POSSIBLE TOPICS: Voting info; Houston Chronicle tech editor is taking the buyout; Longtime cult-favorite Houston movie theater permanently shutters; City of Houston launches new restaurant, meal assistance program; UT report provides look into high COVID-19 risk in Texas correctional facilities; Republicans kept their grip on Texas government in 2020. In 2021, they’ll be able to tighten it; Redistricting Tom DeLay; A Convicted Kidnapper Is Chosen to Lead Government of Kyrgyzstan; This is no conventional coup. Trump is paving the way for a ‘virtual Confederacy’; There’s a plan afoot to replace the Electoral College, and your state may already be part of it; “Incoming GOP Senator Doesn’t Seem To Have A Full Grasp On Basics Of U.S. Govt And History; The economy as we knew it might be over, Fed Chairman says; Inheritance, not work, has become the main route to middle-class home ownership; Let’s consider the larger and long-term effects of “delocalizing” so-called white-collar work on this problem. We might call this, “”Things To Come”, rather like the 1936 movie; More.

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1. Make sure you are registered to vote!
   1. VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
      1. HarrisVotes.COM­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
      2. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
      3. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      4. LibertyElections.com (Liberty County, TX)
      5. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      6. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      7. Waller County (TX) Elections
      8. Chambers County (TX) ElectionsFor personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information,
      9. consider visiting ORG. Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
      10. 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.
      11. 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.
          3. Make sure you are registered:
          4. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
          5. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
          6. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
          7. Outside Texas, try org.
2. Houston Chronicle tech editor is taking the buyout; by Chris Roush | TALKINGBIZNEWS.COM | November 13, 2020
   1. Dwight Silverman, the technology editor at the Houston Chronicle, has accepted the paper’s buyout and is leaving after 30 years. …
   2. Silverman is a regular panelist on This Week in Tech, the popular tech news podcast at twit.tv, and is a former co-host of Technology Bytes, a weekly computer call-in show on KPFT-FM.
3. Longtime cult-favorite Houston movie theater permanently shutters; By Craig D. Lindsey | HOUSTON.CULTUREMAP.COM | Nov 9, 2020, 4:22 pm
   1. On November 9, the Houston Chronicle reported that AMC Studio 30 has officially, permanently closed. [T]he Chronicle notes that the closing has nothing to do with the pandemic shaking up both the movie business and the movie-exhibition business (the chain’s lease ran out and the property owner reportedly has other plans) …
   2. AMC said in part, “… one of our most prominent landlord … made certain rent concessions in exchange for other rights, including its ability to terminate up to seven leases. In conjunction with this agreement, AMC has ceased operations at six EPR-owned theatre locations nationwide. AMC Studio 30, which closed at the end of business on Sunday, November 8, is the only AMC in this area impacted as a result of this agreement.
4. City of Houston launches new restaurant, meal assistance program; Bill Barajas, Reporter | COM | Published: November 13, 2020, 7:03 pm
   1. The city of Houston has launched a new restaurant and meal assistance program.
   2. City council approved the $2.2 million Houston Eats Restaurant Support program or H.E.R.S. to help local restaurants and provide up to 20,000 meals to individuals most affected by the pandemic.
   3. The city partnered with Lemond Kitchen, a local catering company run by Merinda Martin and her husband.
   4. Lemond Kitchen will be responsible for finding Houstonians in 31 zip codes identified with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social vulnerability data. …
   5. The individuals in need must be senior citizens, high-risk and/or homebound adults, people with disabilities, families with children under the age of 18, low income or unemployed.
   6. [Merinda] Martin was also tasked with finding 15 local businesses to help cook the meals. …
   7. One of the restaurants selected is Dona Maria Mexican Café in Houston’s East end. …
   8. Dona Maria had agreed to provide about 200 meals a week and the program will pay them $10 a meal.
   9. [The] extra income … will help pay the bills and allow [the owner] to reassure employees that everything will be OK. …
   10. If you want to know more about the distribution sites, whether you or a loved ones qualify, or for a list of businesses involved you can click here.
5. UT report provides look into high COVID-19 risk in Texas correctional facilities – The report shows 231 people died from COVID-19 in correctional facilities: 190 prison inmates, 14 jail inmates and 27 staff members. Author: Janelle Bludau | khou.com | Published: 10:16 PM CST November 14, 2020, Updated: 6:55 AM CST November 15, 2020
   1. A report by researchers at the University of Texas gives a startling look at just how bad coronavirus has hit Texas jails and prisons. …
   2. … 80 percent of the 14 people who died in jail were awaiting trial and hadn’t yet been convicted of a crime; 21 had less than two years on their sentence; nine had already been approved for parole, and the average age of an inmate who died in prison was only 64 years old.
   3. [Michele Dietch, distinguished senior lecturer at LBJ School of Public Affairs, said], “People in prisons and jails tend to age a lot quicker than people on the outside.” …
   4. The true goal of the report, she said, is to figure out what to do next.
   5. “We really need to be reducing the population in our prisons and jails to enable the people who are there to be safer and to get certain people out of harm’s way,” Dietch said.
6. Republicans kept their grip on Texas government in 2020. In 2021, they’ll be able to tighten it. – Because Republicans in the state House and Senate held onto their 20-year majority, they are positioned to further entrench their power until the next redistricting rolls around in 2031. by Karen Brooks Harper | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 13, 20205 AM
   1. When the Lone Star State defied polls and stayed solidly red on election night, dejected Texas Democrats saw the next 10 years flash before their eyes.
   2. In a few months, the Texas Legislature will begin the dramatic, gut-wrenching wonk-fest known as redistricting — the decennial redrawing of district lines for the state’s elected officials in Congress, the state Capitol and the State Board of Education to create roughly equally populated districts to match the population growth after the 2020 census.
   3. And because Republicans in the state House and Senate held onto their 20-year majority, they are positioned to further entrench their power until the next redistricting rolls around in 2031. Their majority also extends to the Legislative Redistricting Board, which draws the maps when the Legislature can’t agree on them.
   4. Redistricting Tom DeLay; COM | Dec. 14, 2005
      1. The Supreme Court agreed this week to review Texas’ 2003 Congressional redistricting, which added five Republicans to the state’s delegation. The plan, engineered by the former House majority leader Tom DeLay, is rightly being challenged as partisan and discriminatory against minority voters. It is encouraging that the court has decided to step in.
      2. DeLay’s 2003 redrawing of Texas’ Congressional district lines threw aside the longstanding tradition that new lines are drawn only every 10 years, after the census. The purpose of this heavy-handed line-drawing was purely to increase the number of Republican districts. It worked. The number of Republicans in the delegation went to 21 from 16, helping to entrench Mr. DeLay as majority leader. …
      3. The Texas case also raises unusually strong claims that the voting strength of minority voters was illegally diluted. According to a recently uncovered memo, the eight career Justice Department employees assigned to review the plan in 2003 unanimously concluded that it violated the Voting Rights Act. But political appointees at Justice overruled their objections and approved it anyway.
7. Pressure mounts on Peru’s president after 2 die in protests, By Franklin Briceño | APNEWS.COM | November 15, 2020
   1. Pressure mounted on Peru’s interim president to resign Sunday after a night of protests in which two people were killed and the country’s political turmoil deepened.
   2. At least nine of Manuel Merino’s Cabinet members quit and the president of Congress scheduled an emergency session to discuss the leader’s resignation. …
   3. [Manuel] Merino, a little-known politician and rice farmer, rose to Peru’s highest office Monday after the legislature voted to oust former President Martín Vizcarra. Lawmakers utilized a clause dating back to the 19th century to declare the president of “permanent moral incapacity” based on unproven allegations that he’d accepted bribes while serving as governor years ago.
8. A Convicted Kidnapper Is Chosen to Lead Government of Kyrgyzstan – Lawmakers in Central Asia’s only democracy selected a man sprung from jail by protesters just days ago in an effort to end days of violent political unrest; By Andrew Higgins | NYTIMES.COM | 10, 2020, 2:28 p.m. ET
   1. MOSCOW — A man who had been convicted of kidnapping was chosen to be the prime minister of Kyrgyzstan on Saturday after feuding politicians agreed on a new government in an effort to end nearly a week of violent turmoil in the Central Asian country.
   2. An agreement to put the government under the man, Sadyr Japarov, who was sprung from jail this past week by anti-government protesters, should help calm street violence. But it stirred alarm in some quarters that criminal elements had prevailed in a power struggle set off by disputed parliamentary election results last Sunday. …
   3. Japarov, a former member of Parliament for a nationalist party, has insisted that the kidnapping charges against him were politically motivated, a plausible claim in a country where each successive government often jails members of the previous one. Among those freed from prison this past week by protesters were a former president, Almazbek Atambayev, serving an 11-year-sentence for corruption, and two former prime ministers. …
9. This is no conventional coup. Trump is paving the way for a ‘virtual Confederacy’ – Race is the message behind his supporters’ legal shenanigans, and a keystone for a Trumpian government in exile; By Jonathan Freedland | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Fri 13 Nov 2020 11.22 EST, Last modified on Fri 13 Nov 2020 16.46 EST
   1. Not for the first time, Donald Trump’s unhinged behaviour prompts an uncomfortable question: should we be laughing in derision or trembling with fear? Is he playing out his last days as nothing more than a sore loser pathetically kidding himself that he might yet score the winning run, even after the crowd’s gone home and the stadium is empty – or is his insistence that last week’s election was stolen an attempt to cling on to power, to stage a coup against his democratically elected successor? The case for laughter is strong … [A] wing of the department of homeland security – part of the government that Trump still heads – declared that last week’s election “was the most secure in American history”, and that there was “no evidence” of any malpractice, still less of the mass-scale fraud that Trump has groundlessly alleged.
   2. The result is that Trump’s lawyers have been all but laughed out of court, forced by impatient judges to admit that they don’t have any evidence, let alone proof. … Surely Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was joking when he promised with a smile: “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” …
   3. … But every now and then, fear intrudes. Why, for example, has Trump fired the civilian leadership of the defence department, including the defence secretary, Mark Esper, filling their posts and others in intelligence with ultra-loyalists? Esper stood up to Trump over the summer, when the president wanted to deploy the military to crush peaceful protests. Does Trump have something similar in mind, a move that would require a yes man to nod it through? Is it possible that Pompeo was not, after all, joking? …
   4. One Capitol Hill Republican tells me he suspects Trump sacked Esper mainly to “make him feel better”, and “to get even with the people who thwarted him”, rather than because he wants a Pentagon boss who will agree to send in the troops. Equally possible, says my source, is that Trump plans to go out with a bang, and wants pliant people in post. What kind of bang? Some talk of a total withdrawal from Afghanistan. Conversely, there’s chatter about a possible attack on Iran. That would be huge – and Trump likes huge – but it’s not a coup. …
   5. … Trump’s attempt to defy a democratic election is comically inept or cynically motivated doesn’t alter the fact that he’s making it. No less alarming, all but a handful of Republicans have backed him. …
   6. The fear is that Trump and his followers will never give way, that he will remain the head of a “Trumpian government in exile”, as the historian Sean Wilentz puts it, antagonistic to the legitimate, elected government, armed with allies in Congress, sustained via social media and nourished by grievance and the romance of a lost cause: a new, virtual Confederacy. … [I]nevitably in America, so much of this turns on race. …
   7. As Barack Obama writes in his upcoming memoir, these are “dark spirits” that have “long been lurking on the edge of the Republican party – xenophobia … paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward bl
10. There’s a plan afoot to replace the Electoral College, and your state may already be part of it – Colorado became the latest state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, now one of 15 states and D.C.; By Elliott Ramos | nbcnews.com | Nov. 9, 2020, 2:24 PM CST / Updated Nov. 10, 2020, 9:07 AM CST
    1. Colorado voters have decided to join a growing list of states that hope to decide a president by popular vote, the latest move in a national chess match over the way the United States elects its presidents.
    2. Called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, the agreement calls for states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, once enough states join the agreement.
    3. So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have approved the pact, covering 196 electoral votes of the required 270 to win the presidency.

    4. States	Category		Florida	Not enacted	Pennsylvania	Not enacted
       California	Enacted		Georgia	Not enacted	South Carolina	Not enacted
       Colorado	Enacted		Idaho	Not enacted	South Dakota	Not enacted
       Connecticut	Enacted		Indiana	Not enacted	Tennessee	Not enacted
       Delaware	Enacted		Iowa	Not enacted	Texas	Not enacted
       District of Columbia	Enacted		Kansas	Not enacted	Utah	Not enacted
       Hawaii	Enacted		Kentucky	Not enacted	Virginia	Not enacted
       Illinois	Enacted		Louisiana	Not enacted	West Virginia	Not enacted
       Maryland	Enacted		Maine	Not enacted	Wisconsin	Not enacted
       Massachusetts	Enacted		Michigan	Not enacted	Wyoming	Not enacted
       New Jersey	Enacted		Minnesota	Not enacted
       New Mexico	Enacted		Mississippi	Not enacted
       New York	Enacted		Missouri	Not enacted
       Oregon	Enacted		Montana	Not enacted
       Rhode Island	Enacted		Nebraska	Not enacted
       Vermont	Enacted		Nevada	Not enacted
       Washington	Enacted		New Hampshire	Not enacted
       Alabama	Not enacted		North Carolina	Not enacted
       Alaska	Not enacted		North Dakota	Not enacted
       Arizona	Not enacted		Ohio	Not enacted
       Arkansas	Not enacted		Oklahoma	Not enacted

    5. … While the compact has gained traction in states run by Democratic governors, it has been supported by some Republicans such as former RNC chair Michael Steele.
    6. Critics, however, say the popular vote initiative will encourage candidates to focus on large cities, which tend to favor Democratic candidates. [John Koza, creator and chair of the National Popular Vote nonprofit,] takes issue with that.
    7. “We know how candidates campaign now, and they would campaign the same way they do now, except it would be spread out over the whole country,” he said.
11. Mike: Would it really be too much to ask that candidates for state and federal office pass a basic citizenship and/or civics test first?
    1. “Incoming GOP Senator Doesn’t Seem To Have A Full Grasp On Basics Of U.S. Govt And History; By Cristina Cabrera | TALKINGPOINTSMEMO.COM | November 13, 2020 11:38 a.m.
       1. Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a former Auburn University football coach who defeated Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) in a landslide during the 2020 elections, apparently forgot to brush up on grade school-level U.S. history and civics before he decided to be a part of the government.
       2. A revealing interview with the Alabama Daily News on Thursday showed that Tuberville did not know what the three branches of the U.S. government are.
       3. “You know, our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three of branches of government. It wasn’t set up that way, our three branches, the House, the Senate and executive,” the senator-elect said, apparently unaware that the House and Senate form one legislative branch and omitting the judicial branch altogether.
       4. Additionally, he incorrectly asserted that Al Gore was president-elect for 30 days in 2000.
       5. Those weren’t the only, uh, flubs: Tuberville also indicated that he didn’t understand what World War II was about.
       6. [Tuberville said,] “My dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of socialism,” he told the Daily News (it was fascism, not socialism).
       7. That wasn’t even the first time the incoming lawmaker had misidentified the basis for U.S. involvement in World War II: During his victory speech on election night, Tuberville told supporters his father was “liberating Paris from socialism and communism” during the war.
12. The economy as we knew it might be over, Fed Chairman says; By Anneken Tappe | CNN Business | Updated 4:57 PM ET, Thu November 12, 2020
    1. … “We’re recovering, but to a different economy,” [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell] said during a virtual panel discussion at the European Central Bank’s Forum on Central Banking.
    2. The pandemic has accelerated existing trends in the economy and society, including the increasing use of technology, telework and automation, he said. This will have lasting effects on how people live and work….
    3. [Powell said it’s] likely that lower-paid workers, as well as those in jobs requiring face-to-face interactions, such as retail or restaurant workers, will shoulder most of the burden of this shift. These groups, heavily skewed towards women and minorities, have already been among those most affected by pandemic layoffs,
    4. The post-pandemic economy is also at risk of being less productive: women have been forced to quit their jobs due to child care responsibilities during the crisis, and children aren’t getting the education they deserve, Powell said.
    5. Generally speaking, inequality holds the economy back, the central banker said.
    6. “Even after the unemployment rate goes down and there’s a vaccine, there’s going to be a probably substantial group of workers who are going to need support as they’re finding their way in the post-pandemic economy, because it’s going to be different in some fundamental ways,” Powell said. …
    7. Inheritance, not work, has become the main route to middle-class home ownership – The cost of housing is rising so much faster than wages that buyers increasingly rely on family wealth; Lisa Adkins and Martijn Konings | theguardian.com | Mon 9 Nov 2020, 03.00 EST (Last modified on Tue 10 Nov 2020 04.19 EST)
       1. In many of the world’s largest and most expensive cities, young people find themselves in a strange predicament. Although their educational credentials and employment prospects put them in the “middle-class” category, many have virtually no chance of ever making it on to the property ladder.
       2. For almost four decades, property prices have increased at a much faster rate than wages. Although this trend has hardly gone unnoticed, what has received less recognition is how it has fundamentally reshaped both class and inequality in western societies. …
       3. This model worked on the basis of steady annual wage rises. But during the 1970s, growing union power and high wages began to threaten corporate profits. The industrial standoff that ensued resulted in high levels of consumer price inflation. This posed a direct threat to asset values and triggered broader economic turbulence – conditions that proved fertile for a rightwing offensive against organised labour, led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
       4. This rightwing political vision centred not just on crushing organised labour, but on democratising capital so that all citizens could enjoy the benefits of asset ownership. …
       5. If this served to push up property prices much faster than before, for a time most eyes were precisely on the democratic nature of the wealth effect – how capital gains allowed ordinary people to financially benefit from property ownership. But property inflation benefits the already propertied, and works to exclude aspiring middle-class households from the housing market. In many OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries, homeownership rates show a particular pattern over the period 1980 to 2020 – an upward trend followed by a downward trend.
       6. In this way, property inflation over time eroded the distinctive achievement of the Keynesian era: the possibility of buying a home on the basis of a wage alone. In many large cities, it is now virtually impossible to break into the property market if you earn an average, or even above-average, salary. …
       7. [A] new hierarchy of property-based classes has emerged. At the top of this hierarchy are those who own property: first, a small group of investors who generate income from diversified property portfolios; second, a substantial layer of people who no longer have any mortgage debt on their own home and own several investment properties, some outright and others through a mortgage; and third, those who have large mortgages on their homes, and who may experience significant financial stress, but are nonetheless able to build up wealth over time. At the bottom of this hierarchy are those who don’t own assets: renters, including well-paid professionals who are paying off the mortgages of their landlords, and homeless people. …
       8. The millennial generation is the first to experience this reality with full force. Members of that generation may have played by all the rules, yet by their late twenties still find themselves without any real prospect of achieving a middle-class existence. But of course, it makes little sense to frame the problem in terms of “baby boomers v millennials”, because property gets passed on from one generation to the next. For millennials from a wealthy family, all of these problems are likely to melt away. …
       9. MIKE: Now let’s consider the larger and long-term effects of “delocalizing” so-called white-collar work on this problem. We might call this, “”Things To Come”, rather like the 1936 movie.
          1. Dispersal of distance workers from high-cost city housing to lower-cost suburbs, exurbs, and even small towns.
          2. In the long run, this could lead to an economic revitalization of rural and sub-rural America.
          3. Face-to-face work may also evolve into distance jobs, but for those that do not, workers may also relocate to where the distance workers now live.
          4. We discussed this sort of economic and social transformation in our March 23^rd show when we compared the post-Covid19 world to the 14^th century post-plague world; not in terms of the specific changes, but in terms of the unpredictable-but-radical changes that might result over the long-term.
          5. What might be the additional ramifications of these changes?
             1. Urban mass transit may have to transform for a lower population density;
             2. Fixed rail may become less desirable than buses until population shifts stabilize and become more predictable.
             3. City property values may stabilize and even decline, especially in the most costly city-center residences.
             4. Rail lines to more distant and dispersed population centers may become more necessary, as they were earlier in the 20^th Small towns may again vie to come “whistle stops”.
             5. With more distance existing between smaller, more numerous population centers, high-speed rail may become seen a more vital to national infrastructure.
             6. The calculus for car ownership, which was already shifting with young urban people, may become even more unpredictable as small-town lifestyles emerge and evolve in unpredictable ways.
          6. Since WW1, urbanization – the flow of people in low density areas to higher density areas where work can be found – has been the norm. Post-Covid, this flow may become more complex. Some jobs, such as manufacturing, may need to remain centralized to supplies and transport. Other jobs that can be distance-worked, may become more ruralized.
          7. There will be “support” jobs and businesses distributed across the country that will follow these flows.
          8. There will be winners and losers, but it’s impossible to foresee from this point in time whether the changes will be zero-sum or some sort of win-win.