United Airlines Cutting 1,300 In Houston

How fitting is is that this story involves GEORGE BUSH airport? Here is the Houston Business Journal with the details:

Fresh off Southwest Airlines Co.’s approval from Houston City Council to build an international terminal at Hobby airport, United Continental Holdings Inc. said it will move forward with layoffs and canceled routes in Houston.

The Houston Chronicle reports that mere hours after council voted to approve Southwest’s expansion for an international terminal at Hobby, United told employees in a bulletin that it would eliminate 1,300 local jobs and cut planned operations by 10 percent.

The Chicago-based airline’s layoffs are expected to begin in the fall, and it already canceled planned service to Auckland, New Zealand.

United has adamantly opposed Southwest’s planned expansion at Hobby, claiming that it would cost the city jobs at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, it’s local hub, and cause it to stop some international routes.

The Chronicle reports that Houston Mayor Annise Parker said she believes that United is committed to Houston, and that the airline’s decision to immediately cut 1,300 workers is preemptive since the international terminal at Hobby will not be complete for another three years. Therefore, she said, their personnel cuts must be based on other factors than the council vote.

Normally I treat any politician's words as if they are turds that have just fallen into my drink (thanks, Bill!), but in this instance I actually think Houston Mayor Annise Parker is correct. If all were going swimmingly for United (oops, sorry, poor choice of metaphor when discussing an airline) I seriously doubt they would chop employees three years in advance of increased competition coming online.

And that's what makes this last bit even more laughable:

Dallas-based Southwest has argued that having two international airports in Houston will help competition, creating lower airfares that will lead to more passengers. This assumption was supported by a Houston Airport System study that said the new terminal would create more than 10,000 local jobs.

I'll take that bet. in fact, the airline industry is in such dire straights, and their middle class passenger base is so financially strapped, that I would lay even odds as to whether by the time this new terminal is built that the extra capacity is even necessary.


Bonus: I know I've posted this tune before, but I just can't get enough of it

Nationwide Insurance Closing Amarillo Call Center

It is not a good time to be a call center employee right now. Here is a local Texas television station with the details:

Jobs will be lost in Amarillo following an announcement Wednesday that Nationwide insurance will soon be closing their call center.

Nationwide says they will be cutting more than 300 jobs.

Amarillo's call center is due to be closed in July of next year.

The Amarillo Economic Development Corporation currently owns the building in which Nationwide's call center resides.

Customers can still be served by the insurance company online.

Good fucking luck with that. It doesn't sound like Nationwide is on your side any longer.

United Space Alliance (Florida) Lays Off 10% Of Work Force

It is probably not a very good time to be the nation's "leading space shuttle contractor." Here is Florida Today with the story:

United Space Alliance, NASA’s lead space shuttle contractor, today shaves its work force by 10 percent with its latest round of layoffs, which include 181 employees based at Kennedy Space Center.

In all, 269 employees are leaving company offices in Florida, Texas and Alabama, the majority of them (186) through voluntary layoffs officially called self-nominations.

More than half the departing employees were the last to receive a “critical skills” bonus that was offered as an incentive to help retain those skills through flyout of the shuttle program, which completed its last mission last July. All laid off employees receive a severance package.

After today’s cuts, Houston-based USA expects to have 2,589 employees, including 1,323 at KSC.

Another round of reductions is planned in the fall.

Given that the space shuttle will never fly again, it is kind of baffling that this company is even still in business.


Bonus: Major Tom isn't coming home because he never got off the ground

Eastern Research Services (Texas) Abruptly Closes, 150 Laid Off

Some layoff stories are actually more heartless than others. This is one of the bad ones, as reported by a local Texas television station:

A west El Paso research company shut its doors for good Thursday, which left 150 people out of work. Employees said the layoffs happened overnight and with no warning.

The employees of Eastern Research Services said they walked into work Thursday morning and were immediately called into a meeting to be told they were being let go. After being escorted out by security, a group of employees gathered outside to break the news to their co-workers.

"We were at work yesterday. We had extra hours," said P. Haji Rivera.

Just 24 hours later.

"We're working one day and today we're out of work," said Rivera.

Rivera said some were notified of the layoffs when they called the employee hotline.

"ERS is permanently seizing operations and shutting down all of its offices," said a recording on the hotline.

