make in 2306 that cities are primarily economic entities.

- Click here for the story.

At the time, it was considered revolutionary to move researchers and engineers away from the oil fields and consolidate them in a centralized locations like Houston because conventional wisdom in the industry held that these specialists would lose their feel for the oilfield. Instead, consolidation allowed for far greater collaboration among workers as they tried to find better ways to discover and exploit oil reserves.

"It was a very high-risk decision," Little recalled. Other companies eventually followed Shell's lead.

The news of Shell's plans to consolidate operations in Houston became public in August 1969. "Shell to Move 1,000 Workers Here," the Houston Chronicle's banner headline blared. The final number was closer to 1,400.

New York, meanwhile, had become increasingly expensive and Shell's president, Dick McCurdy, wanted to shrink the company's footprint there.

Shell started relocating people from New York in 1970 as One Shell neared completion. Shell moved people in shifts: after they finished work on a Thursday in New York, and they'd start on Tuesday in Houston. Only one day of work was lost each week.

Shell also had to hire a lot of new people. Roughly 700 of the New York workers refused to move.

"Let's face it: It was a little bit of a culture shock," Little said. "Most who made the move were pleasantly surprised."

By 1971, only the uppermost Shell Oil executives remained in New York. That soon changed. The new president, Harry Bridges, decided to move the corporate headquarters to Houston and One Shell Plaza.

Is the Texas economy #1 or #21?

It depends on whether you are measuring the overall state of the economy - including unemployment, state GDP, and state personal income per capita - or corporate profits. The later is doing much better than the former.

For more click here: Texas economy ranked 21st in nation - State also ranks near the bottom on education spending, correlation?

The Texas economy ranks 21st in the nation, according to Governing magazine, which used economic data from 2014 to 2016 to create an index.

That's a pretty middling performance for an economy once labelled the Texas Miracle because of how quickly it added jobs following the Great Recession of 2008. It turns out that all of that growth was tied to the oil and gas industry, which has taken a nosedive over the last two years.

The top five economies, according to the magazine, were Massachusetts, Oregon, Delaware, Colorado and California. Those are all blue states, which will surely infuriate Texas conservatives who will still angrily point out that Chief Executive magazine still ranks Texas, and four red states, as the best places to do business.

The radically different perspectives are not mutually exclusive, by the way, since one ranks economic performance as it impacts the population, and the other ranks the places where corporate profits grow the fastest.

List of major topics in recent sessions of the Texas Legislature

I'm posting this for future reference. The Texas House Research Organization publishes lists of topics likely to dominate each session of the legislature prior to its meeting. Below are links to the ones published going back to 1998.

2306 students who are thinking about paper topics related to next year's session might find this useful. The legislature tends to revisit certain issues regularly.

- Click here for the HRO's section on Legislative Session Reports.

Topics for the
- 76th Session. (1999)
- 77th Session. (2001)
- 78th Session. (2003)
- 79th Session. (2005)
- 80th Session. (2007)
- 81st Session. (2009)
- 82nd Session. (2011)
- 83rd Session. (2013)
- 84th Session. (2015)

From the Washington Post: New proposals would let lotteries or experts replace voting. Here’s what’s wrong with that.

More evidence that elites are way down on democracy.

- Click here for the article.

Is it time to rethink representative democracy? After the Brexit vote, some voters in the United Kingdom had a case of “regrexit” and called for a second referendum. In the United States, the recent arguments that the November 2016 election may be “rigged” generated a great deal of public discussion, as did concerns that the Republican Party candidate is not qualified for office.

Those who study this topic have been looking at ways to “renew” representative democracy.

Recently, two rival proposals that trace back to classical Greece have resurfaced for a modern audience. Both limit who can vote and seek to stimulate apolitical and rational decision-making:

1) Representatives by lottery.
2) Experts as representatives.

Education in Texas in the News - 8/23/16

For consideration:

All from the Texas Tribune.

