Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2019 i The Texas Observer

Careless As a worker for the state, it was really refreshing to see someone call it what it is, antiquated and far-right reaching (“Expecting Care,” December|January issue). I can’t tell you how sad it is to watch foster girls struggle, but with a baby it’s just disheartening. I would be curious to know if the Department of Family and Protective Services included the babies they removed from girls in foster care in that total count, or really how many were born to moms in care regardless of outcome. I bet it’s higher than one would think. Keep up the great work. Carrie LAST NAME AND CITY WITHHELD He Said, She Said I HAVE MANY ISSUES WITH RUMYA PUTCHA’S VERSION of the events regarding her experience with yoga in College Station…

Willie Nelson, who continues touring ahead of his 86th birthday in April, recently announced which new business venture? a. Whiskey River, a bar and grill in Spicewood where diners can also book horseback ridesb. BioWillie, a biodiesel company peddling fuel made from soybean oilc. Willie’s Remedy, a medium-dark, CBD-oil-infused coffee that “packs a powerful aroma”d. Roll Me Up, a monthly bandanna subscription service that delivers “sustainably grown organic hemp neckerchiefs in 12 colors” Answer: C. According to a press release, Willie’s Remedy “offers a relaxing, yet energizing buzz” and is sold in all 50 states. (BioWillie, Nelson’s biodiesel company, shut down in 2014.)…

IT’S BEEN YEARS SINCE DR. KAREN SWENSON STOPPED DOING miscarriage management at Seton, a Catholic hospital in Austin. That’s because of Seton’s longtime but largely unknown policy mandating the burial of fetal remains after miscarriages. Swenson, an OB-GYN for more than 30 years, says the mandate caused patients enormous distress. In one case, a Muslim patient learned about the burial policy as she was about to go into surgery; she put the procedure on hold while she waited for permission from her imam. Instead of sending her patients to Seton, Swenson now directs them to other Austin-area hospitals that don’t have a burial diktat. In 2017, Swenson watched as the Texas Legislature passed a law that requires the burial or cremation of fetal remains from abortions and miscarriages at medical…

THE TERM #BANTHEBIBLE WHO’S USING IT Texas Values, Empower Texans, Erick Erickson In hopes of protecting their religious right to discriminate against the LGBTQ community, Texas conservatives have turned to a perplexing new message this legislative session: #BanTheBible. The hashtag, pushed nonstop by Jonathan Saenz, president of religious-right lobby group Texas Values, refers to a raft of bills filed largely by members of the newly formed Texas House LGBTQ Caucus. In reality, the legislation seeks to update state nondiscrimination laws to cover LGBTQ Texans, streamline the process for transgender people updating their birth certificates and prohibit state-licensed health-care providers from performing “conversion therapy” on minors. Texas Values has acknowledged that none of the bills mentions the Bible, let alone advocates banning it. Until they commandeered the tortured hashtag, it had…

TITLE/ORGANIZATION Board member, Direct Action Texas; chief of staff for Texas Congressman Lance Gooden THE CAUSE Exposing voter fraud NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENT Initiating “the largest election fraud case that Texas has ever seen” ALLIES Ken Paxton; Empower Texans MONEY QUOTE “Watching Democrats justify crime is delicious.” IN AUGUST, TWO MONTHS BEFORE the start of early voting in the midterms, Aaron Harris planted the seeds of an election-fraud scare that would call into question the voter registrations of thousands of naturalized citizens. “The fact that our Texas elections are being compromised is beyond question,” Harris wrote in a letter to Governor Greg Abbott on behalf of his organization, Direct Action Texas, and a coalition of other conservative groups. Harris, a Tarrant County political operative who’s tight with the Empower Texans wing of…

TRUMP WON’T GET HIS BEAUTIFUL MEXICAN-funded concrete wall from sea to sea. The president’s attempt to hold the federal government hostage for his arbitrary demand of $5.7 billion has failed. For these reasons, Democrats and the broader resistance are celebrating. But they shouldn’t. Lost in the debate is this reality: Over the last year, Democrats have agreed to give Trump billions of dollars for at least 88 miles of new border fencing and walls. And no one is paying a bigger price than the people of the Texas borderlands, the Rio Grande Valley in particular. All 88 miles are slated to be built in the Valley, which already has at least 50 miles of Bush-era wall. Unlike much of the national media, which is obsessed with political “optics” and the…

LOT: STORIES by Bryan Washington RIVERHEAD BOOKS $25; 240 PAGES THE WONDER OF HOUSTON CAN SOMETIMES BE DIFFICULT TO explain to those not born and bred in the Bayou City. Yes, it is indeed sprawling, as so many have said pejoratively through the years, but there is a beauty in Houston’s expansiveness. Other cities, too, can boast of their multiplicity, but Houston’s sheer size and the diversity its vastness encourages is what makes the humid town stand out. Yet while there is a bevy of Houston-centered stories to be told, not enough authors have had space to share them — particularly with wider audiences. Thankfully, the goal to share more H-Town (or “H-Tine,” the preferred enunciation of select natives like me) narratives has been greatly advanced by Bryan Washington’s Lot,…

WHEN AMARILLO TEMPERATURES DIP INTO THE TEENS, like they did in early January, 36-year-old Dominic Baldivia simply turns up the heat in his two-bedroom duplex near downtown. But a few months ago, staying warm in the Panhandle nights was considerably more difficult for him. Back then he was homeless, living in a tent at Christ Church Camp of New Beginnings, where 30 or so of Amarillo’s homeless who don’t fit into the city’s traditional shelter system sought refuge. At night he would thaw his bones by a campfire, bundle into a subzero sleeping bag and try to sleep through the cold. “When you’re out there in the cold, you want heat, but you have to do things to acquire that heat. You’ve got to burn calories or go stand by…

ONCE A WEEK, DIANE WILSON LAUNCHES HER KAYAK ON Cox Creek, a brackish stream near Point Comfort that feeds Cox and Lavaca bays, and paddles for four to five hours looking for white, grain-size plastic bits called nurdles. Used in industry as raw material for making any number of plastic products, nurdles clump together when they’re loosed in the water, forming a hard scum like the ring around a bathtub. Wilson, 70, pays particular attention to the stormwater pipes from the nearby Formosa Plastics petrochemical plant, the source of this plastic scourge. Though it’s an arduous trek by kayak, Wilson and seven other volunteers have been taking turns collecting samples of the pellets every day for the last three years. The evidence is a crucial part of a lawsuit that…

THE NEXT PRESIDENT WILL HAVE A LOT TO DO. EACH AND EVERY executive agency, down to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will need a deep cleaning. Unidentified fluids will have to be expunged from the carpet in Scott Pruitt’s soundproof room; rancid oils that have accumulated in the crevices of the Interior Department will have to be scrubbed; and whatever’s been going on at Rick Perry’s Energy Department — he’s been awfully quiet, hasn’t he? — will probably take a team of scientists and their Geiger counters to undo. We think what it takes to shake up Washington is an outsider with new ideas, but what’s needed is an insider with strong convictions, a redeemed demon — Mitch McConnell, but not evil. That alone will be a herculean task,…

At 1 a.m., after many rural Texas towns have turned in for the night, a light but steady stream of traffic rolls through the main drag of Dalhart, a Panhandle town of 8,300. There’s a line for coffee at the Toot’n Totum downtown. Idling pickups and rattling trailers punctuate what would otherwise be a quiet country night. It’s now that a small army of Mexican and Guatemalan laborers load into trailers, driving on gravel roads until they reach the potato furrows of Larsen Farms, a 3,700-acre operation just west of Dalhart. On one blustery October night, a bracing wind laced with the stench of cow manure whips through the treeless expanse. The only light comes from the high beams of the tractors plowing up the tubers and the encumbered trailers…