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Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.
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- A 6.32-acre tract located in the Lakes of Savannah development near County Road 58 will soon be outside of Pearland city limits and instead be located in Pearland’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ. …
- “There are 42 lots. Of those 42 lots, 36 of those residents out there have already petitioned the city for deannexation,” Pearland City Attorney Darrin Coker said. “The remaining six lots are owned by the developer or builder, and those have also been signed petitions for deannexation.” …
- The city of Pearland receives about $30,000 annually in property tax revenue from the homes, Coker said. With the deannexation of the land, the city will lose that revenue, but homeowners will also relinquish all rights to city services, he said.
- ANDREW: Why petition to deannex?
- Tomball City Council approved a $47,614 grant Dec. 6 for a Tomball Economic Development Corp. project to create a new young adult space at the Lone Star College-Tomball Community Library. TEDC Executive Director Kelly Violette said at the meeting the project would be a flexible space including interactive equipment targeting teens in the community.
- “The idea is a kind of makers space but something that is going to be attractive to teens to come in and really be a part of that space,” Violette said. …
- Library Director Janna Hoglund … said the space will include an interactive touchscreen table, a digital wall with multiple interactive screens, and virtual and augmented reality equipment. She said the library plans to use the space to offer workshops and seminars for young adults. …
- Hoglund said this is Phase 2 of the Innovation Lab project, which opened at the library in January 2020. The Innovation Lab, which is a makers space offering various technology and equipment such as 3D printers, has increased community engagement with the library, Hoglund said. She said she hopes the young adult space will do the same.
- Between January and February 2019, an average of 63 people attended technology-focused classes at the library, according to the meeting’s agenda packet. That number rose to 363 between January and February 2020 after the Innovation Lab opened, a report in the packet shows.
- Hoglund said the library is still considering a name for the new space. She said she hopes the library can open the space in spring 2022, but the library is still finalizing the timeline.
- TAGS: Tomball Tomball City Council LSC-Tomball Community Library Tomball Innovation Lab Tomball Economic Development Corp. Tomball Education Tomball Government
- ANDREW: This is great. As more communal parts of life are commercialized, people will still have those needs, but fewer options to satisfy them. Libraries are increasingly stepping up in response– they do books, computers, classes, job hunting, community aid referrals, and yes, creating, both crafts and media. Some offer shelters and kitchens too. Having more places offer those things for free or low cost is always good.
- KUFFNER: I’m going to let this speak for itself. [Excerpted from The Texas Tribune]
- “Rick Perry is running for governor — but not that Rick Perry.
- The Republican Party of Texas updated its list of candidate filings Monday — hours before the deadline for the March primary election — to include a Rick Perry running for governor. The party quickly confirmed that it was not Rick Perry, the former governor and U.S. energy secretary, against Gov. Greg Abbott. Instead it’s Ricky Lynn Perry, a man from Springtown, a town in Parker County northwest of Fort Worth. On the form, the man listed “Rick Perry” as the version of his name that he wants to appear on the ballot.
- A LinkedIn profile for a Rick Perry from Springtown lists his current job as a senior desktop technician for Lockheed Martin. Neither Perry could be immediately reached for comment.
- Abbott is running for a third term and has drawn at least three primary challengers. While Abbott may not be facing a challenge from his predecessor, having such a widely known name on the primary ballot could complicate his path to renomination.
- Rick Perry was the longest-serving governor of Texas, preceding Abbott before the latter took office in 2015.
- The candidate Perry’s form was notarized by Tony McDonald, an Austin lawyer who is active in anti-establishment conservative circles and has supported one of Abbott’s primary opponents, Don Huffines. McDonald told the Tribune that Perry is a “good conservative activist from Parker County” whom he knows through a “friend of a friend.” McDonald said he was supporting Perry and serving as his campaign treasurer.
- Asked if one of Abbott’s existing primary challengers had convinced Perry to run, McDonald said he was “not aware of that.” […]
- Abbott’s campaign, meanwhile, scoffed at Perry’s filing. The governor’s top political strategist, Dave Carney, said on Twitter that it was “another stupid pet trick” and that it “will backfire as these stunts always do.”
