Is Mayor White ready for state politics?

Gardner Selby, writing in today’s Austin American-Statesman poses that question…

If the methodologically weak Texas Lyceum Poll is to believed, maybe yes, maybe no.

Three discussion points regarding White and the Governor’s race in 2010:

1. Does Bill White actually have the strong name identification outside of Houston that we, living in Houston, assume that he has?
2. Assuming an Obama victory in 2008, will 2010 — a mid-term election with the Democrats playing defense — really be a good playing field for a Democrat running statewide in Texas?
3. Assuming that Kay Bailey Hutchison is the nominee for Governor, could White defeat her?

While the Texas Lyceum Poll is not the best measure to make an assessment of White’s chances, their numbers nonetheless suggest that he has some name ID work to do before mounting a statewide effort.

Fortunately for White, he can afford to take a wait-and-see approach to his post-Mayor future. 2010 is a long way off.  An Obama win may mean a return trip to D.C.  An Obama loss may strengthen his case for a Gubernatorial run in 2010.  A run by KBH for Governor may mean a run by White for the Senate instead, potentially against a Perry-appointed incumbent (a la Krueger vs. KBH), perhaps Greg Abbott or maybe even The Dew.  This is assuming, of course, that KBH doesn’t do her usual flirting with a run for Governor and then backs away — again. Oh, and did we mention Rick “I’m Running Again” Perry?  If KBH actually pulls the trigger and runs, she would be the prohibitive favorite to win — even against ol’ Slick Rick.

However, as college football has so painfully taught us, correlation does not imply causation — in this case, that the prohibitive favorite does not always equal the actual winner in the 2010 Governor’s race…

Stay tuned!

Fun with GIS: Rotten Neighbor…

One of our students saw this site and it made her think of our Urban Government class…

For grins, we typed in UST’s zip code (77006) in the box below…

… and this is what it came up with.  The red houses are primarily sex offenders.  Joy.  On the upside, the yellow houses are foreclosures if you’re looking to move inside the Loop and near the University…

Unfortunately, Rotten Neighbor — while interesting — doesn’t provide anything close to a full picture of area crimes or bad neighbors.  Sadly, neither does the Clery Act nor HPD’s crime stats site, since both are lagged by at least a month and are for reported crimes only.

Hat tip to Elizabeth Rinaldi!

Mexicans and Machines: Why it’s time to lay off NAFTA

Thoughts to ponder from Drew Carey at Reason TV. Yes, that Drew Carey.  He’s definitely not your usual Hollywood liberal:

Campaign season is just getting warmed up, but looking back on the primaries we’ve already seen plenty of the usual fare: candidates shaking hands, hanging out at diners, and scaring voters about foreigners who are taking your jobs.

Sometimes the threat comes from China, Japan, or outsourcing to India. Today, it’s NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement—you know, all those Mexicans taking our jobs.

Senator Barack Obama joins the likes of CNN’s Lou Dobbs in decrying NAFTA. So many free trade foes fret about cheap foreign labor, yet they rarely holler about competitors who will work for far less than any foreigner. Politicians don’t pay much attention to it, but—from Terminator to Ice Pirates—Hollywood films have been warning us about humanity’s inevitable war against the machines.

“Now, think about it,” says Reason.tv host Drew Carey. “How are we supposed to compete against something that doesn’t get paid, doesn’t get health insurance, and never goes on breaks?”

Today, we don’t need human workers to book our travel, do our banking, or file our taxes. From factory workers to symphony conductors, countless workers are locked in battle with soulless job stealers known as computers, websites, and robots.

“No job is safe from the robot threat!” warns Carey. Of course, the warning is more than a little tongue-in-cheek. There’s no need to take a sledgehammer to a robot, because, although technology shakes up the labor market, it ends up giving us higher living standards as well as more and better job opportunities.

Like technology, trade gives us more good stuff than bad—yet Americans are likely to cheer technology and fear trade. No doubt TV talkers and White House wannabes will keep stoking our fears of foreigners until voters and viewers stop buying it—or until robots snag their jobs, too.

Related: Why Are These People So Ashamed of NAFTA? The Democratic myths about free trade – Steve Chapman, Reason Magazine 

Solar Economics: The Sun shines on Texas…

Yet more stuff from McKinsey Consulting today.  This time, it’s on solar power.

The graph above predicts when solar power will reach price parity with fossil-fueled electricity in certain parts of the world. Italy, for example, is just about at parity. According to McKinsey’s estimates, Texas should reach price parity with fossil-fueled electricity within ten years or so (around 2020), assuming, of course, that there is no technological breakthrough between now and then. 

So should we go out and buy some solar panels for our various ol’ homesteads soon? Hell no. Given how our various neighborhood associations have acted when some of us have put up a satellite TV dish, we can only imagine what they’d say about solar panels on the roof…

Hat tips to Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic and Wick Allison at D Magazine.

John Culberson: Most Connected Congressman?

From Dave Witzel’s post at Personal Democracy Forum Blog:

John Culberson, Republican from Houston, has taken an early but wide lead as “most connected Congressman” by posting a Qik video of his counter-ambush of a TMZ stringer and being the first person totwitter from the Oval Office. As he notes on the video, he tried to do a live Qik posting from the Oval Office of President Bush, but he was stopped by the Secret Service.

He’ll widen his lead Thursday with “the 1st telephone/internet/video/text real time townhall meeting“. He didn’t broadcast video from inside a committee meeting on appropriations saying “don’t think I’m going to try to take this into the committee room… I’m going to have to take this a step at a time.”

He’s taken some big steps already. Here’s the video (via Qik).

Those battlin’ Astros…

Astros’ pitcher Shawn Chacon grabbed Astros’ GM Ed Wade and threw him to the floor yesterday after Wade requested a meeting and then yelled at the pitcher.  Fun.  Were they watching “The Bronx is Burning“? and taking a cue from the 1977 Yankees?

The Chacon-Wade fight reminded some of us of the fistfights that we witnessed in committee meetings among our professors while doctoral students… Good times, man.  Good times. 

Houston’s Energized Economy

Houston has been getting a load of good press lately — you can now include the Washington Post on that list.

The WaPo’s Michael Fletcher has a story today entitled “Houston’s Pipelines of Prosperity.”  There is photo gallery that accompanies the story…

High-speed rail: A response to Councilman Brown…

The Shanghai Maglev.  The picture was taken by my colleague, Professor Julia Zhou of Ningbo University, when I was there in 2006.

I respect for Councilman Peter Brown.  He’s been quite generous with his time in appearances before my Urban Government and Houston classes, as well as in providing internship opportunities for our students.  Hell, I’ve been to his house to speak on Houston politics.  But… I have a point of contention with an observation that he made in his op-ed piece in the Sunday Houston Chronicle.

Brown observed:

Major world cities are making huge “smart” investments in carefully planned, pro-growth rail systems. The transit menu includes conventional streetcars and subways, fast commuter lines, 180- mile-per-hour bullet trains and even higher speed mag-lev lines, such as the link between downtown Shanghai, China, and its airport. The European Union, with sleek, high-tech trains linking just about every major city, is a model for transportation efficiency, with one-half the per-capita energy consumption as the United States. This is a significant competitive advantage.

I will neither agree nor disagree with his observations about E.U. trains and cities.  Tory Gattis offers a differing opinion on Europe, noting that European cities are older, have a much higher density, and were built during an era of walking.

But I will disagree with Councilman Brown on Shanghai.  I was in Shanghai for an academic conference in October of 2006 and will return there in October for another academic conference.  When I was there, I took the Shanghai Maglev (上海磁浮示范运营线), which can be picked up east of the Pudong Financial District at Longyang Road Station (龙阳路), to Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport (PVG;上海浦东国际机场). How did I and my Chinese and Australian colleagues actually get to the Maglev station?  By taxi. Because of its unique technology, the Maglev is not linked to the Shanghai subway system — you have to get off and get on a regular subway train or take a taxi to get to the Pudong.

No question, the Maglev is one hell of an adventure (particularly when you’re going 431km/hr or 267 mph/hr) and would be a very, very quick trip from Bush IAH to Downtown.  The route from Longyang Road to to PVG is 19 miles (roughly the same distance down the Hardy Tollway from Bush IAH to Downtown) and takes about 8 minutes.

The Shanghai Maglev: Yes, it really does go that fast…

Brown also notes in his op-ed a conversation that he had with a talkative business executive, who explained to him that:

“Houston is a great city to do business, very friendly, but if you expect to compete worldwide, you better have a high-speed train from downtown to your airports, and soon!”

If this business executive is placing Shanghai in that category, fine.  But if you think that businesspeople are regularly taking the Maglev to and from the Pudong, think again.  The Shanghai Maglev is not a commercial success.  The cost of a one way ticket is ¥50 (about $7.00) and ¥40 (about $5.60) for airline passengers with proof of an airline ticket purchase receipt.  While $7.00 seems a bit pricey for a one-way mass transit commute to Houston’s Downtown, it is prohibitively expensive for the average Shanghaier.  Not surprisingly, it deters ridership.  The Maglev usually runs at 20%  of capacity and requires heavy subsidies from the government in order to operate at all.  It’s a great novelty trip for visitors — and will be showcased during Expo 2010 — but as a regular-use mass transit system for the average citizen, it’s a non-starter.

