Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

1. Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
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3. Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG

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.

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter InformationTEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   1. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2021
      1. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
      2. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      3. Liberty County Elections (Liberty County, TX)
      4. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      5. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      6. Waller County (TX) Elections
      7. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      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 CentersHARRIS COUNTY – 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)
          8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
             1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
             2. Sick or disabled;
             3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
             4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
             5. Make sure you are registered:
             6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
             7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
             8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
             9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and for those of you whoa are eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL YOUR MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2022
   1. Next Election: January 25, 2022 – Special Election – City ofouston, District 
   2. Early Voting: January 10 – January 21, 2022
   3. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and for those of you who are eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL YOUR MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2022
      1. Next Harris County Election is January 25, 2022: Special Election for City of Houston, District G: Early Voting Ends January 21, 2022
      2. Primary Election: March 1, 2022 – (These dates are subject to changes from the 2021 legislative session.) as per TEXAS Secretary Of State
3. March 1, 2022 – (These dates are subject to changes from the 2021 legislative session.) as per TEXAS Secretary Of State

4. First day to apply for a ballot by mail using Application for a Ballot by Mail (ABBM) or Federal Post Card Application (FPCA).	Saturday, January 1, 2022
   Last Day to Register to Vote	Monday, January 31, 2022
   First Day of Early Voting by Personal Appearance	Monday, February 14, 2022
   Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail (Received, if not Postmarked)	Friday, February 18, 2022
   Last Day of Early Voting by Personal Appearance	Friday, February 25, 2022
   Last day for Receipt of Marked Ballot by Mail	Tuesday, March 1, 2022 (Election Day) at 7:00 p.m. if carrier envelope is not postmarked, OR  Thursday, March 3, 2022 (next business day* after Election Day) at 5:00 p.m. if carrier envelope is postmarked by 7:00 p.m. at the location of the election on Election Day (unless overseas or military voter deadlines apply)4 *First business day after Texas Independence Day

5. MIKE’S MAIL-IN BALLOT REQUEST EXPERIENCE: My app was rejected for being TOO EARLY.
6. Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey looks ahead to 2022 in Precinct 3; By Danica Lloyd | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 5:02 PM Dec 30, 2021 CST | Updated 5:02 PM Dec 30, 2021 CST
   1. As 2021 [came] to a close, Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey recapped 2021 and discussed his priorities heading into 2022 during a Dec. 16 interview with Community Impact Newspaper.
   2. [2022 brings] changes for Ramsey as redistricting this fall flipped much of Precinct 3 and Precinct 4’s jurisdictions. This transition is slated for completion in March … .
   3. Q: What would you say are some of the biggest accomplishments in Precinct 3 over the past year? RAMSEY: We walked into the year with certain priorities, and we’ve really been able to make significant gains in all of those. One of them was lowering taxes. When we met in October to set the tax rate, we not only lowered the taxes in terms of the tax rate; we reduced the tax revenues in terms of the amount of money that the county was taking in from taxes. … [I]nfrastructure is going to continue to be a focus. … The other corollary to that has to do with money to support that. It seems like every meeting we come up with a new program. Many of them are well-meaning, many of those are social programs, and I’m not opposed to that in every case, but I’m telling you every dollar that’s spent on a new program [is] a dollar that’s not spent on infrastructure. … We’ve [also] got to get I-45 started back up. This misrepresentation of what TxDOT is doing and will do is not right. … The county sued TxDOT to stop it … I’ve tried to convince my colleagues to drop the lawsuit. They have paused it, [and] TxDOT has been more than accommodating. But if we’re not careful and we don’t do something quickly, TxDOT’s going to take that $9 billion and move it to Dallas or Austin or San Antonio.
   4. MIKE: I felt that this was interesting in that it shows the clear distinction between the Texas Republican philosophy of governing versus the Liberal Democratic philosophy of governing, and therefore demonstrates the degree to which elections have consequences.
   5. MIKE: Ramsey is clearly from the “doing more with less” school of government. He’s dedicated to infrastructure and references bond money, but he’s obviously against tax revenue, and against tax revenue going to social programs (though he’s “not opposed to that in every case”). It’s the old Grover Norquist philosophy of shrinking government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub.
   6. MIKE: Some infrastructure also qualifies as social programs, such as water, waste and power grid infrastructure. Some social programs are to help people lift themselves out of poverty, which in the long term is good for society and business overall. And FYI, reducing poverty usually equals increasing tax revenue since formerly-poor people spend more money.
   7. MIKE: Unless you’re a Republican, reducing tax revenue is not an unadulterated good since you get the government you pay for. It will be interesting to see what Harris County government looks like after the next election cycles in the Commissioners Court.
   8. TAGS: Tom Ramsey Harris County
7. Tomball City Council discusses potential uses for American Rescue Plan Act funding; By Chandler France | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 11:54 AM Jan 7, 2022 CST, Updated 11:54 AM Jan 7, 2022 CST
   2. Tomball City Council discussed potential uses for the funding it received from the American Rescue Plan Act … Tomball will receive a total of $2.92 million, half of which it has already received, while the remaining half will come this year …
   3. The proposed uses include providing grants to nonprofit organizations, replacing lost hotel occupancy tax revenue, improving the Tomball Historic Depot, and replacing the city’s water and gas meters. An agenda item to spend $1.7 million of the funds on replacing the meters was tabled at the meeting, Community Impact Newspaper previously reported. Director of Public Works Beth Jones said the water and gas meters are a critical part of the city’s infrastructure. She said city staff focused on the project as something that could be addressed using ARPA funds. …
   4. The city also proposed using $100,000 to provide grants to nonprofit organizations. The remaining $527,437 would be used for improvements to the Tomball Historic Depot.
   5. [Assistant City Manager Jessica Rogers] said the money allotted for improvements to the Depot was simply what was leftover of the ARPA funding after budgeting for grants, hotel tax revenue replacement, and the water and gas meter replacements instead of for any specific project.
   6. Council Member Chad Degges said he would rather see the city use regularly budgeted funds for improvements to the depot rather than ARPA funding. Degges said he would like to see if the city could use the funds to help small businesses and residents of the city. …
   7. City Council did not approve any uses of the funds during the meeting [but will] come back with resolutions to spend the funds at later council meetings.
   8. Tags: Tomball Tomball City Council Tomball Historic Depot American Rescue Plan Act David Esquivel Jessica Rogers Beth Jones Chad Degges Tomball-Magnolia Tomball Government
   9. MIKE: “City of Tomball elections are nonpartisan (no political parties)” … according to the Elections | Tomball, TX – Official Website. Why am I not surprised? I wonder how successfully we could pick out the party affiliations of the individuals referenced in this story? Which is why I’m all for PARTISAN local elections. It’s a “truth in advertising” issue.
8. Montgomery County accepts Operation Lone Star grant to reimburse costs at southern border; By Jishnu Nair | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | Jan 17, 2022 CST | Updated 11:19 AM Jan 18, 2022 CST
   1. Montgomery County commissioners accepted a grant from Texas’ Operation Lone Star fund at a Jan. 11 commissioners court meeting to reimburse county jailors who traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to assist state forces in detaining undocumented immigrants. … The amount accepted on Jan. 11 was $154,758.82. … At the Oct. 26 session, [Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson] told commissioners that the reimbursement would cover salaries and overtime of personnel who had assisted state forces at the border. Henderson confirmed that the county’s operations cost $400,000 in total, and that as of the end of October, no county forces remained at the border.
   2. MIKE: My first reaction to this headline was, what is Montgomery County doing spending money at the southern border? If I were living in Montgomery County, I’d be livid that my county tax dollars went toward this, and outraged that Texas relief funds paid for it.
