Utterly despicable

"Mind your own business."  Unvaccinated, unmasked "freedom" bullshit performers spreading covid to me and my family IS my business, you deplorable bucket of piss.

UPDATE:

Also Houston.

UPDATE:

Meanwhile in Houston

So that attempt by Abbott to restrict voting by allowing only one drop box in every county only served to show how hard the GOP is trying to thwart democracy.

Houston, you have a problem

Need something to take your mind off Covid?

Rough

Unwelcome

A group of attorneys in Jacksonville, Fla. filed a lawsuit on Wednesday to block the Republican National Convention from taking place in the city next month.

The lawsuit, filed in Duval County, points to several arguments why the city should not host the event as Florida’s case numbers continue to spike, saying the convention would be "a nuisance injurious to the health (and) welfare" of the community.

[...]

The attorneys filed the lawsuit days after Florida set a record for the most COVID-19 cases confirmed in a single day in a state during the pandemic, with 11,458 cases on Saturday.

[...]

The attorneys request that the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena should only admit no more than 2,500 people, leaving at least 12,500 seats of the arena “isolated or roped off” to ensure social distancing.

The convention was originally scheduled to take place in North Carolina, but the president moved his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination to Jacksonville after sparring with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) over coronavirus restrictions.

[...]

The city announced last week it would mandate people to wear face masks in public indoor locations where social distancing is not possible.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Speaking of Republican conventions...

You tell 'em

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

America failing

It's amazing we're still alive after two years of the Trump wrecking crew

In the weeks after Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic sweep through the Houston area — which resulted in chemical spills, fires, flooded storage tanks and damaged industrial plants — rescue crews and residents complained of burning throats, nausea and dizziness.

Fifteen hundred miles west in the high desert city of Palmdale, NASA scientists were preparing to fly a DC-8, equipped with the world’s most sophisticated air samplers over the hurricane zone to monitor pollution levels.

The mission never got off the ground. Both the state of Texas and the EPA told the scientists to stay away.

[...]

EPA and state officials argued that NASA’s data would cause “confusion” and might “overlap” with their own analysis — which was showing only a few, isolated spots of concern.

“At this time, we don’t think your data would be useful,” Michael Honeycutt, Texas’ director of toxicology, wrote to NASA officials, adding that low-flying helicopters equipped with infra-red cameras, contracted by his agency, would be sufficient.

EPA deferred to Honeycutt, a controversial toxicologist who has suggested air pollution may be beneficial to human health.

[...]

Since taking office, the Trump administration has rejected and suppressed established science, partnered with fringe researchers and embraced industry-backed views — including appointing a former coal lobbyist as its new EPA administrator.

At the time of the hurricane, the agency was run by Scott Pruitt, who during his tenure targeted dozens of environmental regulations for rollback, including several focused on air pollution.

[...]

On Aug. 28, Gov. Greg Abbott suspended state emission rules, including those governing air pollution, after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality argued they would impede disaster response. The rules remained suspended for the next seven months.

When the storm finally moved north and east on Sept. 4, the level of environmental destruction and confusion on the ground was unprecedented.

Smokestacks, pipelines and generators had been damaged or destroyed. Storage tanks filled with toxic chemicals were battered and leaking. Superfund sites were flooded, spilling hazardous waste into nearby rivers, streams and neighborhoods.

Officials from the EPA and the state environmental agency, which had shut down their stationary air monitors to avoid storm damage, maintained the air quality was fine.

[...]

Clouds of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals floated over the city, according to analyses by environmental groups and news reports.

As those reports spread, researchers with NASA’s Atmospheric Tomography Mission program thought they could help.

Since 2016, the chemistry laboratory has flown more that 197,000 miles around the globe, sampling hundreds of unique airborne gases or particles.

The team was about to embark on its fourth and final mission around the globe and had planned a six-hour test flight for Sept. 14 that would take them east to Lamont, Okla., where they’d carry out compass measurements, before heading back to Palmdale.

[...]

Paul Newman, chief scientist of NASA’s Earth Science Division, suggested they divert their test run and fly over Houston.

[...]

It is the most precise and comprehensive airborne air quality lab on the planet, according to scientists familiar with the equipment. Where the EPA’s air pollution single-prop plane can gather some basic chemistry of about two dozen species of air-pollutant compounds, the NASA jet can analyze more than 450.

[...]

On Sept. 9, David Gray, the EPA’s deputy regional administrator in Texas and leader of the agency’s emergency response, wrote to NASA and Texas officials that he was “hesitant” to have the jet “collect additional information that overlaps our existing efforts” until he learned more about the mission. He noted that media and nongovernmental organizations were releasing data that was “conflicting” with the state and EPA’s.

NASA scientists tried to reassure Gray and Honeycutt that they wouldn’t do anything to hinder the data collection efforts. They said they wouldn’t focus on particular facility emissions but instead assess whether large changes in air quality had occurred following the disaster. They also promised not to deliver their data to the media, although they underscored it would eventually be made public.

[...]

But the NASA scientists’ assurances didn’t work.

[...]

“NASA does NOT need EPA approval,” Newman wrote to the team’s project coordinator, Barry Lefer. “We certainly should notify and potentially coordinate, but we don’t need approval.”

His superiors disagreed, and that evening Michael Freilich, the director of NASA’s Earth Sciences division, called off the flight.

[...]

An investigation from the Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle showed there was widespread, unreported pollution and environmental damage in the region. The team identified more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases, most of which were never publicized or vastly understated, including a cloud of hydrochloric acid that leaked from a damaged pipeline and a gasoline spill from an oil terminal that formed “a vapor cloud.”

  LA Times

One would think it impossible for officials to have their heads simultaneously in the sand and up their asses, but this is Scott Pruitt's EPA and Greg Abbott's Texas, so there we are.

  Charlie Pierce

And what about that line that the top toxicologist for the state of Texas, Michael Honeycutt said pollution might be good for people? Surely that's not what he said.

A 2014 investigation by the independent outlet the Center for Public Integrity found Honeycutt's regulatory opinions routinely reflect the opinions of industry, and under his leadership, Texas has loosened restrictions on dozens of chemicals. The president of the Texas Pipeline Association co-signed a letter of support for Honeycutt's nomination to the EPA science advisory board.

[...]

He cited data from an appendix of a massive EPA ozone analysis that found ozone levels in some particularly polluted neighborhoods could temporary increase as the overall amount of air pollution decreased.

[...]

"Houston and Los Angeles are going to lose people. People are going to die," he said.

[...]

However, he did not mention that once the amount of air pollution dropped below a certain level, the EPA predicted ozone would drop as well, providing long-term health benefits to the people in those areas.

"His positions generally are totally inconsistent with mainstream thinking. There's just never enough evidence to persuade him on environmental issues," Craft says. "It's frightening, honestly."

[...]

Honeycutt has broken with mainstream scientific opinion on other toxicology issues as well. In 2011, he split with the American Association of Pediatrics when he told Congress he thought the EPA was being overly cautious in its regulation of mercury.

"Methyl mercury is a toxic chemical, but the scientific data overwhelmingly do not support EPA's position on the health risk of mercury," Honeycutt wrote in response to questions from one of the congressional committee members.

In the same testimony, Honeycutt criticized the EPA for overstating the health hazards posed by hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen made famous by Erin Brockovich, as well as formaldehyde and arsenic.

"Almost every time there's a public concern about pollution he says there's nothing to worry about [...] ," says Luke Metzger, state director of the advocacy group Environment Texas.

  NPR

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Houston police raid - the fallout

The Houston Police Department will end its use of controversial no-knock warrants in most situations, Chief Art Acevedo said during a contentious town hall meeting three weeks after a deadly Pecan Park drug raid that left two people dead and five officers injured.

"The no-knock warrants are going to go away like leaded gasoline in this city," Acevedo told the crowd of activists, reformers and concerned community members gathered at Talento Bilingüe de Houston.

[...]

The Houston Police Department will end its use of controversial no-knock warrants in most situations, Chief Art Acevedo said during a contentious town hall meeting three weeks after a deadly Pecan Park drug raid that left two people dead and five officers injured.

"The no-knock warrants are going to go away like leaded gasoline in this city," Acevedo told the crowd of activists, reformers and concerned community members gathered at Talento Bilingüe de Houston.

[...]

The news came during the meeting late Monday after more than an hour of questions from a furious crowd that repeatedly pressed Acevedo on the conduct of his undercover officers, the use of no-knock warrants and inflammatory comments from Houston police union President Joe Gamaldi who recently seemed to suggest the department was surveilling law enforcement critics.

[...]

"I'm very confident we're going to have criminal charges on one or more of the officers," he said.

The crowd greeted his declaration with a chorus of angry voices demanding: "All of them."

[...]

The news came during the meeting late Monday after more than an hour of questions from a furious crowd that repeatedly pressed Acevedo on the conduct of his undercover officers, the use of no-knock warrants and inflammatory comments from Houston police union President Joe Gamaldi who recently seemed to suggest the department was surveilling law enforcement critics.

  Houston Chronicle

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

That deadly Houston raid

An internal Houston police investigation has uncovered alarming deficiencies in the department's narcotics division that led to an allegedly falsified search warrant used to justify a southeast Houston drug raid last month that killed two Pecan Park residents and injured five officers, according to documents obtained Friday by the Houston Chronicle.

In a hastily called press conference, Police Chief Art Acevedo said Gerald Goines, the veteran narcotics case agent at the center of the controversy, will likely face criminal charges. The internal investigation revealed he allegedly lied about using a confidential informant to conduct an undercover buy at the residence on Harding Street. The buy led to a raid and a fatal gunfight at the house the next day, killing Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58, and injuring five Houston Police Department officers.

The debacle, which has infuriated officers across the department and which critics say has damaged public trust in HPD, and infuriated members of the department's rank-and-file, also prompted Acevedo to order an "extensive audit" of the 175-member narcotics division and an examination of Goines' recent cases.

  Houston Chronicle

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 2/20: Police chief says they will no longer perform no-knock raids.

Jesus Christ, America

The Houston Police Department responded to a shooting in southeast Houston where several police officers were wounded Monday night. Police have confirmed five officers were struck and have been rushed to local hospitals. One suspect is dead and police are looking for possibly two other suspects who are barricaded inside a residence. "Please avoid the area and yield for emergency vehicles," police tweeted.

"We have had several officers shot. Please pray for officers," Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo tweeted.

"We have had several officers shot. Please pray for officers," Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo tweeted.

[...]

The station said the shooting happened near Milby High School. Officials have asked residents to avoid the area.

It is not immediately clear what led to the shooting. SWAT officers and federal agents — including Houston's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) — have responded to the scene.

  CBS

Reporters are saying officers were serving a warrant.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



"The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."  Or is it the other way around?

UPDATE  2/8:  Developments.  The whole story is stinking.

UPDATE 2/16: 

Shifting ground in Texas

I can just hear the wagging tongues in Galveston now, blaming Hurricane Katrina for the influx of unwelcome blacks bussed into Houston.

More on the Harris County judges

After losing his bench in a Democratic sweep, Harris County Juvenile Court Judge Glenn Devlin released nearly all of the youthful defendants that appeared in front him on Wednesday morning, simply asking the kids whether they planned to kill anyone before letting them go.

"He was releasing everybody," said public defender Steven Halpert, who watched the string of surprising releases. "Apparently he was saying that's what the voters wanted."

[...]

"He's not one of those that never releases a kid charged with an aggravated robbery," he said. "But nobody has seen this before."

Some of the children didn't have parents present in court Wednesday. Of the juveniles who appeared before the judge, Halpert said he only saw one detained.

All of the cases, he said, were reset to Jan. 4, the first Friday after Devlin's replacement takes the bench.

  Houston Chronicle

Wow. Good riddance to a spiteful dick sore loser.  I'm going to guess justice was never served under Judge Devlin in the first place.

"Judge Devlin appears to be abdicating the basic responsibility of any sitting juvenile judge," said Elizabeth Henneke of the Lone Star Justice Alliance, a group that works to get young people out of the justice system and into treatment programs.

She called Devlin's post-election actions "disappointing and shocking" and something she'd never seen in a Texas juvenile court.

[...]

"We oppose the wholesale release of violent offenders at any age," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement later. "This could endanger the public."

[...]

The longtime Republican jurist — whose seat was among 59 swept by Democrats in Tuesday's election — is one of two juvenile court judges in Harris County whose track records favoring incarceration contributed heavily to doubling the number of kids Harris County sent to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department in recent years, even as those figures fell in the rest of the state.

A Houston Chronicle investigation last month found that Devlin and Judge John Phillips accounted for more than one-fifth of all children sent to the state's juvenile prisons last year. The two jurists not only sent more teens to juvenile prison, but they also sent them younger and for less-serious offenses than the county's third juvenile court, where Judge Mike Schneider presides.

But despite the differences in their courtroom practices, all three of the juvenile court judges — all Republicans — lost their benches to Democrats in Tuesday's election by at least 10-point spreads.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  It's even worse...

How about a little schadenfreude?

And some Houston area good news:



Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old Colombian immigrant won one of those spots.

UPDATE:  What a spiteful asshole loser Judge Devlin turned out to be.  Good riddance.

Sick in Houston? Must Be Your Imagination

Plants owned by Shell, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil and other industry giants reported more than 1.5 million pounds (680 metric tons) of extraordinary emissions over eight days beginning Aug. 23 to the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality in Harris County, which encompasses Houston. That amounted to 61 percent of this year’s largely unpermitted emissions for the county and five times the amount released in the same period in 2016. Of the known carcinogens released during Harvey, more than 13 tons were benzene. Inhaling it can cause dizziness and even unconsciousness and long-term exposure can trigger leukemia.

[...]

People complained of headaches, nausea, itchy skin and throats — classic symptoms of industrial chemical exposure — as plants and refineries raced to burn off compounds that could combust in extreme weather or power loss.

[...]

Asked about the health effects of the dramatic emissions spike, state environmental commission spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said “all measured concentrations were well below levels of health concern” and “local residents should not be concerned about air quality issues related to the effects of the storm.” The federal Environmental Protection Agency issued a similar statement.

  TPM

Shame on them.

Yet most air monitors were knocked out or offline during Harvey’s wrath, making measurement difficult.

Knocked offline or taken offline?

As the storm closed in, Gov. Greg Abbott decreed the temporary suspension of emissions regulations. The state environmental agency’s director said Texas law could exempt refineries and chemical plants from state fines and liability for extraordinary releases resulting from “an act of God, war, strike, riot, or other catastrophe. ”

[...]

Big plants tend to delay shutdowns for as long as possible when a hurricane is coming — then restart quickly afterward — triggering another spike in unhealthy emissions, said Daniel Cohan, a Rice University environmental scientist.

“These (plants) are three and four decades old, beasts that are meant to operate all the time.”

[...]

At an Arkema Inc. plant about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of downtown Houston, organic peroxides rendered unstable by lost refrigeration exploded in flames and cast an acrid plume. At least 18 tons burned after people within a 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometer) radius were evacuated. On Thursday, seven sheriff’s deputies and emergency medical responders sued Arkema in state court for gross negligence, claiming fumes from the incident made them vomit and gasp for air.

Benzene and other toxins spilled into the air outside the Valero Partners refinery on Houston’s east side, as heavy rains damaged a tank’s floating roof and invaded a dike.

A city health department air monitor downwind of the refinery on Friday registered an alarming level of up to 14,000 parts per billion of volatile organic compounds, some carcinogenic, said department chief scientist Loren Raun, and aerial monitoring continued to detect benzene on Monday.

[...]

By volume, most of Harris County’s emissions were sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which break down to fine particles and ozone that all can cause respiratory problems, especially for people with asthma and emphysema.

[...]

In Galena Park, mothers in a private Facebook group described sickening odors like “sweet gasoline,” raw sewage and thick air.

[...]

People in the petrochemical corridor should be provided health screening as a next step in Harvey recovery, said Rotkin-Ellman of the environmental group NRDC.

A Harris County pollution control services toxicologist, Latrice Babin, said she was not aware of any special screening.

[...]

Cindy Sanchez began to feel ill while barbecuing just before Harvey’s torrents started pelting this city just east of Houston, along a corridor with the nation’s highest concentration of petrochemical plants.

[...]

Sanchez’s headaches still hadn’t gone away on Wednesday. Nor had the sickening smell, she said.

She wants to see a doctor, but like many in her neighborhood, she said, Sanchez currently has no health insurance.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Your'e Right - There Shouldn't Be a Major City in a Flood Plain, But...

...don't blame the homeowners.

Houston’s problem was runaway development in flood-prone areas, accelerated by heavily subsidized federal flood insurance. Now that Hurricane Harvey has turned Conrad’s warnings into reality, it’s worth noting that Houston’s problem was in part a Washington problem, a slow-motion disaster that was easy to predict but politically impossible to prevent. Congress often discusses fixing flood insurance to stop encouraging Americans to build in harm’s way, but the National Flood Insurance Program is still almost as dysfunctional as it was 19 years ago. It is now nearly $25 billion in the red, piling debt onto the national credit card. Meanwhile, cities like Houston—as well as New Orleans, which Higher Ground identified as the national leader in repetitive losses eight years before Hurricane Katrina—continue to sprawl into their vulnerable floodplains, aided by the availability of inexpensive federally supported insurance.

  Politico

And this wouldn't be happening if people with political connections were not making oodles of money off the deal.

Hurricane Harvey is not the first costly flood to hit Houston since that 1998 report. In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped more than two feet of rain on the city, causing about $5 billion in damages. Two relatively modest storms that hit Houston in 2015 and 2016—so small they didn't get names—did so much property damage they made the list of the 15 highest-priced floods in U.S. history.

[...]

Climate change almost certainly made Harvey marginally worse, giving the storm a boost through higher sea levels and warmer sea temperatures. And it’s true that federal flood policies have ignored climate. President Barack Obama tried to change that a bit, ordering federal agencies to account for rising seas and other flood risks when permitting infrastructure projects, but President Donald Trump revoked the order just last week.

Think about it. Trump's livelihood is in real estate. If you can get government insurance to cover ill-planned building projects, you can't lose. (Especially if you're only selling your name.)

An investigation last year by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found that the Houston area’s impervious surfaces increased by 25 percent from 1996 to 2011, as thousands of new homes were built around its bayous. Houston is renowned for its anything-goes zoning rules, but the feds have also promoted those trends by providing extremely cheap insurance in high-risk areas.

[...]

One $69,000 home in Mississippi flooded 34 times in 32 years, producing $663,000 in payouts. The government routinely dishes out more in claims than it takes in through premiums, and the program has gradually drifted deeper and deeper into debt.

[...]

Environmentalists, taxpayer groups and other reformers across the political spectrum have tried to rein in the program, pushing to raise premiums to better reflect flood risks and limit repetitive loss payments. But they have encountered ferocious pushback in Washington from real estate agents, homebuilders and other development interests, as well as politicians representing areas that tend to go underwater.

[...]

In Hannibal, Missouri, the Mississippi River reached its 10-year flood stage in seven out of the eight years between 2008 and 2015, which would be a one-in-a-million coincidence if it were really a coincidence. Cities as diverse as Miami, St. Louis and Sacramento face a constant risk of becoming the next Houston or New Orleans.

[...]

“This isn’t the storm of the millennium,” Conrad says. “It’s going to happen again and again.”

And just to be complete, and fair, it's not just the housing/building market that's in this business. It's also big agriculture. Acres upon acres of farmland in California is in flood plains, with the same kind of federal bail-out insurance. Those guys are making boatloads (no pun intended) of money off that deal. Not to mention the fact that they can acutally collect federal money for NOT planting those acres.  At least, with agriculture, however, thousands of people aren't left homeless or dead.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Well, that sounds good, but it doesn't address the problem of paving over bayous and areas that would normally absorb or contain flood waters.  Once that's done, it just forces water out onto more acreage.  Building should be prohibited in those areas.  If that means building up in other areas instead of out, so be it.  It happens to cities like San Francisco where there simply isn't any more land on which to build out.  They have to go up.  Houston, for instance, is incredibly spread out, with very limited areas of high-rise building.

It also doesn't address having chemical plants and oil refineries in danger zones.

There Went the Arkema Plant

Two explosions have taken place at a chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, that lost power due to flooding caused by tropical storm Harvey.

A sheriff’s deputy was taken to hospital after inhaling chemical fumes, and nine others drove themselves to hospital as a precaution. The plant makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints and other products.

[...]

The plant was shut down on Friday in anticipation of the storm, though 11 employees stayed on site, tasked with trying to keep chemicals safe. Those workers were evacuated on Tuesday after the facility lost power from its primary supply and backup generators late on Monday night. Harris County ordered the evacuation of residents within a 1.5-mile (2.4km) radius.

[...]

“We want local residents to be aware that product is stored in multiple locations on the site, and a threat of additional explosion remains. Please do not return to the area within the evacuation zone.”

[...]

Six oil refineries have begun the process of assessing damage and restarting, while two refineries in the Gulf coast region are operating at reduced rates.

[...]

The Texas Department of Public Safety said 48,700 homes in the area had sustained flood damage, including 17,000 with major damage and 1,000 that were destroyed. The state estimated that 700 businesses had been damaged.

[...]

Many streets in Houston remain under water and some will be so for days, if not weeks. More shelters have opened to handle the swelling numbers of people seeking refuge and to ease the pressure on the biggest shelter, a downtown convention centre that was operating at double its intended 5,000 capacity. [ed: emphasis mine]

  Guardian

If You Really Want to Know the Dangers from Harvey...

Read Charles Pierce's article today.