Would a Maglev high-speed rail system in Houston really be any different?

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Kristin2Go: Saint Arnold is more than brew —  Kristan Finan, Houston Chronicle
• Five Reasons to Love $4 Gas – Foreign Policy
• A False Moderate? – Michael Gerson, Washington Post
• The Case Against Tim Pawlenty — Chris Cillizza, The Fix Blog, Washington Post
• Beijing Announces Traffic Plan for Olympics — Jake Hooker, New York Times
• Barack Obama and the politicisation of lifestyle — Frank Furedi, Spiked Online
• Will 2008 Elections Be A Rerun of 1932? — John Gizzi, Human Events
• Services in Houston’s suburbs feel strain of gas prices — Eric Hanson and Renee Lee, Houston Chronicle
• What to do with aggressive beggars and hawkers? — Joyce Hor-Chung Lau, Globespotters Travel Blog, International Herald Tribune
• Winning Political Memorabilia From Losing Campaigns — Sydney Beveridge, Mental Floss Blog
• The Myth of Multitasking — Christine Rosen The New Atlantis
• Drinking on an International Level: Beer Gardens in New York — Alexandra Vallis, New York Magazine
• Brief squabble issues from county judge race — Alan Berstein, Houston Politics Blog, Houston Chronicle
• National Geographic Goes Chinese – Lydia Wallace, Danwei Blog
• Earth Will Survive After All, Physicists Say — Dennis Overbye, New York Times

Fuel costs sending immigrants back to Mexico

Perhaps the illegal immigration issue will solve itself.  One consequence of high fuel prices in the United States is that legal and illegal immigrants, unable to afford high gas prices (or because contractors can’t afford to shuttle them to sites), are moving back to Mexico in large numbers…

The cluelessness never ceases to amaze us…

At the state Republican Convention this past weekend at the George R. Brown, Christy Hoppe of the Dallas Morning News’ Trail Blazers blog noted that one vendor was selling the pin that appears above.  Lovely.  An embarassing new racist, anti-Obama fashion statement.  Just what the GOP needs for voter outreach.

Hoppe also noted the following:

There were other pins that weren’t necessarily conveying the positive, inclusive, united front that has been portrayed during the convention. One said, “Press 1 for English. Press 2 for Deportation” and another, “I will hold my nose when I vote for McCain”

UGH!  Why is it that some of our fellow Republicans manage to be both: 1.) Racially clueless and 2.) Politically tone deaf.  And don’t even start in with some weak argument that we’re engaging in “political correctness” or that we’re somehow “RINOs.”  We ain’t.  It just dumbfounded that the idiocy never seems to end with a certain element within our party.  Apparently some of our fellow Republicans have taken John Milton’s Paradise Lost to heart for 2008: “Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.  We thought that the purpose of a convention was to help to portray the party as modern and, yes, not racist.

Go ahead and invite vendors like this to the national convention in St. Paul.   Try it.   See how well it works.  George Allen anyone?

LSP Launches “Harris County Republican Rap Sheet”

The Lone Star Project has launched the “Harris County Republican Rap Sheet” — a new web site that organizes the facts and exposes the Republican office holders responsible for the ethical meltdown in Harris County government.

They promise that as Texas Republican scandals continue, the site will be updated and expanded.

One person not listed (not a surprise): Paul Bettencourt — the last Harris County Republican likely standing after November 4th… 

Texas surfer rode waves into history books in ’70s, ’80s

Michael Young had a story in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News about Grace Clark Knowles that reminded me of the fact that the West Coast media (all media for that matter) have a bad habit of neglecting Texas surfers.

I was glad to see the Morning News article. Grace Clark deserves the attention. El Ride - “Grace Gets In The Dallas Paper nice recognition for a special lady” — also picked up the article. She got her boards at Blakers, the same surf shop I patronized back in the day.  Blakers was located on Hwy 288 at about Fuqua. That’s the route we took from Westbury High School to get to Surfside Beach. Blakers, unfortunately, is long gone.

Another Westbury surfer from the same era who was abused by the West Coast media was Ken Bradshaw. His father was a Harris County Deputy Sheriff.  Surfline has a post that tells a little bit about Ken.  He “owned” Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu for many a year; with Mark Foo was reluctantly involved in the hottest competition in big wave surfing ever; is credited with surfing the biggest wave ever surfed.