- East Dallas High School Plants, Nurtures College Dreams.
- How UNT-Dallas' Grand Law School Experiment Could Be Overruled.
- Education Officials Point Fingers over College Readiness.
- Judge Denies State's Request to Toss STAAR Suit.

From the Houston Chronicle: Texas judge blocks federal directive on bathrooms and transgender students

This is worth discussion.

It applies to a variety of topics we will cover in class including federalism, civil rights, presidential power, the courts, and checks and balances. And probably more, like the role of Texas' attorney general, and electoral politics. And still more!

- Click here for the article.

A Fort Worth federal judge temporarily has blocked the implementation of President Obama's directive ordering public schools across the country to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

In a 38-page ruling issued late Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor said he was blocking the directive because it contradicted other regulations and because the federal government had not complied with rules regarding public comment and notice.

"This case presents the difficult issue of balancing the protection of students' rights and that of personal privacy when using school bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities, while ensuring that no student is unnecessarily marginalized while attending school...," O'Connor wrote. "The resolution of this difficult policy issue is not, however, the subject of this Order."

The Obama administration issued the directive in May, in the middle of a still-ongoing fight over a North Carolina law that requires people to use public bathrooms of the gender of which they were born. The directive implied that public schools could lose federal funding for not accommodating transgender students.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led a coalition of 13 states who sued over the directive in May, said he was "pleased" with Sunday's injunction.

"This President is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform," Paxton said in a statement. "That cannot be allowed to continue."

Civil rights advocates expressed disappointment with the ruling. The Human Rights Campaign said it would "thousands at risk as they return to school."

"Judge O'Connor's decision to bar the Department of Justice from enforcing this important guidance puts thousands of transgender students at even greater risk of marginalization, harassment, and discrimination as they return to school this fall," said Sarah Warbelow, the organization's legal director, in a statement. "All students, regardless of their gender identity, deserve to be able to learn in an environment free from discrimination."

From Vox: How the first liberal Supreme Court in a generation could reshape America

A likely consequence of a Clinton win in November.

- Click here for the article.

Odds are that very soon, the Supreme Court will become something it hasn’t been in nearly 50 years: made up of a majority of Democratic-appointed justices.

Ever since Abe Fortas’s resignation in 1969, the Court has either been split down the middle or, more often, made up primarily of Republican appointees. Some of those Republican appointees nonetheless turned out to be liberals, but even taking that into account, the Court hasn’t been majority liberal since 1971, when William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell joined.

That hasn’t stopped the Court from evolving in a progressive direction at times. In 1973, GOP appointee Harry Blackmun authored Roe v. Wade, drawing only two dissents; from 1996’s Romer v. Evans to 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, Anthony Kennedy and the Court’s liberals steadily expanded the rights of LGBTQ Americans.

But for the most part, over the past half-century liberals have been playing defense as an organized and well-planned movement of conservatives has limited the scope of rights trumpeted by liberals, expanded the power of the state in criminal justice, and issued more business-friendly rulings on campaign finance and regulatory issues.

The Court ruled that states didn't have to give poor black and Latino school districts the same fundingas rich white districts. It ruled thatschool resegregation achieved through white flight to wealthy suburbs was just fine. It ruled that despite declaring abortion a fundamental right, that didn’t mean Medicaid had to extend that right to poor women, and then it reversed course on treating abortion as a fundamental right at all. Itstruck down the death penalty but then brought it back four years later.

And in more recent years, it’s gutted the Voting Rights Act, struck down limits on campaign donations by corporations, strangled Medicaid expansion in the crib, and for the first time in American history declared an individual right to own guns.
All that could be about to change.

From the New York Times: 50 Years of Electoral College Maps: How the U.S. Turned Red and Blue

Another look at a story we cover in both 2305 and 2306 about how the major parties realigned after the election of 1964 - including Texas.

The along graphics are worth your time.

- Click here for the article.

It really begins with the election of 1948 when Southern states pulled support from the Democratic Party following Truman's support for civil rights policies.