Other employees of the company said when they showed up for work managers told them all ERS offices across the country were closing their doors for good.

"The company has been losing money for some time and no longer has the ability to continue operating," the recording said.

The company based in Pennsylvania does polling and market research for many agencies.

"We were hoping that they give us at least a notice, like a week notice that they're going to be closing down, not just overnight," said Rivera.

That's the problem with the recent trend to change over from having "Personnel" to having "Human Resources." When you are merely a resource, they think they can treat you like just another piece of furniture.


Bonus: I guess all we can do for El Paso is play you a song

Corporatocracy In Action: Seeking Money, Texas Schools Turn to Advertisements

I guess it isn't enough that everyone who doesn't make a conscious decision to try to avoid being overexposed to our relentless media culture is now bombarded with advertising nearly every waking minute, nor that children are sucked into the hologram's vortex while still wearing diapers. In a desperate scramble to raise revenues, school districts in Texas have now decided to turn their school buildings and buses into billboards for corporate America. Here is the New York Times with the details:

The rooftop of a suburban high school is not a location that companies usually consider prime advertising real estate. But in Humble Independent School District, it may be. The district’s high school lies directly in a flight path for Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

Although the rooftop plan has yet to come to fruition, Humble I.S.D. has already sold the naming rights to nearly every piece of its football stadium, including the entryway, the press box and the turf. Its school buses carry advertisements for the Houston Astros and local hospitals, among others.

The school district is pioneering a practice that an increasing number of districts across the state are adopting: selling advertisements on pieces of school property to help make up for some of the money lost through state budget cuts.

Advertising revenue can benefit school districts that primarily have two sources of income — what they receive from local taxpayers and what they get from the state and federal governments.

But with school leaders under pressure to find creative financing sources and few state-level guidelines about what is appropriate, some researchers who study the impact of ads in schools question whether schools fully grasp the consequences of commercialism creeping into public schools.

The proliferation of companies like Steep Creek Media, which acts as a middleman between districts and would-be advertisers, has made it simpler for schools to get into advertising. Steep Creek offers an attractive proposition for schools — and business is booming, according to its owner and founder, Cynthia Calvert, who represents 35 districts and has had to turn down handfuls of clients.

In exchange for what usually amounts to a cut of 40 percent of the profits, the company lures potential advertisers with a diverse menu of placements: on buses, textbook covers, in-school television monitors, scoreboards and Web sites.

Districts have the ultimate say over what ads they accept, but Steep Creek handles all the work in between, including graphic design.

Easier access to advertisers may not always translate to a more thoughtful process for schools, however.

“There doesn’t seem to be a real handle on the part of the school districts for what they are getting into,” said Faith Boninger, a researcher with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who studies how advertising in schools affects students.

Ms. Boninger said many districts entered into advertising agreements with an attitude of “let’s do it, we need the money” without understanding the psychological and educational costs to students.

Having advertisements in schools is not consistent with the teaching of critical thinking, Ms. Boninger said. And what is being sold — fast food, for instance — can run counter to subjects being taught, like nutrition. She added that the polarized gender stereotypes and materialist perspectives that may come with exposure to advertisements had been shown to harm students’ self-esteem.

Gee, ya think? If anything, advertising is the antithesis of critical thinking. Its whole aim is to get people to respond emotionally and impulsively and then act in a way that is likely NOT in their best interest. (My God, Loser, if you don't go into hock in order to buy our shitty product, then you aren't cool and all your friends are gonna LAUGH at you!) It is in no way, shape or form conducive to learning and would not be allowed anywhere near a classroom in any society that was serious about educating its young people.

It's no accident that during the past couple of generations as television, advertising and now the Internet have become more and more sophisticated, our public discourse has corroded so dramatically. Whacked out charlatans like Lyndon LaRouche used to be ostracized from mainstream political discourse. Nowadays, however, the likes of Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are treated by the media as serious presidential candidates despite routinely making reality challenged pronouncements that would have made even LaRouche blush. That can only happen in a society in which reason and logic are no longer valued by a substantial percentage of the population.

It's a sad state of affairs, and I see no indication that it is going to turn around for the better any time soon.