- KUFFNER: You know me, I love a good phony candidate story. Most likely this is just a dumb trick that will have no effect on the outcome. But it’s funny, and we could all use a laugh.
- … Until now, retired judges picked by the state have often agreed at the mens’ first court hearings to release them from state custody on no-cost bonds while their criminal cases slowly continue through the new judicial process for migrants. Other men who can afford their cash bonds are let out earlier. The released men typically are transferred to federal immigration authorities, after which they are either further detained, deported or released into the United States pending asylum hearings. …
- Instead, the region’s administrative judge said, Shahan himself has handpicked five county judges he hopes will help him with the heavy caseload brought on by Abbott’s Operation Lone Star arrests.
- “My guess is he’s friends with these folks,” said Stephen Ables, the presiding administrative judge in the region who appointed the three retired judges from a state-provided list to help Kinney County. “He feels they probably understand West Texas.”
- Unlike the visiting judges, Shahan has not allowed migrants to be released on no-cost bonds after they plead not guilty in his court. Instead, they stay in the state prisons that Abbott retooled as jails for immigration-related crimes while they await future court proceedings or a trial date. …
- In condemning the timing of Shahan’s decision, defense attorneys also pointed to the legal aid group’s recent request for all of its remaining 153 clients in prison to be released on no-cost bonds because the men have been in prison for months without a court date. The visiting judges were expected to hear many of the cases, as Shahan was out of the office after testing positive for the coronavirus. …
- MIKE: There’s a lot more detail to this story, but I think this is the essence of it. IMO, the main issue here is the old “Justice delayed is justice denied” argument. I’m surprised that none of the defense attorneys have filed in federal courts for civil rights violations, but of course I’m no lawyer.
- ANDREW: Totally wrong. There is clearly not enough oversight of Shahan’s office. I want to know what official reason he gave to dismiss these other judges, and I want that reason thoroughly investigated for plausibility.
- For a vast majority of Americans, democracy ends when work hours begin.
- Most people in this country are subject, as workers, to the nearly unmediated authority of their employers, which can discipline, sanction or fire them for nearly any reason at all.
- In other words, Americans are at the mercy of what the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson calls “private government,” a workplace despotism in which most workers “cede all of their rights to their employers, except those specifically guaranteed to them by law, for the duration of the employment relationship.” …
- [T]o say that most workers are subject to unaccountable “private government” is to make clear the authoritarian character of the American workplace. And it is to remind ourselves that in the absence of any countervailing force, the bosses and managers who wield that authority can force workers into deadly environments and life-threatening situations, or force them to remain in them.
- That is what appears to have happened on Friday at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory in Mayfield, Ky. There, more than 100 people, including seven prisoners, were on the night shift, working even after tornado sirens sounded outside the facility. “People had questioned if they could leave or go home,” one employee told NBC News in an interview. But, she said, they were warned: If they left, they were “more than likely to be fired.” …
- [I]n Edwardsville, Ill., a similarly powerful tornado hit an Amazon warehouse, killing six people. There, too, workers had been toiling in the midst of severe weather.
- Had either of these groups of workers been empowered to say … they may have been able to protect themselves, to leave work or miss a shift without jeopardizing their jobs. In the absence of that ability, they were, in effect, compelled to work by the almost sovereign power of their respective employers, with horrific consequences for them, their families and their communities.
- Put another way, these disasters cannot be separated from the overall political economy of the United States, which is arguably more anti-labor now than it’s been at any point since Franklin Roosevelt signed the Wagner Act in 1935. A society organized for capital — a society in which most workers are denied a meaningful voice in their place of employment — is a society where some workers will be exposed, against their will, to life-threatening conditions.
- The immediate solution is as it always has been: unionization, collective bargaining and workplace democracy. This is easier said than done, of course, but it still must be said. Our democracy is and will remain incomplete for as long as most Americans work without power or representation under the authority of private governments. Whatever democratic habits we hope to instill in ourselves and our children cannot be sustained, in the long run, when democracy is banned from the shop floor. …
- ANDREW: There are a number of resources out there about unionizing and workplace democracy. Do some research when you get some personal time. As starting points, I recommend the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives for workplace democracy and the Industrial Workers of the World for unionizing.
