Category Archives: Politics – General

President nominates a Clear Thinkers favorite for the Supreme Court

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supreme court building4.jpgPresident Bush’s selection of D.C. appellate judge John G. Roberts Jr. to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court is a solid one and should not lead to much of a confirmation fight. As noted in this post from earlier this year, Judge Roberts was my favorite candidate for one of the Supreme Court openings, a superb thinker and writer while on the D.C. Court of Appeals.
Stuart Buck passes along notes that, before Judge Roberts took the bench, Justice Scalia told one of Stuart’s friends that he and several other Supreme Court Justices thought that Roberts was the best Supreme Court litigator in the country. The reason? Because he never became flustered during questioning and was always able to answer any question calmly while skillfully weaving in the substantive points that he wanted to make in the first place. As usual, the SCOTUS Blog has a fine compendium of resources on the Roberts nomination, including this post that reviews some of his decisions while on the D.C. Court of Appeals.
My sense is that the nomination of Judge Roberts means that there is a good chance that President Bush intends to nominate a woman to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist when he retires as expected in the near future. Hopefully, Houstonian and Fifth Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones will be in the running for that nomination.

The abysmal condition of the Harris County Jail

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jail.jpgOver my 26 year legal career, a local issue that has been continually discussed among Houston attorneys is the horrid condition of the Harris County Jail.
This is not an easy issue. The constituency most interested in the issue — prisoners — is neither attractive nor important to politicians. Similarly, the issue brings into sharp focus a public policy conflict that governments have ducked for decades — i.e., the tendency of politicians to indulge the public demand for tougher sentencing for political purposes while attempting to avoid responsibility for most government’s booming deficits and debt. Stated simply, politicians are not particularly interested in dealing with the fact that governments either have to accept that tougher sentencing means more prisoners and more money spent on building prisons or — if government is not willing to spend the money — fewer and shorter prison terms for offenders.
With that backdrop, it’s not particularly surprising that, after noting that almost 1,300 inmates are sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the Harris County Jail while large sections of the jail are unused because of a guard shortage, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards has decertified the Harris County Jail for the second year in a row. This Steve McVicker/Bill Murphy Chronicle article reports on the Commission findings.

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Chronicle weblog on terrorist attacks in London

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London.jpgDwight Silverman, the excellent technology columnist for the Houston Chronicle who has sheparded the Chronicle’s increasing contribution to the blogosphere, is contributing to this handy blog on the terrorist attacks of earlier today in London.
Check it out, as Dwight has included lots of good links to commentary and up-to-the-minute news reports. This “instant blog” on a breaking news story is yet another example of how weblogs are redefining the way in which information is delivered to the public.

More on the City of Houston’s troubled hotel investments

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Magnolia.jpgAnne Linehan over at blogHouston.net alerts us to this Chronicle article that updates the situation facing the City of Houston in regard to its investment in two downtown Houston hotels, The Magnolia and the Crowne Plaza. This earlier post examined the City’s problem investments in the hotels, while this post addressed the soft market for hotel rooms in downtown Houston.
As Anne notes, not much has changed in regard to the situation since the prior report on the hotels’ financial problems. The hotels are still not generating enough revenue to service the City’s subordinated debt on the hotels, and it is not at all clear from the article that the hotels are even generating positive cash flow from operations exclusive of debt service. Thankfully, the City’s total investment in both hotels is under $15 million, which is a drop in the bucket compared to this other dubious investment.
Nevertheless, after throwing a few $15 millions around, you could be talking about some real money, so the City needs to address the situation responsibly. As noted in the earlier post, despite its notes on the properties, the City is really just a preferred equity investor in these hotels. Consequently, the main issue at this point is whether the hotels are being managed properly and whether there is a reasonable chance that they can generate enough revenue to break even from an operations standpoint. Assuming a “yes” answer to those two questions, then the City simply needs to look at these properties as long-term (make that very long-term) investments that need to be monitored as a part of its long-term investment portfolio. The hotels could also be productively used as poster children from time to time whenever some City official floats the idea that it is good economically for the City to loan money on a project that private financing will not support.
On the other hand, if either of the answers to the foregoing questions is “no,” that raises additional issues that a City government is institutionally incapable of handling well. In that event, some second or third buyer of one of these hotels might just be able to turn a profit on the City’s dime.

Updated roster of Supreme Court Justice candidates

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supreme court building.jpgFollowing on the NY Times list contained in this post from earlier this year, this Washington Post article reviews the likeliest pool of candidates that President Bush would draw from in nominating a new justice to replace any of the several elderly Justices who could retire in the near future from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The WaPo list is the same as the earlier NY Times list, except that the WaPo list includes Fifth Circuit Judge Emilio Garza as one of the candidates.
My personal favorite in this group remains John J. Roberts, who has been a clear thinker and superb writer while on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The legacy of Lee Brown?

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MayorBrown.jpgThis Dan Feldstein/Chronicle article reports that the brother of former Houston mayor Lee P. Brown was implicated this morning during the opening stages of the federal corruption trial of Cleveland, Ohio businessman Nate Gray:

[O]n the first day of a major bribery trial here of three other men, prosecutors played a wiretapped cell phone conversation in which Cleveland businessman Nate Gray brags that “the mayor’s brother and I are like this.”
“I can go into Houston and have more juice than a local guy,” Gray told a young attorney who wanted to learn the ropes of Gray’s consulting business.
“Greasing palms” was how to get things done, said Gray, who faces 44 counts of bribery-related charges.
Two other people Gray allegedly gave cash and gifts were Houston city officials ? former Brown chief of staff Oliver Spellman and building services director Monique McGilbra.
Both pleaded guilty to accepting bribes and are expected to testify against Gray. . .
Prosecutors said Brown got monthly payments totaling thousands of dollars and even a payment specifically for promising to talk to his mayoral brother about a pending contract.

Here is a previous post regarding Ms. McGilbra’s plea deal, and Kevin Whited over at blogHouston.net (more here) has been covering these developments from the beginning.
Where there is smoke in such matters, there is often fire. Stay tuned on this one.

NASA shakeup continues

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NASA3.jpgAs noted in this earlier post, new NASA chief administrator Michael D. Griffin is shaking things up at the space agency. This Washington Post article reports on Mr. Griffin’s latest moves, which include the building of a less political and more scientifically-oriented management team to implement the initiative to return humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually send them to Mars. One particularly interesting part of the article is the following:

“[Mr. Griffin] wanted to be NASA administrator for a long time and has given a lot of thought to what has been done well or badly,” one congressional source said. “Because of that, he is not going to take a year or two to get to know the organization.”
Instead, the sources said, he expressed dismay that NASA over the past several years had put a lot of people in top management positions because of what one source described as “political connections or bureaucratic gamesmanship — not merit.”
Several sources spoke of a corps of younger scientists and engineers, including Griffin, who had been groomed in the 1970s and 1980s as NASA’s next generation of leaders only to be shoved aside during the past 15 years. They said Griffin hopes to bring them back.
“The people around him will be quite outstanding,” one source said. “The philosophy is that good people attract outstanding people. This is going to be a very high-intensity environment, and NASA needs experienced, outstanding people.”

Fiddling while Rome burns

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perry.jpgIt’s a good sign that it’s not going to be a good day at the office for a Republican politician when the morning’s edition of the Wall Street Journal has both an editorial and an op-ed piece critical of the politician.
But that’s precisely what Texas governor Rick Perry is confronting today. In this WSJ editorial ($) aptly entitled “What’s the Matter with Texas?”, the Journal editors pick up on a theme that was noted earlier in this post — that is, the utter lack of leadership being exhibited by Republican politicians:

Republicans control every lever of political power in Austin for the first time since Reconstruction and had promised a sweeping reform agenda. Property tax relief. Vouchers for kids in failed inner-city public schools. An end to Robin Hood school financing. And passage of a fiscally tight budget.
This entire legislative agenda was ambushed. The school voucher pilot program for 20,000 mostly minority kids was rejected by the very Democratic legislators representing the families who would have benefited from the opportunity to attend private and parochial schools that actually work. The depressing fact that nearly half of the black and Hispanic children in the state fail to graduate from public high schools wasn’t perceived as a sufficient crisis to give choice a chance.
Most of the other failings of this legislature must be laid at the feet of the Republicans.

The Journal goes on to note that the Republicans are playing with serious political fire by failing to address the problem of spiraling property taxes in Texas:

But it’s almost inconceivable that the legislature would adjourn until 2007 without chopping property taxes. Skyrocketing appraisals are taxing Texans out of their houses, and infuriated home owners are ready to march on Austin. One Dallas legislator reported that he was accosted by irate voters at his kid’s swim meet this week. . .
[I]f property taxes aren’t cut meaningfully right now, the Republicans might not be coming back to Austin after the next election.

Meanwhile, over at OpinionJournal, J.R. Labbe, senior editorial writer and columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, pens this op-ed that addresses the challenges from within the Texas Republican Party that Mr. Perry is expected to face in the upcoming election campaign, and notes in particular that Mr. Perry’s recent political staging of a signing ceremony for parental consent legislation in the gymnasium of a Ft. Worth church could backfire:

But the community of faith, even in the Lone Star State, is not a monolith. Plenty of Texan Christians were put off by what they perceived as Gov. Perry’s use of religion as a theatrical prop. Witnessing oneself as a godly governor might be more effectively demonstrated if religion weren’t turned into a sideshow.

As I observed to Charles Kuffner during lunch yesterday, I’m not sure what’s worse — the risk that government will embrace the worst characteristics of certain Christian churches, or that those churches will embrace the worst characteristics of government.

The Enron Airline?

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airliner.jpgA sure sign that a discussion on a particular subject has deteriorated to an unrecoverable level is a participant’s allegation that the other side’s position defends Nazism in some respect. With regard to discussions about business, it’s quickly becoming evident that such discussions have degenerated into uselessness when one participant accuses the other side’s position of defending Enron.
This NY Times article reports on a Congressional hearing yesterday in which Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Gerald Grinstein, Northwest Airlines President and Chief Executive Officer Douglas Steenland, and UAL Chairman, President and CEO Glenn Tilton testified in favor of proposed legislation that would allow airlines to freeze pension plans and extend their current obligations over 25 years. Last month, United Airlines obtained Bankruptcy Court approval to shift its employee-pension plans — including their nearly $10 billion shortfall — on to the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
In response to the airline executives’ rather reasonable comments in support of common-sense legislation, Senator Charles Grassley (Rep. Iowa) called United Airlines a “catastrophe” and compared United Airlines to Enron Corp., saying the carrier used “illusory investment gains” to “hide and disguise” the true financial condition of its pension plans. “Unlike Enron, however,” concluded Sen. Grassley. “Everything United did was perfectly legal.”
Well, playing the Enron card may make for a good sound bite, but it’s a sure sign that Mr. Grassley wants to avoid addressing what’s really troubling the airline industry — i.e., Big Labor supported by compliant politicians. Let’s take United as a case in point. At a time when unions owned over 50% of the company, controlled three board seats, and effectively hired and fired the company’s CEO, the unions decided to increase their retirement compensation by approving unfundable pension obligations while, at the same time, extracting maximum current wage benefits that made United uncompetitive from an operations standpoint. Thus, United’s owner-employees effectively looted the company with high current compensation benefits while, at the same time, effectively insuring that they would also ultimately loot the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which they knew would be the guarantor of at least a substantial portion of United’s unfundable pension obligations.
Frankly, even the Enron sharpies didn’t think of such a scheme.

George Will on the Wright Amendment

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will_small.jpgWashington Post columnist George F. Will adds this column to the growing body of opinion that the Wright Amendment — which restricts Southwest Airlines from flying to most states from its Dallas Love Field hub — is at least obsolescent and probably bad public policy in the first place. Here are previous posts on the Wright Amendment.
In his column, Mr. Will passes along a humorous anecdote from Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s chairman, regarding the Wright Amendment and the beginning of the airline:

In 1971, after years of harassing litigation by two airlines averse to competition, Southwest Airlines was born. It had just three aircraft and flew only intrastate, between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. This first of the no-frills, low-cost airlines, under the leadership of its ebullient founder Herb Kelleher, was to democratize air travel and revolutionize the airline industry.
The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, and the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, which opened in 1974, tried unsuccessfully to force Southwest to move its operations from close-in Love Field out to DFW, arguing that the new airport depended on this. Today Kelleher laughingly recalls telling a judge:

“If a three-aircraft airline can bankrupt an 18,000-acre, nine-miles-long airport, then that airport probably should not have been built in the first place.”