- Click here for that story.

By 1947, as the Cold War with the Soviet Union intensified and the nation was becoming increasingly anti-Communist and intolerant, Harry Truman astonished everyone by suddenly supporting civil rights. Truman had been outraged at the murder and assaults on dozens of black veterans of World War II. Although he once held strong racial biases -- he had used the word "nigger" freely in his speech -- in 1947 he decided to make civil rights a national issue. He authorized a fifteen-man committee on Civil Rights to recommend new legislation to protect people from discrimination. Speaking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Truman became the first president of the United States to address the NAACP. He promised African Americans that the federal government would act now to end discrimination, violence, and race prejudice in American life. Shortly afterward, his panel issued its report confirming that segregation, lynching, and discrimination at the polls had to be ended.

In the election year of 1948, Truman continued to push for civil rights, partially because he felt that it was the right thing to do, and partially because he knew that he had to win the black vote in order to be elected. Although most political analysts predicted a Republican landslide, Truman believed that the election would depend on a handful of cities in the North where the balance of power would be held by black votes. Senator Hubert Humphrey, who was deeply committed to civil rights, had successfully maneuvered the Democratic Party to support a strong civil rights plank in its campaign platform -- much stronger than Truman wanted. One of Truman's strongest arguments in favor of civil rights was that American and Russia were now locked in a deadly "Cold War" and the Russians were using America's Jim Crow policies to win support from the rest of the world. Southerners replied that the civil-rights program was supported by Communists.

Strom Thurmond, Governor of South Carolina, and a group of Southern delegates walked out of the Democratic Convention when the civil-rights platform passed. The dissidents formed the States' Rights party, whose members came to known as Dixiecrats.

From the Houston Chronicle: Histories of TSU and UH marked by segregation Begun as racially separate institutions, schools grew to full public universities

A little know piece of regional history, complex history. One that helped set the stage for Brown v Board of Education.

- Click here for the article.

Both schools began in 1927, when the Houston school board agreed to fund the creation of two junior colleges: Houston Junior College and Houston Colored Junior College.

"Things started very quickly," said Mary Manning, an archivist at UH.

By the fall of 1927, 232 students had enrolled in the white school. Seventy-five students enrolled in the black college. Just seven years later, by 1934, the student body had grown to more than 900 at the white college and 700 at the black college. The Houston school board decided to make them full four-year private universities. The Houston Colored Junior College became the Houston College for Negroes. Houston Junior College became the University of Houston.

The universities eventually moved to permanent homes, just blocks from each other. Millionaire oilman Hugh Roy Cullen donated 53 acres to the black university. He gave money to help UH begin building its campus, declaring that the school must always be a college "for working men and women and their sons and daughters." Left unsaid was that those men and women must be white.

By the 1940s, Texas was becoming a major battleground in the fight to end school segregation. The college that would become Texas Southern was at the heart of it.

In the 1940s, the University of Texas at Austin's law school denied admission to Heman Marion Sweatt of Houston because of "the fact that he is a negro." His case, argued by Thurgood Marshall, for whom TSU's law school is named, would eventually go all the way to the Supreme Court. Before it got there, Texas lawmakers got to work trying to build a case to show black students in Texas had equal - but separate - opportunities in the state. They bought the flourishing black college in Houston for $2 million in 1947 and set to work building a school that at least seemed equal to UT.

And thus, Houston's first public university was born - not as an effort to expand educational opportunities, but to keep the state from having to integrate its flagship in Austin. If state leaders could show black students had their own version of the University of Texas, then the courts, state leaders hoped, wouldn't require the white University of Texas to admit black students.

Judicial challenges to Texas' education funding system

Texas has been front and center - not always in a good way - regarding the constitutionality of education policy.

For consideration:

1973 - San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriquez.
1981 - Plyler v. Doe.
1991 - Edgewood v Kirby.
2015 - Morath et al v. Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition et al.

