October 1, 2018

Real Clear Politics Says the Oregon Governor's Race Now a "Tossup"

The race between incumbent Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, and her main challenger, state Rep. Knute Buehler (R-Bend) is tightening, according to the website Real Clear Politics.

Real Clear Politics aggregates polling data from around the country but also relies on a team of reporters and columnists for its content.

As is customary, neither Brown nor Buehler's campaigns is releasing polling at this point. Two recently released polls done independent of the campaigns yielded pretty different results..

A Hoffman Research poll done by Portlander Tim Nashif two weeks ago put Brown ahead by 10 points. A poll released this week by Leona Consulting, which works with GOP candidates, put Brown ahead by just one point, with a margin of error of 3.8 percent. That poll was done by Clout, an Ohio firm that gets low scores for accuracy.

Read more: https://www.wweek.com/news/2018/09/27/real-clear-politics-says-the-oregon-governors-race-now-a-tossup/

October 1, 2018

Knute Buehler Slams Kate Brown for Cover Oregon--But That Fiasco Ended Before She Became Governor

On the eve of the first debate between the two leading candidates for governor, the GOP challenger, Knute Buehler, is trying to make up a significant fundraising gap between himself and incumbent Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat.

A fundraising letter Buehler's campaign sent out recently included a line that caught the eye of alert recipients.

The letter listed a "long series of disappointments from Kate Brown." The last of the disappointments listed is "failed Cover Oregon websites."

Cover Oregon was the online health insurance portal the state of Oregon built to sign up new Medicaid patients following the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also know as Obamacare. From 2011, when lawmakers approved building Cover Oregon, until March 2015, when newly sworn-in Gov. Brown signed a bill officially abolishing it, the program failed spectacularly, at a cost of more than $300 million.

Read more: https://www.wweek.com/news/2018/09/29/knute-beuhler-hits-kate-brown-for-cover-oregon-but-that-fiasco-ended-before-she-became-governor/

October 1, 2018

Texas voter rolls grow to 15.6M ahead of midterm election

HOUSTON—Texas has set a new voter registration record of 15.6 million people ahead of the highly anticipated Senate race between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke.

Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos told the Houston Chronicle that the state's voter rolls have grown by 1.6 million since the last midterm election in 2014.

Election records show that Texas has seen a 400,000-voter increase since March. The state on average added just over 100,000 voters a year between 2002 and 2014.

"Recently, we have heard from a number of county election officials who tell us they are witnessing voter registration rates and voter enthusiasm in a midterm year that we usually see before presidential-year elections, which is phenomenal," Pablos said. "On the whole, we are seeing Texans become more engaged, which is very healthy for the future of our state."

Read more: http://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/texas/story/2018/sep/29/texas-voter-rolls-grow-156m-ahead-midterm-election/745524/

October 1, 2018

CDC testing for 'brain-eating amoeba' at BSR Surf Resort near Waco

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is testing at BSR Cable Park’s Surf Resort for Naegleria fowleri, which is commonly referred to as a “brain-eating amoeba,” officials said.

Kelly Craine, Waco-McLennan County Public Health District spokesperson, said the park voluntarily closed Friday pending the investigation. One person from out of state has been infected by the amoeba, and officials are investigating the source, Craine said.

Only four people out of 143 infected in the United States between 1962 and 2017 have survived, according to the CDC.

BSR Cable Park owner Stuart E. Parsons Jr. said BSR Surf Resort values its guests’ safety and will continue to comply with requests from the CDC and local health department in the investigation of the death of Fabrizio “Fab” Stabile.

Read more: https://www.wacotrib.com/news/business/cdc-testing-for-brain-eating-amoeba-at-bsr-surf-resort/article_bbdf0718-5c64-5566-b240-4c78b785cbc1.html

October 1, 2018

Rare bee discovered at National Butterfly Center

Two nature surveyors this month discovered a red-legged Toluca Leafcutter Bee at the National Butterfly Center in Mission. It’s the first time the bee species has been spotted in the U.S.

The Toluca Leafcutter Bee had been documented in Tamaulipas, Mexico, but American Museum of Natural History bee experts John Ascher and Jack Neff identified it in South Texas through photographs taken by surveyors Paula Sharp and Ross Eatman.

The bee was temporarily captured and released back to its home at the National Butterfly Center.

The male bee, which was found to use Texas snout bean as its food source, has not been documented anywhere else in the U.S. Leafcutter bees carry pieces of leaves to their egg chambers, according to Sharp and Eastman’s website.

Read more and see photo: https://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_8f2edd76-c516-11e8-a133-d335f1557075.html
(McAllen Monitor)

October 1, 2018

Holguin reissues debate challenge to Cloud in District 27 congressional race

CORPUS CHRISTI -- Democratic congressional candidate Eric Holguin has called out his Republican opponent, again challenging him to debate.

Rep. Michael Cloud's camp says they already sparred several times ahead of the special election, but the newly elected congressman is open to another in the weeks before the Nov. 6 election.

Cloud who won the June 30 special election for Texas' 27th Congressional District, has been busy working for the district, a spokesman said.

"...While he is currently focused on doing the job he was elected to do, he plans to do another debate when it gets closer to the election," spokesman Brian Cruickshanks said, referring to the challenge as a "desperate attempt to close the gap" between votes.

Read more: https://www.caller.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/28/holguin-reissues-debate-challenge-cloud-district-27-race/1456478002/

October 1, 2018

Sid Miller's Ag Dep't. Knew About Dangerous Pesticide Violations in 2015, Did Nothing for Two Years

On August 17, 2015, Harlingen rancher Danny Davis called in a complaint to the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA). Like many others who raise cattle and horses near the U.S.-Mexico border, Davis was caught in the state-federal fever tick dragnet — a mandatory program in which South Texas ranchers must allow their animals to be treated with insecticide to kill a deadly tick before they can be sold. Davis told the state regulatory agency that after U.S. Department of Agriculture employees doused seven of his calves in Bayer’s Co-Ral, two of the animals died. He suspected the USDA had used the chemicals incorrectly and wanted the state ag agency to investigate.

It turned out Davis was on to something. In December 2015, a TDA inspector found that USDA pesticide applicators had violated state and federal pesticide laws hundreds of times while applying chemicals to kill the tick, which can carry a disease that causes anemia and death in cattle. The inspector couldn’t prove that Co-Ral was killing cattle, but he did unearth a trove of broken rules. Among his findings: Federal employees failed to keep complete records of pesticide treatments; didn’t always wear protective gear when handling and mixing toxic chemicals; didn’t adequately warn workers about the stout pesticides they’d be handling; indiscriminately sprayed a poison that a federal judge has since instructed the EPA to ban; and regularly dumped Co-Ral onto South Texas ranchlands in violation of the chemical’s label instructions.

All told, Inspector Arturo De La Garza’s investigation implicated 17 USDA employees and revealed an agency culture defined by the regular misuse of highly toxic pesticides in the name of killing ticks.

De La Garza signed and dated his damning 81-page report on December 15, 2015. But Sid Miller’s agriculture department did nothing for two and a half years before finally issuing violations and warnings to wrongdoers in April 2018. What took so long? “The delay in finalizing the agency actions on this issue is solely due to understaffing” of attorneys in the agency’s enforcement division, said Mark Loeffler, a department spokesperson.

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/sid-millers-ag-department-knew-about-dangerous-pesticide-violations-in-2015-did-nothing-for-two-years/

October 1, 2018

Will Matt Rinaldi Pay for Calling ICE on Latino Protesters?

The North Texas Republican has made enemies during his time in the Freedom Caucus, including police unions and his GOP predecessor. Democrats look to capitalize in November.


On the final day of last year’s legislative session, hundreds of mostly Hispanic protesters filed into the Capitol gallery overlooking the Texas House floor. Dressed all in red, they draped large banners over the gallery railing and drowned out the legislative proceedings with chants against the recently signed “sanctuary cities” ban. Some Democratic lawmakers applauded the demonstrators; Representative Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, preferred to start some shit.

First, Rinaldi called an ICE hotline to report the protesters, whom he presumed to be undocumented. Then, he walked over to a group of Hispanic lawmakers and bragged about the call. Representative Poncho Nevárez pushed Rinaldi, and Rinaldi threatened to shoot Nevárez — an altercation that made national headlines and capped off a toxic legislative session. Liberals quickly promised that Rinaldi, who won his 2016 election by less than 2 percentage points, had signed his own political death warrant. “Texans will ensure that Republican Matt Rinaldi’s pathetic political career and dangerous agenda comes to an end,” avowed Manny Garcia, deputy director of the Texas Democratic Party.

Executing that warrant now falls to Julie Johnson, 52, a longtime Dallas trial attorney. With a campaign emphasizing public education and health care, Johnson has shown fundraising chops, pulling in more than $450,000 as of July — more than four times Rinaldi’s haul over the same period. In a district that’s only 42 percent Anglo and that Hillary Clinton carried by 8 points, Johnson, whose wife is a physician, has homed in on Rinaldi’s ICE call and record of supporting anti-LGBT legislation. “People in this district don’t appreciate their representative being discriminatory and behaving in a bigoted way as he has,” Johnson told the Observer.

Johnson added that some of her campaign volunteers were among the protesters Rinaldi reported to ICE. For his part, Rinaldi told the Observer that voters in his district view his call to ICE as “reasonable” and said the protesters were “shutting down our legislature by force and resisting police officers.”

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/will-matt-rinaldi-pay-for-calling-ice-on-latino-protesters/

October 1, 2018

Sadly, This Beto O'Rourke Funko Pop Isn't Real

Reddit is making hearts skip again.

The image of a Beto O'Rourke Funko Pop doll complete with a Whataburger skate board popped up on the social media site early last night as shared by user txfan4549.

Sadly, Triple-meat Liberals will have to wait a little longer for a Beto Pop as commenter ShadowD24 pointed out that it's definitely not a real promotion.

"I work for Whataburger can confirm this is false. Sadly enough, I am totally down for this to happen but feel like to much of the client base would have some kind of heart attacks over this," ShadowD24 wrote.

The image, created by Dallas-based designer Mark Fallis (also responsible for the Shiner Whataburger mockup shared earlier this year), is already making the rounds on Instagram as well.

Read more: https://www.sacurrent.com/Flavor/archives/2018/09/27/sadly-this-beto-orourke-funko-pop-isnt-real

October 1, 2018

Swiss Company's Oil Export Plans Could Threaten Corpus Christi's Port Expansion

A Swiss company’s plans to export American oil could mean millions in lost revenue for the Port of Corpus Christi, and port officials are now challenging their new rival.

The port is the nation’s largest oil exporter, and it wants to further dominate the market with a ship channel expansion to make room for huge tanker ships.

Enter Switzerland competitor Trafigura.

A subsidiary of the company called Texas Gulf Terminals is planning a nearby facility that could be built before the port expansion is finished.

Analyst Sandy Fielden with the research firm Morningstar says the rival project could provide oil companies a cheaper, quicker alternative to send their product abroad.

Read more: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2018/09/28/305805/swiss-companys-oil-export-plans-could-threaten-corpus-christis-port-expansion/