Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2018 i The Texas Observer

Out to Dry The “Shallow Waters” series (“A River Divided,” August issue, and more at texasobserver.org/shallow-waters) is a thorough look at the challenges facing South Texas in the new reality of climate change and water scarcity. We must be mindful of the relationship between water and energy as well. Wind and solar — clean, renewable energy sources that are now cheaper than their dirty alternatives — do not need water to produce energy. Coal, natural gas and nuclear energy all require copious amounts of water for resource extraction and energy generation. This is yet another reason to prefer renewable energy over fossil sources. Adrian Shelley Director, Public Citizen-Texas AUSTIN I WISH “SHALLOW WATERS” WAS REQUIRED READING for every American. Depressing but informative with a small glimmer of hope of cooperation…

In September, a crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $10,000 to pay for a billboard featuring a Trump tweet deriding Ted Cruz. “Why would the people of Texas support Ted Cruz when he has accomplished absolutely nothing for them,” the 2016 tweet reads. He is another all talk, no action pol!" After becoming president, Trump changed his tune and now plans to hold a rally for Cruz in Texas, where the billboard will be mounted (at press time, the location had not yet been announced). Which of the following did Trump not tweet about Cruz? a. “[He] does not have the right ‘temperment’ to be president.” b. “[He] has my complete and total Endorsement.” c. “I don’t cheat at golf but [he] cheats—with his game he has no choice.” d. “[He] lifts…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, A CANADIAN ENERGY PRODUCER was poised to build two large wind farms in Clay County, a mostly featureless stretch of plains at the Texas-Oklahoma line. The 300-megawatt project would have bolstered Texas’ growing portfolio of renewable energy, which last year supplied a record 17 percent of the state’s electricity. But then anti-wind farm activists led by John Greer, a Dallas oil investor, swooped into the farming and ranching community to attack the deal. Mounting pressure from Greer, politicians and the nearby Air Force base was enough to convince the project developer, Innergex Renewable Energy Inc., to pull the plug in June. The situation is a case study in how opponents can stop wind projects even as Texas has increasingly embraced renewable energy. “The war is on,” Greer…

Visit texasobserver.org/strangest-state for more “Strangest State” and links to original stories. Got a local oddity or some small-town news to share? Tips are welcome at cahalan@texasobserver.org.…

If you’re considering entering the 2019 Observer story contest, you could do worse than to write a story about a small Texas publication fighting an uphill battle. It’s no surprise we’re suckers for that kind of thing. With “Ink Upon the Furrows,” contest winner Heath Dollar captures, in fewer than 2,500 words, the death of a newspaper, a language and an entire culture smack dab in the middle of the Lone Star State. Facing the end of his life, Daniel Zima, publisher/editor of Texaský rolník, the Texas Farmer, a Czech-language newspaper, delivers papers to his elderly neighbors in a nursing home while awaiting a buyer he suspects will never appear. “I was taken by this story and its palpable sense of nostalgia,” writes guest judge Natalia Sylvester, “how it so…

Fuchsia wine cups and purple prairie verbena sprang up after that last torrential rain. I dreamed that you pointed to my head, remarking that you could see thinning spots again. I looked at my hands covered in pine needles of hair. I put them in my pockets and smiled, glad for returned baldness on the brink of Texas summer. This morning, groundskeepers mowed this field outside my window, missing nothing. I run my fingers through my new, dark hair. I check my palms for signs. Barbara Muller Bowen is a poet living in San Antonio with her husband, cats, dog and a bottle of Writers’ Tears Irish whiskey.…

THE TERM “Pajama Boy” WHO’S USING IT: Ted Cruz, Seb Gorka In August, while bemoaning the liberal elite’s incessant fawning over Beto O’Rourke, Ted Cruz declared, “According to the media, Texas has become a state of pajama boys.” Pajama boys? For those with fuzzy memories of bygone political internet terms, it was a deep-cut reference to December 2013, when President Obama tweeted out a photo of a young man wearing trendy glasses and red-and-black plaid pajamas while holding a mug. “Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance,” the text read, part of an effort to promote enrollment in Obamacare among the youths. Conservatives pilloried the ad as the epitome of liberalism — irresponsible, effete hipsters in a state of arrested development. Memes comparing hardened soldiers to the…

