Isaac Laquedem

A timeline of Texas's stand against Covid as managed by Governor Abbott and Costello

Sometimes the facts imply their own editorial commentary:

March 19, 2020:    Governor Abbott limits gatherings of large groups to help prevent the spread of Covid-19.

June 30, 2020:    Texas reports 6,975 new Covid-19 cases, a single-day high for the state.

December 17, 2020:     Texas reports 16,864 new Covid-19 cases, the highest daily number of new cases since the start of the pandemic.

March 2, 2021:    Governor Abbott lifts Texas's mask mandate and allows all businesses to reopen at full capacity.

April 5, 2021:    Governor Abbott prohibits Texas governments from requiring visitors to show proof of vaccination.

May 18, 2021:  Governor Abbott bans almost all Texas governments from requiring visitors to wear masks. "Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices," he said.

July 21, 2021:    New Covid cases in Texas begin to jump, moving from 1,000/day in the prior week to 10,000/day on July 27.

July 29, 2021:  Governor Abbott allows all state agencies and local governments "to proceed without COVID-19-related limitations imposed by local governmental entities or officials."  Any local official or  government that violates the order may be fined $1,000.  The governor reiterates his April 5, 2021 order that prohibits all governments from requiring visitors to provide proof of vaccination.  "Texans have mastered the safe practices that help to prevent and avoid the spread of COVID-19," he wrote.

August 17, 2021:    Governor Abbott tests positive for Covid-19.

October 11, 2021:    Governor Abbott prohibits all vaccine mandates in Texas, writing that "in yet another instance of federal overreach, the Biden Administration is now bullying many private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, causing workforce disruptions that threaten Texas's continued recovery from the COVID-19 disaster."

December 28, 2021:    Texas reports 57,000 new Covid-19 cases over the Christmas weekend.

December 31, 2021:    Governor Abbott begs President Biden for federal help for Texas to fight Covid.

Fox News outclasses the BBC for journalistic ethics? Today, yes

The conviction this week of Ghislaine Maxwell for her complicity in the sexual misconduct of her longtime friend and employer, the late Jeffrey Epstein, spawned a plethora of articles and interviews with legal analysts.  For example, yesterday the BBC interviewed law professor Alan Dershowitz to talk about the verdict.  The Washington Post reports that Professor Dershowitz used his time on the BBC World News "to slam [witness Virginia] Giuffre for supposedly not being a credible witness," and (again in the Post's words) "claimed the case from Giuffre against him and Britain's Prince Andrew *** was somehow weakened after Maxwell's guilty verdict." 

Professor Dershowitz also appeared on Fox News to talk about the case.  Fox News disclosed, as the BBC did not, that Dershowitz had once been Epstein's lawyer (he helped defend Epstein in his 2008 sex-crime trial), and that Dershowitz had also been accused of having had sex with Ms. Giuffre when she was 16.  (Dershowitz has denied that allegation, and in fact claimed this week that Ms. Giuffre herself could be charged with sex crimes.)

It's odd to read about Fox News surpassing the BBC on journalistic ethics, but then it's been a crazy year.

Burlington, Vermont slashed its police force. Hilarity did not ensue.

One of the shibboleths of cutting budgets is that the corporation, or agency, or non-profit will have to learn to do more with less. It's not possible to consistently do more with less; otherwise we could cut the budget for [fill in the blank here] to nothing and be able to do everything. Here's an illuminating story about Burlington, Vermont, a small liberal city that decided to cut its police force ... and what has happened since. The takeaway? Violent crime hasn't increased, but the quality of life took a nosedive.  Like Burlington, Portland has reduced its police force, not so much by an intentional budget cut as by attrition and neglect.  The result?  To me, it seems much the same as what happened in Burlington.

The Oregonian finds what the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability didn't want to look for

It's hard to improve on the Oregonian's headline in today's print edition: "$11.5M city contract awarded to executive with history of fraud."  (The story is available online to subscribers, here.)  The reporter, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, writes that the directors of the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund, a city office of some sort, awarded a $11.5 million contract to a newish nonprofit corporation called Diversifying Energy to buy and install portable heat pumps and cooling units inside 15,000 homes and apartments.  (That's about $750 per heat pump or cooling unit.)

The story points out three oddities in the city's choice of a contractor.  First is that Diversifying Energy is not even two years old.  Its president, secretary, and executive director Linda Woodley formed the corporation in July 2020, and originally named "Energizing Diversity."  Its 2020 tax return indicates that it received less than $50,000 from all sources in 2020.  Mr. Kavanaugh reports that the City of Portland did award Diversifying Energy a $198,000 contract in April 2021 to upgrade three buildings for air quality.

Second is that Ms. Woodley is subject to an IRS tax lien for not paying income taxes in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and had been convicted of bankruptcy fraud and tax fraud in 1997.

Third is that city staff who evaluated the applications for the grant had concerns about Diversifying Energy's high personnel costs and recommended that the city accept the competing bid.  The city's grants committee rejected the staff recommendation and recommended that the city offer the contract to Diversifying Energy.  The city council unanimously approved the committee's recommendation, also rejecting the staff advice.

Not mentioned in the story, but odd, is that the IRS determination letter for Diversifying Energy was issued not to Diversifying Energy or its prior name when it was formed, but to "Shades of Green" the month before Energizing Diversity was incorporated.   (A "determination letter" is the letter from the IRS that says that a nonprofit organization qualifies as a 501(c)(3) and that contributions to the organization will be tax-deductible.)  The state had two businesses using the name "Shades of Green."  One was in Klamath County and has been in existence for 20 years.  The other was a for-profit corporation called Prisma Point Incorporated, formed by Ms. Woodley in 2014 and still arounds today, operating from the same office as the nonprofit.  It's extremely unusual for a non-profit to have a determination letter that had been issued to a for-profit corporation; in fact, it's not supposed to happen.

Mr. Kavanaugh's story contains the obligatory disclaimer by city officials (there should be a hotkey for that phrase), that "neither city staffers nor grants committee members knew of Woodley's troubling past, Portland officials told The Oregonian / OregonLive, when the news outlet informed them of reams of public records documenting her financial fraud and unpaid taxes.  Nor were they aware of a series of mischaracterizations and possible outright fabrications in her firm's proposal that The Oregonian / OregonLive found during fact-checking, they said."

What conclusion can we draw from The Oregonian and Mr. Kavanaugh finding information that the city missed?  The obvious one is that when city management determines to award someone a contract, it shuts its collective eye to warning signs.  The less obvious one is that the grants committee, part of the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, awarded the contract on something other than business history, financial qualification, track record, and economic efficiency.  The City Council should insist that the members of the committee explain their thinking before the city allows them to award any other contracts.