B and B

Developers' land-trashing behavior near San Antonio now threatens U.S. Army's Camp Bullis

The rate of land-trashing by real estate developers in northwest Bexar County has reached the stage where it threatens the continued existence of an amy training ground, Camp Bullis.  This threat has compelled both the City of San Antonio and the U.S. Army to act, which, finally, has brought some attention to the issue -- though, alas, not in a general sense.  Plenty of formerly beautiful Hill Country terrain and wildlife habitat has been scraped and blasted into nothingness in recent years without raising much alarm from anyone but those of us in the immediate area.

From the San Antonio Express-News over the weekend:

A federal judge Friday ordered a San Antonio-area developer to cease road-clearing operations for a new subdivision adjacent to Camp Bullis, giving wildlife experts time to evaluate the project's impact on golden-cheeked warbler habitat.

U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez granted a temporary restraining order against INTCO-Dominion Partnership and set a hearing for 10 a.m. Wednesday on an environmental group's request for a permanent injunction that would halt development next to the range.

The lawsuit, filed Friday by Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas, contends that INTCO is destroying dense trees and brush that are home to the endangered migratory bird that nests each spring and summer in the Hill Country. Destroying warbler habitat is a violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“This is an early victory. It's not the end,” Aquifer Guardians President Enrique Valdivia said. “But if we didn't get the restraining order, the bulldozers might work through the weekend and there wouldn't be anything left to litigate over.”

INTCO has been clearing trees and brush on the 340-acre site near Bullis as it prepares to build a road for a high-end subdivision. The company's Austin-based attorney, Allen Glen, said it was “a safe assumption” his client would follow the order and suspend work.

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Critics of INTCO say the project, and others like it, are driving the warbler onto Camp Bullis, and that if the trend isn't stopped the Army will be unable to train on the 27,994-acre range. As growth has exploded in the area, the warbler population on Bullis has nearly doubled from 672 in 2001 to 1,086 in 2007.

Fort Sam and top city and county leaders say any reduction of training area raises the risk of the Army moving 37,250 military and civilian workers to be on the post by 2011.

“The issue is bigger, of course, than the fate of the warbler. It's concern about development around Camp Bullis and, of course, the impact on the aquifer recharge zone,” Aquifer Guardians' Valdivia said.

Federal law and Defense Department policy forbid the Army from taking legal action, forcing it to rely on groups such as the Aquifer Guardians and the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, which had considered seeking the restraining order.

...

Post spokesman Phil Reidinger said court action is the only way to stop work on the site while biologists take a closer look, and added that Fort Sam “cannot shoulder the conservation burden alone” — a view shared by its advocates.

“The really big problem with this is Camp Bullis is really the only one in the area that is observing the law,” Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance Executive Director Annalisa Peace said. “If everybody was observing the law, it probably wouldn't be a problem for Camp Bullis.”

Disgraceful attitudes towards women run rampant in our media

Our TV media is not a direct reflection of our society, but it does reflect the attitudes of those in powerful positions. With that in mind, take a look at this video produced by the Women's Media Center (via Digby):

End of an historic primary. Beginning of another historic campaign.

And with this, my self-imposed political "vacation" comes to an end and the campaign to make Barack Obama our next President begins.

Hillary Clinton ends historic race, strongly endorses Barack Obama

WASHINGTON — Putting an end to her campaign to be the first woman president, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today enthusiastically endorsed her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, praising his determination and calling on her supporters to fight for his election.

...

"Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been," Clinton said. "We have to work together. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure Sen. Obama is our next president. I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort."

...

Repeatedly throughout the speech, the New York senator highlighted the historic nature of her candidacy, the strongest run for the nomination of a major party by a female candidate. Making a reference to her vote total over the course of the campaign, Clinton said she hoped that she had made "18 million" cracks in the glass ceiling preventing women from becoming president. And she said she hoped she had made the path to the presidency a little easier for the next female candidate for president.

"You can so be proud that from now on it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories," Clinton said. "Unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee. Unremarkable to think a woman could be president of the United States. And that is truly remarkable, my friends."

Clinton said that she would fight to lower barriers that women still faced.

"Like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there. I want to build an America that embraces the potential of every last one of us," she said.

...

"We all know this has been a tough fight but the Democratic Party is a family," Clinton said in the speech. "Today our paths have merged."