From the New Republic: The Anti-Democratic - Urge With populism on the rise in both parties, it has become fashionable for elites to bash the masses. But we need more democracy, not less.

Democracy has fallen under harsh times recently - with Trump and Sanders and Brexit and all. Elites have recently begun referring to democracy as "mob rule,"just like in the olden days. We may be witnessing a period of excess democracy that might spill over into tyranny, which was a concern of the Constitution's framers. But this author thinks that attitude is misplaced. Critics have it exactly wrong.

This applies to our ongoing discussion of the nature and merits of democracy.

- Click here for the article.

In reality, our political system is far less democratic than it was a generation ago. Over the past 40 years, we’ve seen unions crushed, welfare gutted, higher education defunded, prisons packed to overflowing, voting rights curbed, and the rich made steadily richer while wages stagnated. It’s not the frustration of the people that should terrify us, but rather the legitimate sources of their frustration, which have so long gone unaddressed. Regular citizens struggling to make ends meet have almost nowhere to turn, nothing to join. We shouldn’t wonder that so many voters have seized on this election to make a statement, even a nihilistic one. To insist that the only solution is for the people to get back in line is to refuse to acknowledge that the “establishment” bears any responsibility for the conditions that created the public’s outrage in the first place.

There's no quick fix for this mess. If Hillary Clinton wins in November, it will be tempting to view the ballot-box refutation of Trumpism as a restoration of political sanity. But a Clinton presidency won’t fundamentally change the conditions that led millions of Americans to turn to Trump or Sanders. The only way out is the hard way—building democratic outlets for change patiently, on the ground. We have to build durable movements that support and advance the twin causes of racial and economic justice in a lasting and meaningful manner. And we have to acknowledge that protests are a necessary but insufficient ingredient for social change: They can be galvanizing and clarifying, but, just like political campaigns, they tend to be short-lived and don’t always translate into the sustained, strategic organizing efforts we need.

Above all, in spite of the reports of political chaos—and yes, even stupidity—that daily flood our inboxes and Twitter feeds, we must resist the call of the elites and the tug of the anti-democratic urge. Knee-jerk contempt for democracy—insulting those we disagree with as idiotic, as incapable or unworthy of civic trust and responsibility—has a long and ugly history in this country, where the Founding Fathers were nearly as democracy-averse as Plato, and certainly more hostile to the prospect of redistributing wealth. The non-propertied, non-male, and nonwhite have all had to battle for basic political inclusion—and then real political power—pushing against reactionary conservatives and anxious liberals alike. Our job now is to advance this democratic march, rather than retreat from it in fear. Before we write democracy off, we should at least truly try it.

Political Knowledge Today

This is always a great way to start a semester - especially since I like to begin with a lecture justifying the government requirement.

- Political ignorance haunts 2016 campaign.

A noted libertarian scholar finds ignorance among supporters of both major party candidates. He thinks the problem is that government does more than we can comprehend.

What is behind this public ignorance?

It is not that the voters are dumb, but that they have little incentive to learn. Because there is only an infinitesimally small chance that any one vote can influence the result of an election, even most smart people usually have little motivation to follow politics closely. That helps explain why political knowledge levels have remained low for decades, in spite of rising IQ scores and educational attainment, and despite the increasing availability of information on the Internet.There is no easy solution to the problem of political ignorance. But we can at least mitigate it by limiting and decentralizing government.

- What Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Can Learn From William James.

The problem isn't bad politicians, its bad citizens.

Good citizens do not merely demand liberty and equality (though they should), but view their liberty and equality as public goods to be used for public ends. Good citizens do not merely study their nation’s glorious past (though they may), but seek to understand its complicated present and shape its uncertain (but certain-to-be-different) future. Good citizens do not merely articulate their interests, opinions and principles in the language of inclusivity, but embrace the hard work, moral humility and imperfect compromises that make an inclusive common life possible.

Who was William James? Click here.

This essay was referred to in the article: The Moral Equivalent of War.