9. IN CASE YOU HADN’T HEARD: Shelley Luther, anti-lockdown activist and GOP candidate [for the Texas House], said Chinese students should be banned from Texas universities; Luther became nationally known at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 when she refused to shut down her Dallas salon in defiance of emergency orders. She was sentenced to a week in jail but was released after only a few days. By PATRICK SVITEK | THE TEXAS TRIBUNE | 7, 2022
   1. “Chinese students should be BANNED from attending all Texas universities,” Luther said in the Wednesday tweet. “No more Communists!”
   2. In a follow-up tweet that is still online, Luther said the state’s taxpayers “should not be subsidizing the next generation of CCP leaders,” referring to the Chinese Communist Party. In a subsequent tweet, she said it is “common sense” that CCP members “should not have access to our schools.”
   3. On Friday, state Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat from Houston who is Chinese-American, condemned Luther’s comments and asked her to publicly apologize.
   4. “Luther’s statements are ignorant, hateful, and incite violence against not only Chinese Americans, but all Asian Americans,” Wu said in a statement. “To casually conflate all Chinese students in America with actual registered members of the ruling party in the People’s Republic of China is not only ignorance of an extreme nature, it is also the type of rhetoric that drives anti-Asian hate crimes.”
   5. Republican leaders were virtually quiet about Luther’s tweet, but one Republican in the Texas House, Rep. Jacey Jetton of Richmond, who is Asian American, tweeted Sunday that the GOP “should stand against cancelling Chinese Students on college campuses.”
   6. MIKE: Interestingly, Shelley Luthor doesn’t have any vocalized problem with, say, Russian students being banned from Texas universities. And Jetton’s use of the phrase “cancelling Chinese Students” is a weird use of Republican anti-liberal jargon.
10. Texas says supply chain issues have limited the number of voter registration forms it can give out; by Ashley Lopez, KUT News | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Jan. 18, 20227 hours ago
    1. Sam Taylor, assistant secretary of state for communications, said supply chain issues have made it harder and more expensive to get paper, which means the secretary of state’s office will be giving out fewer voter registration forms to groups ahead of elections this year. …
    2. [Grace Chimene, the president of the League of Women Voters of Texas,] said in previous years, her group … has been able to get enough forms to pass out at naturalization ceremonies. Often, she said, the group partners with the state to give out several thousand forms at each ceremony. …
    3. Taylor said the secretary of state’s office has been forced to limit each group to 1,000 to 2,000 registration forms per request. He said this shortage is coming at a time when many groups are seeking out new voter registration forms because of a change in Texas’ voter registration laws created under Senate Bill 1, a controversial voting law that went into effect last month. …
    4. [Taylor said in a statement Tuesday,] “While we have made clear to officials and groups that they should not be distributing the old version of the Voter Registration form, county voter registrars may accept completed voter registration applications on the old form, so long as the application is otherwise valid. In other words, using last year’s form in and of itself is not fatal to the voter’s registration application.”
    5. Chimene said all these constraints present serious issues for her group as they try to get voter registration materials together ahead of these large naturalization ceremonies. …
    6. According to Chimene, this is one of the pitfalls of Texas being among the few states in the country that does not have online voter registration. Supply chain issues are not as big of a problem when you can just direct someone to a website. …
    7. MIKE: So the unnecessary Texas voting integrity legislation led to a shortage of unnecessary updated voter registration cards, which are admitted to be unnecessary since the old cards are perfectly fine for use. Allegedly.
11. The Filibuster, Explained;
    1. Then-Vice President Aaron Burr suggested eliminating the motion to end debate in 1806; we don’t know why he did this. But the motion to end debate wasn’t replaced with anything.
    2. Therefore, debate could never be forced to end, so debate could hold up motions forever. This is the filibuster.
    3. In 1972, Senate rules were changed to allow two pieces of business at once, called “The 2-Track System. This allowed one bill to be filibustered while other legislative business was being conducted.
    4. What may happen to the filibuster going forward? DISCUSS!
    5. Follow links in blog post for more info.
       1. The Filibuster, Explained; The procedure, whose use has increased dramatically in recent decades, has troubling implications for democracy. By Tim Lau | BRENNANCENTER.ORG | Published: April 26, 2021
       2. The Silent Filibuster Paradox: Searching for Solutions to the Senate Standstill; By Jacob Miller | HARVARDPOLITICS.COM | August 26, 2021
       3. Senate Democrats plan a vote to change the filibuster. So what is it?; By Ron Elving | NPR.ORG | January 17, 202210:12 AM ET
       4. The Filibuster, Explained; The procedure, whose use has increased dramatically in recent decades, has troubling implications for democracy. By Tim Lau | BRENNANCENTER.ORG | Published: April 26, 2021
       5. The Silent Filibuster Paradox: Searching for Solutions to the Senate Standstill; By Jacob Miller | HARVARDPOLITICS.COM | August 26, 2021
       6. Senate Democrats plan a vote to change the filibuster. So what is it?; By Ron Elving | NPR.ORG | January 17, 202210:12 AM ET|
       7. Schumer to propose ‘talking filibuster’ rules change on voting rights amid stalemate; By Clare Foran, Ali Zaslav and Manu Raju | CNN | Updated 7:49 PM ET, Tue January 18, 2022
          1. Schumer indicated that the talking filibuster proposal would only apply to the voting legislation Democrats are currently pushing for a vote on. When asked if the proposed rules change would allow for a talking filibuster only on the voting legislation that is now under debate, he said “correct.”
12. How the media mistakes a slogan for a story; By Ramishah Maruf | CNN Business | Updated 3:58 PM ET, Sun November 7, 2021
    1. MIKE: As a preface, there is a video that inspired me to find this article. I strongly encourage you to go to the video that I have linked here.
    2. Infrastructure week is a “cheeky” slogan, but the real story is what the infrastructure funding in the “Build Back Better” bill will accomplish, CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter said on “Reliable Sources” Sunday. And it’s the media’s responsibility to report the story, not just repeat catch-all slogans.
    3. Critical Race Theory is another example of a concept that’s become a rallying cry.
    4. “The activists who tried to [take] critical race theory from a national story into a national slogan,” Stelter said. “They knew what they were doing. They were trying to create a boogeyman and it worked.”
    5. Natasha Alford, vice president of digital content at the Grio and CNN political analyst, said the media, in an attempt to answer questions, often falls into a trap of repeating phrases that are put out there to intentionally derail the public dialogue. … [MIKE: Republicans are great at “focus-grouping” such phrases for effect.]
    6. And when focusing too much on slogans, the substance of the news can get pushed out of the spotlight. An October CBS poll found that only 10% of Americans know the specifics of the “Build Back Better” bill. …
    7. Stelter said the format of news also can have an effect — often users have to pay a subscription to gain access to substantial, in-depth coverage. And too often complex issues, such as CRT, are portrayed in overly simplified, black and white terms. The media has also come under criticism for its reporting on the economy. …
    8. [T]here is a “bad news bias,” where the media is attracted to covering the negative.
    9. “Some of that bias just comes out the gate too soon,” Alford said. “I mean, it was not even 48 hours after Joe Biden’s elected, and (the media is asking) ‘is he failing us?'”
    10. MIKE: Perceptions that are both created and accepted by media, and subsequently becoming “common wisdom”. Republicans have historically been particularly good at devising potent phrases and then having the party discipline to repeat them until the media use those phrases as the definition of the topic they’re reporting.
13. FROM SCIENCE FICTION TO SCIENCE FACTION: The robot work force isn’t coming. It’s already here; By Melissa Repko (@melissa_repko) | CNBC.COM | Published Mon, Dec 27 20217:00 AM EST, Updated Mon, Dec 27 202110:48 AM EST
    1. … To cope in these changing times, retailers and restaurants are stepping up investments in robots and other technology. Walgreens is turning to automation to fill prescriptions, while Sprinkles and Starbucks move to swap out cashiers for tablets. Elsewhere, Walmart-owned Sam’s Club is using robots to scrub store floors and scan inventory at some locations, and restaurant chains like Buffalo Wild Wings and White Castle are testing robots that can flip burgers or make chicken wings.
    2. Molly Harnischfeger, a director of the consumer-insights team at AlixPartners, said companies are feeling more urgency as they struggle to find workers and pay higher wages. Plus, she said, shoppers and diners, impatient with long waiting periods and other consequences of staffing shortages, are becoming more open to robots and other technology. …
    3. The retail and restaurant sectors have long been associated with high turnover and low wages. But with fewer workers now and on the horizon, the industries are raising wages, sweetening perks and even offering sign-on bonuses to recruit new hires.
    4. Ron Hetrick, a senior economist for labor market-insights firm Emsi Burning Glass, said the labor shortage will outlast the pandemic. Many baby boomers retired early, and some people opted out of industries with higher levels of interpersonal interactions or chose a job that allowed remote work because of child-care challenges. …
    5. At Walgreens, some prescription bottles are filled at centralized, automated hubs — rather than getting filled by an employee by hand at a store. …
    6. With the pandemic, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians have ramped up the patient-care side of their tasks. They are doing Covid-19 tests and vaccines along with filling prescriptions and answering questions about medications. Even beyond the health crisis, Walgreens was looking to turn stores into health-care destinations with doctor offices and other medical services. …
    7. Josh Baylin, vice president of product and marketing for Brain Corp., said companies have to get smarter about how they use their workforce. That means looking for monotonous, low-value tasks to automate — an approach that both saves money and makes jobs more enjoyable. …
    8. MIKE: In the past, I’ve talked about how China is facing a demographic cliff over the next 30 years due to their previous “one-child” policy. While there’s some governmental “buyer’s remorse” at the policy’s success, it’s actually working as originally designed, cutting China’s population by the end of this century rather than doubling it.
    9. MIKE: In the US, we’re not facing a cliff so much as a slope, but it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic, both by illness and by earlier-than-planned retirements of Baby Boomers. So, robots will be taking the place of “missing workers”, but what does that mean for low-skilled and entry-level workers? Will there be places for them? What will the roles of government and business be in finding or creating those places?
    10. MIKE: These are relatively benign problems compared to the next two stories.

14. First archaeological experiment in space; by Flinders University | PHYS.ORG | January 18, 2022

    1. [In] A … solar-system-first—[an] archaeological project has this week begun on the International Space Station.
    2. [T]he International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP) is the first archaeological study of a space habitat.
    3. “We’re the first to try to understand how humans relate to the items they live with in space,” says Associate Professor Walsh.
    4. “By bringing archaeological perspectives to an active space domain, we’re the first to show how people adapt their behaviour to a completely new environment.” …
    5. While earth-bound archaeologists dig one-meter squares to understand a site and strategize further study, the ISSAP team will use adhesive tape to define one-meter areas of the International Space Station and then use daily photographs to study how the spaces are used. …
    6. Set up by NASA astronaut Kayla Barron on Friday afternoon GMT (the time zone of the ISS), the squares have been placed in a handful of locations representing work and leisure, including a galley table, workstation, EXPRESS [laboratory] racks and the wall across from the latrine.
    7. As part of the experiment, the ISS crew themselves also chose an additional location for study, based on their assessment of what would be interesting to document, with the final square placed on one of the racks in the US laboratory module, Destiny.
    8. The daily photography is now underway and will continue for 60 days.