Hill Country Planning Association, aka "Hill Country Militia," rises up against developers' land-trashing

For a little story on the animosity that real estate developers are engendering in our neck of the woods due to the way they manage to transform bucolic hill country vistas into moonscapes of destruction, see this recent article in the San Antonio Current by Greg Harmon of harmon on earth (emphasis added):

[In early 2007] Reports that the San Antonio Water System was seeking to expand its authority across the city’s entire 5-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction, and that a new high-density development straddling Medina and Bandera counties was seeking SAWS sewer and water service, had rattled a broader geography of turf warriors. Many of them were already members of the non-profit Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, whose mission is specifically focused on protecting the Edwards Aquifer.

In a galleon of a ranch house outside Helotes modeled on Yellowstone National Park’s guest quarters, they debated just what they could do to stop the quickening pace of sprawling development. While SAWS officials argued that extending their pipes would better protect area water supplies by limiting the creation of smaller, less-professional water-company operations or, worse, the explosion of septic-tank communities, the consensus in the meeting was that the lines would only ensure the continued rush of concrete, sheet rock, and tarpaper.

The mix of political persuasions was bridged by a collective, dawning environmental consciousness, perhaps best illustrated by the retired neurosurgeon from Quihi, busy battling plans for a quarry in his hamlet.

“I never considered myself an environmentalist. I really didn’t,” said Robert Fitzgerald. “But once you start looking at what people are doing down there, if you have any feeling at all, you become an environmentalist.”

A member of the Edwards Aquifer Authority publicly confessed the agency hadn’t been willing to act on many issues out of fear. “It’s fear of what the legislature will do. Really, it’s fear of what the developers will get the lege to do to us,” he said. “Some think it’s time we called their bluff.”

Then Bebe [Fenstermaker] shot off from the front of the room. “We’re losing Texas. I don’t know if you know that,” she said. “I can’t stand to drive anywhere anymore … We look like New Jersey.”

A woman at the opposite end of the stone and timber expanse shook her jaw. “New Jersey looks better.”

Some attendees compared the motivation behind the night’s meeting to the survival ethic of the early Texians. “We’re kind of like the pioneers 200 years ago,” said one. “When there was a fight, they all left their homes and came together.”

No surprise that in such a charged environment when prospective names for the group were floated the combativeness of the moment seeped out. “How about militia?” offered one. “Hill Country Militia?”

It took time, but eventually the more mundane Hill County Planning Association was adopted.

Early versions of the group’s Master Plan struck one prominent participant as a rewrite of the Communist Manifesto, though it read more like an early American Revolutionary screed. A trace of those rhetorical flourishes remains, particularly the opening “We the People.”

After lengthy defining of place and purpose, the group’s Master Plan comes to a solitary demand: “An immediate moratorium is called on all development in The Hill Country to assure compliance with all local, State, and Federal laws and until a comprehensive cumulative environmental impact study is completed.”

...

Group members were still working out the final language of the Master Plan when developers at Sonoma Verde were blasting and excavating their way to the perfect limestone tabula rasa, a blank slate devoid of any living thing, atop that cherished Edwards recharge zone.

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Today the [Fenstermaker] sisters watch as Post Oak Development blasts a hill flat on the backside of Crownridge Canyon Natural Area off Kyle Seal Parkway. It’s like nothing they’ve ever seen before.

“This is like West Virginia coal mining,” Mary Fenstermaker says.

“We’ve seen land raped, but we’ve never seen that,” Bebe says. “I’ve never seen Texas treated like that.”

For much more, read the entire article.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

Here is a bill I've been keeping a close eye on for nearly a year:

Under a measure sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, the court’s ruling that Ms. [Lilly] Ledbetter [of Alabama] failed to file a timely challenge to pay practices at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden would effectively be overturned, though Ms. Ledbetter would not benefit directly.

Ms. Ledbetter, who earned thousands of dollars less than male colleagues doing similar supervisory work, was found by the court to have failed to make her claim within 180 days of the company’s pay policy decision. The sponsors of the bill want to clear up that requirement and straighten out what they see as a flawed ruling.

“Never mind that Ms. Ledbetter didn’t know about the discrimination when it first began,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Never mind that she had no means to learn of the discrimination because Goodyear kept salary information confidential. Never mind that Goodyear’s discrimination against Ms. Ledbetter continued each and every time it gave her a smaller paycheck than it gave her male colleagues.”

The House passed a similar bill last year soon after the court decision, but its backers have encountered resistance in the Senate and from the Bush administration, which argues it could spark a wave of lawsuits. Some Senate Republicans have reservations about the measure, but they intend to be careful in their opposition to avoid being portrayed as backing pay discrimination.

New corporate giveaway under guise of "fixing" the mortgage crisis

I am of mixed opinions of how or even whether to assist people and banks that got involved in the overinflated housing market over the last few years.  But one thing I am clear about is that giving out billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to the housing industry that reaped in mega-profits during those years is profoundly wrong.

Daniel Gross wrote in Slate last Monday (emphasis added):

The proposed tax break [now passed by the Senate] is hard to justify for several reasons. It does nothing for slow and steady companies that keep their heads and simply rack up profits year after year—and pay their taxes accordingly. Rather, it rewards the most reckless participants in the bubble. If you borrowed a ton of money to build spec houses in Miami and reported $2 billion in profits between 2002 and 2007 but gave up all those profits by notching a $2 billion loss this year, the extended carryback has a great deal of value. If you've been building affordable housing in Wichita, Kan., and booked $300 million in profits in those years, and then, through careful management of costs, managed to eke out a $5 million profit this year, it has no value. The big public homebuilders, whose shares rallied on the news of this potential tax break, didn't pay any windfall taxes on the bubble-era earnings. Why should they get an extraordinary post-bubble windfall?

Homebuilders argue that they need relief because their sector, which provides a great deal of domestic employment, is on the ropes, and they're finding it more difficult to raise capital. Which is as it should be. After bubbles pop, those who screwed up really badly fail and get taken over by creditors or opportunistic investors. Those who have sound underlying franchises but merely got a little carried away can survive if they take painful restructuring moves. This is what is known as market capitalism. For all the talk of a credit crunch, capital is still available—it's just not available on the easy terms managers had come to expect during the late Greenspan years. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and plenty of other firms tied to the mortgage/finance complex have taken steps to shore up their balance sheets and replenish lost capital. But investors, having been burned, demand more downside protection and better guaranteed returns. Thornburg Mortgage was forced to pay 18 percent interest for an emergency round of capital raising that allowed it to stave off bankruptcy. This is also what is known as market capitalism.

...

The proposal to give new tax breaks to homebuilders and banks is yet another example of the pernicious trend of privatizing profit and socializing losses, which is gnawing away at faith in the system. Dilute the shareholders, not the taxpayers.

Thankfully, the House of Representatives may take a far more sensible route, according to the Washington Post (emphasis added):

On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved an $11 billion tax package that rejects help for home builders and offers a $7,500 tax credit to first-time home buyers rather than buyers of foreclosed properties.

Please keep paying attention so that we all do not get swindled in the end.

Cachao

Since I last posted here, the world lost one of our greatest musical influences of the last century. 

Israel Cachao López, the Cuban bassist and composer who was a pioneer of the mambo, died on Saturday in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 89 and lived in Coral Gables.

...

Cachao, as he was universally known, transformed the rhythm of Cuban music when he and his brother, the pianist and cellist Orestes López, extended and accelerated the final section of the stately Cuban danzón into the mambo. “My brother and I would say to each other, ‘Mambea, mambea ahí,’ which meant to add swing to that part,” he said in a 2006 interview with The Miami Herald. The springy mambo bass lines Cachao created in the late 1930’s — simultaneously driving and playful — became a foundation of modern Cuban music, of the salsa that grew out of it, and also of Latin-influenced rock ’n’ roll and rhythm-and-blues. For much of the 20th century, Cachao’s innovations set the world dancing.

In the late 1950’s, he brought another breakthrough to Latin music with descargas: late-night Havana jam sessions that merged Afro-Cuban rhythms, Cuban songs and the convolutions of jazz. The mixture of propulsion and exploration in those recordings has influenced salsa and jazz musicians ever since.

Here is a YouTube tribute, from CCSFMusic25.  The music is Cachao on bass and Paquito D'Rivera on clarinet:

And  Cachao - Ahora Si, courtesy of  winplayer86.

It literally rained mud here last Tuesday

Literally, mud fell from the sky here in San Antonio last Tuesday. 

I have no experience with that kind of weather phenomenon before, so I didn't know what to make of it.  My first impression upon seeing my car, after emerging from my office late that afternoon, was "My car is spattered in mud from top to bottom!  How did this happen?  Did some huge truck drive though a deep puddle at high speed?"  With no such large puddle nearby and thus no evidence that such a thing could have happened, I then noted that I had parked underneath a large live oak tree and that it is spring and rationalized that trees are messy in the spring. Then I promptly put it out of my mind, while driving to the nearest gas station to clean off the windows that I could barely see through.  There, some puzzlement  returned as I noted that the line for the car wash was six deep.

Daily life being full of distractions, and the concept of a muddy rain non-existent in my head, I once again forgot all about this, until, after a few days of no internet access thanks to a bad phone line, I read this article in the Express-News, titled, "Just ash with rain? Not so fast":

The strange stuff that fell Tuesday, griming up windows and lining the pockets of carwash owners, has had the additional effect of setting up a sort of meteorological whodunit.

Just what, some scientific sleuths want to know, commingled with the rain as it fell onto vehicles from San Antonio to Corpus Christi, from Austin to Houston?

Some initial reports, including one from a National Weather Service meteorologist, had the primary cause of the deposits as ash from wildfires in Mexico.

Other indications, including satellite photos, showed a dust plume also emerging from central Mexico.    

Another additive to the mix washed from the sky by the rain of a fast-moving cold front may have been particles from bone-dry West Texas.

...

Forrest Mims III, a science consultant and a freelance columnist for the Express-News, took a sample of the stuff from his window and put it under the microscope, forwarding some of his findings to TCEQ.

"There's one black spore and there are three possible soot particles and everything else is dirt, dust, sand. I would say that it's probably less than 1 percent smoke, and that's being generous," he said.

Joe Baskin, the weather service meteorologist who initially thought that what blew over here was mostly smoke since that's what it looked like in photos, said another look indicated that it likely was dust. (The weather service isn't responsible for investigating the stuff once it leaves clouds.)

    

David Gay, acting director of the Illinois-based National Atmospheric Deposition Program, said his government-funded network of researchers had five sample sites in South Texas and would be able to review initial findings as early as next week.

To me and, I suspect, most others here, it is much more plausible that the stuff in the rain was dust and not ash, as was apparently first reported.  The brownish, rusty color of the residue just does not fit the concept of dull gray ash.

So what is going on in west Texas or northern Mexico that their dirt is falling on our city?

Geoengineering: Rolling the dice with the only planet we've got

If "geoengineering" is truly becoming a mainstream concept, as suggested by Chris Mooney at the Intersection (based on a recent mention in Time magazine), then we are truly on a dangerous path.

Time writes, "Geoengineering has long been the province of kooks, but as the difficulty of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions has become harder to ignore, it is slowly emerging as an option of last resort."

Are we already reduced to thinking about last resorts?   If we ever reach the point that we have to say, Let's purposefully try to mess up our planet's extremely complicated climate system in order to restore a poorly understood equilibrium that we lost a while back," then we are truly f****d. 

We don't have a planet to practice on.  We've never done anything like that before.  What are the odds it would work as intended?

If we reach that point, it's far worse than the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game, or pulling the goalie at the end of a hockey game.  After all, those strategies have been tried before and we know they can work, if rarely.  In the case of geongineering, it won't work.  To even think of attempting it is to think that we're doomed anyway so we might as well have some fun on the way out.

We're not there yet, thankfully, so let's send the talk of geoengineering back to the science fiction books where it belongs.

Photos from Luminaria festival Saturday night

Here are a few of my photos from the first Luminaria arts and music festival, downtown San Antonio, Saturday, March 15, 2008.   There was way too much going on to come close to seeing and doing all I wanted to.  If the city this again (and I sure hope they do), perhaps they could split it up into a couple weekend evenings, instead of just one.  It was a blast. 

Luminaria: new music and arts festival in San Antonio today and tonight

For those living in and near San Antonio, a new music and arts festival that is taking place today and tonight may be of interest.  It is called Luminaria.  Here is the description:

Luminaria is the first annual all day and evening celebration of San Antonio premiere artists and art organizations giving citizens of the community a chance to experience the city’s diverse cultures through observing and participating in our world-class artistic heritage. Through visual, performing, multi-media, theatre, dance, music and other artistic forms, audiences will be engaged throughout San Antonio in a free, world-class celebration of the arts.

Luminaria is intended to be a cohesive celebration of the arts through a creative atmosphere showcasing San Antonio’s diverse artistic community.

An artist-driven celebration of the arts, Luminaria is an unprecedented collaboration of over 40 non-profit organizations that will come together for 1 day to celebrate the dynamic vitality of San Antonio’s creative spirit.

Based on the success of other international celebrations such as Nuit Blanche in Paris and Noche Blanca in Madrid, no other city in Texas has attempted to coordinate continuous artistic, educational and innovative programming for a city-wide arts celebration. To further highlight the name of this event, the traditional role of the luminaria is a clever small light that conjures up creative ideas which inspires waves of innovation.

Here is a list of events taking place downtown from 6pm to midnight tonight.  It is an impressive list that includes six venues for performances.  I just found out about this festival, but hopefully will get a chance to catch part of this tonight.  It looks like great fun.

For more, here is an article in the Express-News about the festival.

Christmas Mountains: Texas GOP still trying to sell off more public land

Our GOP administration in Texas continues its assault on the concept of public lands.  They haven't had much success lately, but they keep trying.  This time, it is Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who for months has been doing his best to try to sell off 9,000+ acres of land out in the spectacular west Texas desert into private hands. 

This land, in the Christmas Mountains adjacent to Big Bend National Park, was donated to the state by a conservation group back in the early 1990s.  Once Patterson decided last year that it must be sold, the National Park Service stepped in to propose purchasing it and taking it off the state of Texas's hands.  But Patterson now appears to be refusing to consider the Park Service proposal.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an update:

AUSTIN -- Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson continues to block a proposal that could put the Christmas Mountains into the hands of the National Park Service, conservationists complained this week.

Patterson, who is chairman of the School Land Board, which has authority over the Christmas Mountains, has so far declined to bring up for board consideration a park service proposal to add the mountains to Big Bend National Park.

Patterson, who drew criticism for his recent attempts to sell the property to private interests, raised eyebrows last week when he told an audience in Fort Worth that "Big Bend National Park doesn't want" the Christmas Mountains.

Conservationist Luke Metzger likened Patterson's stance to "blocking democracy."

"To prevent the proposal from at least being considered -- I think that's outrageous," said Metzger, director of Environment Texas. "It's a failure of government for him to not to even allow the case from being made to the full land board."

The three-member board has met three times since the federal agency made its proposal Jan. 31, and another meeting is scheduled for March 18. The park service's proposed management plan for the Christmas Mountains has not been put on any of the meeting agendas.

A spokesman for Patterson did not respond to questions about the land commissioner's plans. However, in a statement that he posted this week on the Star-Telegram's PoliTex blog, Patterson indicated that he did not want to transfer the property to the park service -- at least for the moment -- and that he is still considering selling the mountains to a private bidder, which he has said can act as a good steward of the property.

For more on the Christmas Mountains story, see jobsanger and Capitol Annex.

"Where were you all last time?"

The line of the night, from the precinct chair at our Democratic precinct convention (aka "caucus") last night, addressing the (guessing) 200 or so attendees in an elementary school cafeteria:

Where were you all last time we had one of these things, when we had like four people!

Three photos from the Obama rally last night

These are not the greatest images, but they are the best I managed to acquire from my distance and in the available lighting.  Obama's "Stand for Change" rally, February 29 2008, San Antonio TX:

Obama and Clinton both in San Antonio last night

A few days ago, I noticed that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were planning rallies in San Antonio for the weekend.  I was hoping to attend both of them -- after all, it is pretty rare that my state is involved in such a heated primary race between two stellar candidates.  Sadly, they managed to schedule both rallies for exactly the same time last night, but twenty miles apart.  My plans were foiled -- I had to pick one and only one.

Being a supporter of Obama's, I picked his rally, even though it was far less convenient.  The venue for Obama was the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, far out on the northeast side.  Driving all the way across town at rush hour was not appealing, but the rarity of the moment won out, and I put up with it.

I was amazed at the number of volunteers helping out -- hawking t-shirts and buttons, handing out "tickets" and pens (the price of admission was your contact information), and, mostly, seeking to sign up additional volunteers.

I tried to get some pictures, but was not quite close enough to get decent ones.  Darn those big crowds!  The Express-News quotes a crowd size of about 8,000 people, and that strikes me as roughly correct.  It was by far the largest political rally I've been to -- perhaps too large to be an ideal rally, as it is difficult to fully engage those who are far away physically from the speakers and the candidate.  And I had no prayer of getting up close enough at the end to shake the candidate's hand, as I had managed to do at the John Kerry rally in March 2004 and the Bill Clinton rally for Ciro Rodriguez in 2006.

Still, it appears a good time was had by all.  I am sorry I won't be able to attend a Hillary Clinton rally, though.  Any chance she'll be back before Tuesday seems quite slim.  And at this point, I have to admit that I am ready for this primary season to be over after that.