"... I Won't Get a Dime Out of This"

Real Estate Mogul Severance' less than Successful Texas Beachfront Investment Strategy

We don't really know much about Ms. Carol Severance (yet) but her assault on Texas' open beach law comes at an interesting time.

• She is a California lawyer who is apparently wealthy enough to own a half dozen beach houses in Texas.

• If she owns any beach property in her native state, it's underwater too - but that condition is not related to cyclonic weather phenomena. 

Severance, under cover of the shadowy Pacific Legal Foundation, has come frighteningly close to upending five decades of legal precedent so she can get paid off  (her version of "not get[ing] a dime") by the taxpayers of Galveston County. Periscope was curious about Severance' involvement with Pacific Legal.  Alas, she is not on the board but these eleven rich white guys are. 

Nonetheless, following the Great Recession era playbook of the monied who've been wronged;  Severance, rather than paying her own legal bills, is attempting to extract cash from what's become by default one of the bigger wallets out there (the Texas taxpayer).   Utilizing the litigation engine of the handiest right wing, astro-turf organization available, Severance is looking for a quick million bucks or so.  If she can't get paid off, she seems content with finishing the job that Ike started.


A cursory look at Pacific Legal's website will tell you all you need to know:  lots of American flags, pictures of the snail darter, links to Fox News... you get the idea.

In a decision that sent shock waves through the gulf coast environmental and legal community, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with her. Either Severance and Pacific Legal Foundation get paid off (i.e."[not] get a dime") or Galveston's critical beach restoration project is stopped dead in its tracks.

It is at this point the helpful right wing blogger points out to his wide-eyed readers that "this is a complex legal issue".  

Actually, it isn't.  

Since 1959 Texas has protected our beaches as public treasures which have, almost without exception, been freely accessible - to reactionary lawyers and mindless socialists alike.  It's a tradition Texans and their politicians have taken pretty seriously and have (until November) uniformly protected against numerous challenges.   

Irony is showing new signs of life. A panicky California mouth-piece aided by her veins-in-your-teeth nut-job 'public interest group' have, for the moment, successfully accomplished what rabid Texas 'property rights' types never have. 

A recent walk down a heavily developed three mile stretch of coast in northern California provides a preview of what sandy shorelines become without these sorts of laws.  Along this particular beach southern Marin County, only about half the waterfront is accessible.  The other half is littered with threats from billionaires about what they'll do to you if you cross them.  

In a avalanche of amicus briefs, the Supreme Court is being subjected to the outrage that has resulted from this ruling.

Aha, I hear you saying....  but what can I do?

We hear someone has come up with the bright idea of forming  The Texas Beach Party.  The 'party'  raison d'erte would be the defense of the Texas coastline from California plutocrats - or any other interloper. 

A humble suggestion from Periscope: the Beach Party will be in need of a couple dozen volunteers in bikinis to help get the spin cycle started.

Ladies with such qualifications should watch this space for further details.   A bright future of political activism awaits . . . 

Prospective staff of Texas Beach Party 

Rogue's Gallery

Not all Rogues this Ugly

Periscope noted the plaintive tsk-tsk of Chronicle reporter Allan Turner on this morning's front page.  

Clearly, space limitations precluded treatment of the entirety of our fair city's crooked politicians.  Helpful commenters (those without out a Chronicle W-2 but merely a web connection - the bar is low...) pointed out his misses.  Chuck Rosenthal, Tommy Thomas...  I could continue but why?

Anyone can rifle the news morgue and populate a rouge's gallery - the fun part is in predicting whose snout will be snapped off next by those with the handcuffs and bullets.

And so...

We note with keen interest after a comprehensive reading of Mr. Eversole's Yule-tide indictment that almost none of the projects for which he was allegedly bribed by Mike Surface were even in his precinct.

Murworth (I & II) were in Precinct One.  The Commissioner for that Precinct, El Franco Lee, seems to have benefited from these projects much more than Jerry Eversole.  The sole mention of a bribe-fueled project in the 31 page indictment which was, in fact, located in Eversole's Precinct 4 was very likely the least valuable (from a roast pork standpoint).

So Periscope has to wonder...  will El Franco be walking the plank the next time a Christian Holiday rolls around?

