"The not-honest operators are making sick people come to work, refusing to offer paid time off or pay for testing, and that's gonna get people killed."

Journalist Amy McCarthy (@aemccarthy on Twitter) is the editor of Eater Dallas and Eater Houston. I've joined together a recent Twitter thread of hers to produce this narrative. As a pretext to McCarthy's words, the Washington Post comments on the escalating pace of hospitalizations in Texas.

Health officials in Texas reported a record number of hospitalizations on Wednesday — 2,793 — in a 66 percent increase since Memorial Day, an analysis by The Washington Post shows. The daily death toll also increased slightly in the past few days. Thirty-three coronavirus-related fatalities were announced Wednesday, making the total number of deaths statewide 2,062. Texas began to reopen on April 20 after roughly two weeks under a stay-at-home order. Cases have been trending upward since then.

McCarthy takes it from here.

It is extremely extremely fucked up that there is no requirement for restaurants to close after someone on staff tests positive for COVID-19. I am hearing so many (hard to verify) rumors about staff testing positive and working without a mask.

When you ask the owners about it, they either lie or tell you that person had no contact with guests.

We know that restaurants (and diners) are not following social distancing guidelines. Being in a restaurant right now is terrifying, even if they are "doing it right." The honest operators are shutting down! They're paying thousands and thousands of dollars to sanitize and install UV lights in their HVAC.

AND IT'S STILL NOT ENOUGH.

The not-honest operators are making sick people come to work, refusing to offer paid time off or pay for testing, and that's gonna get people killed. Right now, in Texas, there's no mechanism for punishing those operators.

If (Governor Greg) Abbott and his fuckboy cronies had their way, these businesses would be fully indemnified from ANY consequences of spreading coronavirus.

The worst part about it all is that so many of these businesses are in such a precarious financial position that they HAVE TO take today's pennies at the risk of tomorrow's dollars.

Because our fuckshit government won't do anything to help.

And this postscript:

I am worried sick about it, literally. These establishments can't survive if we're all dead from this fucking virus in six months.

Texas: "Cautiously coming back from the shutdown."

The key word in the clock-baitish headline is "cautiously." What if there were a reopening, and very few came? It would lessen the chance of a surge -- and an economic recovery.

Texas Is Showing the World How to Reopen Cautiously at Bloomberg

A month into lifting restrictions, coronavirus cases haven’t surged. Many residents are keeping their distance, raising doubts about the speed of the economic recovery.

Over Memorial Day weekend, a club in Houston hosted a pool party that looked straight out of spring break, with loads of bulky bare chests, bikinis and day drinking on an umbrella-filled patio during a balmy Saturday.

A day earlier, Texas Governor Greg Abbott allowed bars—along with rodeos, bowling alleys and bingo halls—to open their doors at reduced capacity in the second phase of the state’s plan to restart the economy after shutting down in early April to slow the coronavirus.

The scene at Clé Houston, which quickly spread on social media, played to stereotypes of Texans—libertarian, don’t-tread-on-me types who prize personal freedom.

But the reality of how many of the state’s citizens are behaving is much different. In other parts of the city that Saturday, bars were tame, even boring, with sparse attendance and plenty of crowd control. Some owners marked tables and floors with an X to reinforce social distancing. Another set out squeeze bottles filled with hand sanitizer.

South Padre Island, this was not.

A month into the reopening of one of America’s biggest economic engines, Texas looks a lot like those other Houston watering holes: cautiously coming back from the shutdown ...

"If it wasn't an election year it would have passed 9-0 ... this opportunity is gone." Anyone got a Kleenex?

"It's all private property."

Yes, Deaffrey ... it is private property, and YOU can do anything you want with it.

Texas anti-masturbation bill moves closer to becoming law, by Adam Lusher (Independent)

Under the Man’s Right to Know Act, Texan men would be fined $100 for every 'unregulated masturbatory emission' - although they may be reassured to learn this is a satirical bill highlighting how women have been targeted by anti-abortion laws.

A bill that would see Texas men fined $100 (£82) for masturbating has taken a step closer to becoming law after it received its first reading in the state’s House of Representatives.