- [Server] Ryan Brandt stood next to one of the more than 30 diners she’d just waited on as the man made an announcement.
- “We are tipping,” Grant Wise hollered so the entire party could hear, “a total of $4,400.”
- Cheers erupted from the table. Brandt, 35, buried her face in her hands and sobbed as Wise put his hands on her shoulders.
- “It was a beautiful moment and one I’ll never forget,” Wise wrote in an online post.
- [MIKE: I recommend going to that post link and comments for an update.]
- The money was to be split between Brandt and the other servers who waited on Wise’s party. But what was supposed to be a kind, life-boosting gesture after the Dec. 2 dinner has devolved into a nightmare for Brandt and a public relations firestorm for Oven & Tap, the Bentonville, Ark., restaurant where she worked for 3½ years. Twelve days later, Brandt is no longer an employee there, and her former workplace has been forced to defend itself after firing her. …
- Wise said he called Oven & Tap before the meal to request Brandt as one of the night’s servers and to ensure his plan wouldn’t run afoul of the restaurant’s tipping policy.
- After getting the tip, however, Brandt said her manager told her that she and the other servers who worked the party couldn’t keep all of it. Instead, they would have to split it among the bartenders, cooks and food runners, something that had never happened before, Brandt said. Normally, 7 percent of a server’s food-and-beverage sales at Oven & Tap are automatically deducted from their paychecks to pay those people, while tips are left untouched, her lawyer, Bill Horton, told The Washington Post. ([Natalie Ghidotti, president and CEO of a Little Rock-based public relations firm], disputed that figure and said tip outs come out of a server’s tip, not their earned wages.)
- Still, Brandt turned over the tip, Horton said. Then, she reached out to Wise to thank him for his generosity while explaining she hadn’t gotten to keep the full tip. Dissatisfied with that, Wise went to the owners to ask that they return the money, saying he and his fellow diners intended to only tip the servers who’d waited on them. Horton said Wise then gave Brandt and the other servers the money directly. Brandt walked away with $2,200, according to the restaurant.
- Oven & Tap co-owner Mollie Mullis denied to KNWA that Wise asked about the restaurant’s tipping policy in advance. Through a spokesperson, the owners told The Post that the restaurant normally takes a cut of servers’ credit card tips to divvy among other employees, but servers get to keep cash tips in their entirety. For large parties, the restaurant decides how to handle tips on a case-by-case basis.
- When Wise requested his tip go to just the servers, the owners “immediately honored that request as they have an absolute right to tip whoever they want,” [wrote Ghidotti].
- Oven & Tap later paid other employees who worked the night of Wise’s dinner a total of about $7,000, “[b]ecause we feel the entire staff worked so hard that night to serve a large party of 32 people,” Ghidotti wrote.
- On Dec. 7, the owners told Brandt they were firing her because she’d told Wise how his party’s tip was being distributed, Horton said. Ghidotti confirmed to The Post that Brandt had been fired but said the owners wouldn’t comment publicly about why.
- On Friday, Oven & Tap’s owners threatened to sue Brandt in a cease-and-desist letter in which they claimed she’s permanently damaged the restaurant’s reputation. People who’ve never been to the restaurant have since left “countless unwarranted 1 Star Reviews … an outpouring of negative reviews, which will undoubtedly impact [the restaurant’s business],” attorney Steve Brooks wrote in the letter. Oven & Tap “has now been cast as a restaurant that treats its employees poorly.”
- After Brandt was let go, Wise started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money so Brandt could pay rent and buy food while she was unemployed. Within days, the fundraiser exceeded its goal by raising more than $8,700.
- As the campaign was raising money, Brandt got good news, Wise said: She’d gotten a job as a server at another restaurant. Her first shift was last week.
