TOPICS: Outrageous Plan to Deepen, Widen, Kill Buffalo Bayou – Virtual Public Meeting Monday, Oct. 26; CENSUS YEAR: VOTE DOWN-BALLOT!; Houston creates new system for low-income residents to address late court fees; Sick Texans seeking late absentee ballots still need a doctor’s note, Texas appeals court rules; The attorney general’s office has sidelined four of the seven whistleblowers who reported Ken Paxton to law enforcement; Critics urge Texas regulators to reverse decision allowing social workers to turn away clients who are LGBTQ or have a disability; Alarming failure rates among Texas students fuel calls to get them back into classrooms; A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans; Treaty to ban nuclear weapons made official with 50th UN signatory; Saudi Arabia may have enough uranium ore to produce nuclear fuel; How Many Countries Are There in the World in 2019?; Mail-In Ballot Postage, Early Voting Has Started; Drive-Thru Voting in Harris County; More.

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1.  “… [A]sk not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country!” ~ John F Kennedy, Inaugural speech, January 20, 1961
2. The Secrecy Voting Envelope: https://www.youtube.com/embed/oxaXleNeQKA
3. According to current court rulings, there will be NO straight-ticket voting in this election.
4. The next election is the General Election on November 3^rd, 2020
   1. VOTING FAQ – In Texas, Early Voting Starts October 13-thru-30!
   2. VOTETEXAS.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   3. Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail (Received, not Postmarked): October 23, 2020
   4. VOTING BY MAIL: INSTRUCTIONS
      1. 1-2 page Ballot: USE (1)-stamps
      2. 3-4 page Ballot: USE (2)-stamps
      3. 5-6 pages Ballot: USE (3)-stamps
   5. LAST DAY TO APPLY FOR BALLOT BY MAIL (RECEIVED, NOT POSTMARKED): OCTOBER 23, 2020
      1. HARRISVOTES.COM­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
      2. DRIVE-THRU and 24-HOUR VOTING will be available at some early voting sites. More info at HARRISVOTES.COM!
      3. FortBendVotes.com takes you to the proper link
      4. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      5. LibertyElections.com (Liberty County, TX)
      6. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      7. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      8. Waller County (TX) Elections
      9. Chambers County (TX) Elections
   6. Make sure you are registered to vote!
   7. On the possibility that the courts make you eligible to vote by mail on Election Day due to the Covid-19 virus, make sure that you are ready with an application to mail in. These are available from HARRISVOTES.COM­.  Follow directions carefully.
   8. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, consider visiting VOTE.ORG. Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
   9. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   10. HARRISVOTES.COM – Countywide Voting Centers
       1. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
          1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
          2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
          3. Current utility bill
          4. Bank statement
          5. Government check
          6. Paycheck
          7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
       2. You may vote early by-mail if:
          1.  You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
          2. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
          3. Sick or disabled;
          4. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
          5. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
          6. Make sure you are registered:
       3. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
          1. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
             1. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
                1. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
5. Outrageous Plan to Deepen, Widen, Kill Buffalo Bayou – Virtual Public Meeting Monday, Oct. 26. Comment Period No (SAVEBUFFALOBAYOU.ORG); 13, 2020
   1. The US Army Corps of Engineers has come up [a] plan to strip, deepen and widen Buffalo Bayou and line it in places with concrete block for 22-24 miles all the way from Highway 6 in far west Houston to 1,500-feet downstream of Montrose in Buffalo Bayou Park …
   2. Creating capacity to convey more and faster rainwater runoff encourages the production of more and faster runoff. As the excellent Greater Houston Flood Mitigation Consortium reported in 2018, “conveyance projects can make flooding worse.” (p. 17) …
   3. The Corps is holding virtual public meetings on the report, known as the Buffalo Bayou and Tributaries Resiliency Study Interim Feasibility Report. The first virtual meeting is today, Monday, Oct. 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. Here is how to join the meetings.