Under section 173.010 of House Bill 4260, the Man’s Right to Know Act, Texas men would only be allowed to masturbate under supervision, inside approved health care and medical facilities ...

Looks like it's time for Adam to have that father-to-son chat with Deafferson.

Wait -- what was that?

The article's from 2017 and it isn't even about Colonial Manor?

My bad. Thanks to J for directing me to the real piece of belated local journalism.

Back to 'square one' for Colonial Manor redevelopment in New Albany

City officials still consider area a priority

"If it wasn't an election year it would have passed 9-0," New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan said. "The council's vote killed this opportunity. This opportunity is gone ... the council's no vote killed the deal ... a corridor study about what? It's all private property ... it was decided to move forward and buy the property ... we missed our chance to revitalize Colonial Manor. Nothing is scheduled to happen at this time. It's a disappointment."

Gahan's Colonial Manor solution?

Fact is, redevelopment's fix was a hurried election-year political ploy from the start, but as we've noted previously, politics is a bauble for Gahan alone. No one else can be allowed to play with his ... er, toys.

 Our mayor's quite the crybaby when he doesn't clutch get his own way, isn't he?

If the pickup truck killed the boy, then charge it. Charge SOMETHING or SOMEONE.

Three times, the newspaper of record stated that a pickup truck struck a boy. Italics have been added.

Texas Boy Killed by Truck as His School Held a Walkout on Guns, by Christina Caron (New York Times)

Photo credit: An 11-year-old boy died after being struck by a pickup truck as he tried to cross a busy highway in El Paso on Friday, the same day that his school and others nationwide held walkouts to protest gun violence.

An 11-year-old boy in El Paso died on Friday after getting hit by a pickup truck while his school held a walkout to protest gun violence.

“Obviously everybody’s in a state of shock,” Xavier De La Torre, the superintendent of the Ysleta Independent School District, said at a news conference on Friday.

The boy, Jonathan Benko, and a group of about 12 to 15 other students from Parkland Middle School in El Paso decided not to participate in the walkout, and instead left the campus to visit a park on the other side of Loop 375, a busy highway that surrounds parts of the city, officials said.

Jonathan, a sixth grader and the last one to try to cross, was struck by a Ford F-150 pickup truck, Officer Darrel Petry, a spokesman for the El Paso Police Department, said on Saturday. He was transported to the University Medical Center of El Paso, where he died.

All that, and only then did the driver belatedly enter the story.

None of the other children were injured, Officer Petry said. The driver of the truck, who stayed on the scene, was uninjured. He was not charged, the police said.

Granted, it's important to know whether this was one of those newfangled driverless pickup trucks -- and it wasn't -- but moreover, given that the pickup truck hit the boy, why not charge the pickup truck, or not ... seeing as we seldom charge the driver?

Or do we always lede by blaming the vehicle so there's a reason not to think about the driver's role? Except, of course, the authorities would have gone after the driver full bore had he been drunk, as opposed to sober.

It's all very confusing.

Couldn't we just charge drivers who kill people?

Isn't that important?

Social media crickets chirp, pins drop as Planned Parenthood scores some justice.

Now, about that Hillary Clinton endorsement ...

A Little Justice for Planned Parenthood, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

A remarkable thing happened late Monday afternoon in a courthouse in Houston. It was a victory of sorts for ACORN, and for Shirley Sherrod, and for Mary Landrieu, and for the Kerry for President campaign, for that matter. Criminal ratfcking was treated as, well, a crime.

Prosecutors in Harris County said one of the leaders of the Center for Medical Progress—an anti-abortion group that made secretly recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials trying to illegally profit from the sale of fetal tissue—had been indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a felony, and on a misdemeanor charge related to purchasing human organs. That leader, David R. Daleiden, 27, the director of the center, had posed as a biotechnology representative to infiltrate Planned Parenthood affiliates and surreptitiously record his efforts to procure tissue for research. Another center employee, Sandra S. Merritt, 62, was indicted on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record. The record-tampering charges accused Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Merritt of making and presenting fake California driver's licenses, with the intent to defraud, for their April meeting at Planned Parenthood in Houston.

This is an altogether remarkable event, even more so because of where it occurred. A Texas grand jury did this.

Europe vs. Texas: Trimesters sans context.

And in so many other ways, too.

Do American Anti-Choicers Really Want to Live With Europe's Abortion Laws?
Smacking down the the latest anti-abortion fallacy, by Katha Pollitt (The Nation)

When it comes to abortion, is Europe like Texas with fresher fruit and topless beaches? ... Here’s what’s really different about Western Europe ...

"Raw abuse of power?" Why, that's the Republican way.

Isn't that right, Commissioners Bush and Seabrook?

I'd ask Keith Henderson what he thinks, except he's amid the cedars of Lebanon, up Boone County way, Groucho mask in hand, preparing to conduct the shadow prosecution in the Third Time Lucky case.

Not really. He's convening a grand jury in pursuit of missing information. It is unclear whether Dan Coffey will accept company in pursuit.

I'm sure powerhouse GOP chairman Dave Matthews much appreciates the Supreme Court's appeasement of Southerners perpetually re-fighting the Civil War a full 150 years after Gettysburg, with the ostensible topic this time being voting rights.

Todays SCOTUS rulings on same sex marriage cases have churchgoers nationwide biting their nails and contemplating flight to human rights sanctuaries like Belarus, where the gays aren't permitted.

Meanwhile, in Texas ...

Texas abortion bill defeated after missing deadline, by Helen Davidson (Guardian)

... Wearing pink trainers, (Senator Wendy) Davis rocked from hip to hip and slowly paced while she read testimony from doctors and women who would be affected by the bill if it were passed. "What purpose does this bill serve? And could it be, might it just be a desire to limit women's access to safe, healthy, legal, constitutionally protected abortions in the state of Texas?" she said.

Hmm, could be. What do you think, Steve? How 'bout you, Mark?

Texas Vote Passing Abortion Bill Is Rendered Moot, by Manny Fernandez and Erik Eckholm (NYT)

... The reversal served as an embarrassing episode for Mr. (David) Dewhurst and Republican senators on a divisive bill that was closely watched around the nation, both by anti-abortion activists and supporters of abortion rights.

“The G.O.P. Senate leadership comes out of this whole process looking somewhat disingenuous, deceptive and disorganized,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

Perhaps it isn't the appearance at all. That's the way it is here, too. It's what today's Republican reactionaries are, at root ... whether in DC, Texas, or right here at home.

Secession is a movement, all right.

Recently the same point was covered, dispassionately and sans humor, by Peter Weber at The Week (What would happen if Texas actually seceded?).  

Weber's conclusion (giving disgruntled states more power to reinforce their retrograde social instincts) is at least debatable in reasonable company, whereas the secession petitions are little more than the posturing of deluded losers, reminding us that some movements never go very far beyond bowel. But I'm as yet willing to consider their departure, just so long as they take their share of the national debt with them. Talk about a buzz kill.

The agony and the ecstacy of Texan secession, by Brian Tucker (Insider Louisville)

A couple of weeks ago, everyone was talking about a few meaningless petitions making the rounds in southern states in the wake of President Barack Obama’s re-election ...

... They say time heals all wounds, so since they’ve had a while to calm down, I thought I’d check in on the now all-but-forgotten (Texan) hayseeds who started this latest round of backwoods buffoonery.

Predictably, they have not moved on. Emboldened by “media inquiries,” these Texans have become even more determined to press on and drop out of the Union.

Currently, they boast more than 100,000 signatures on the 2012 petition. That’s four-tenths of one percent of Texas’ population to you and me.

By contrast, there are more people in Utah who have paid a hooker to whip them with a sock full of chicken fat than have signed the Texas petition.

We want out ... wait ... not just yet.

Thanks to S for the tip:

Rick Perry, After Raising Secession, Calls For Fed Help With Swine Flu (The Huffington Post).

Less than two weeks after raising the prospect of seceding from the union, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is calling on the federal government to come to his state's aid in the midst of the swine flu outbreak.