Monthly Archives: March 2006

Afternoon News: Hearings Underway

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KPRC informs us that, as of 3 p.m., civil service hearings were underway downtown, which may determine if Mayor White and Council Member Alvarado will have to take the stand. Anyone betting the answer is “no?”

A civil service hearing commission, scheduled to take place Friday at 3 p.m., could decide whether or not Mayor Bill White could be summoned to testify in some of the termination hearings and if a continuance would be granted to two of the four fired employees who said they need more time to fight their terminations.

I’m thinking the answer may be no to the second request as well, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it went the other way. If it does not, it will be a clear signal that the hearings are not being taken seriously, but are being forced through as fast as possible to minimize the impact. Although Mayor White’s probably breathing a sigh of relief that the reconquistas have taken the spotlight off the Bonusgate affair, if the appeals drag out and they are forced to testify, it would turn into a media circus again.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office is expected to receive details Friday of the city’s employee incentive pay and bonus plan. On Wednesday, subpoenas requesting the documents were issued to every council member and department head.

But is all the information being turned over to those who request it?

Watkins told KPRC Local 2 on Thursday that the city is refusing to hand over documents to her that would prove her innocence.

And of course the FBI is collecting Ms. Alvarado’s bank records. However, these are probably the words that make people feel the most uneasy this afternoon:

Watkins, who is currently writing a book about the bonus scandal, said she feels she is being singled out for talking about the investigation.

My suggested title: It Takes a Thief.

Of Fecal Matter and Rotary Air Impellers

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Although with a title like that, this post should belong over at TBIFOC, I simply couldn’t resist. No sooner than I take my eye off of the Bonusgate scandal than the other shoe drops. The FBI has requested Alvarado’s bank records.

The FBI request is for all of Alvarado’s bank accounts, open or closed. It went out Wednesday to major banks across the country through what’s known as the loss avoidance alert system, which is an electronic network connecting banks with law enforcement.

The FBI would not comment on the investigation. But Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal confirmed for KPRC that the federal request was made.

Her attorney Rusty Hardin and spokesman Joe “Butter Wouldn’t Melt In My Mouth” Householder immediately spun it into no big deal, just an example of how cooperative the council member was being with law enforcement, and how anxious happy she was to show that she was a virgin had done nothing wrong.

Her attorney, Rusty Hardin, told KPRC that the FBI’s involvement was expected because Alvarado is a public official.

Her spokesman, Joe Householder, said her account numbers have now been forwarded to the district attorney’s office.

“So they can get a hold of it as quickly as they can,” Householder said. “That actually happened this afternoon. We had reached out to them earlier and said, ‘If you want this material, you can have it.’ And, just as an extra step, we e-mailed those numbers to them.”

Hardin said he contacted the FBI several weeks ago offering to make Alvarado’s or any records available. He said he has not yet heard from the agency. Hardin said this is a natural progression in the investigation and not an indication that Alvarado has done anything wrong.

Yeah……nothing wrong. That’s the ticket. Counting down the seconds until someone claims she’s being persecuted because of backlash against illegal immigrants undocumented workers persons of Hispanic descent.

Hat tip to Bloghouston.

A Call To Arms

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Annoyed over students playing hooky and waving Mexican flags? Worried that half a million people who aren’t here legally are “showing their strength” in street protests? Pissed off that an HISD principal flew the Mexican flag at a Texas school?

Time to point out the error of their ways to the spineless politicians that are kowtowing to the illegal alien lobby and those who employ them.

San Jacinto day is Saturday Friday, 4/21/06. Be at the Federal Courthouse. Bring your flag. American, of course. Pass the word on to all your friends and neighbors. The gringo ones, anyway….

Water Meter Failures: How Accurate Is Your Bill?

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Ok, as usual, the press gets it half right. For that matter, Annise Parker isn’t exactly on the money either.

The project was supposed to cost $50 million and be complete in 2003. Instead, it’s now costing approximately $75 million and won’t be complete until 2008.

“The failure rate is beyond anything that we should have experienced,” Houston City Controller Annise Parker said.

She’s right about that much. How bad is it? Bad. Very bad. Is it as bad as it’s said to be? No, not hardly.

Lets get the worst out of the way: The program was ill-conceived, poorly planned, terribly executed, over budget, and has never worked as advertised. Inasmuch as it has caused numerous problems, resulted in many bill estimations, and caused hundreds, maybe thousands of man-hours per month to be devoted to correcting bills, and resulted in a great decrease in the public’s confidence level even before the story finally broke, it should be probably regarded as the single biggest failure in city administration over the last ten years, short of outright corruption. (Which is not to speak of any specific incident, just to say that I put malfeasance in a class seperate from mere incompetence.) Well, ok, it’s in the top two, anyway.

It will be made clear that the problems stem from decisions made as far back as the Lanier administrtion, but the key mistakes were made during the Brown era, and that the managers involved have since taken their retirement pay and run for the beaches. The current team running Public Works and the section responsible for meters (Utility Customer Service) is all-new, having been shuffled in after the Pension Massacre of 2004. They have inherited a very bad hand, and are trying to play it as well as possible, after about eighteen months of learning that their hole cards are deuces. They’re dealing with the administrative issues well enough, but this is a fundamental city policy–a decison to abandon this program wouldn’t be made in Public Works, not even by Marcotte. Whether they should just fold and ask for an expensive re-deal is a matter of public policy and high-level decision-making by the Mayor and Council–something we may now see if this story becomes a major public issue.

The good news is that, while it’s bad, it’s not nearly as bad as it looks when you see “47%.” If you think it means 47% of the bills are wrong, you’d be way off. You could take that on faith or my word, but I suspect that you, as the reader, want a bit more to go on. To explain why it’s not as bad, I have to explain exactly what is failing and why. It’s not very technical and I’ll avoid jargon as much as possible. In this article, I’m addressing just the technical aspects necessary to show why the 47% figure is highly misleading. History of the decisions and the people repsonsible will have to wait for a future article. Continue reading →

“I Wouldn’t Treat A Dog That Bad….”

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We’ve all heard that saying at some time or another. Well, you or I might not, but what about the City of Houston? Two former employees who got fed up with the city’s animal shelter took their message to the council Tuesday, and that message is the City ought to cite itself for animal cruelty:

They provided many photographs showing problems with cages.

Some are too small for larger dogs that can’t even turn around or wag their tails.

They also said there are serious problems with the grates.

“The grates have holes in them that are large enough for animals to get their feet caught in and if you don’t catch it within a few hours of it happening, then you end up euthanizing the animal in the cage because you couldn’t get their foot loose,” said Michelle Haberland.

Haberland says she’s witnessed it all first hand.

She was a veterinary technician there until last month. She says she couldn’t take it anymore.
“They were hanging art work that costs thousands of dollars in the lobby and we couldn’t order antibiotics for the dogs that we were euthanizing day in an day out for an upper respiratory infection. I said, ‘That’s it. I have got to go,'” said Haberland.

Artwork? Honestly, some buildings you want to dress up, because they should look imposing and/or be a culturally positive addition to the city. They are a mark of city pride. City Halls are obviously such, but so are libraries, and some public works. We could have dull, flat gray concrete retaining walls on the Southwest Freeway, but instead we’re putting in nice tan ones with a pattern and climbing ivy. So artwork in public buildings or architecture, per se, isn’t a bad idea.

The art work was indeed ordered and installed to improve the shelter’s image and to make it more people-friendly. Manager Cynda Lewis says it did not cost thousands of dollars.

“I think it was about $1,500 for materials and an inside person did it for us,” said Lewis.

Fifteen hundred dollars to decorate the lobby while the animals went without antibiotics or decent cages. Assuming they weren’t put to death.

Last year, of the 26,243 animals picked up by BARC, 21,214 animals were euthanized.

There were 1,463 animals adopted and 1,579 animals reclaimed by their owners. There were 1,698 animals saved by rescue groups and 289 animals lost or unaccounted for. Some of them were actually lost down the sewer drain.

Put to death, or lost down the drain. While $1,500 gets spent on artwork. Wonder if any bonuses were handed out there for best-looking lobby. Or killing dogs more efficiently.

I bet it’s a nice lobby, but just for the record, if you put pink cake frosting on a turd, it’s still a turd.

Annie, Get My Gun!

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This was a bit of a surprise:

There’s a battle looming over your right to take a gun to work. The controversy centers on whether you should be able to leave a firearm in your car. . . . In Texas, businesses have the right to keep concealed weapons out of buildings. Now there’s a move to allow companies to prohibit them from parking lots, too and that has some concealed carriers upset.

FYI: Civilian City of Houston employees are already prohibited from bringing firearms to work, even if left in the car, in the parking lot. It’s a firing offense. That was made very clear to us when the concealed carry law passed. I’ve recently discussed it with co-workers, as to whether we could “get away with it” if we parked on a public street instead of on a city parking lot. We concluded that making our cars more vulnerable to theft (with a gun in it) was probably a bad trade off, but still didn’t like the idea that our employer was essentially denying us the ability to defend ourselves while in transit from home to work.

Needless to say, I’m against yet another effort to gut the Second Amendment.

Generally Miscellaneous (and a correction)

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So my laptop should be delivered today. UPS tried to drop it off yesterday, but no one was at home. With that and the cell phone I got last year and the digital camera I bought the year before that, I should be caught up to at least the year 2000. I’ll have to wait until next year to join the 21st century and upgrade to a camera phone and a GPS unit for the laptop. Well, I’ll add it to the gift list, so it can get ignored with all the rest. 🙂

Meanwhile, a source told me a protesting high schooler in Dallas got hit by a bus. Damn, I didn’t know Metro ran up there. I think the story got garbled (or there’s two incidents), because that’s not what I found upon searching. Continue reading →

SEIU Tries Again

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So I arrived at work this morning to find this in my mailbox:

Today, a majority of city employees are moving forward with efforts to build a strong, new union with SEIU.

City employees united in SEIU will submit more than 6,700 petition signatures to the city at 4 pm on Tuesday, March 28, at City Hall, 900 Bagby. Together, we’re seeking a union election so that all of us can vote and decide for ourselves whether we want to form a union. SEIU is the ONLY union to file petition signatures with the city to date and the only city employee union with a track record of success.

To learn more about how SEIU members are winning improvements in Texas, including wage improvements of 4.5 to 12 percent and a freeze on health care cost increases for San Antonio city employees, visit us online at http://www.seiutx.org

They’re really proud of what they did in San Antonio. Apparently it’s their only success to date, since they keep harping on it. So, anyway, since they failed last January, they went out and got some more signatures; enough to be a majority according to the Legal Department’s response. Also note the dig at the AFSCME NOW folks: “SEIU is the ONLY union to file petition signatures with the city to date and the only city employee union with a track record of success. ” Of course, AFSCME NOW disagrees, since both unions are taking credit for holding the line on our healthcare costs. I’m more inclined to believe AFSCME over this one. It’s hard to credit SEIU with being that influential yet, even given their politicking to date.

Oh, and I was slightly amused by this:

PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT FORWARD THIS MESSAGE FROM YOUR WORK EMAIL ACCOUNT. It is against City of Houston policy to forward non-work related emails.

Rats. Does this count? (FYI, my work shift doesn’t begin for another 10 minutes or so. Pbbbbbbbt.)

Alvarado: The History

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The Chronicle does a nice bit of reporting on council member Carol Alvarado, detailing her beginning in politics, her longtime political alliances, and her history of misteps. I’m not certain how to characterize this article. It’s either fairly balanced, or somewhat negative towards Ms. Alvarado. It could be that after so much of Ms. White’s whitewashing its favorite people, we just can’t recongize balanced reporting about them. To figure out which it was, I compared it to articles written about Tom DeLay or Dan Patrick.

Ok, it’s balanced. Doesn’t hold a candle to Chronically Biased coverage of either of those guys.

While it discusses her early achievements as a UH student, and words of praise from Gene Green, it doesn’t hesitate to include an opposing viewpoint from fellow Hispanic Gabriel Vasquez:

But former Councilman Gabriel Vasquez, who represented the adjoining District H, believes Alvarado is not up to higher and more demanding public office.

“She’s good at relationships and constituent services,” Vasquez says. “But in terms of the functional responsibility of managing the budget, preparing the budget and understanding the whole function of being a mayor-in-training, she’s not so good.”

While on council, Vasquez sparred publicly and privately with Alvarado, one of a group of politicians born of Houston’s historical Hispanic leadership. Vasquez calls their style of politics the “Chicago ward-boss model.”

“It’s about power, authority and control,” he says.
(Emphasis added.)

We know about politicians and their penchant for control around here, don’t we? But the finishing touch for me was this:

Alvarado has taken well to the more rewarding side of public service. Beyond her $50,000-plus annual council salary, she supplements her income with consulting fees primarily for advising out-of-town Hispanic-owned businesses on the how-tos of seeking public contracts.

She lives in a chic apartment in Post Rice Lofts downtown, and is often spotted dining at see-and-be-seen La Griglia and other stylish eateries.

Consulting fees, eh? A girl’s got to have her priorities, after all.

Edit: I think I need to make that clearer: She’s accepting fees for advising businesses on the how-tos of seeking public contracts in Houston. Contracts on which she will later be voting. Nice business…. if you can get elected to it.

From the Controller’s Office

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Oh, ye of little faith! I said I’d be back with the local happenings, didn’t I? City Controller Annise Parker has spoken out to answer some questions about the Bonusgate scandals. Hat tip to Insite. Although he states there is more on the City of Houston website, he didn’t directly link his source. After searching the site, I cannot locate the article he’s referencing. (Maybe he got an advance copy?) But what he does have quoted on his site has a few items of note.

How do council budgets differ?
Council members have control over their individual budgets and are expected to keep them in balance. But for reporting purposes all 14 offices, plus the Mayor Pro Tem Office, are shown in the aggregate. A council office might be under or (temporarily) over budget, but the total remains in balance.F&A monitors each office and keeps the council member or designee informed, providing a monthly record of available funds, amount spent to date, and amounts remaining by spending category. Problems seldom occur except when a council member leaves office at the end of a term, which falls in the middle of the fiscal year, and unexpected bills surface.

Like bills for I-love-me publications? And from a question about council office budgets:

Each council member is, in effect, director of a small city department, and the bonuses they grant are co-signed by the mayor pro tem.

I think we see now why the DA widened the investigation. Rosie, et.al. could have been signing for anyone to get bonuses. Continue reading →

Say It’s So, Joe! Say It’s So!

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Dr. Heinous writes to alert me to this story (original story here), bubbling away quietly in the Austin tech community. Or not quietly, any more. Oh, I can only hope.

It’s no secret that things at Sony Online Entertainment haven’t been gumdrops and lollypops. While EverQuest has been a bonafide success, Star Wars Galaxies has been an enormous screw up. The massively-multiplayer online version of the popular George Lucas films has been a fiasco, costing SOE players and money.

A mole sends us word that Raph Koster has left the SOE to start up a new games studio. Cindy Armstrong, head of Business Development, has taken an offer to become the new USA honcho for Webzen. Moreover, Lucas Arts is not extending their Star Wars license. Yikes.

The rot has started to set in, and the mole implies that it’s only a matter of time before SOE’s prez. John Smedley is sent packing. “Place has been falling apart for a while,� writes our mole. “Smedley is not long in his job.� May the force be with you, John.

This should come as no surprise if you’re a fan of the game or read this blog almost a year ago. (The two linked articles were on the old Post-Nuke version 1.0 of the website, and have been copied verbatim to the new version for linking.)

As Dr. Heinous says: “It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.” Of course, his definition of “nicer” is “more deserving.”

Finally, to everyone wondering where their metro news and commentary went, don’t worry, it will be back! It’s just a brief phase I’m going through. 🙂

Cheesecake wars? But I Already Imitated the French!

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Steven DenBeste thinks I’m picking on him? 😕

20060326.1730: Ubu Roi has a review up of the first DVD of Maburaho. I haven’t managed to watch it yet, but he used it as an opportunity to register his latest salvo in the “cheesecake frame grabs” challenge against me. (What did I do to deserve this?)

Maybe I should resort to nukes? NSFW ecchi bath scenes from Popotan? Or I should get my tail in gear and watch the first DVD of Divergence Eve and post some frame grabs from it. I dunno about this. Why is he picking this fight with little old ME? (Go pick on someone your own size!)

Sheesh, my own size would be someone with a tenth of that anime collection! Besides which, I surrendered after the UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie posts — that stuff’s further out than I’d post (my blog is read by too many people at work), and I can’t beat it short of hentai!

Update 2: And SDB counters with UFO Ultramaiden Princess Valkyrie. (Scroll down, then go to next page.) Sigh, I know when I’m whupped, I’m not topping that cheesecake short of hentai. And I don’t have any. (Wouldn’t post it if I did.)

(And by the way, since I buried it in the third update to the Godanner shots, thanks for the help in fixing my capture problems, Steven!)

Of course if you really want to post ecchi, don’t let a little thing like my surrender stop you — just warn us of the NSFW stuff. 🙂

More Cheesecake–Maburaho Review

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Well, I was stuck at home tonight, so I decided to work up some more anime cheesecake to post, with a bit of a review to go with it. I had some more trouble with the aspect ratio, despite Steven denBeste’s help (see Update 3; it was just my own lack of attention that caused it. I spent an hour taking new shots and they came out much better.

Unfortunately, they don’t come out perfect. For that, I blame ADV, the American distributor. I hadn’t really noticed it until I started taking snapshots, but the transfer has issues with rainbowing, aliasing, and cross-coloration. It’s some of the worst I’ve ever seen. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll see in pictures.

Speaking of which, lets get on to it. Warning, spoilers ahead! (The worst of the spoilers are blacked out, but I can’t get it to work perfectly; going to have to read up on styles a bit. Edit: finally got it to work. Highlight with your mouse to read them.) Continue reading →