   4. The public comment period opened Oct. 2 when the Corps’ Galveston District released the 210-page report. Public comment ends on Nov. 2. Here is how to send your comments to the Corps.
6. CENSUS YEAR: VOTE DOWN-BALLOT!
7. Houston creates new system for low-income residents to address late court fees; By Emma Whalen | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 5:35 PM Oct 23, 2020 CDT | Updated 5:35 PM Oct 23, 2020 CDT
   1. Houston’s municipal court system will have two new judges tasked with helping financially burdened residents avoid escalating late fees on low-level citations.
   2. “This program will give many people remove holds they have on receiving a driver’s license or vehicle registration and may very well be the last hurdle before getting a job, finishing college or technical school, avoid arrest and really give them a chance to move forward,” Turner said.
   3. Mayor Sylvester Turner and Presiding Municipal Judge Elaine Marshall announced the Safe Harbor Court on Oct. 23.
   4. The city’s municipal courts have over 100,000 cases in delinquent status dating back to 2008, Turner said. An estimated 33,000 of those cases may be able to be addressed by the new court.
   5. Residents facing fines or fees will work with the court to find alternative methods of payment and, in some cases, avoid arrests or jail time. Two judges assigned to the court will also visit residents facing delinquent fines and set up community events to educate the public on the Safe Harbor program.
   6. The program is part of Mayor Sylvester Turner’s Complete Communities initiative and was also recommended by his policing reform task force. …
8. Sick Texans seeking late absentee ballots still need a doctor’s note, Texas appeals court rules; by Jolie McCullough | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Oct. 23, 20205 PM
   1. Starting Saturday, Texas voters who become too sick to go to the polls must seek emergency absentee ballots to vote in the election. Credit: Charlie Pearce for The Texas Tribune
   2. Texas voters who get sick shortly before Election Day and can’t go to the polls will still need a doctor’s note before they can get an emergency absentee ballot, a state appeals court ruled Friday.
   3. Voting rights group MOVE Texas will not appeal the temporary ruling further. Instead, as a fallback, the group has established a free telehealth service with volunteer physicians to provide the necessary documentation for sick voters seeking absentee ballots starting Saturday, the executive director said.
   4. The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals’ ruling, overriding a state district court order, said implementing the lower court’s ruling “would change the longstanding requirements governing late mail-in ballots and risk voter confusion.” The case will still be reviewed further after the election. …
   5. “It’s completely up to the physician if they want to issue the waiver or not,” Galloway said. “If so, they can do it digitally. That voter is then set and it’s at no cost to them to be able to complete the application and turn it into the elections department.”
   6. MIKE:
      1. The “voter confusion” argument seems to be getting very arbitrarily invoked this year in election questions before courts;
      2. An absentee ballot application – as I understand it – still needs to be mailed or hand-delivered to the County Clerk, which seems to defeat the whole purpose.
9. The attorney general’s office has sidelined four of the seven whistleblowers who reported Ken Paxton to law enforcement – Two were fired and two placed on leave — moves employment attorneys say will likely spark a whistleblower lawsuit. A spokesperson for Paxton said the personnel changes were not related to the whistleblower allegations. by Emma Platoff | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Oct. 23, 20209 AM
   1. … Mark Penley, the deputy attorney general for criminal justice, was put on leave weeks ago, shortly after reporting Paxton to law enforcement, top aides have said. And Jeff Mateer, who worked for years as Paxton’s top deputy, resigned earlier this month after accusing his boss of running afoul of the law.