Bonus: It was bad enough when they started using the media to try and "educate" us dumbasses back in the 1970s...thinking back on it, these silly videos never helped my learning one damn bit even though I'd seen them so many times I could recite the songs by heart

Houston Police Department Rape Kit Examination Backlog Hits 6,600

Here is another story about the effects that the slow collapse of the tax base of state and local governments is having on public safety and law enforcement. Click2 Houston.com has the rather scary details:

Since 2011, the Houston Police Department has faced mounting criticism over the thousands of untested rape kits sitting in evidence. Now, because of a recently completed audit, HPD knows exactly how big the problem is and just how much of a challenge the department still faces.

Last year, Local 2 Investigates was first to report on a massive back log of untested rape kits stored in the department's property room. These kits can contain vital pieces of evidence that can help catch and convict sexual predators and help rape survivors find justice.

Last year, HPD was one of only two police agencies in the country to be awarded a federal grant from the National Institute of Justice to conduct an audit as to exactly how many rape kits have been sitting in evidence untested. HPD officials told Local 2 that audit is complete.

HPD reported, as of Dec. 1, there are 6,663 untested rape kits stored in evidence. HPD officials said some of the untested kits date back to the 1980s.

"Rape kits have to be a No. 1 priority," said Ray Hunt, president of the Houston Police Officers Union. "These kits have to be tested and they have to be tested quickly."

So how many other jurisdictions do you suppose are having this problem but haven't received federal grant money to do what they should be doing anyway...figuring out how big a problem they have?

As with so many other bad things happening in our economy these days, it all points back to declining revenues:

However, HPD officials said one of the biggest challenges will be finding the resources to tackle the backlog while at the same time handling an average of 930 new rape kits submitted to the department each year.

I'm sure the victims of these henious crimes will find plenty of cold comfort in that last statement.

Kinetic Concepts Inc. to Lay Off 114 in San Antonio After Leveraged Buyout

This story caught my attention because the scenario is very similar to the one that caused my father to be laid off for six months back in 1986: a leveraged buyout attempt by a UK based equity firm. My dad was eventually rehired. These folks may not be so lucky, as reported My SA.com:

San Antonio-based medical devices and biotechnology firm Kinetic Concepts Inc. announced 127 layoffs on Tuesday, 114 of them in San Antonio, most involving administrative positions, as the company realigns its three business units.

The company employs about 7,100 globally, 2,100 in San Antonio. The layoffs account for a little more than 5 percent of the San Antonio workforce and less than 2 percent companywide. The 13 layoffs outside of San Antonio involved positions within the United States.

The layoffs mainly eliminated positions in finance, human resources, information technology and corporate communications. To a lesser degree, layoffs occurred in marketing and research and development, a corporate spokesman said.

Okay, lay some corporate FlackSpeak on me:

“Throughout our 35-year history, we've been a stable employer and provided good jobs to thousands of employees — even during the global economic challenges of the past few years. With the changing landscape in healthcare, and with an eye toward the future, we need to match our workforce to the needs of the business and our customers.

“We will continue to maintain a significant employee base in San Antonio and look forward to opening our new global headquarters here this summer,” the statement concluded.

KCI last year acquired 8.3 acres at 12930 Interstate 10 West, south of Hausman Road, where a three-story, 100,000-square-foot building is being built for its new headquarters.

The layoffs follow the November leveraged buyout of KCI by a group led by London-based private equity firm Apax Partners. The deal was valued at $6.1 billion.

So typical...the billionaires play their buyout games and the workers get the shaft. That's how it is in our crony capitalist system these days.


Bonus: "Games people play...you take it or you leave it. The things that they say don't make it right"

Dallas Meeting on School Closures Turns Ugly; 177 Teachers to Lose Their Jobs

In my July 11th post from last year, "Why We’re Screwed (Part 1): Public Opinion Poll Regarding Entitlement Cuts" I asserted that as the American tax base continues to shrink, the various interest groups are going to find themselves engaged in a fierce struggle to maintain their share of the booty. So far, those clashes have not erupted into actual violence, but the tipping point could be drawing near, as demonstrated by this recent story from a local Dallas television station:

After a raucous meeting lasting more than four hours with police intervention, Dallas ISD trustees voted to close 11 elementary schools, which will result in 177 layoffs of full-time employees.

Ooh...grab the popcorn ma. This looks like it's gonna be GOOD.
"Wake up people; are you asleep? Are you sick? Or what?" Joyce Foreman, one of the first public speakers opposing school closures, asked board members.

Tempers were hot. Her speech could have foreshadowed what was to come.

"Treating teachers with respect is not that expensive. Do it!" said Bill Betzen, a former Dallas ISD teacher.

Actually, I beg to differ, Mr. Betzen. The full salary and benefits of 177 teachers are actually quite expensive in these tough economic times. Not that I'm at all happy to see these teachers lose their jobs. It's just that the money to pay them has to come from SOMEWHERE.

But it gets even better:

For more than an hour and a half speakers blasted the board until one, Joyce Foreman, questioned why several trustees weren’t even listening. They had left the room.

That’s when the situation spiraled south.

"Security, I would like you to escort Ms. Joyce Foreman out of this meeting right now," said DISD Board President Dr. Lew Blackburn.

A team of uniformed Dallas ISD police officers closed in on Foreman, who was standing at the microphone as the crowd erupted in protest.

"If you do not get quiet we will move this meeting down the hall and you will not be a part of it!" Blackburn said over the loud jeers.

"No Justice! No Peace!" Foreman yelled, holding her purse above her head as police pushed her back towards the door.

"Sir! You need to be quiet!" Blackburn said to someone in the commotion.

Seconds later, he suspended the meeting. "Trustees, we are moving down the hall!"

Trustees retreated to their smaller board room to continue the meeting away from the anger.

Cowards. If you can't stand the heat, then give up your cushy position. Yes, I realize the crowd was being unreasonable, and that the schools are facing tough budgetary times in this age of austerity. But if you can't handle the stress that comes with being the hatchet person, then GTFO already. It was the unrealistic promises made to people at all levels of society by hacks such as yourselves that created the massive sense of entitlement we have in this country in the first place.


Bonus: "Strong words in...the staff room...the accusations fly"

NAFTA's Latest "Free" Trade Gift: Carrier Plant in Tyler, Texas, Moving Production to Mexico

Probably no other state in the U.S. has been as staunchly supportive as Texas of the politicians who have been firmly in the back pockets of big business and enacted the globalization policies which have wrought devastation upon working and middle class Americans. Nevertheless, as a staunch opponent of both big business and "free" trade (Once again, it's only free for the elites who profit from it and is paid for by those who lose their jobs) I still take no satisfaction from seeing the policies they have consistently voted for now devastate their livelihoods.

Among other things Tyler, Texas, was once home to a Kelly Springfield tire factory that was a sister plant to the one in my hometown where my father served his whole career as a middle manager. That plant closed in 2008, and now, according to a local television station, it is being joined by another factory from the Carrier corporation, which is shutting down to move production across the border to Mexico:

More than 400 employees at Tyler's Carrier plant were told this morning that the Carrier plant in Tyler could be closing. The company has proposed the closure but it is subject to a collective bargaining agreement with the union.

If they choose to close, the company will continue operations through the end of 2013.

Carrier tells CBS 19 they are proposing the closure after a review of business and market conditions.

"I thought it was a shame that again we're losing jobs to a foreign country," Carrier worker Darren Hawks said about the possible closure.

He's worked at Tyler's plant for close to 20 years.

"I don't know what I'm going to do because I'm right in the middle of an age where I don't want to be looking for a job. There are a lot of unemployed people out there who are a lot younger than me so I'm just curious what job I'm going to find," he said.

At least one worker knows what the real story is:

Carrier spokesperson Michelle Caldwell says The shutdown is pending a collective bargaining agreement with the sheet metal workers union.

"We go under negotiations starting next week for severance packages and whatever we can get for employees who lose their jobs,"Local Sheet Metal Workers Union manager, Blain Strickland, said.

Strickland says the jobs are headed to Mexico.

"They're wages are like $4 an hour. American companies can't compete with that," he said.

Well, not since NAFTA anyway. But you have to ask yourself this: in a few years when nearly all of America's good paying blue collar jobs have been destroyed by globalization and the economic effects of peak oil, who is going to be left to buy Carrier's products? Because the low paid Mexican workers sure won't be able to afford them.

The idea that poorer Mexicans, many of whom used to live on subsistence farms and have been driven off their land by plunging grain prices that were a direct result of NAFTA and the subsequent flood of American agriculture products into the country, are somehow better off working long hours for crappy wages in the shitty factories that have been built to replace the ones in the U.S. is laughable. Does anyone really think that the surge in illegal Mexican immigrants to the U.S. looking for work after NAFTA was passed was just a coincidence?

Mr. Strickland also took his soon-be-ex-employers task for their excuses:

Carrier said there decision came down to the numbers. They said since 2005 housing starts are down 71 percent and non residential construction is down 59 percent. Carrier said it was those numbers that affected their market decision."

Strickland disagrees with that explanation.

"Since 1992 carrier has closed 6 manufacturing plants in the United States," he said. "There is no other reason than cheap labor."

In the last decade, Tyler's Carrier plant has slowly shrunk its workforce from 1250 to just over 400. A blow to the economy.

No doubt the housing crash was a big factor in the declining profit margins for Carrier, but that still doesn't explain the previous rounds of layoffs and closings during the boom years.

Ultimately, however, despite the unrelenting bad news, hope somehow still springs eternal:

"Next two years you never know what will happen things might go skyrocket high," Stewart said.

Or things might crater to as yet unseen depths. And quite frankly, the latter scenario seems far more likely than the former given that there is no driver for the creation of good paying jobs in America these days.


Bonus: Linda and Emmylou sing a melancholy Bruce Springsteen tune about crossing the border

DSC to Lay Off 130 in Roanoke, Texas

image: DSC is "ready for anything," except the continuation of the economic downturn

Texas has been getting hit pretty hard with layoff notices lately. Here is the Dallas Business Journal with the latest bad news:

DSC Logistics plans to lay off 130 employees at its Roanoke facility.

The Des Plaines, Ill.-based company told the Texas Workforce Commission that it notified employees about the layoffs on Wednesday.

Verlyn Suderman, DSC vice president and general counsel, told the commission in a letter that a “significant loss of business affecting the facility” prompted the layoffs.

Hey, at least DSC Vice President and General Counsel Verlyn Suderman didn't try to sugar coat it. Business is bad, which is the reason for the firings. There, now was that so hard?


Bonus: "Is it any wonder I'm not a criminal? Is it any wonder I'm not it jail?"

Peak NFL: Dallas Cowboys' Attendance Steadily Dropping

As the final regular season Sunday of the NFL season kicks off, here is a story from CBS Sports about the former America's Team that might better explain why the league took its lockout of the players to the very brink this past summer:

In the stadium’s first year, the team drew an average of 89,700 fans. Even last year’s 6-10 team managed to attract 87,000 fans. But this year, the fan attendance number dropped to just 85,000 fans – despite the fact that Cowboys have a chance to win their division this weekend.

RJ Choppy with 105.3 The Fan analyzed the attendance drop from a few different angles, but does not see it as a huge problem. “The Cowboys have been sort of mediocre and the economy has been in the tank,” he said. “I don’t really think it should be such a long-term problem, but in the short-term, it certainly is a little bit of a concern.”

If the team starts winning consistently again, Choppy predicts that the attendance will go up again. “So much of it is economics,” he said. “You have to pick things that you want to cut from your life and, unfortunately, one of the first things that go are recreational.

”Adding to the attendance concern is the sheer size of Cowboys Stadium. While other NFL teams have been building smaller arenas, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones bucked the trend and went bigger. “Everyone who builds these new stadiums, they’re going smaller, more intimate, more quaint,” Choppy said. “I think the natural feeling that, well, that Cowboys Stadium is so big. It’s almost to the point where it’s not practical.”

They can try to spin this story all they want. The fact is that not too long ago many NFL teams had years long waiting lists for people who wanted to buy season tickets. Nowadays, a lot of NFL games don't even sell out anymore. Given the league's prominence at the top of the heap of the sporting world in America, that is pretty significant.

As for me, I was an NFL season ticket holder for 13 years until I sold my personal seat licenses for a tidy little profit prior to the 2010 season. I have to admit that I don't at all miss going to the games at the prices they charge for tickets these days.


Bonus: Sorry Josh, but I think soon you MAY be the only cowboy

Up to a Half Billion Trees Killed by the Texas Drought

The reports just keep rolling in about effects of the hellish drought Texas suffered through this past year. Here is Reuters with yet another horrible story:

The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service.

"In 2011, Texas experienced an exceptional drought, prolonged high winds, and record-setting temperatures," Forest Service Sustainable Forestry chief Burl Carraway told Reuters on Tuesday. "Together, those conditions took a severe toll on trees across the state."

He said that between 100 million and 500 million trees were lost. That figure does not include trees killed in wildfires that have scorched an estimated 4 million acres in Texas since the beginning of 2011. A massive wildfire in Bastrop, east of Austin in September that destroyed 1,600 homes, is blamed for killing 1.5 million trees.

The tree loss is in both urban and rural areas and represents as much as 10 percent of all the trees in the state, Carraway said.

"This is a generational event," Barry Ward, executive director of the nonprofit Trees for Houston, which supports forestry efforts, told Reuters on Tuesday. "Mature trees take 20 or 30 years to re-grow. This will make an aesthetic difference for decades to come."

He said the loss will affect the state in many ways. For example, there is increased fire danger because all the dead trees are now fuel, Ward said.

There's little doubt that should Texas suffer a series of summers like this past one that the quality of life, to say nothing of the ability of the landscape to support life, is going to plummet fast. And yet hope still prevails:

Forest Resource Analyst Chris Edgar said that trees and forests are amazingly resilient.

"Loss of trees due to adverse weather conditions is something that is a part of the natural process of the forest," said Edgar, who works for the Texas Forest Service.

One of the worst areas of die-off occurred in the part of east Texas known as the Piney Woods, he said. That is one of the country's leading producers of wood and paper products. It is still unclear what the long-term damage may be to that industry, which is one of the largest agricultural employers in the state.

Carraway said that what Mother Nature has damaged, Mother Nature can repair.

"Assuming the rainfall levels get back to normal, I certainly see the forest being able to recover," he said.

That's an iffy assumption at this point, Mr. Edgar. I hope for the sake of you and everyone else living in Texas that you are proven correct. But I sure wouldn't invest in any money in Texas woodlands right about now.


Bonus: Seems like an appropriate time for this song

JC Evans Construction to Lay Off 300

More bad news in the construction industry, this time down in Texas where, as I reported earlier today, the horses and donkeys are also dying do to the drought:

A Central Texas construction company with roots to 1939 has notified state officials that it plans to lay off 300 employees and that the layoffs are expected to be permanent.

J.C. Evans Construction Co., which filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August, advised the Texas Workforce Commission about the layoffs in a letter dated Nov. 23. The state released the letter Monday.

What's interesting is how this company, which has been around for more than 70 years, got into trouble:

Andrews wrote that the Leander-based company was trying to auction off quarries to raise money. When the quarries could not fetch a sufficient price, the layoffs were executed "across every position and job title."

For most of its existence, the company focused on commercial construction, including work on Mansfield Dam, baseball and softball fields for the University of Texas, IBM facilities and several state buildings around Austin.

In the early 1990s, employees bought out the Evans family, making the company 100 percent employee-owned, according to news reports. In the early 2000s, the company remade itself, focusing on site work at subdivisions for homebuilders.

Over the past year, the company's fortunes soured, according to the bankruptcy filing.

Business income fell from $155 million in 2010 to $54.7 million through Aug. 1.

The company also was a party to 18 lawsuits within the past year, and Caterpillar Financial Services Corp. repossessed $373,400 in machinery and equipment.

So they made the decision to chase after the housing bubble mirage and ended up dying of thirst in the middle of the desert. Kind of an apt metaphor these days for a company based in Texas.

Texas Drought Causing Thousands of Horses and Donkeys to Be Abandoned

Here's a sad story, as reported by Reuters:

The yearlong Texas drought is taking a heartbreaking toll on horses and donkeys, thousands of which have been abandoned by owners who can no longer afford the skyrocketing price of the hay needed to feed them.

“We get 20 to 40 calls a week that horses are alongside the road and left; nobody’s claimed them,” Richard Fincher of Safe Haven Equine Rescue in Gilmer, in east Texas, told Reuters. “Sheriffs are calling us all the time.”

Before this year, he would get more like three or four calls a week, he said.

The problem, according to Dennis Sigler, a horse specialist at Texas A&M University, is that the drought has dried up the hay fields, leaving horse owners having to pay double or triple the prices they are used to paying for hay, if they can find hay at all.

“The price of hay and feed today is at levels we have never experienced before because of the drought,” Sigler said. “In addition to that, pastures are short, and folks who have horses on pasture have no grass for their horses. There is just no market for horses this year.”

In addition, Sigler said, the drought has forced Texas ranchers to sell some of their cattle herds, leaving them with horses that are no longer needed to ride the range.

What makes this particularly galling is that Texas is a (ahem) hotbed of climate change denial. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that anyone should just blindly accept the global warming message of pop culture sources like Al Gore's, An Inconvenient Truth. What I'm saying is that if you live in an area that is particularly vulnerable to a potential change in climate, or in an area where your economic livelihood could potentially be destroyed by increasingly volatile weather events, you at least owe it to yourself to be open-minded on the subject.

The Texas "heat dome" this past summer was a phenomenal weather event in terms of the number of temperature records set and the utter lack of rainfall. If summers like this one become the "new normal" in the near future then the state of Texas will not be able to support its large population for very long. As it stands, it's having a hard time just maintaining its population of horses and donkeys.


Bonus: An outstanding James McMurtry music video tribute to his home state of Texas

The Texas State Association of Firefighters Endorsed Rick Perry--Right Before He Kicked Them in the Nuts

It has by now been widely reported how Texas Governor and Republican presidential campaign front runner Rick Perry gutted his state's firefighting budget just in time for the breakout of massive wildfires this summer that have consumed much of his state. Just how much those budget cuts contributed to the death and destruction recently wreaked upon Texas is a matter of debate, but it likely was not inconsequential. To recap, here are the gory details from the Huffington Post:

In Texas, firefighters aren't just battling the wild fires raging around Austin and Houston. The state's first responders have also had to deal with budget cuts affecting everything from fuel purchases to hoses and air tanks.

In some cases, fire officials say, firefighters have had to pay out of pocket for basic necessities like proper protective gear and fuel to get them to the scene. One fire department that battled the blazes in Bastrop County had to pay for a hose, recalled Bastrop City Fire Chief Henry Perry, speaking to The Huffington Post during a break from working the wild fires.

In light of the above. you might be under the assumption that Governor Perry and the Texas firefighters are political antagonists. Well, you would be wrong in the assumption. Here is another quote from the same article:

The cuts come at a time when Texas fire departments have already been slowing purchases of new fire trucks and other critical equipment as a way to save money, said Guy Turner, president of the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters. The association had endorsed Perry in his re-election for governor in 2010.

"What I fear will happen is equipment will start to fail and put our members at peril," Turner explained. "You can imagine if you're inside a structure fire and your engine quits."

Turner doesn't have to imagine it. He said he knows of firefighters whose breathing apparatus has malfunctioned during fires. There have also been "instances of hoses failing during the course of firefighting operations."

"For years, public safety was the golden calf -- that we were untouchable," Turner said. "Nobody's untouchable. It is a shame. They are basically putting a price on how much our lives are worth. It's disturbing at best."

I certainly agree with Mr. Turner that putting a price on firefighters' lives is "disturbing." But perhaps Mr. Turner ought to take a good look in the mirror and asses how it was that he gave his enthusiastic endorsement to the same man who was so willing to put that price tag on their lives. Here is a quote from Mr. Turner upon his organization's endorsement of Perry almost exactly one year ago today:

“Gov. Rick Perry has consistently supported the issues relating to public safety, and has been a dedicated advocate of health and safety for professional fire fighters and EMS workers across Texas,” said Guy Turner, president of TSAFF. "For his long friendship and support, the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters, representing almost 16,000 fire fighters and emergency medical workers in 170 jurisdictions is proud to endorse Governor Rick Perry in his bid for re-election.”

Guy Turner should immediately resign. And if he refuses to do so, then the 16,000 firefighters and emergency medial workers he claims to represent should DEMAND his resignation. You cannot blunder this badly in looking out for your organization's best interests and still be taken seriously as its president.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't wager a nickel that Mr. Turner, or Perry for that matter, will suffer very much politically as a result of this scandal. For whatever reason, Americans have completely lost the ability to demand accountability for anyone who rises into a supposed leadership position in this society, just so long as they are not involved in a sex scandal. Perry will continue to score points on the campaign trail by bashing the government despite the dramatic evidence of the damage his actions have wrought upon his own state.