TITLE/ORGANIZATION Obstetrician-gynecologist THE CAUSE Lobbying for anti-abortion legislation NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENT Helping to draft Texas’ mandatory 24-hour abortion waiting period ALLIES Texas Alliance for Life, Ken Paxton MONEY QUOTE "Being pro-life you feel like you’re countercultural. You’re going upstream trying to convince people that there really is value in human life." THIS SUMMER, DURING A federal trial over Texas’ fetal burial law, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights set out to demonstrate the anti-abortion bias of the state’s final witness: an Austin OB-GYN named Mikeal Love. It wasn’t difficult. Love, who has delivered babies in the capital city for more than two decades, has a long track record of anti-abortion politics. At the trial, he acknowledged that he believes abortion should be illegal, except when the woman’s life is…

I’LL ADMIT IT: FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS, I’ve paid little attention to Ken Paxton’s criminal troubles. I knew, of course, that the Texas attorney general had been indicted (who could forget his grinning mugshot?), and I could probably give you a reasonable accounting of his alleged felonies. Beyond that, though, I’d just tuned out the slow drip-drip of news about the criminal case. I’m in good company: Most Texans are likely not even aware that Texas’ top law enforcement officer, who’s on the ballot this November, could spend the rest of his life in prison. Part of the problem is that Paxton and his legal team have used their political and financial muscle to bring the case to a virtual standstill. And some Texans may be distracted by…

IT WAS A SUNNY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON IN south College Station when I arrived for yoga class, like I had on any other Wednesday for the past three years. After battling the rush-hour drive-thru Starbucks line to squeeze into a parking spot, I hurried past a new boutique next door. The display window featured a Buddha statue next to a Native American headdress, a yoga mat, a dream catcher and a hammock. Mentally bookmarking that bizarre collection of Orientalist-leisure artifacts as something to investigate later, I walked into the studio. As I made my way down the cheerful teal hallway I knew and loved, the owner of the studio stepped in front of me, blocking my path. He said he’d received a complaint about me from Ashley, a fellow member I…

HAVING TRIED LITTLE ELSE TO SAVE ITS WATER SUPPLY, Corpus Christi is considering an option that no other Texas city has embraced: seawater desalination. The strategy has long been considered a far-in-the-future option because of its cost, logistical challenges and environmental side effects. Nonetheless, Corpus is plunging ahead in the hopes of diversifying its water supply, which consists entirely of three shallow surface water lakes that rapidly shrink during droughts. City officials argue that desalination would provide an uninterruptible supply of water for the city’s growing port and industrial area. In March, the Port of Corpus Christi applied to the state environmental agency for a permit to build a desalination plant, saying it wanted to help the city get the project planning started. Then, in August, Seven Seas Water Corporation,…

ESTEBAN RANGEL JUST WANTED JUSTICE. A 45-YEAR-OLD from Ciudad Juárez, Rangel has worked construction in El Paso since he was 17. In that time, he’s seen scores of immigrant workers cheated by employers — always without consequence. “Workers who aren’t paid by their employers, if they go steal a gallon of milk or diapers for their kids, they go to jail,” Rangel said. “But these bosses that are stealing every day? Never.” So in late 2011, when a contractor named John Najera tried to pay Rangel only half of the $2,295 he was owed for a roofing job, Rangel didn’t let the matter go. With help from the Labor Justice Committee, an El Paso worker center, he reported the crime to police, resulting in Najera’s arrest for wage theft. Rangel…

THERE’S ONE ELEMENT OF THE SENATE RACE IN TEXAS THAT HAS gotten surprisingly little attention: Ted Cruz’s astonishingly thin legislative record. As his first term comes to a close, he might as well have not been in Congress at all. Cruz has passed only two of his own bills and frequently brags about an amendment that allows parents to save for private school tuition tax-free; none of them has had much practical impact on his constituents. He takes credit for Harvey relief but played an ancillary role in securing it. Cruz’s tea party base sent him to Washington, D.C., to break stuff, not do stuff. He’s an obstructionist, not a problem-solver. In that respect, he sits well outside a long, bipartisan tradition in which the Texas congressional delegation understood its…