Category: Houston Chronicle

Chronicle: GPTX Ballot Access and Climate Policy

19/9/2019

Chronicle photo of ten Green Party candidates with fists raised at a press conference during the Green Party's 2016 national convention at the University of Houston.

Green Party candidates from Texas and across the country hold up their fists after speaking at a press conference at the Green Party Convention at the University of Houston Friday, August 5, 2016 in Houston. (Michael Ciaglo / Houston Chronicle)

PDiddie's comment on the most recent entry alerted me to Marina Kormbaki's article in the Chronicle's online edition. (UPDATE: GPTX comrade Don Cook has informed us that the story is also in the print edition, on page A-3.) I had thought that the author would send me a message when it went to digital press; perhaps Janis Richards, Laura Palmer, and I will hear from her today.

As coverage of the Green Party in mainstream papers goes, Kormbaki's piece is above average. It contains no obvious factual errors and treats the Party as a legitimate political movement, not just a one-off human-interest story. It certainly doesn't hurt that Kormbaki works for a German news outlet aligned with the Social Democrats, a party whose role as leaders of the left is gradually shifting to the Greens, as is happening elsewhere in Europe.

The photo selected to accompany the article features some Greenfolk I love and admire, such as the late Ashely "Flashe" Gordon (on the right end, partially obscured by a camera). This photo helps bust the persistent myth that the Green Party is just for old white recovering hippies. It is a microcosm of the convention delegates and the Party as a whole: diverse in ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and other dimensions.

dbc Interviewed for Chronicle Article

13/9/2019

Too bad the headline couldn't be "dbc Interviewed for Job at Chronicle." But I can fantasize that my editorial skills are worthy of a position at the Chron.

Exchange journalist Marina Kormbaki, who also appears in this entry, interviewed me by phone today for about a half-hour. She also interviewed my Green comrade Laura Palmer and possibly some others. The interviews covered several overlapping topics, all having to do with the state of the Green Party in Texas and its positions on climate policy, in light of the Democrats' debate devoting all of five minutes to The Biggest Existential Threat Other Than Thermonuclear Annihilation last night.

I'll let y'all know when Kormbaki's article appears in the print or online editions of the Chronicle.

My Most Recent LTE That Actually Got Published

25/10/2018

UPDATE: The letter made it into the 28 October print edition of the Chronicle and online. dbc is pleased, although the Viewpoints editor cut out the portions in bold below.

I've been waiting, but not holding my breath, to see whether the letter I wrote Sunday to the editors of the Houston Chronicle might appear in the print edition before posting the text of it here. No such luck (until Sunday the 28th).

The Chron's editorial board's endorsement of incumbent Greg Abbott (R) for governor, alongside Beto O'Rourke (D, over incumbent Ted Cruz) for US senator and Mike Collier (D, over incumbent Dan Patrick) for lieutenant governor, inspired me to write the letter. It wasn't so much whom they chose as how they chose him—and what they overlooked.

You may need a digital subscription to houstonchronicle.com to read the entire endorsement.

DISCLAIMER: I am not, nor have I ever been, active with the Libertarian Party. I have voted for a few Libertarian candidates over the years, but I am careful about which Libertarians I consider worthy of that vote. As you may know the Green platform shares some policy views with the Libertarian platform. The primary shared interest between the two movements is ditching the Duopoly with all due haste, introducing reforms in the US and the various states that make it possible for more than two political parties to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

To the Editors:

In the Chronicle’s tepid endorsement of Greg Abbott to continue as governor, your editorial board bemoans the lack of better choices. However, the piece gives no mention to Libertarian nominee Mark Jay Tippetts. Although I am not a big-L Libertarian, I find the lack of even a mention (let alone a star rating) journalistic malpractice. You are not giving us the whole story.

Even if the board does not consider Tippetts a better option, the board should say so and tell us why. The same is true for all of the paper’s endorsements for 2018. Readers should expect better of a paper that, as recently as 2016, endorsed Libertarian Mark Miller for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. Miller took more than 5% of the vote, securing a ballot line for Texas Libertarians for 2018.

Blatantly ignoring third-party candidates is an endorsement of the so-called two-party system, the partisan duopoly that has turned our nation into the world’s largest purveyor of death and destruction to enrich banks and billionaires while stealing from the rest of us. The majority of voters have rejected that duopoly. In the 2016 presidential race, the two major parties gave us a Wall Street warmonger and a white supremacist grifter. As your endorsement of Abbott puts it, we deserve better.

Chronicle: GPTX Ballot Access and Climate Policy

dbc Interviewed for Chronicle Article

My Most Recent LTE That Actually Got Published

DBC Sez...

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