- ANDREW: Wanting to spread the money around is admirable, but the lack of clear and agreed-upon precedent ruined it. That wouldn’t have happened if Oven & Tap were an employee cooperative. In addition to being democratic workplaces, it’s common for cooperatives to portion out profits equally to all employees. That would likely mean the servers wouldn’t have to rely on tips, and a clear precedent could be set of tips going into the same pot as profits, and being split accordingly. Of course, if the employees wanted a different setup, they could make it happen– democratically.
- … Paul (R-Ky.) asked Biden to “move expeditiously to approve the appropriate resources for our state,” citing the “loss of life and severe property damage.” … The message did not go unheeded. Following the request from Paul and from the seven other members of the state’s congressional delegation, Biden declared a federal disaster the next day — making Kentucky eligible for the full range of emergency government assistance.
- But it also conjured memories of Paul’s own lengthy history of opposing congressional legislation written to address past disasters, including bills passed following hurricanes Sandy, Harvey and Maria directing billions of dollars of assistance to stricken Americans. …
- “We should do all we can to help our Kentucky neighbors. God be with them — they are hurting,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) wrote. “But do not for one second forget that [Paul] has voted against helping most Americans most times they’re in need.”
- Interviewed Tuesday about the criticism, Paul lashed out at his critics and said they were distorting his record, which includes not only opposition to disaster-specific aid bills, but opposition to most every government spending bill that the Senate has taken up since 2011, when he was sworn in. …
- Paul, who has donated $100,000 from his campaign to the relief effort, said he has routinely requested emergency aid for his state when warranted and that he has “never been opposed to the program, ever.” What he has been opposed to, he said, is refilling disaster aid accounts with borrowed money rather than offsetting the disaster aid with spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.
- “That’s different than saying, ‘Oh, he now wants it because it’s in his state and he never wanted it [before],’ ” [Paul] said. “I’ve never opposed anybody’s disaster relief in any other state. I’ve just asked that it be paid for.” …
- [W]hile online critics did not hold back in their fury toward Paul, his Senate colleagues were more measured, assuring tornado victims in Kentucky and elsewhere that Congress would act if needed.
- “I have always voted for disaster aid, and we shouldn’t hold it against disaster victims when their politicians are not doing their job,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said.
- MIKE: So maybe Rand Paul made a fair point. Perhaps Sen. Paul should rather be asked what other federal programs to Kentucky he would like to cut to pay for the disaster aid Kentucky desperately needs. Just to be philosophically consistent.
- ANDREW: Unfortunately, if asked, he’d likely have a long list of programs to cut, starting with anything relating to reproductive health, then benefits for child welfare, food, housing, and unemployment. This is the problem: they want to pay for what they want to buy by sacrificing what the rest of us need to barely survive.
- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their second dedicated video call of the year Wednesday, amid rising international concerns about tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border.
- Putin won support from Xi for his push to obtain binding security guarantees for Russia from the West, a Kremlin official said, according to Reuters.
- Russia wants the United States and NATO to guarantee the military alliance will not expand further eastward or deploy weapons systems in Ukraine and other countries on Russia’s border. …
- Ahead of the virtual meeting, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the two leaders would discuss tensions in Europe and described the two countries as “allies,” according to Reuters. …
- Members of NATO — a powerful military alliance — vowed in June to address threats from China in addition to Russia. …
- It is less clear what Beijing’s position is on Ukraine. Xi spoke over the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July, according to China’s foreign ministry. …
- G-7 leaders on Sunday issued a statement condemning “Russia’s military build-up and aggressive rhetoric towards Ukraine.” The U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom are part of the bloc of major economies. China is not part of the G-7. …
- MIKE: The push-and-shove in this story has me thinking of parallels to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The end result of that was removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba in return for a promise from the US not to invade Cuba and removal of US nuclear-armed missiles from Turkey.
- ANDREW: More polarization of international politics brought by the drive to make other nations behave like one’s own. Many nations do this, not just the US. But if it’s going to change, someone has to take the first step and make cooperation rather than domination and exploitation their foreign policy goal.
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig 