"An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy."
Mon, April 12, 2021, 3PM (CT). TOPICS: Voting info; Tax Day for individuals extended; Officials: No grace period to follow end of statewide waiver for vehicle title, registration requirements; Federal relief offers Houston way to avert fiscal disaster—for now; Bellaire roundup: Council OK’s grant for backup generator; Rice Military-area senior housing project gets backing of city’s Harvey grant program; Houston political groups eye November for election on mayoral power limits; Federal judge approves Houston’s $2 billion answer to Clean Water Act lawsuit; Texas has 19.4% of its population fully vaccinated; TX Land Commissioner George P. Bush “seriously considering” run for attorney general; Western U.S. may be entering its most severe drought in modern history; Nearly “catastrophic” Piney Point wastewater leak could irreparably harm neighboring marine life; Egypt, Sudan reject Ethiopian proposal for data sharing on Renaissance dam; Brexit Britain’s Biggest Test Might Be Survival; Ukraine turns to Turkey as Russia threatens full-scale war; US and China deploy aircraft carriers in South China Sea as tensions simmer; How Putin or Xi Could Blow It All Up for Biden; More. Guest: [AUDIO/VIDEO] #KPFTHouston 90.1FM
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig(@ThinkwingRadio) airs every Monday from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My co-host and Editor is Andrew Ferguson.
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For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:
An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend t become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)
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Next Election: May 01, 2021 – Uniform Election. Early Voting: April 19th – April 27th
If you are denied your right to vote any place at any timeat any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
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:
A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
Current utility bill
Bank statement
Government check
Paycheck
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)
… According to the April 5 news release, Texans will need to complete any overdue transactions prior to 11:59 p.m. on April 14 to avoid being penalized for expired vehicle registrations.
“After April 14, 2021, law enforcement may begin issuing citations to motorists operating a vehicle without a current registration sticker or current registration receipt. There is no grace period after the April 14, 2021 deadline,” the release reads.
As a reminder, Texans will need to obtain a passing vehicle inspection prior to renewing vehicle registrations. Vehicle registrations can be renewed online, by mail or in person.
A $615 million influx of federal funds will help Houston stave off a potentially disastrous budget season, Houston Controller Chris Brown said.
The dollars are part of the American Rescue Plan Act, a federal aid package that in part aims to help cities make up for lost revenues from decreased sales, property and other tax revenues impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. …
The city’s fiscal year begins July 1, preceded by months of preparation among city staff. …
Bellaire City Council’s April 5 meeting included approval of disaster grant funds for a new generator and the temporary suspension of an ordinance to allow for an upcoming dog event at Evelyn’s Park. …
With a match from the city of over $60,000, the total project cost is $240,000, which will pay for a new backup power system that will allow the city to maintain critical water-system pressure and continuity of operations during prolonged power outages. …
A new 135-unit affordable senior living complex near Washington Avenue will receive a piece of the city’s Harvey recovery funds targeting multifamily development.
The Houston City Council approved on April 7 an allocation of $14 million for the project, which is also receiving funding from Texas’ 9% low income housing tax credit, among other sources, to cover the $40 million construction. …
The development, known as the Heritage Senior Residences, will offer 135 one- and two-bedroom units and serve seniors over the age of 55 making between 30% to 80% of the area median income. It will be located at the northeast corner of Center Street and Moy Street, city documents state.
According to the development’s website, it is slated to break ground this month and open for residents in the fall of 2022. …
Houston ISD’s board of trustees made official a decision that has been in the works for several months—renaming Woodrow Wilson Montessori for Ella J. Baker, a civil rights leader. The decision was unanimous at the trustees’ April 8 meeting. …
[T]he committee opted to recognize Baker, a behind-the-scenes civil rights leader. As an advocate for civil rights and economic justice over 50 years, she provided leadership to the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. …
Representatives from local political groups ranging from the Houston Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America to the Harris County Young Republicans have reached a milestone in their ongoing effort to limit powers held by the Houston mayor’s office. …
Others involved in the effort include the Houston Professional Firefighters Association, Indivisible Houston, Houston Justice, and Houston City Council Members Amy Peck and Michael Kubosh. …
The organizers, members of the Houston Charter Amendment Coalition, announced April 5 they passed the 20,000-signature threshold to get a proposed change to the city’s charter on the ballot for a public vote. …
The petition aims to expand the influence of individual City Council members by allowing any of them to place an item on the City Council agenda. As proposed, an item must get support from two additional council members to get placed on the agenda. …
Currently, under the city’s “strong-mayor” form of government, only the mayor has the authority to place agenda items on the ballot. Some of the county’s most populous cities follow the same format, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. …
A lawsuit alleging that persistent sewage overflows in Houston violate the Clean Water Act has resulted in a 15-year, $2 billion infrastructure plan approved by a federal judge April 2.
The plan, outlined in a federal consent decree, includes 430 sewer system improvement projects and will be paid by an increase in water bill rates. The city of Houston was also required to pay a $4.4 million settlement to both the state of Texas and the federal government. …
Houston Public Works Director Carol Haddock told Houston City Council members in 2019 … that water bill rates would increase by less than 1%. Total bills will likely not surpass 2% of the median area family income, a standard the EPA defines as affordable, Haddock said. …
[R]epresentatives of clean water advocacy group Bayou City Waterkeeper, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, say it does not go far enough to protect the city’s most vulnerable residents. The decree, negotiated between local, state and federal officials, states that the city of Houston is obligated to resolve wastewater overflow issues on public property but not private, residential properties. …
… Bayou City Waterkeeper was pushing officials to write a requirement into the consent decree that they would [re]allocate the city’s [$4.4 million] settlement with the state and federal government toward a residential repair fund for low-income homeowners. …
Houston Public Works officials said that although the sewage improvement plan does not apply to overflows on residential properties, it does target issues on public property in low-income communities first.
“Houston Public Works is putting great effort into education & outreach to change behavior and prevent sanitary sewer overflows from occurring to begin with. The City of Houston cannot be responsible for damages to private properties,” a Houston Public Works representative wrote in a statement to Community Impact Newspaper.
Extreme drought across the Western U.S. has become as reliable as a summer afternoon thunderstorm in Florida. And news headlines about drought in the West can seem a bit like a broken record, with some scientists saying the region is on the precipice of permanent drought. That’s because in 2000, the Western U.S. entered the beginning of what scientists call a megadrought — the second worst in 1,200 years — triggered by a combination of a natural dry cycle and human-caused climate change. … [S]oil moisture content is at its lowest levels in at least 120 years.
[T]emperatures across the Western U.S. have increased by a few degrees over the past 50 years. The warmer air provides more heat energy to evaporate moisture from vegetation and soil. As a result, the ground continues to dry out, providing flammable fuel for escalating fire seasons. …
In fact, 2020 was the worst fire season in the modern history of the West …
Florida officials have been scrambling over the past week after a wastewater pond at the former Piney Point phosphate mining facility sprung a major leak — a situation officials described as a potential “catastrophe.” While officials have managed to drain the reservoir enough so that a “tidal wave” of wastewater did not flood the area, experts told CBS News that the threat to the environment remains.
Residents who live immediately around the area are physically safe for the time being, state officials said, but millions of gallons of water have flowed into the ground and local waterways, and millions more were pumped directly into Port Manatee, an entrance to Tampa Bay on Florida’s west coast, to prevent the reservoir from collapsing.
From March 26 to April 9, approximately 237 million gallons of water either leaked or were intentionally discharged from the reservoir, the state’s environmental department said. Officials stopped discharging water into the port on Friday, according to the state’s water quality dashboard.
The water was determined to not have harmful levels of radioactive material, and officials have said the water in the reservoir meets marine water quality standards “with the exception of pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen.” …
The nutrients most of concern when it comes to the wastewater — which is a combination of saltwater from a local dredge project, process water and stormwater — are nitrogen and phosphorus. While both are essential to plant life, excessive amounts can destroy ecosystems, experts say.
1966: The Borden Chemical Company builds the Piney Point phosphate processing plant. It was the first of five owners, several of which were caught dumping waste into nearby Bishop Harbor, a marine estuary that flows into Tampa Bay, and releasing toxic gas into the air. [From Piney Point from 1966-present: On the edge of disaster – The phosphate processing plant that prompted emergency dumping of wastewater and evacuations has been an environmental threat to Tampa Bay for more than two decades. By Christopher O’Donnell | TAMPABAY.COM | Published Apr. 6, 2021]
PALMETTO, Fla. — During a tour of the former Piney Point phosphate mine on Sunday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged he would hold the property owner financially responsible for the mess. But the ABC Action News Team has uncovered that might be a difficult task … getting the company to come up with millions of dollars to pay for containment and clean-up could be a problem.
The company’s authorized representative is William F. Harley, III. of Massapequa, New York. He’s a hedge fund manager who recently became CEO of a medical marijuana venture.
Prior to that, records show he owned multiple Hooters franchises and served as a director and major investor Frederick’s of Hollywood, which sells lingerie and adult novelties.
Harley signed off as the debtor on a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition for HRK Holdings, LLC. in 2012, just six years after the company was formed. It currently leases space to multiple companies that have operations near Port Manatee.
At the time of the bankruptcy filing, the company included an exhibit saying it needed money to repair and monitor the facility. The document says, “If the materials are not properly monitored and maintained, or if a gypstack failure occurs, the materials may pose a risk to the environment in the future.”
During and after the bankruptcy case, HRK Holdings continued to borrow millions from a bank, but according to a foreclosure lawsuit filed in Manatee County Circuit Court last November, the company didn’t pay it back.
The phone number for HRK Holdings, LLC. in Manatee County is disconnected.
MIKE: So the “H” in HRK Holdings is probably William F. Harley, III. Who are the “R” and the “K”? And why was the company responsible for creating the waste able to sell its responsibility to clean up the waste to another company that is able to avoid that responsibility by going bankrupt (which was probably the plan all along)?
As I’ve long said: “Profit it private. Pollution is public.”
Egypt and Sudan on Saturday rejected an Ethiopian proposal to share data on the operations of its giant hydropower dam on the Blue Nile after negotiations between the three countries in Kinshasa [DR Congo] this week ended without progress.
Ethiopia is pinning its hopes of economic development and power generation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt fears will imperil its supply from the Nile. Sudan is also concerned about the impact on its own water flows. …
Cairo and Khartoum maintained that they are seeking a legally binding agreement over the operations of the dam, which Addis Ababa says is crucial to its economic development. …
MIKE: This is a seriously contentious issue among 3 countries over a finite source of water. If all 3 aren’t careful, you could end up with a water war.
In the post-Brexit era, a feasibility study is underway of a proposal for a physical link over, or under, the Irish Sea between Scotland and Northern Ireland as part of the government’s review of how to better bind the United Kingdom and its four constituent nations. A more immediate concern may be whether the link could one day connect two independent states that are no longer part of the U.K. …
Scotland will hold elections on May 6 to its parliament in Edinburgh that are being cast as a vote on whether the nation has the right to—or the need for—another say on its constitutional future. Polls suggest the pro-independence Scottish National Party could sweep to a majority, … and press its demands for a second referendum on splitting from the U.K. …
In Northern Ireland, grievances are being nursed over its separate treatment from the British mainland in the Brexit deal struck between London and Brussels, and the province’s bitterly divided past is resurfacing as a result. …
Even in Wales, which … voted with England in favor of Brexit, support for independence has risen during the coronavirus pandemic. …
Taken together, it’s hard to ignore a growing sense that things are inexorably coming to a head, whether to diminish the union or reinforce it, and that Brexit has lent those forces greater agency. …
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Istanbul over the weekend to mark the 10th anniversary of his country’s strategic partnership with Turkey and shore up support from his Black Sea neighbour as tensions escalate with Russia over Ukraine’s simmering war in Donbas. …
While Turkey spars with the United States and other Western European leaders over the purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile system and the conflict in Syria, the aspiring NATO country of Ukraine has developed strong ties with Ankara. …
“Our main goal is that the Black Sea continues to be a sea of peace, tranquillity and cooperation,” the Turkish president stated, speaking next to his Ukrainian counterpart at Saturday’s news conference.
Military activity in the South China Sea spiked over the weekend as a Chinese aircraft carrier entered the region and a US Navy expeditionary strike group wrapped up exercises.
