The Texas Observer May/June 2021

Predatory Lending This is so wrong (“Payday and Car Title Lenders in Texas Won More Than $45 Million in Pandemic Aid,” February 2, texasobserver.org) and impacts people who are already economically vulnerable. Take the time to call your state Representative and voice your opinion. Lucretia Irrera VIA FACEBOOK THEY PREY ON PEOPLE IN NEED. … THEY ARE SIMPLY predatory and unscrupulous and cause far more harm to their victims than any benefit. They should be eliminated. Charles Raley VIA FACEBOOK UNTIL MY WIFE AND I GOT OUR CREDIT SCORE OVER 720, WE would receive almost daily calls asking us to apply for credit cards with interest rates close to 30 percent. Letters in the mail as well. If we wanted any type of loan, it was going to be a…

WILDFIRE La Niña Brings Wildfires BRAD SMITH IS LOOKING AT TEXAS’ WILDFIRE FORECAST, and what he sees is not encouraging. Smith, the head of a Texas A&M Forest Service division that predicts fires, has one of the best handles on when and where one will strike in Texas. In the spring of 2017, Smith scoured available climate and weather data and determined that there was a good chance of a massive wildfire breaking out in the Texas Panhandle; he alerted firefighting personnel, then booked it from College Station to Amarillo to see if his prediction would come true. Unfortunately, it did. More than 1 million acres were engulfed in flames and seven people died. “It was really tragic,” Smith says. In an interview this March, he pointed out a similarity…

The polar vortex that hit Texas in February plunged the state into frigid temperatures for days. But Texas is a place of weather extremes. Which of the following about extraordinary Texas weather is untrue? a. An invisible line called the 98th meridian bisects Texas into wetter and drier halves. b. The state’s “drought of record” lasted for seven years and occurred in the 1950s. c. A hurricane that struck Galveston in 1900 was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. d. The towns of Tulia and Seminole share the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in Texas: –23 degrees. ANSWER A. The line that divides the wetter and drier halves of the state is the 100th meridian.…

During Winter Storm Uri in mid-February, millions of Texans lost power and water. Nearly 200 died from hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, and other causes, according to the Houston Chronicle. About three-quarters were people of color, half were seniors, and at least six were children. Since the last near-blackout in Texas, in 2011, total pay for ERCOT executives and directors increased by 50 percent from about $5 million to $7.5 million. Over the past decade, ERCOT and the Texas Public Utilities Commission, which oversees it, declined to require winterization at power plants because the Legislature didn’t mandate it. Texas industrial plants emitted more than 3 million excess pounds of pollution during the winter storm, according to an independent analysis by environmental groups. In March, Governor Greg Abbott announced he was lifting…

Picking Up the Slack “THIS IS LIKE THE HUNGER GAMES!” some version of this exclamation, often peppered with curse words and red-faced anger emojis, is a common refrain in a now-defunct volunteer Slack group I spent a few hours in each week this spring, working alongside tech types trying to #disrupt a broken COVID-19 vaccine-distribution system. The group saw tens of thousands of people come through searching for their shots, monitoring the platform’s auto-updated appointment trackers, and seeking assistance from dozens of volunteer schedulers who navigated public and private systems to find vaccines for people with low computer literacy or unreliable internet access. Of course, it shouldn’t be this hard to get a lifesaving vaccine. For anyone. But this pandemic year, combined with our Texas deep freeze in February, has…

AMARILLO // A rare cloned horse raised in Amarillo is heading to its forever home at the San Diego Zoo, KAMR reports. The endangered Przewalski horse named Kurt was born after his father’s DNA was frozen for 40 years. The veterinarian who raised Kurt hopes that the horse will be able to boost his species’ numbers in California. WACO // Ted Nugent, the draft-dodging, Trump-loving rock musician, is auctioning off some of his prized belongings in Central Texas. Among the items the 73-year-old Nugent is selling are vintage guitars, vehicles, and bow hunting gear, KWTX reports. He calls the items “the coolest stuff available to mankind,” adding, “My outrageous, adventurous lifetime has accumulated way too much stuff than anybody could reasonably put to use.” BRAZOS COUNTY // A dog and…