Only 30% of Americans can name the three branches of government - my goal is to make you one of them.

Some food for thought: It won’t happen, but compulsory voting might be the only solution to political ignorance in America.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: Oh, You Thought Your State Government Worked For You?

Negative fallout from a recent Texas Supreme Court decision limiting access to public data.

- Click here for the article.

A lot can happen when you're distracted by presidential politics. The past week offered a few relatively local reminders of why politics matters.

Texas state government can shut down your access to public information — simply by hiring private businesses to do government work that would otherwise be subject to public scrutiny.

What’s supposed to be the virtuous circle of civics — you elect lawmakers, they get to work, you re-evaluate them on that work and then vote again — has been corrupted. It competes with the commercial circle of civics, where elections are paid for by business interests that are rewarded with state contracts that, incidentally, are protected from public scrutiny because of laws passed by those same business-backed officeholders.

You can blame the Texas Supreme Court, if you’d like, for the ruling that exposed what some call a “monstrous loophole” in the state’s public information laws. Or you can blame the lawmakers who wrote those laws.

Either way, as The Texas Tribune’s Jim Malewitz reported, you can’t find out what it cost McAllen taxpayers to hire Enrique Iglesias to sing in a parade, or how many ride-hailing permits Uber got from the city of Houston.

That’s before you even get to the really big contracts that replace entire departments of state government — in child support, health and human services programs, state prisons and data services.It might be your money, but the state doesn’t think it’s any of your business.

From the Texas Tribune: Trump Calls NAFTA a "Disaster." Texas Republicans Beg to Differ.

There's a split among Republicans on the agreement.

- Click here for the article.

Caught between the anti-globalist tirades of their presidential standard bearer and their state's close trade ties with Mexico, Texas congressional Republicans are straddling a tricky political line when it comes to talk of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Republican nominee Donald Trump called NAFTA a “disaster” and backed renegotiating the pact in a policy speech in Detroit on Monday. Barring a better deal, he said, the United States should withdraw from the 22-year-old agreement that lowered trade barriers between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Texas grassroots conservatives also want to abandon the deal. The Republican Party of Texas' 2016 platform demands “immediate withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement.”

But when The Texas Tribune reached out to each of the 27 Republican members of the Texas congressional delegation, not one joined in Trump's call for renegotiating the treaty. None agreed to be interviewed, three responded with written statements and the others either did not respond or declined to comment.

“NAFTA is responsible for increasing trade between Texas and Mexico by almost 110 percent since 2004,” Rep. Will Hurd, R-San Antonio, said in a statement.

From Slate: A Boy Died on This Water Slide—in One of the Many States That Barely Ensure That Rides Are Safe

This is how we get regulations.

- Click here for the article.

Earlier this month, USA Today placed the Verruckt water side at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, Kansas, on the top of its list of the “13 Best Outdoor Water Park Rides” in America. “Insanity,” the newspaper proclaimed of the attraction, which is the world’s largest water slide, dropping riders by 17 floors in a few terrifying seconds.

On Sunday, a few days after that article appeared, Caleb Schwab, the 10-year-old son of a Kansas state legislator, died on that ride. The circumstances of his death are still murky, though one Kansas City television station is reporting that parkgoers claim the ride’s harness wasn’t working properly. One thing, however, is almost certain: the dismal state of amusement park regulations in the United States, which allow attractions in Kansas and many other states to effectively evade any serious government safety oversight.

Even as amusement rides are getting more terrifying and death-defying by the year, the amusement park industry actively fights attempts at increased regulation. According to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, surveys reveal that 4 out of 5 of its member organizations say they view “state regulation as the biggest threat to their businesses.”

Annexation History - Planning and Development Department - City of Houston

Governing: Gov2Gov: The Lobbying That Falls Under the Radar Cities, counties and states put a lot of effort -- and money -- into lobbying other levels of government.

For our look at both local governments and lobbying.

- Click here for the article.

