September 1, 2017

Travis Park Confederate monument will come down after city council vote

San Antonio will remove its lone Confederate statue standing in Travis Park downtown after a 10-1 city council vote Thursday afternoon.

The request to remove the Confederate monument has drawn heated protests from both sides of the issue since two councilors proposed it in July. The issue heated up after a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month.

Councilmen Roberto Treviño and William "Cruz" Shaw submitted the initial request in July to rid the park of the statue and place it in a museum or in the proper historical context elsewhere. It is unclear when the statue will be moved. Mayor Ron Nirenberg bypassed the normal committee process to put it up for a full council vote Thursday.

Hours before the decision, officials erected a fence around the park as a precautionary measure.



http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Fence-erected-around-Travis-Park-in-advance-of-12163810.php

August 30, 2017

San Antonio - Robert E Lee High School's name is changing!!

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/article/NEISD-board-votes-to-drop-name-of-Lee-High-School-12159774.php

North East Independent School District trustees — prodded by a fervent national debate over memorializing the Confederacy that some said had become a distraction for students — voted 7-0 Tuesday to change the name of Robert E. Lee High School.

Administrators will submit a plan at a future board meeting for a process to rename the school, which trustees indicated would not occur until at least the start of the 2018-19 school year.

Several board members said the decision was a difficult one that had followed an outpouring of messages and calls to the board, some of them vitriolic.

The crowd — which had entered through metal detectors and were watched by several police officers — responded with applause and some expressions of dismay at the decision.

It was the second time in two years that the board had considered the issue. Those who wanted to keep the name as a source of tradition and pride, and those who considered it an outdated tribute to a racist past, had fueled hours of public comment at multiple meetings over several months before trustees voted 5-2 to keep the name in 2015.

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This came out of nowhere!! So awesome!!
From last Thursday (while I was focusing on Harvey): NEISD board has placed the name change issue on the agenda for a special meeting set for 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

August 6, 2017

My favorite song from 1960

I don't think Shakin' All Over by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates was on the US Billboard charts.
It is a British tune way ahead of it's time. Sounds more 1965ish than 1960.

(I'm sure the video is not from 1960, but the song is)

July 28, 2017

The Senate is in session

They are literally thieves in the night.

July 23, 2017

Tom Wakely running for governor

He announced it today at the Bexar County Democratic Party meeting.

No formal announcement. He ran against Lamar Smith in 2016


Yay, we have someone other than the "International King of Leather"!

He seems like a decent guy.

Here is an article about him from last year:


http://www.expressnews.com/news/news_columnists/gilbert_garcia/article/Bernie-ite-angles-for-Lamar-Smith-s-job-7230258.php

In this year of open rebellion against political institutions, even the biggest backroom deal-makers want to be perceived as outsiders. But for Wakely, the shoe fits.

How else to describe a Bernie Sanders devotee who helped César Chávez organize grape boycotts in the 1970s, became a Unitarian Universalist pastor in the 1980s, ran a jazz club in Mexico in the 2000s and now uses his white-brick North Side home as a veterans hospice?

Wakely, 62, kicks off his general-election campaign Saturday afternoon at Tilo Mexican Restaurant (two blocks from his campaign headquarters), marking the white-bearded activist’s graduation from a self-described role on the political fringes to a spot closer to the center of the arena.

The only political office he ever sought prior to this year was a Wisconsin school board post he won 25 years ago. That probably would have been the end of his political career if not for the encouragement of Lucy Coffey, a World War II veteran who died last March in San Antonio at the age of 108. Coffey, the country’s oldest living female veteran at the time of her passing, befriended Wakely near the end of her life.

June 11, 2017

In Upset, Ron Nirenberg is New Mayor of San Antonio

Iris Dimmick - Rivard Report

Mayor Ivy Taylor conceded to Councilman Ron Nirenberg (D8) just after 9 p.m. on Saturday, June 10.

“I first want to thank Ivy Taylor, our mayor, for her years of service,” Nirenberg said in his victory speech. “It’s not easy to do the work that we do, as any family member can attest. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy, and I want to thank our mayor for the service to our city.”

With 100% of precincts reporting, Nirenberg received a resounding 54.59% of the vote to Taylor’s 45.41% Exactly 5,266 votes separated the two in the early voting results. That margin grew to more than 9,091.