Can’t forget Doc Paskowitz either.  Divine Surf Design has a great story:

Doc is most likely the first Jewish surfer ever, having surfed Galveston, TX at age 12 in 1933. A year later, when he moved to Mission Beach, he would become San Diego’’s first Jewish surfer and probably the city’s first Jewish lifeguard, working as a San Diego City Lifeguard in Mission Beach in 1936 and in La Jolla the following year.

Doc’s picture is on my bulletin board outside my office. He is almost 90 years old and still ripping the waves in Hawaii.

Rip

Who Gentrifies Low-Income Neighborhoods?

Gentrification in the Heights — courtesy of our colleague, Professor Caroline Calvillo…

A new paper by Economists Terra McKinnish, Randall Walsh, and Kirk White looks at the consequences of urban gentrification.  The paper is available here.  Their key findings are intriguing:

1. The analysis points to the in-migration of white college graduates, particularly those under 40 without children, as a key hallmark of gentrifying neighborhoods.  
2. The presence of children, having less than a college degree, or elderly status dampens the likelihood that a white household moves into a gentrifying neighborhood, but these same effects are much diminished, or even reversed, for black and Hispanic householders.
3. Synthetic cohort analysis of out-migration finds no evidence of displacement of non-white households, but does find evidence of disproportionate retention of black householders with a high school degree.
4. A decomposition of the total income gains in a gentrifying neighborhood attribute the bulk of the gains to two key groups: black high school graduates (due to disproportionate retention and income gains) and white college graduates (due to disproportionate in-migration and high incomes). 

Their findings suggest that rather than dislocating non-white households, gentrification creates neighborhoods that are attractive to middle-class minority households, particularly those with children or with elderly householders.  They posit that one reasonable interpretation of the data is that because these neighborhoods are experiencing income gains (but are also more diverse with regards to race/ethnicity and income than established middle-class neighborhoods), they are desirable locations for non-white middle-class households.  

Sounds like Houston to us.  And yes, it was included in their study…

Michelle’s Texas GOP Convention Field Report, Part II…

More Texas GOP observations from Michelle:

Friday’s speeches were great.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke and was very engaging with the audience.  His message was simple and reinforced throughout the speech: “Drill here, drill now, pay less.” He kept emphasizing his website: American Solutions.com.

I was incredibly impressed by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s speech.  She walked out with her husband and  brought a great energy back to the delegates.  What I liked so much about her was that she had longevity and it reminded Texas what we should be proud of.

Kay reminded the delegates that we have a sitting Texan as President.   Yes, President Bush was mentioned — by name, no less!  She noted that he has kept another terrorist attack off our soil.  She also mentioned some other accomplishments of the Bush administration like tax cuts. She also reminded Texans that we still have political power.

What I liked about her is that she made the issues personal both to the audience and herself.  Her speech seemed to bring cohesiveness and pride back to the R ticket.

State Representative Phil King spoke of being involved in former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’ campaign for President in Texas and realized that he was it.   Huckabee was answering his own phone etc. — so it really was a grass roots effort (I guess he knew the audience!). Huckabee was his jovial self.  There were homemade signs with “McCain-Huckabee” and “Huckabee for V.P.”  I felt the same about his speech this time as I did when he spoke in Houston back in March.  His jocularity didn’t transfer to me as a serious person knowing the background of issues, but maybe that would be good for a VP.  He spoke of growing up in a D town (Hope, Arkansas).  His dad worked 2 jobs to send him to college and that now he was living the true American dream when he ran for President.  He also encouraged the delegates to “vote for his 2nd choice for President, John McCain.”  Cute. Again, I felt that his speech wasn’t tied so much to Texas.  He could have done that speech in California or anywhere else.

Senator John McCain was invited, but had a conflict so he sent former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in his place.  It was noted among the delegates that McCain needs to Texas for more than just our dollars.  He is coming for a fundraiser and campaign rally in Houston on Tuesday.

Senator John Cornyn’s speech was very different than Huckabee’s.  He spoke of Texas and of the issues near and dear to Republicans.  He was great and stayed on message.

The Ron Paul people were calling points of information and being somewhat disruptive in the process of adopting the rules, but it did not develop into anything further.  The lawsuit against the Texas GOP was dismissed and the people were ordered to pay all legal fees and court costs.

The platform was adopted without too many problems, although there was some discussion about the issue of the Boy Scouts, as well as the “marriage = one man, one woman” provision.

The national delegates were elected. Not a shock that State Senator Dan Patrick won a slot. 

My brain is tired from all of the formal and informal discussions at eh convention. They provided great material for the Texas Politics course this Fall. Boy, I wish I was teaching the Texas politics in the Fall!  

Coming soon: Michelle’s convention pics…