Data reported by the Center for Responsive Politicsindicates that states, localities and their associations collectively spent $71 million in federal lobbying last year. The education sector, primarily colleges and universities, spent another $77 million. When combined, more was spent on those two areas of public-sector lobbying than defense, oil and gas, and some other major industries.

Some governments employ dedicated intergovernmental relations staff, and a select few larger cities maintain personnel in Washington. Many contract with private lobbying firms to give them broader reach. State and national associations further represent governments and groups of officials on a range of issues.“Intergovernmental relations is one of those under-the-radar-activities for any city,” says Jeff Coyle, who heads government affairs for San Antonio. “How a city relates to and is governed by states and the federal government is crucially important to people in the community, whether they realize it or not.”

At the federal level, top priorities of state and local government associations include protecting tax exemption for municipal bonds and seeking the authority to collect sales taxes from online retailers. “Whether it’s education, advocating or lobbying, those who are closest to the people ought to have a seat at the table in informing decisions made by other levels of government,” says Carolyn Coleman, director of federal advocacy for the National League of Cities.

From Governing: Can Counties Fix Rural America's Endless Recession? The inability of most rural places to recover from the economic downturn is fueling political and social problems around the nation.

For our look at counties, as well as the unique problems rural America faces as the economy continues to change.

- Click here for the article.

While some metro areas are thriving, two out of three rural counties have experienced a net loss in their total number of businesses since 2010, after the recession had technically ended. According to a recent report by the Economic Innovation Group, half the new businesses started throughout the nation since 2010 were created in just 20 counties, out of more than 3,000 nationwide.

Urban America recovers from recessions, but rural America no longer seems able to. “You look all across this country and some of these places are dying,” says Seth McKee, an expert on rural politics at Texas Tech University. “They’re either going to be wiped off the map, or they’re getting smaller and smaller and there’s nothing to sustain them.”
That may be overstating the case, but it’s no longer far-fetched to talk about permanent, Appalachian-style poverty spreading across rural America. There just aren’t enough jobs. By now, it’s a familiar story that many manufacturing plants have shut down or moved and taken their jobs with them. The prevailing fear of the moment -- that robots are going to take over all the work -- has already happened in agriculture. A machine knows more about the exact fat and protein content of the milk from every cow it touches than a human hand ever would. Farmers are becoming almost as likely to plant sensors as seeds, helping them map out where their drones should apply fertilizer. Already, farms account for less than 1 percent of employment, but the number of agriculture jobs is projected to decline another 6 percent by 2024.

The old notion that jobs in timber, farming and small-town manufacturing are secure and will last for life is not just outdated but antique.

. . . Lincoln County actually has a lot of things going for it. Local officials have been able to leverage the presence of the coast not only to promote tourism and maintain a sizable fishing fleet, but also to develop marine science as an economic driver. What was at one time home to a single oceanographer’s lab has become the nexus for a range of enterprises that constitute a growing share of the local economy. Oregon State University (OSU) runs the Hatfield Marine Science Center, which houses an alphabet soup of state and federal agencies. There’s an aquarium next door that pairs well with the town’s beaches as a tourist magnet. A few years ago, Newport’s harbor became the headquarters for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific fleet, nabbing the ships from Puget Sound.

All of these projects, along with many others, came about because the Newport area has managed to build a collaborative culture, with city, county, port and state officials pulling together with private-sector actors to make things happen. “This cluster didn’t happen by accident,” says Gil Sylvia, an economist at the Hatfield center. “You start with something small and you build out the components.”

From Vox: Can panicked Republicans rid themselves of Trump? Here are 7 options.

A look at campaign strategy, as well as the unique and troubled relationship that exists between Trump and the Republican Party establishment.

- Click here for the article.

Here are the options:

1) Kick Trump off the ticket and find another candidate2) Convince Trump to drop out (or hope he drops out on his own)3) Officially disavow Trump4) Un-endorse Trump5) Quietly shift to down-ballot races6) Hope Trump will start behaving himself7) Learn to stop worrying and love the Trump

From 538: Tighter Restrictions Are Losing In The Battle Over Voter ID Laws

The federal courts are checking state legislatures.

- Click here for the article.

The struggle over who can vote on Election Day is becoming more heated in courtrooms, judges’ chambers and statehouses across the country, paralleling the intensity of the presidential race. And at the moment, the side that wants fewer voting restrictions seems to be winning.

The battle began in earnest after 2010, when several Republican state legislatures began tightening identification requirements on voters. It has reached a new level in the 2016 election, when voters in 17 states faced new restrictions that ranged from photo ID requirements to cutbacks on early voting and same-day registration. Republicans said the laws were necessary to prevent fraud; Democrats and voting rights advocates said the restrictions were really designed to reduce participation by minority groups and young voters who traditionally support Democrats.

“It’s the biggest rollback of voting since Jim Crow,” said Jonathan Brater, an attorney at NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, which compiled the list of restrictions.1

But in just the past few weeks, several of these laws have been blocked or overturned by federal judges. On Monday, a District Court judge issued a preliminary injunction against a voter ID law in North Dakota. In the previous 10 days, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ID law in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act, a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a law in North Carolina, and a District Court judge in Wisconsin ruled that elements of the law there were unconstitutional. There is also major voting-law litigation ongoing in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio and Virginia.

For a look at HB 4 (78th Regular Session) ...

.. the legislation leading to tort reform in Texas: click here.

Two posts on tort reform,

An author from the Texas Public Policy Foundation gives it a thumbs up on its tenth anniversary.

- Click here for it.

Ten years of tort reform have provided greater access to health care and helped make Texas the nation’s leading job producer. Indeed, by recognizing the causal connection between economic prosperity and efficient, fair courts, the Texas legislature passed and Governor Rick Perry signed House Bill 4 (HB4)—powerful tort reform legislation that is the foundation of the Texas economic miracle. Yet, despite the awesome economic growth and increased access to health care triggered by HB4, members of the trial bar are still working to overturn this reform. While Texans should stand their ground and rebuff efforts to undo HB4’s successful tort reforms, all Americans should take notice of Texas’s remarkable transformation and look to enact similar reforms in their own states.

 A critic of Missouri's effort to do the same argues that tort reform violates the 7th Amendment.

- Click here for that.

The 7th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides for the right of citizens to have their disputes tried to a jury of their peers. Under the Missouri Constitution, “the right to trial by jury as heretofore enjoyed shall remain inviolate“.

Inviolate. That is not a word used very often in today’s language. “Inviolate” means “free from violation, injury, or outrage” and, alternatively, as “not infringed.”

And yet, our constitutional right to jury trial is under attack nearly constantly in legislatures across the country. Yesterday, Governor Jay Nixon vetoed two attempts to violate, injure, and infringe upon Missourian’s right to jury trial.

SB 847 would give a negligent defendant a discount on paying damages based on insurance or benefits purchased or obtained by the injured victim. This bill would have taken the insurance paid for by the victimand given those benefits to the defendant.
Ridiculous.

From SE Texas Record: Watchdog group asks Texans to keep arbitration out of insurance policies

For our look at civil law, among other things - including the possible agenda of the 85th Texas legislative session.

- Click here for the article.

Texas Watch, a self-proclaimed consumer protection group, recently launched a campaign urging Lone Star residents to tell the Texas Department of Insurance to keep arbitration out of insurance disputes.

“Arbitration clauses force consumers with disputes into closed, costly, and biased proceedings without any appeal or public record. For years, TDI rightfully rejected policies with these dangerous clauses,” reads a May 18 Texas Watch email sent to supporters.

“But, a new policy submitted to TDI could reverse this longstanding rule. The policy includes a binding arbitration clause, which would strip unaware consumers of their constitutional rights (to sue) in exchange for a discount.”

In December, Texas, after being absent from the top 10 for several years, reappeared on the American Tort Reform Association’s annual “Judicial Hellholes” report for the thousands upon thousands of lawsuits filed in Hidalgo County after a couple of 2012 hailstorm strikes.

Now, trial lawyers advertise heavily after every major storm in Texas, seeking to sign up as many clients as possible. As a result, hundreds to thousands of lawsuits are filed against insurance companies following a destructive weather event.

Steve Badger, a commercial insurance attorney and partner at Zelle LLP, says Texas Watch is directing their concerns at the wrong group.

“The insurance industry didn’t wake up on morning and say ‘hey, let’s add an arbitration provision to our policies,’” said Badger. “Instead, the insurance industry is reacting to what is going on in the market place – and that is thousands of hail damage lawsuits.”

From the New York Times: Tim Huelskamp, Anti-Establishment House Republican, Loses Primary in Kansas

Committee membership and constituency service still seems to matter, even in the age of the Tea Party.

- Click here for the article.

Representative Tim Huelskamp, a member of the hard-line conservativeFreedom Caucus, lost to a political newcomer on Tuesday in the Republican primary for his Kansas district.

Mr. Huelskamp, who was elected to Congress in 2010 and quickly earned a reputation for frustrating Republican leaders, was defeated byRoger Marshall, an obstetrician from Great Bend, in the primary for the First Congressional District, which covers western Kansas and much of the state’s center.

Mr. Marshall won with the support of business groups and the agriculture lobby, which had turned its back on Mr. Huelskamp after Speaker John A. Boehner had him removed from the Agriculture Committee in 2012, a crucial position for a legislator from a farm state. Mr. Huelskamp was a frequent critic of Mr. Boehner, who resigned last year amid strife with the Republican Party’s right wing.

“Getting kicked off the Agriculture Committee is a crime that can’t be forgiven,” Brian Scheideman, a 52-year-old driver’s education instructor, said after voting for Mr. Marshall in Wamego, The Associated Press reported. “I don’t mind the independent voice, but you’ve got to figure out how to work with people.”

Mr. Marshall had the support of the Kansas Farm Bureau, the Kansas Livestock Association, the National Association of Wheat Growers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to The A.P. Mr. Huelskamp had the backing of the billionaire Koch brothers’ political network, the Club for Growth and conservative colleagues who visited the state to campaign for him.

From Governing: Some Officials Are Getting Schooled in Running Elections

Running elections ain't easy. The University of Minnesota is trying to change that by offering a programs in elections administration.

For our look at county governments and the management of elections.

- Click here for the article.

The demands on election administrators have been growing in recent years.

Federal laws passed in the wake of the Florida recounts in the 2000 presidential election imposed new requirements on everything from voting equipment to provisional ballots to voter databases.

States have added to the complexity, too. Some have imposed voter ID laws that require election officials to apply a new layer of scrutiny on would-be voters. Others have added to administrative duties by expanding early voting, increasing access to absentee ballots and starting Election Day registration.

Meanwhile, social media and the 24-hour news cycle can easily turn a local bureaucratic snafu into a national news story -- like when voters in the Phoenix area had to wait hours to cast votes in this year's presidential primary.

Sharing expertise in the field has been difficult, but Doug Chapin, the director of the University of Minnesota's election administration program, hopes they can fix that.

"Because elections are so localized in this country, people tend to become experts on how things work in their own jurisdiction," he said. "This program allows them to put it in a larger national and thematic context. It's the first step in creating what I like to think of as a profession of election administration."

Because the program is online, it allows elections officials from across the country to connect with one another. The diversity of their experiences is important, said Gelms, because states handle various issues differently. And even in the same state, populous areas face a whole unique set of problems from spread-out rural areas.

An introductory class covers broad themes, including what Chapin characterizes as the three central tensions in election administration: central control vs. local control; access to the ballot vs. integrity; and fairness vs. finality. Other courses explore law, design, communication and even transportation -- and how they affect election administration.