   2. A sixth employee, Director of Law Enforcement David Maxwell, was also placed on leave earlier this month. Maxwell did not sign on to the whistleblowers’ Oct. 1 letter to human resources, which stated they had “a good faith belief that the Attorney General is violating federal and/or state law.” But he was involved in the investigation that sparked the mutiny against Paxton — and Paxton has slammed Maxwell for his work on the case. …
10. Critics urge Texas regulators to reverse decision allowing social workers to turn away clients who are LGBTQ or have a disability – Lawmakers plan to file a bill during the 2021 session to bolster the state’s nondiscrimination protections. ; by Shawn Mulcahy | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Oct. 23, 20203 PM
    1. Lawmakers and advocates on Friday railed against a Texas regulatory board’s decision to remove protections for LGBTQ people and those with disabilities who seek social work services. They also previewed a bipartisan bill they plan to file aimed at bolstering anti-discrimination protections.
    2. During a press conference organized by the Texas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, advocates called the move by the Texas State Board of Social Work Examiners, which has not yet been finalized, an attempt to create “two classes of Texans.”
    3. “This flies in the face of everything that we’ve been taught, everything that we’ve been trained, everything that exists in our national code of conduct and our code of ethics,” said state Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, who is also a social worker. …
    4. The social worker regulatory board voted unanimously last week to revise a section of its code of conduct that lays out when a social worker can refuse to serve someone. The code will no longer prohibit social workers from discriminating on the basis of a disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.
    5. Bottom of Form
    6. Top of Form
    7. Bottom of Form
    8. Greg Abbott’s office recommended the change, board members said, because the nondiscrimination protections went further than those laid out in state law.
    9. The Behavioral Health Executive Council, which oversees the board, will hold a hearing Oct. 27 and allow the public to comment on the change.
11. Alarming failure rates among Texas students fuel calls to get them back into classrooms – Most schools hoped this fall would see students make up academic ground lost last spring when the pandemic hit. Instead, districts are looking for ways to reverse plummeting grades and attendance among students learning at home. by Aliyya Swaby | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | 23, 20206 AM
    1. As fall progresses, Texas public school superintendents are realizing that virtual instruction simply is not working for thousands of students across the state.
    2. Report cards from the first weeks of the school year show more students than last year failing at least one class. Students are turning in assignments late, if at all; skipping days to weeks of virtual school; and falling behind on reading, educators and parents report. Many parents say they’re exhausted from playing the role of at-home teacher, and some students without support at home are struggling to keep track of their daily workload with limited outside help.
    3. The problems are concentrated among students trying to learn from home, more than 3 million of the state’s 5.5 million public school students, according to administrators’ accounts. The trends are adding urgency to calls for getting more students back into classrooms as quickly as possible.
    4. By now, many school districts hoped their students would be making up academic ground lost last spring, when the pandemic caused them to shut down classrooms. Texas is mandating that districts get back to normal this fall and prepare students for upcoming state standardized tests. Schools dialed up the intensity of their classes — and then an alarming number of students began failing.
    5. As the first grading period came to a close, some administrators began temporarily backpedaling from their initial insistence on academic rigor. They gave teachers the message: Do what you can to make sure kids pass.
    6. Judson Independent School District, in San Antonio, added a note to its grading handbook allowing principals to “grant any exceptions” and “extend grace” to students, letting them make up late work or drop assignments. “We understand that connectivity issues, lack of devices, technological issues with the Student Portal, Canvas, and electronic books may impede a student from submitting their assignments in a timely manner,” the handbook now reads.
    7. Cathryn Mitchell, principal of Austin ISD’s Gorzycki Middle School, sent an email in early October, obtained by The Texas Tribune, alerting all staff to a “campus-wide dilemma.” Almost 25% of students were failing at least one class, including 200 failing more than one subject. She attributed the failures to steep technology learning curves, lack of access to devices and Wi-Fi, shifting reopening guidelines and anxiety over the health risks of on-campus learning.
    8. The email implored teachers to exhaust “all measures to assist the student before failing them,” including working with them one on one, emailing or calling parents, and setting up Zoom parent conferences. For teachers unable to do everything to help a failing student before the grading deadline, Mitchell wrote, “we would ask that you gift the student with a 70.” Texas’ “no pass, no play” rule prohibits students pulling less than a 70 in one or more classes in a marking period from playing sports or participating in extracurricular activities for three weeks.
    9. “We know that some students are taking advantage of the situation or have procrastinated to get themselves into this position. There is no question about that,” Mitchell wrote. “But we also know that we have asked a great deal of them these first five weeks. … This will not be the norm every six-weeks.” …
    10. As the extent of students’ struggles become clear, parents and superintendents are increasingly determined to get students back to school, the pendulum of their worries swinging away from health risks and toward the risks of students not learning at all. “Districts are starting to feel some real internal pressure as educators,” said Joy Baskin, legal services director at the Texas Association of School Boards. “If they feel that there’s enough momentum around getting everyone back, I think that’s their preference.”
    11. State data on COVID-19 in schools is limited and full of gaps, but it points toward low student infection rates, encouraging some experts. Experts say layering policies such as sanitization, social distancing and masks is needed to reduce the risk of transmission. Despite outcries from some teachers and parents, dozens of school districts have nixed their virtual learning options altogether and brought nearly all students back to classrooms.
    12. According to the San Antonio Express-News, at least one of those districts is attempting to require all remote learners with failing grades to return in person — violating recently updated state guidance. “Discontinuing remote instruction in a way that only targets struggling students is not permitted,” the updated guidance reads.
    13. Texas school districts don’t have much time to get students back on track. This academic year, the Texas Education Agency will resume strict sanctions on schools and districts with consistently low student standardized test scores after pausing those penalties last spring. And there are dollars at stake, with state funding tied to student attendance. Districts have reported losing track of thousands of students, including some of their most vulnerable, who haven’t logged into virtual classes or responded to phone calls and door knocks. According to state leaders, schools that are open for in-person instruction have seen higher levels of enrollment than those with only virtual education. …
    14. Some Austin ISD parents are considering sending their children back later this fall, once the district returns to in-person instruction that more closely resembles a regular classroom. When the district reopened, it had students sitting in classrooms but learning virtually. The state halted that approach. Rosemary Wynn, an Austin ISD parent, thinks her eighth and ninth grade sons may get more out of learning in person once it includes more face-to-face instruction.
    15. She and her husband had a stern talk with their O. Henry Middle School eighth grader earlier this fall after realizing he had not opened about 100 emails from his teachers, except one from his football coach. He was previously a straight-A student, but at one point his grade in one class had fallen to 29, she said.
    16. “Children don’t know how to read email. That is not part of their repertoire,” she said, with exasperation. “I haven’t had a single teacher reach out to say, ‘your kids’ grades this, your kids’ grades that.’ I think the whole way this is set up is a recipe for disaster.”
    17. Kelly Sanders and her [14-year-old son] at Austin High School in Austin ISD, regularly debate whether he should return later this fall. Bizuayehu has dyslexia and dysgraphia, which impacts his ability to write clearly by hand, and he’s found virtual learning much easier. “I do not want to go back,” he said.
    18. Sanders is concerned that the second grading period will be even more academically rigorous and that her son will not be able to keep up virtually. “I’m happy that [he is] making really good grades right now, but I’m concerned that it still isn’t as rigorous as the classes would be if it were in person. If at some point he has to take a standardized test on the material, I don’t know what that looks like,” she said.
    19. But for other parents, the decision is easy. Single parent Renee Schalk chose to keep her 17-year-old son and 2-year-old triplets home from Georgetown schools and doesn’t regret it. “My children are children of color,” said Schalk, who is Black. “I don’t want them subjected to COVID-19. … We’re not doing enough in this state, we’re not doing anything in this country to make it safe.”
12. A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans – An Atlantic investigation reveals who they are and what they might do on Election Day. Story by Mike Giglio | THEATLANTIC.COM | November 2020 Issue
    1. Rhodes, 55, is a stocky man with a gray buzz cut, a wardrobe of tactical-casual attire, and a black eye patch. With him in his pickup were a pistol and a dusty black hat with the gold logo of the Oath Keepers, a militant group that has drawn in thousands of people from the military and law-enforcement communities.
    2. Rhodes had been talking about civil war since he founded the Oath Keepers, in 2009. But now more people were listening. And whereas Rhodes had once cast himself as a revolutionary in waiting, he now saw his role as defending the president. He had put out a call for his followers to protect the country against what he was calling an “insurrection.” The unrest, he told me, was the latest attempt to undermine Donald Trump. …
    3. In August, when a teenager was charged with shooting and killing two people at protests over police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rhodes called him “a Hero, a Patriot” on Twitter. And when a Trump supporter was killed later that week in Portland, Oregon, Rhodes declared that there was no going back. “Civil war is here, right now,” he wrote, before being banned from the platform for inciting violence. …
    4. As Trump spent the year warning about voter fraud, the Oath Keepers were listening. What would happen, I wondered, if Trump lost, said the election had been stolen, and refused to concede? Or the flip side: What if he won and his opponents poured into the streets in protest? The U.S. was already seeing a surge in political violence, and in August the FBI put out a bulletin that warned of a possible escalation heading into the election. How much worse would things get if trained professionals took up arms? …
    5. Rhodes kept the nature of the Oath Keepers ambiguous—the group was officially nonpartisan and was not, as a later post on the blog put it, a militia “per se.” Even so, he cautioned that its members would be painted as extremists and said they could remain anonymous. “We don’t ask current-serving law enforcement and military to sign up on any kind of membership list,” he said in a radio interview. “We think that’d be foolish.” But eventually he did create such a list. It collected members’ names, home and email addresses, phone numbers, and service histories, along with answers to a question about how they could help the Oath Keepers. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center passed the entries for nearly 25,000 people along to [the author]. …
    6. Rhodes believed that the militia groups of the past had been too secretive, which made the public suspicious and gave authorities more leeway to crack down. He established the Oath Keepers as a registered nonprofit with a board of directors; members did relief work after hurricanes and spoke at local Republican events. They could walk into police stations or stand outside military bases with leaflets; they could meet with sheriffs and petition lawmakers.
    7. In 2014, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers joined an armed standoff between Patriot groups and federal authorities in Nevada on behalf of the cattle rancher Cliven Bundy. The next year, they led another standoff, at the Sugar Pine Mine in Josephine County, Oregon. Both times, what started as a dispute over land-use issues became a rallying cry on the militant right. Both times, the authorities backed down. In 2014, Rhodes sent teams to Ferguson, Missouri, to protect businesses during the unrest over police brutality after Michael Brown’s killing. Images of Oath Keepers standing guard on rooftops with semiautomatic rifles became symbols of an America beginning to turn on itself.
    8. In Trump, the Patriot movement believed it had an ally in the White House for the first time. … When Trump warned of the potential for civil war at the start of the impeachment inquiry last fall, Rhodes voiced his assent on Twitter. “This is the truth,” he wrote. “This is where we are.”
    9. Rhodes maintained secrecy around his rank and file. Monitoring groups couldn’t say for sure how many members the Oath Keepers had or what kind of people were joining.
    10. But the leaked database laid everything out. … They hailed from every state. About two-thirds had a background in the military or law enforcement. About 10 percent of these members were active-duty. There was a sheriff in Colorado, a SWAT-team member in Indiana, a police patrolman in Miami, the chief of a small police department in Illinois. There were members of the Special Forces, private military contractors, an Army psyops sergeant major, a cavalry scout instructor in Texas, a grunt in Afghanistan. There were Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, a 20-year special agent in the Secret Service, and two people who said they were in the FBI.
    11. … [A]n officer in the Los Angeles Police Department said he’d enlist his colleagues “to fight the tyranny our country is facing.” Similar pledges came from a police captain in Texas, an Army recruiter in Oregon, and a Border Patrol agent in Arizona, among many others. … A special agent in the New York City Police Department’s intelligence bureau recalled that he’d been heading to work one day when he saw a window decal with the Oath Keepers logo and jotted down the name on his hand. He vowed to be ready “if the balloon ever goes up.” …
    12. … David Solomita [is] an Iraq War veteran in Florida whose entry said that a police officer had recruited him to the Oath Keepers while he was out to dinner with his wife. [The author] didn’t mention civil war when [he] emailed, yet [Solomita] replied, “I want to make this clear, I am a libertarian and was in Iraq when it became a civil war, I want no part of one.” …
    13. David Hines, a conservative writer, has called guns the right’s most successful organizing platform. The issue demands local involvement, to closely track not just federal but state and municipal laws and politics. Guns are also social. To shoot them, you’ll likely head to a range, and to buy them, you’ll likely visit a store or a gun show where you’ll find people who share your mindset. “Guns,” Hines writes, “are on-ramps to activism.” …
    14. “It’s not just about guns,” Rhodes said. But guns were at the heart of it. Trump was stoking the idea that conservatives are a minority threatened by a demographic tide that will let liberal cities dictate the terms for the rest of the country. When I asked Rhodes and other people on the militant right to name concerns beyond gun rights, they mentioned how history is taught in schools, or how the Green New Deal would threaten land use, agriculture, single-family homes. They stressed that America is a republic, not a democracy. Liberals, Rhodes told me, want to see “a narrow majority trampling on our rights. The only way to do that is to disarm us first.” …
    15. When the protests erupted in Kenosha a month later, many of the demonstrators brought guns, and vigilante groups quickly formed on the other side. They called themselves the Kenosha Guard. There was a confrontation near a gas station like the one at Pepperoni Bill’s, and a teenager allegedly opened fire and killed two people. A man affiliated with antifa allegedly gunned down a Trump supporter in Portland later that week, and Rhodes declared that “the first shot has been fired.”
    16. By then, some writers popular on the militant right had been warning that wars don’t always start with a clear, decisive event—an attack, a coup, an invasion—and that you might not realize you’re in one until it’s under way. Civil conflict is gradual. The path to it, I thought, might begin with brooding over it. …
13. Treaty to ban nuclear weapons made official with 50th UN signatory – Production, use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons illegal from January 2021 though nuclear-armed states have not signed up; Staff and agencies | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Sun 25 Oct 2020 01.52 EDT, Last modified on Sun 25 Oct 2020 02.00 EDT
    1. An international treaty banning nuclear weapons has been ratified by a 50th country [Honduras], the UN has said, allowing the historic though essentially symbolic text to enter into force after 90 days.
    2. While nuclear powers have not signed up to the treaty, activists who have pushed for its enactment hold out hope that it will prove to be more than symbolic and have a gradual deterrent effect. …
    3. The treaty would come into force on 22 January 2021, the UN said.
    4. Declared nuclear-armed states including the US, Britain, France, China and Russia have not signed the treaty.
    5. The US has written to treaty signatories saying the Trump administration believes they made “a strategic error” and urging them to rescind their ratification.
    6. The letter, obtained by the Associated Press, said the five original nuclear powers – the US, Russia, China, Britain and France – and America’s NATO allies “stand unified in our opposition to the potential repercussions” of the treaty.
    7. However campaigners hope the treaty will have the same impact as previous international treaties on landmines and cluster munitions, bringing a stigma to their stockpiling and use, and thereby a change in behaviour even in countries that did not sign up.
    8. OBTW: Revealed: Saudi Arabia may have enough uranium ore to produce nuclear fuel
14. How Many Countries Are There in the World in 2019?; STRATFOR.COM | Apr 15, 2019, 10:00 GMT
    1. Anywhere from 195 to 249, depending on how you count.