If you'd rather not know how the rest of the US, and perhaps the rest of the world is teetering on disaster, do something else.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

By the way...The Huffington Post took down that article about Galveston and the bio lab.  No explanation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/concern-over-bio-lab-caught-in-texas-storm_us_59a68bd1e4b05fa16286be5f

It may be here:  Worries About a Galveston Bio Lab

Maybe what happened to the HuffPo piece - Pierce is running a check on his previous post.

Keep Trump's Infrastructure Policy in Mind

An executive order issued by Trump earlier this month revoked an Obama-era directive that had established flood-risk standards for federally funded infrastructure projects built in areas prone to flooding or subject to the effects of sea-level rise – like many of those now sinking in Texas.

Houston already has some of the laxest building regulations for structures in potential flood zones and the president wants to spread that policy across the US.

[...]

Storms and flooding are generally becoming costlier and more frequent and data suggests climate change is a leading culprit.

Many towns are located in coastal areas and riverine floodplains, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says “building codes are often insufficient in reducing damage from extreme events”. The number of “billion-dollar events” – natural disasters ranging from flooding to wildfires that incur more than $1bn in damage – has risen over the past few decades, increasing in cost from a roughly $10bn five-year average in 1985 to more than $50bn in 2015.

Obama signed executive order 13690 in 2015 in response to rising sea levels and surface temperatures and more frequent storms, particularly tropical cyclones. The Obama order, with its references to sea-level rise and climate change, became an instant target for an administration eager to expunge those terms from the political lexicon.

[...]

“It makes no sense,” said Steve Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Taxpayers deserve to have the assurance that if they provide assistance to a community to build or rebuild, it’s done in a way that isn’t going to cost taxpayers money in the future.”

  Guardian

It makes sense if you're a building/real estate mogul with friends in the business.

The consequences of making it easier to build in flood zones are likely to be severe. So far 30,000 people are projected to have been displaced by flooding from Hurricane Harvey. This is the third major flood in the US this year, and the third the Houston area has seen since March of last year. Catastrophic flooding, whether on the coast or in the river-hashed central plains, is a given.

[...]

Public housing, which often stands upon flood-prone land that was inexpensive for housing authorities to purchase, is particularly vulnerable. According to HUD, more than 11,000 public housing buildings – 5% of the total – are in flood zones. In total New Orleans has 1,944 buildings in flood zones; Miami and Jacksonville, Florida, have another 1,157, according to HUD.

And guess who's at the helm at HUD. That's right - Ben - the pyramids are grain storage structures - Carson. What in God's name does a brain surgeon with bizarre ideas know about housing? About as much as a TV narcissist huckster salesman knows about running a country.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Houston, We Have a PROBLEM

At some point over the weekend, I cracked wise that the president* soon would tweet that his hurricane was bigger than any of those that made landfall during the presidency of Barack Obama. Now, I think it might be the first thing he says when he finally makes landfall there this week. It was quite a few days for him. He took another whack at dismissing transgender soldiers and sailors. He pardoned the egregious Joe Arpaio. He hinted that he might reverse the DACA policy. He plugged a book by Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, in whose jails people die of thirst, and who makes Arpaio look like Dorothea Dix. And, of course, he kept tweeting Wow as the rain fell and the damage mounted.

As it happens, I agree with Steve M that he's probably just smart enough to come out of this without accidentally tying his own shoes together again. The NYT already is halfway to giving him credit for not doing so. Engaged! He's engaged! For a president of a country which is watching one of its largest cities turn into an inland sea, this is the equivalent of noticing that the president is not in a coma. The real test is going to come in the next few months, when the shambles he's made of the various federal agencies becomes tragically obvious. If they're not underfunded and understaffed, they're peopled at the top with, at best, inexperienced hacks and, at worst, with saboteurs like Pruitt, or outright loons.

The EPA is only one example. There is no question that the Department of Housing and Urban Development will be expected to be heavily involved in the lengthy reconstruction effort. Alec MacGillis last week published an expose of how howlingly bad HUD has become under the leadership of Dr. Ben Carson. Deep in that story we find that the HUD official in charge of the Houston area is one Beth Van Duyne, the mayor of Irving, whose main political activity heretofore had been her active fight against the phantom menace of Sharia law in the United States, and for her clumsy intervention in the famous "clock boy" faux-trage.

I'm sure she's right on top of the housing calamity that's befallen Houston. This should work out splendidly.

  Charles P Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.