City Council next meets Sept. 25 (work session Sept. 23), and the early teasers are all about Council Member Chris Riley’s proposal to find some way (not yet finally drafted) to legalize Transportation Network Companies. Also on tap: several dozen zoning cases and resolutions in search of co-sponsors.
Affordable housing advocate and Austin resident, John Henneberger, co-director/founder of Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, was announced a 2014 MacArthur recipient this week. He’ll receive a $625,000 “no-strings-attached stipend” to pursue creative endeavors.
A campaign ad by Sen. Wendy Davis savages her gubernatorial opponent, Attorney General Greg Abbott, for failing to investigate sexual abuse at Texas Youth Commission facilities in 2007. The ad asserts Abbott’s office had known about the claims for two years, but only acted under legislative pressure.
A grand jury declined to indict four officers involved in the April 2013 fatal shooting of Herbert Babelay (pictured), who had a history of mental illness and allegedly confronted police with a shotgun when they were called by a family member concerned about his erratic and dangerous behavior. See “‘Suicide by Cop’ or Preventable Tragedy?” May 31, 2013.
Texas Social Studies textbooks, backed by the largely right-wing State Board of Education, are seeing heaps of criticism lately. The National Center for Science Education raised a red flag over the textbooks for distorting the truth about climate change – just days after a group of academic scholars with the Texas Freedom Network issued a damning report pointing to several factual inaccuracies and political distortions in the text, including a biased treatment of affirmative action, portraying Islam negatively, downplaying segregation, and undermining the constitutional concept of the separation of church and state.
Heavy rains over the weekend did nothing to break the drought: The Lower Colorado River Authority reports the lakes in the Highland system dropped half an inch to an inch in the last week, and Buchanan and Travis are at only 34% of capacity.
More war on the horizon, as the U.S. wrangles a “coalition” to take on ISIS (aka ISIL), and Texas county sheriffs hallucinate Islamic terrorists crossing the Mexican border. Speaking of the latest congressional authorization for military action, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said on the House floor: “Ultimately, this resolution, like our previous unwise invasion, will make our families less secure, not more secure.”
This article appears in September 19 • 2014.