Meanwhile, the US and Philippines were preparing for joint drills as the US secretary of defense proposed ways to deepen military cooperation between Washington and Manila after China massed vessels in disputed waters.
China’s state-run Global Times on Sunday said the country’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, steamed into the South China Sea on Saturday after completing a week of naval exercises around Taiwan. There was no official announcement of the Liaoning’s position, but the Chinese tabloid cited satellite images first reported by US media outlet The War Zone.
The Liaoning’s reported arrival in the South China Sea came after a US Navy expeditionary strike group, fronted by the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island, conducted exercises in the South China Sea a day earlier. The two flat-top warships were joined by a cruiser, destroyers and smaller amphibious ships. …
“This expeditionary strike force fully demonstrates that we maintain a combat-credible force, capable of responding to any contingency, deter aggression, and provide regional security and stability in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” US Navy Capt. Stewart Bateshansky, commodore, Amphibious Squadron 3, said in a statement.
Global Times quoted a Chinese military expert, Wei Dongxu, as saying the US Navy exercises were a provocation.
Exercises by the Chinese carrier “can establish wider maritime defensive positions, safeguard China’s coastal regions, and keep US military activities in check,” the report said, citing Wei.
… “The continued presence of Chinese maritime militias in the area reveals their intent to further occupy (areas) in the West Philippine Sea,” Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in a statement, using the local name for the South China Sea.
It was the second hostile statement by Lorenzana in two days as he repeated calls by the Philippines for the Chinese boats to leave Whitsun Reef, which Manila calls the Julian Felipe Reef, located within its 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
Chinese diplomats have said the boats anchored near the reef – numbering more than 200 based on initial intelligence gathered by Philippine patrols – were sheltering from rough seas and that no militia were aboard.
On Saturday, Lorenzana said there were still 44 Chinese vessels at Whitsun Reef despite improved weather conditions.
“I am no fool. The weather has been good so far, so they have no reason to stay there,” he said. …
An international tribunal invalidated China’s claim to 90% of the South China Sea in 2016, but Beijing does not recognise the ruling and has built artificial islands in the disputed waters equipped with radar, missiles batteries and hangars for fighter jets.
The Philippines’ air force has been conducting daily aerial patrols over Chinese fishing vessels parked near a disputed reef, the country’s defence chief said, as he repeated a call to Beijing for their withdrawal from their area.
The diplomatic row was touched off earlier this month when some 220 boats were first spotted at the boomerang-shaped Whitsun Reef, west of Palawan Island.
The Philippines ordered China to recall the vessels, describing their presence as an incursion into its sovereign territory. But China, which claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea, said the flotilla is made up of fishing vessels sheltering from bad weather. …
Philippine navy and coast guard ships have been deployed to the area to monitor the situation, in addition to the aerial patrols …
Beijing often invokes the so-called nine-dash line to justify its claimed historic rights over most of it, and has ignored a 2016 international tribunal decision that declared this assertion as without basis. …
[Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte] is being pressed to take a stronger stand against the Chinese government in the face of a separate revelation of “significant construction activity” by China at an artificial island built on top of Subi Reef, also within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. …
The Philippine defense chief on Sunday demanded more than 200 Chinese vessels he said were manned by militias leave a South China Sea reef claimed by Manila, saying their presence was a “provocative action of militarizing the area.” …
A government watchdog overseeing the disputed region said about 220 Chinese vessels were seen moored at Whitsun Reef, which Beijing also claims, on March 7. It released pictures of the vessels side by side in one of the most hotly contested areas of the strategic waterway.
[T]wo unfolding situations involving Russia and China, still America’s most significant international rivals, point to the challenges ahead for Biden. Russia has in recent weeks increased troop and military resource deployment on the Crimean peninsula and along the Russian-Ukrainian border. And China has increased aggressive posturing toward Taiwan and within the South and East China Seas that has Asian and U.S. military leaders deeply concerned.
While neither a Russian invasion of Ukraine nor a Chinese attack on Taiwan is considered the most likely near-term consequence of their saber-rattling, it does not make these situations less risky. In both cases, that is because the stakes for the U.S., our interests and allies are very high and our effective options are limited. It should also be emphasized that in both cases, the possibility of military action by our adversaries is not zero.
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig 