Over the course of the decade, we have reviewed 624 consumer cases, carefully categorizing and compiling win-loss rates, with the scope of these consumer cases encompassing instances where individuals, patients, policyholders, and small business owners were pitted against corporate or governmental entities. . . . On average, defendants have won an overwhelming 74% of their cases and plaintiffs have won just 22% of the time over the last decade. Furthermore, since 2005, consumers have lost an astonishing 79% of their cases before the Texas Supreme Court.

The report also notes that a major factor driving this trend is Gov. Rick Perry (R), whose appointees to the court consistently sided with corporations over people. Indeed, the “win rate” for corporate and other defendants skyrocketed shortly after Perry took over as governor:

Many voting rights advocates feared that the conservative Supreme Court would use this case to make sweeping changes to the laws protecting voters, either by eliminating the judiciary’s authority to draw interim maps such as the ones at issue here or potentially even by striking down key parts of the Voting Rights Act. Fortunately, those fears proved unfounded this time around. The crux of their holding is that the lower court erred in drawing these particular maps because they did not treat the state legislature’s preferred maps as a baseline and depart from that baseline only when necessary to rescue the map from illegality:

In [the challenger's] view, this Court’s precedents require district courts to ignore any state plan that has not received §5 preclearance. But the cases upon which appellees rely hold only that a district court may not adopt an unprecleared plan as its own. They say nothing about whether a district court may take guidance from the lawful policies incorporated insuch a plan for aid in drawing an interim map. Indeed, in Upham this Court ordered a District Court to defer to the unobjectionable aspects of a State’s plan even though that plan had already been denied preclearance.

In this case, the District Court stated that it had “giv[en] effect to as much of the policy judgments in the Legislature’s enacted map as possible.” At the same time, however, the court said that it was required to draw an “independent map” following “neutral principles that advance the interest of the collective public good.” In the court’s view, it “was not required to give any deference to the Legislature’s enacted plan,” and it instead applied principles that it determined “place the interests of the citizens of Texas first.” To the extent the District Court exceeded its mission to draw interim maps that do not violate the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, and substituted its own concept of “the collective public good” for the Texas Legislature’s determination of which policies serve “the interests of the citizens of Texas,” the court erred.

The partisan upshot of this decision is that it is probably good news for Republicans. In an earlier case called Vieth v. Jubelirer, the Supreme Court largely abdicated oversight over politically motivated gerrymanders, thus enabling political parties to be as aggressive as they want in drawing maps that achieve their partisan goals. Because the Texas legislature is overwhelming dominated by Republicans, today’s decision requiring the lower court to use their map as the baseline in drawing an interim map will increase the likelihood that partisan gerrymandering intended to favor the GOP will remain present in the interim map the lower court eventually produces.

Jason Melbourne had already visited four pharmacies in search of Plan B for his wife when he was referred to a CVS in Mesquite, Texas, some 15 miles away from his home. They had one box left:

But when he finally got there, the overnight pharmacist, Minni Matthew, told Melbourne she wasn’t going to sell it to him.

In order for him to buy the meds, the pharmacist said, she’d need to talk to and see the ID of his wife, who was at home with their two young children. He asked why, and she pointed to the fine print on the medication’s box, which says it can only be sold to someone age 17 or older. Melbourne pointed out that he was well over 17.

“I’ve bought this plenty of times in my life, and it’s never been a problem,” he said. “Are you telling me every other place I’ve bought it from has been wrong?”

Didn’t matter, Matthew said, since the medicine obviously wasn’t for him.

“Why don’t you show me the law that says you can’t sell this to a man?” Melbourne replied.

The situation got worse from there. Melbourne put his wife on the phone and even Googled the medication to show the pharmacist there was no law against selling it to a man. But “she didn’t want to see it,” he said.

That’s when a male pharmacy technician informed Melbourne that they didn’t want to sell emergency contraception to men because they might be giving it to “rape victims.”

Jezebel notes that Melbourne’s ordeal happened around the same time that a Houston CVS store refused to sell another man Plan B. CVS apologized for that last month, calling it an “isolated incident.” It wasn’t.

In fact, in 2010 ACLU received reports that Walgreens stores in Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma were refusing to sell emergency contraception to men. Walgreens relented when the ACLU confronted them publicly.

In an email about the Houston incident, CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis insisted they’d briefed all their stores on official company policy, which is “to follow FDA regulations for the sale of emergency contraception, which allows this product to be sold without a prescription to customers who are at least 17 years old, regardless of gender.”

But they obviously need to do a better job educating their stores, because the manager of the Mesquite CVS insisted they’re not supposed to sell Plan B to men because they can’t verify that the woman who takes it will be over 17.

Lisa Graybill, the legal director of the Texas ACLU, says refusing to sell Plan B to men based on this baseless “sensational story” is “misguided.” “I’m not aware of a single case of a man reportedly buying it to push on his underage pedophile victim,” she says.

“I’m outraged,” Melbourne says of the situation. “I chased this thing all over town, then I get accused of using this for rape, even after they’ve talked to my wife on the phone. It makes me feel like a piece of crap.”

Texas, another state covered under the Voting Rights Act, could soon meet the same fate if it is unable to provide sufficient evidence that its law does not also discriminate against minorities. The Justice Department is currently reviewing Texas’ move and has requested the state for more information about the law’s effect on minorities. Once that information is received, the DOJ will rule within 60 days.

ThinkProgress spoke with Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R), a key proponent of the new law, about the upcoming ruling earlier this week. Dewhurst, who is running for his state’s open Senate seat this year, warned that if the Justice Department rules that Texas’ voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act, such a move would be “unconstitutional.”

KEYES: Do you worry that that same fate (regarding the Justice Department ruling against South Carolina’s voter ID law) is going to happen to Texas as well?

DEWHURST: In Texas we passed what I believe to be a very good and constitutional bill that requires some photo identification to vote. That is a simple procedure for protecting the integrity of our voting system. It’s a principle in America: one person, one vote. For the Justice Department to interfere with that process would be wrong and I believe unconstitutional.

KEYES: You think it’d be unconstitutional if they ruled against the voter ID law in Texas?

DEWHURST: If the Justice Department were to come down on our Texas law, they would be wrong under the Constitution because I believe we’ve had our law looked at over and over again and I feel comfortable it is constitutional.

Listen to it:

Dewhurst’s view that enforcing the Voting Rights Act would be unconstitutional is unfortunately becoming more commonplace among modern conservative cognoscenti. Former senator and current Mitt Romney advisor Norm Coleman told ThinkProgress last year that we should “absolutely” consider gutting the Voting Rights Act, and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli argued that his state should be exempted because it has “outgrown” racism. Earlier this year, Arizona filed a lawsuit claiming that the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, and there is a very real risk that the Supreme Court’s conservatives will agree with them. If this view should prevail, a pillar of the civil rights movement that has successfully protected the rights of minorities for nearly 50 years could become a relic of history.

Jakadrien Turner was wrongfully deported in April 2011.

Dallas resident Lorene Turner had been searching for her granddaughter Jakadrien Turner since she ran away from home at the age of 14 in fall 2010. She searched for months until Dallas police helped her locate her granddaughter — in the South American country of Colombia, it turns out. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had deported Jakadrien in April 2011, even though the African American teenager spoke no Spanish:

News 8 learned that Jakadrien somehow ended up in Houston, where she was arrested by Houston police for theft. She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Columbia, who had warrants for her arrest.

So ICE officials stepped in.

News 8 has learned ICE took the girl’s fingerprints, but somehow didn’t confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.

“She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was,” Turner said.

Through her granddaughter’s Facebook messages, Turner says she tracked Jakadrian down.

U.S. Federal authorities got an address. U.S. Embassy officials in Colombia asked police to pick her up.

But that was a month ago, and the Colombian government now has her in a detention facility and won’t release her, despite her family’s request.

It is unclear how the teenager was mistaken for a foreign national, and ICE officials told Dallas TV station News 8 that ICE has seen cases where people provide inaccurate information about who they are. “ICE takes these allegations very seriously,” ICE Director of Public Affairs Brian Hale told News 8. “At the direction of [the Department of Homeland Security], ICE is fully and immediately investigating this matter in order to expeditiously determine the facts of this case.”

Texas (acting) Gov. Mike Jackson (R)

But today, despite his disappointing showing in the Iowa caucuses last night and diminishing prospects of capturing the GOP nomination, Perry announced that he would continue his campaign.

So who has been running the nation’s second largest state in Perry’s absence?

For the past two weeks, it’s been “a little-known politician from the Houston area,” the Dallas Morning News reports. The lieutenant governor, who typically fills in, left the state on December 26 for a five-day vacation, then went to Iowa this week to campaign for Perry. That left state Sen. Mike Jackson (R), who holds the state Senate’s generally honorary position of president pro tem, in charge.

So what’s Jackson been up to as acting governor? “It’s really everyday life,” he told the Morning News. “Big, important state business today? No, I’m at work at my construction company,” Jackson added:

Jackson said he’d spoken to staff members in Austin but otherwise tended to Senate district business, such as chasing down a constituent’s question about whether utility terrain vehicles — oversize golf carts — can be driven on the beach in Galveston.

“That’s about it,” he said.

Under the state constitution, the governor cedes control of Texas when he leaves its borders, though lawmakers have tried several times to enact an amendment that would allow the executive to use modern telecommunications to remain in charge. Perry “stays apprised” of what’s going on in Texas, aides said.

The state pays acting governors $410.96 per day for filling in, so to date, Perry’s absence due to his presidential bid has cost Texas taxpayers at least $25,000 in pay for his substitutes. Meanwhile, Perry’s security detail — which he takes with him on the campaign trail — costs taxpayers as much as $400,000 a month, up from before he announced his bid.

Judge Teresa Hawthorne

Teresa Hawthorne, the Dallas County judge who ruled that the state’s death penalty statute was unconstitutional, must recuse herself from a capital murder case, a judge ruled today. [...]

In his closing arguments, Doug Parks, another of Harris’s attorneys, argued that the state simply didn’t like Hawthorne’s ruling in the defense’s favor on some of the pre-trial motions. If she had ruled in the state’s favor, he argued, “Her personal beliefs about the death penalty wouldn’t matter one iota. … She made rulings the state didn’t like, and now they’re attacking the trial judge based on her personal beliefs and feelings.”

Ultimately, though, [Judge John] Ovard still ruled that a “reasonable person” would have to conclude that Judge Hawthorne is too biased to preside over the case.

This is not law. Indeed, this is barely a mockery of law. If the state disagrees with Hawthorne’s decision, then it is free to appeal it. But when judges can be disqualified from hearing cases if they reach an unpopular decision than the justice system truly is rigged.

And this isn’t even the first time Texas’ court system used the threat of forced recusal against a judge who disagreed with the state’s execution policies. In 2010, Judge Kevin Fine declared the state’s death penalty statute unconstitutional because it was too likely to execute an innocent person. Fine eventually withdrew the opinion, however, after he was threatened with a forced recusal hearing of his own.

Lest there be any doubt, Texas accords far different treatment to judges who demonstrate potential bias in favor of killing criminal defendants. In 2007, Judge Sharon Keller, presiding judge on the highest criminal court in Texas, likely manipulated her court’s procedures to prevent a death row inmate from receiving a stay of execution from the United States Supreme Court. Although a state ethics panel initially gave Keller a “public warning” for her actions, an appeals panel later wiped away even this slap on the wrist.

Likewise, in 1994 Texas elected an unqualified attorney named Stephen Mansfield to its highest criminal court. Judge Mansfield had been disciplined for practicing law without a license in Florida and he was arrested for scalping tickets to the Texas-Texas A&M game on university property. He also was elected on a platform of promising harsher decisions in death penalty cases. Mansfield left the court after he decided not to run for re-election, but he never faced one sanction for his macabre election strategy.

But if one little trial judge dares to suggest that the state’s death penalty procedures are unconstitutional, she will be forced off capital trials because this view could only stem from unreasonable bias.

So this year, GOP lawmakers decided to insert language into a new Medicaid measure that bans any family planning clinic that is even “affiliated” with an abortion provider from receiving WHP funds. Even though Planned Parenthood “corporately separated its abortion services from its family planning services in 2005,” Republicans wanted the fact that these (strictly family planning) clinics are “affiliated” with organization to disqualify them and asked the Department of Health and Human Services to let the state exclude the clinics accordingly.

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services delivered it’s answer: No, as doing so “would violate the Social Security Act” which guarantees that a Medicaid patient can obtain health services from any qualified agency. But instead of accepting the decision, health advocates say Republicans may cancel the WHP program entirely out of spite, leaving at least 130,000 low-income Texas women without services:

But Fran Hagerty, chief executive of the Women’s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas, characterized the federal decision — which extends the program for three months while state officials decide whether to back down from their request — as “the ugliest possible scenario.” She fears the state will opt to end the Women’s Health Program rather than allow Planned Parenthood to continue to be part of it, and that 130,000 low-income women may end up losing out on cancer screenings and birth control.[...]

On Tuesday, state health officials said they would consult with Attorney General Greg Abbott to determine how to proceed. But Gov. Rick Perry doesn’t appear to be in a compromising mood. In a statement from the campaign trail, he said Texas is “committed to protecting life in Texas, and state law prohibits giving state dollars to abortion providers and affiliates — a fact the Obama Administration ignores.”

If state officials decide to forgo the Women’s Health Program in protest, Hagerty said major hospitals like the University of Texas Medical Branch and Parkland in Dallas would be able to maintain some semblance of family planning services, “but nothing like what we have now.” If the program does not extend past March, Hagerty said, community clinics would have to dramatically reduce services, lay off employees or shut down completely.

The program was created as a five year program and is set to expire on December 31. The HHS decision extends WHP for three more months, but Republicans are not accepting HHS’s ruling on the matter. The Texas Humans and Health Services Commission, which requested the waiver, said HHS’s decision is “inconsistent with federal law that gives states the authority to establish qualifications for Medicaid providers.”

State Sen. Robert Deuell (R) said it’s Planned Parenthood’s fault for supporting a constitutionally-protected right. “The problem could be solved tomorrow if Planned Parenthood just renounces abortions and just does family planning and comprehensive care, which they’re capable of,” he said. “Then we could provide a lot of family planning and there wouldn’t be abortions and this problem would go away.”

As the Dallas Observer’s Anna Merlen notes, the program has “served 235,000 women so far and saved the state more than $37.6 million during its first two years by helping women avoid otherwise costly unplanned pregnancies.” Currently, 28 percent of Texas women are uninsured, and without these clinics to provide necessary health care, the health care access problem for women is only going to get worse.

But 15 Democratic state lawmakers are questioning the need for the delay, since “12 of 35 individual insurance providers in Texas meet the 80/20 medical loss ratio” and a waiver would cost policy holders millions in rebates:

[Texas Department of Insurance] TDI estimates that Texans would receive $160 million in rebates or premium credit from individual insurance carriers in Texas in 2011 if providers are required to direct 80 percent of premiums to medical care and quality improvements. But if the adjustment is approved, and individual insurance carrier are only required to meet a 71/29 medical loss ratio in 2011, Texans would only receive $35.6 million in rebates.

Look:

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has also found that insurers are successfully meeting the MLR requirements by “reducing premiums in 2012,” not applying “for premium increases and are making adjustments to lower premiums as a strategy to increase their MLRs.” Most of the insurers are also reducing brokers’ commissions in an effort to lower administrative spending and meet the MLR benchmarks.

Texas consumers, meanwhile, already pay insurance premiums that are higher than the national average and the state suffers from the highest uninsurance rate in the nation.

What happened next was nothing short of horrific — after a seven-hour standoff with police, Grimmer shot her two children and then herself:

One of the children, 12-year-old Ramie Grimmer, died Wednesday night at a San Antonio hospital, Laredo police spokesman Joe Baeza said. The girl’s brother, 10, remained in critical condition.

Ramie appeared to post a chilling update on Facebook while her mother squared off with police Monday at a Laredo welfare office. Her profile was updated to read “may die 2day” just hours before authorities say her mother shot the girl and her brother, then killed herself to end the seven-hour standoff.

Relatives say Grimmer had a history of mental illness. It certainly seems to be a story of a mentally unstable woman who made a tragic decision. But the case also illustrates the depths of despair many families have been driven to during the economic downturn.

A record one in seven American families is currently on food stamps. In 2011, more than 46.2 million people received a total of $75.3 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

But many families in need of government aid often have difficulty getting it as more and more obstacles are erected. In 2008, the Food Research and Action Center noted that given the scope of hunger in America, “it is of great concern that the Food Stamp Program is missing one of every three eligible people.” That means less nutrition for needy families and less economic activity — because according to the USDA, every dollar in federal food stamp benefits generates nearly twice that in economic activity.

Republican governors and legislatures have enacted plans like mandatory drug testing of all welfare recipients to reduce the welfare rolls and make it more difficult to secure benefits, just as rising energy and food costs are exacerbating the squeeze on middle class families. They willfully ignore evidence that these requirements cost more money than they save and welfare recipients actually use drugs less than other groups.

The Obama administration added one more hurdle this week when it announced an aggressive campaign to crack down on SNAP fraud. That’s despite the fact that fraud in the food stamp program reached an all-time low in 2009, and the Agricultural Department, which administers the program, has won accolades from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for already running an effective electronic anti-fraud system.

Perhaps the president is sensitive to politically-motivated attacks by GOP candidates that he is a “food stamp President” who has enabled more fraud during his tenure. But he should realize that Republicans are using the issue as a stalking horse for their war on the poor and government benefits. And given the tragic consequences of denying families aid, his focus on rooting out whatever fraud exists instead of making sure that people who qualify are getting it is seriously misplaced.

(HT: FightForFairEconomy YouTube account)

Joaquin Luna

In his speech today, Hinojosa said Luna’s death underscores the need for the DREAM Act, which would give undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children legal status if they meet certain criteria. Last year, the House passed the DREAM Act, but it failed in the Senate. In his remarks, Hinojosa spoke about the talented students who could qualify under the DREAM Act:

In the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and Across the country, DREAM students have excelled in school, and become valedictorian, and AP scholars, and student leaders, despite facing difficult circumstances. [...]

Many of these students are working tirelessly to earn their high school and college diplomas and aspire to become professionals in the sectors of our workforce which need their talent, skills, and ingenuity.

Watch Hinojosa’s floor speech:

“Simply stated, these talented youth can help our nation increase its global competitiveness and be the innovators of tomorrow,” Hinojosa said, urging his colleagues to co-sponsor the DREAM Act.

“With no previous points so dry it’s hard to say exactly what history would say about a summer such as this one.  Except that this summer is way beyond the previous envelope of summer temperature and precipitation.” — Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon

From October of 2010 through this September 2011, Texas saw its driest year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But these historic dry conditions stretch back even further than that.

After examining tree-ring data going back to 1550, researchers at Columbia University found that this year’s drought was only rivaled once in the last 461 years. According to the Palmer Drought Severity Index, a system for measuring wet and dry conditions, the last time Texas experienced a drought this bad was in 1789.

The state’s climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, explained the historical significance of the ongoing drought in an interview with CBS:

“This is basically off the charts. Based on past history, you wouldn’t expect to see this happening in maybe 500 or 1,000 years.  One more year and we’re already talking about a drought more severe than anything we’ve ever had. And this will become for them, the drought of record.”

The drought, which Nielsen-Gammon says could stretch over a number of years, has devastated cotton crops, livestock, pumpkin crops, and, as the below CBS story points out, Christmas trees. The dry conditions have been exacerbated by a combination of human-caused global warming and La Niña, which pushes unusually cold air from the Pacific Ocean and causes drier-than-average conditions in the Southern U.S.

A number of leading climate experts recently explained the role that they believe human-caused global warming is playing in this epic drought.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT

As Texas climatologist Katherine Kayhoe put it in an email to Climate Progress, dumping ever-increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is setting the conditions for turning extreme-weather events into history-setting catastrophes:

We often try to pigeonhole an event, such as a drought, storm, or heatwave into one category: either human or natural, but not both. What we have to realise is that our natural variability is now occurring on top of, and interacting with, background conditions that have already been altered by long-term climate change.

As our atmosphere becomes warmer, it can hold more water vapor. Atmospheric circulation patterns shift, bringing more rain to some places and less to others. For example, when a storm comes, in many cases there is more water available in the atmosphere and rainfall is heavier. When a drought comes, often temperatures are already higher than they would have been 50 years ago and so the effects of the drought are magnified by higher evaporation rates.

The Why Files has comments on the drought from many leading experts:

Gammon:  “There is evidence that global warming has had an effect on the drought, primarily by increasing the surface temperature, which increases the drought severity by increasing evaporation and water stress, and by decreasing stream flow and water supply….

… “temperatures have been rising in Tex over past 30 years or so, and they are projected to continue rising at similar rates. We think that the hole is filling, and I am afraid of a rebound effect, where natural variability varies in the opposite direction and the temperature rise would be relatively rapid.”

Richard Alley, professor of geosciences, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, The Pennsylvania State University

It sure looks like warming, wrote Richard Alley, an expert on climate and ice at Pennsylvania State University, via email. “Our usual scientific response is to say that human burning of fossil fuels has made the events more likely, and they happened,” but conclusive proof is not available. “You as journalists, and the public in general, HATE that. But it’s probably the best answer.

“In a warmer world, we expect more record highs and fewer record lows, more heat waves and fewer cold snaps. That pattern is being observed. Warmer air can ‘hold’ more water (saturation vapor pressure increases with temperature), so if air is warmer when a rainstorm happens, then the rain can be more intense.

“In addition, there is a fairly strong reason to expect that in a warming world the subtropical dry zones (which include the Sahara and the Kalahari, and influence the U.S. Southwest, including parts of Texas) will intensify and expand poleward at least somewhat.

“Suppose you’re playing dice with me, and after you lose, you discover that I stuck some carefully positioned weights inside them. Out in the climate, the dice are now loaded, but not nearly as much as they will be in the future if we keep burning fossil fuels and releasing the CO₂ to the air. It is hard to prove that any particular event was extreme because of global warming … but for many events (record heat, drought and flood) it is harder to prove that humans did not influence the outcome, just as it is very hard to prove that my loaded dice didn’t affect the game.”

Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research

Is the Texas drought and heat wave due to climate change or natural variation? “There is no doubt a modest component related to climate change, while natural variability plays a major role,” says Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “Fifteen years ago we suggested that with ENSO [El Nino-Southern Oscillation; periodic variations in water temperatures in the Pacific] the floods and droughts would become more intense.”

… Although the drought is linked to La Nina, it is also exacerbated by climate warming, Trenberth adds. Human climate change adds “about a 1 percent to 2 percent effect every day in terms of more energy. So after a month or two this mounts up and helps dry things out. At that point all the heat goes into raising temperatures. So it mounts up to a point that once again records get broken. The extent of the extremes would not have occurred without human climate change.”

In short, Texas ain’t seen nothing yet, assuming we keep listening to their politicians….

Related Posts:

• State Climatologist: “It’s Likely Much of Texas Will Still Be in Severe Drought” Next August, With Worse Water Shortages
• West Texas Sees Worst Drought Since Dust Bowl
• Flood-gate: Perry Officials Try to Hide Sea Level Rise from Texans with “Clear-Cut Unadulterated Censorship”
• After Praying for Rain, Texas Governor Rick Perry Prays for the EPA to Stop Environmental Regulations

More than $380 million in early grants and other aid from the federal health law have already gone to businesses and agencies in the Lone Star State, according to figures from the HHS, and Texas ended up with $17 billion from the stimulus.

Now, the state is waiting for final approval of a new waiver from federal Medicaid rules that could allow the state to draw down an additional $12 billion in funds from the federal government.

And that’s before the main parts of the Affordable Care Act even kick in, which will bring billions of dollars to Texas in extra Medicaid funds and subsidies to help people buy private coverage through a new health insurance exchange.

Indeed, despite the “Washington is overreaching in health care shtick,” Perry is a big believer in bringing back the federal dollars that Texas pays out in taxes: he has asked for and accepted federal stimulus funds for the Medicaid program, is close to securing the state’s 17th Medicaid waiver, has benefited from millions of dollars in grants included in the Affordable Care Act, and will soon expand access to health care for lower-income Texans on Washington’s dime (in accordance with health care reform). So while the governor talks about — and even believes in — allowing states to act as laboratories of democracy and design their own health care systems, his tenure suggests very little of that innovation could be sustained without federal aid.

Though the Republican-controlled Texas legislature was originally tasked with drawing the state’s new congressional districts, the map they produced was not only highly-partisan, but discriminated against the state’s burgeoning minority population. Texas, which is one of a handful of states that must get federal approval under the Voting Rights Act for new redistricting maps, saw its proposal nixed by the District Court of DC two weeks ago. As a result, three federal judges in San Antonio were charged with creating a new map for next year’s elections.

Their proposal today is far more equitable for Texas’ growing minority population, particularly Latinos. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund praised the new plan, calling it an “important victory for Latinos in Texas.” It creates a new “Latino opportunity district” in South Texas (TX-35) where Latino voters won’t be disenfranchised or split up, but rather enabled to elect a candidate of their choosing. In total, four new districts will boost minority representation.

Given the Texas’ Latino surge, it’s no surprise that the original map was thrown out in favor one that was fairer to minorities. Over the past decade, two-thirds of Texas’ population growth has been Latinos, while blacks accounted for another 22 percent. Whites increased by just four percent since 2000.

This population boom earned Texas four new congressional seats, the largest gain of any state. Currently, Republicans enjoy a 23-9 advantage among Texas’ 32 seats, but redistricting analyst Charles Kuffner did a thorough examination of the new districts and predicted that after the dust settles next year, Democrats would gain four seats. The Houston Chronicle, meanwhile, predicted a possible three-seat pickup for Democrats.

Interested parties have until Friday to comment on the court’s proposed map. Kuffner predicts the map “will be finalized by Monday the 28th, which is the opening of filing season, though I hear that could possibly get pushed back a day.”

– RL Miller has more on the collision between Texas’s record drought and its water-guzzling fossil-fuel dependence in this Daily Kos cross-post.

In case anyone missed it, Texas had a big drought last summer — the worst one year drought in the state’s history [see "Worst Texas Drought in Centuries].  Lakes dried, animals were slaughtered, cities imposed lawn watering restrictions, the governor prayed for rain. About the only part of the state unaffected were the wind turbines of West Texas, spinning merrily along and oblivious to near-apocalyptic conditions.

Droughts end, and places recover. Unless they don’t.

Talk has been circulating among the doom-and-gloom sector of the Left of Texas as a failed state. It’s easy to dismiss as a tit-for-tat, revenge for Texas’ talk of secession. Until one looks hard at the water.

The state’s water shortage is structural, warns the Texas Water Development Board. Currently the state needs 18 million acre-feet of water, and it has 17 million acre-feet available to it. Aquifers deplete. Population grows. By 2060, the state is expected to need 22 million acre-feet but only have 15.3 million acre-feet available to it. Because some dry places simply can’t have water piped, the total shortfall is projected to be 8.3 million acre-feet. Roughly, the state will have 2 gallons of water available to it for every 3 gallons it needs.

Houston, we have a problem.

Currently, 18 cities are high priority -they’ll either run out of water within 6 months unless the rains come, or they don’t know how much water they have. Texas’ water supply for the future is uncertain, and the health of Galveston Bay, home of the state’s most commercially productive estuary, is in jeopardy. Last week, voters approved one of two water-related measures on the ballot – a water bond to build dams, but that’s no short term solution for a state whose wildfire “season” is now over one year old.In the meantime, the state is blithely planning multiple power projects to meet projected population growth –  9 coal plants in planning stages will be added to the 19 -20 coal-fired power plants already in the state.

Most electricity power plants require large amounts of water. How large? Short answer: a lot, but no one knows. Medium answer: thirsty power plants threaten watersheds, and Texas’ coal plants are among the nation’s thirstiest.

Coal-fired plants alone account for 67 percent of freshwater withdrawals by the power sector and for 65 percent of the water completely consumed by it, the report said. Newer plants include air-cooling or “dry cooling” technologies, but so many plants rely on water-cooling that they accounted for 41 percent of the withdrawals of freshwater in the United States in 2005, according to the United States Geological Survey.

In more detail, a Union of Concerned Scientists report on freshwater use by power sources begins by noting the impact on drought-stricken Texas:

As of late summer 2011, Texas had suffered the driest 10 months since record keeping began in 1895 (LCRA 2011). Some rivers, such as the Brazos, actually dried up (ClimateWatch 2011). The dry weather came with brutal heat: seven cities recorded at least 80 days above 100°F (Dolce and Erdman 2011). With air conditioners straining to keep up, the state’s demand for electricity shattered records as well, topping 68,000 megawatts in early August (ERCOT 2011).An energy-water collision wasn’t far behind. One plant had to curtail nighttime operations because the drought had reduced the amount of cool water available to bring down the temperature of water discharged from the plant (O’Grady 2011; Sounder 2011). In East Texas, other plant owners had to bring in water from other rivers so they could continue to operate and meet demand for electricity. If the drought were to persist into the following year, operators of the electricity grid warned, power cuts on the scale of thousands of megawatts are possible (O’Grady 2011).

State planners have begun to notice the water-intensive nature of coal plants. The White Stallion coal plant, near Bay City south of Houston, planned to take water from an estuary rich in oyster and shrimp nurseries. Even after promising to switch to a less water-intensive dry-cooling plan, the project has been opposed by farmers who don’t have water to sell. This week, the Lower Colorado River Authority rejected a water contract that would have given White Stallion a 25,000 acre-feet/year water permit. Citizens of Sweetwater in west Texas were outraged upon hearing that the city was secretly negotiating sale of water rights for a so-called clean coal project.

Texas will stay thirsty [see State Climatologist: “It’s Likely Much of Texas Will Still Be in Severe Drought” Next August, With Worse Water Shortages].

A structural water shortage is a permanent water shortage that can only be solved by a drastic change — less agriculture, less people, more water from somewhere else (dams? desalination? Oklahoma?). More coal plants sucking more water from rivers and estuaries is not part of a sane water policy. Some alternatives to coal-fired electricity are just as water-intensive.

Natural gas power plants are frugal users of water, but extraction of natural gas through fracking uses billions of gallons of water. Fortunately, one electricity source uses virtually no water and is plentiful throughout west Texas.

— RL Miller is an attorney and environment blogger with Climate Hawks. This piece was originally published at Daily Kos and was reprinted with permission by the author.

JR:  Fracking does use a staggering amount of water.  Here are two recent stories:

• In Drought-Stricken Texas, Drillers Use Billions Of Gallons Of Water For Fracking:  The Texas Water Development Board estimates the total amount of water used for fracking statewide in 2010 was 13.5 billion gallons. That’s likely to more than double by 2020
• As Texas Withers, Gas Industry Guzzles:

Fracking, which employs high-pressure jets of water to fracture rock and release natural gas, accounts for a fast-growing share of water use in some of the driest parts of Texas. Though the overall affect of fracking on reservoirs and rivers in Fort Worth’s Barnett Shale zone is dwarfed by agriculture and homeowners, its local impacts can be severe. For example, in the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District (UTGCD) west of Fort Worth, the share of groundwater used by frackers was 40 percent in the first half of 2011, up from 25 percent in 2010.

“Obviously, that’s a pretty heavy draw on an aquifer when we’re in the midst of a drought,” says Bob Patterson, UTGCD’s general manager. In his water district, 40 to 50 wells have run dry and many municipalities have declared stage two or stage three drought conditions, which involve severe restrictions on residential outdoor water use. But natural gas drillers can still pump as much water from the district as they want….

Critics of fracking claim the industry actually uses far more water than it lets on. Because water used in the fracking process becomes contaminated with hydrocarbons and other toxins, frackers typically sequester it deep underground, removing that wastewater permanently from the hydrologic cycle. Unlike the water used for irrigation or daily living, it doesn’t reenter rivers, aquifers, or the atmosphere. “Fracking water is typically not recycled,” says Paul Hudak, a hydrologist with the University of North Texas. “It’s not really economical.”