“There are many issues obviously that differentiate my vision from Mayor Taylor’s – on transportation issues, on diversity issues, on public safety issues – and I think that the voters have made some clear choices about the direction that they want to take the city,” Nirenberg said earlier in the evening. “This is a brand new Council so we want to get everyone together and start working on a unified direction for the city.”



https://therivardreport.com/june-10-runoff-voting-results-mayor/

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Yay!!!!!!

May 26, 2017

Prosecutors Race to Keep Angel-of-Death Behind Bars

In Depth reading at Texas Monthly

http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/prosecutors-race-keep-angel-death-behind-bars/

I was in nursing school over there during this time. There was cover-up and scandal involved. No murder charges in San Antonio, but murder charges in Kerrville. It will be difficult to revive an old case. This case isn't "cold". Charges just were not brought at the time.

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Short article about yesterday's Grand Jury indictment of Jones:

Bexar County indicts baby-killing nurse Genene Jones in 36-year-old case:


A convicted child killer who is scheduled for release next year was indicted on a new murder charge Thursday by a Bexar County grand jury in the death of an infant in 1981.

Genene Jones, a former nurse at hospitals in San Antonio and Kerrville, is serving a 99-year sentence for killing Chelsea McClellan, who was 15 months old when she was given a fatal overdose of muscle relaxers in 1982.

Jones also was convicted in Bexar County of injury to a child/serious bodily injury and sentenced to 60 years in prison for giving an overdose to Rolando Santos in 1982. The infant, who was 4 weeks old, survived. The sentences are being served at the same time.A convicted child killer who is scheduled for release next year was indicted on a new murder charge Thursday by a Bexar County grand jury in the death of an infant in 1981.




http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Bexar-County-indicts-baby-killing-nurse-in-11174747.php

May 24, 2017

To all retired or retiring Texas teachers

TRS Care for 2018: Age 60-65 will have $4000 deductible - 80/20 plan. No other option
Age 65 and up: Humana Medicare Advantage - No other option
$1.5 billion dollar shortfall.

This is pretty devastating. One of our Indivisible leaders shared it on FB.

If you have Facebook you can follow TRTA's Live Event. I watched it this evening, but they keep archives on FB.

Next legislative session: They are coming for our pension

http://trta.org/legislation/legislative-updates/

May 22, 2017

Dan Patrick unconvinced by House action on bathrooms, property taxes

After threatening to force a special session of the Texas Legislature unless lawmakers approve a "bathroom bill" and property tax legislation, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick on Monday appeared to be unconvinced by the House's actions on the two issues.

"I share Governor Abbott's concern about the lack of a rollback provision in Senate Bill 669 on property taxes," Patrick said in a statement about a property tax measure the House passed Saturday. Patrick, like Gov. Greg Abbott, had indicated he wanted the House to approve Senate Bill 2, to require local governments that want to raise property taxes by 5 percent or more to get voter approval, but that proposal stalled in the House.

On the bathroom front, Patrick said he had concerns about the "ambiguous language" the House approved as an amendment Sunday to address bathroom use by transgender Texans in public schools because it "doesn't appear to do much." The measure the House approved would require schools to provide single-stall restrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities to students who don't want to use facilities designated by “biological sex.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/05/22/dan-patrick-unconvinced-house-action-special-session-threat/

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It isn't bigoted enough for Dan Patrick.
It doesn't "destroy the state" as much Steven Bannon, aka Dan Patrick, would like.

May 21, 2017

Amid special session threat, House eyes bathroom restrictions

by Alexa Ura May 21, 2017 2 hours ago

Efforts to force legislative overtime over the "bathroom bill" are dwindling.

Heading into the final stretch of the legislative session, the Texas House on Sunday is expected to consider legislation to regulate bathroom and locker use for transgender Texans. But House members are likely to stray from the broader proposals that have languished in their chamber and instead focus only on schools.

Some Republicans in the House are said to be eying Senate Bill 2078 — which focuses on school districts’ “multihazard emergency operations plans” — to amend with language that could nix school districts’ trans-inclusive bathroom policies.

The chamber's last-minute traction on the bathroom legislation follows Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s threat to insist the governor call a special session of the Legislature unless lawmakers passed such a bill — which he has pushed for all session long, citing privacy concerns — as well as property tax legislation (The House on Saturday advanced a less aggressive tax proposal than the Senate had in mind).

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/05/21/amid-special-session-threat-house-eyes-bathroom-restrictions-schools/

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Just when we thought it was gone, it came back to life. Lack of funding for the "sunset safety net" is a reason for a Special Session. They should have just gone into a Special Session for the sunset commission.