The investigation of Eversole began under Bush II.  Was this a simple case of a Republican Justice Department losing its bearings and pursuing the indictment of an upstanding GOP'er like Eversole? Or  was something a bit more complex afoot?  We can't prove this (without $20 or $30 million to investigate, subpoena power and a badge and gun) but we suspect most anyone sitting on Commissioner's Court could (like the fabled ham sandwich) be indicted if the right prosecutor, with the right motive, set out to do so.

Why Jerry?

Periscope believes nothing is as dangerous in politics as making the wrong enemies.  Some of Eversole's enemies - for instance, uber-fixer Jack Raines - have some veeeeerrrrry long memories.  When Raines and Eversole were blood-feuding some years ago about the Houston Sports Authority  some Texas sized resentments were constructed that a boy from Port Arthur would have had a hard time forgetting.

Assange Analog?

All Politics is Local  

                      Loco

Julian Assange and Jerry Eversole - more in common than strange last names?

Here's a Fluxus riddle:  What do WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole have in common?

Answer:  a lot more than you might think.

In addition to the fact that both were recently indicted (Assange for rape, Eversole for bribery); locked in irons and dragged before magistrates for arraignment (Assange in the UK, Eversole in Houston); both men also sport a mean Silver Fox do (Assange from worrying about 'a Jack Ruby style assassination',  Eversole from being 67 years old.)

OK, ok.  Periscope admits to playing the old Separated@Birth? game made popular by pioneer snarkzine Spy in the 90's.  We could go on, but Spy's been shut down over a dozen years now and S@B gets boring quickly.

So what do WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole have in common?  Really?

How about this: both of them really, absolutely, completely pissed off the wrong people (more about that tomorrow).

Our Answer above notwithstanding, here's one interesting thing Assange and The Commissioner definitely don't have in common:  Assange seems to have exerted masterful control of the media as he exited a jail cell in London a week ago. Whereas Periscope has observed that Eversole's mouthpiece, Houston criminal defense legend Rusty Hardin, found it necessary to retain legal PR whiz Mary Flood for his client - and yet Eversole was still described as "chewing gum and flush-faced " by Houston journalist without an editor Chris Moran.  

And while Moran may have not gotten his journalism training at Harvard, Flood got her law license there and only practiced three years before becoming a media practitioner.  She's smart, well regarded and (assuming she can coax Eversole into forgoing the Juicy Fruit when a lens is present) will no doubt do an effective spin job for him.

If Periscope were doing her job (alas, no one asked us...) we'd certainly think about the Julian Assange angle.  Not the hair...  the part about pissing off powerful people - which can land you in irons on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

We know full well who Julian pissed off.  Say... just about every high level politician in the G20.  Dumb move - but at least he's got a nobel laureate standing next to him telling everyone he's a noble guy on a noble mission.

If anyone in Harris County politics actually likes Jerry Eversole.... Periscope has yet to read or hear an account of it.  There's a fairly well established axiom in the PR biz is that if the only guy saying good things about you is your lawyer - he should say them quietly.  Probably not in the cards for Rusty to talk softly - those who carry big sticks seldom do really.  But you would think Flood could flush out a guy who at least 10% of the jury pool recognizes to say that Eversole was a hell of a baseball coach or something.  Anything positive.

Anybody?

Ferris?

Tomorrow:  so who did Jerry piss off?

With Friends Like These . . .

Anti-Social Networking Disorder

Mark Zuckerberg: newest smartest guy on the planet

Like many post-modern gazillionaires (Periscope wonders: are there any other kind?) Mark Zuckerberg followed the time-tested formula for amassing a large fortune. 

1. Steal a good idea from someone.

2. Get a trusted friend or associate to pay for the groundwork.

3. Betray the friend or associate and sue everybody involved.

4. Sell half the deal to a VC thereby at least assuring yourself of multi-millionaire status even if the thing flops.

5. Last (and certainly least) begin having your public relations machine describe you as a 'philanthropist' after you start giving away amounts which are, relatively speaking, roughly akin to what you and I drop into the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas.

5.5 (optional) Once the word is out that you're a raving, lunatic larcenist, adopt a self satisfied pose which prominently features your far above average IQ and the notion that others just don't understand what you're doing for the culture - for humanity.

(By far the biggest problem w/ step 5.5 is that there are at least 50,000 people with the same IQ, several of whom inevitably work for the San Jose Mercury News, and who will soon enough begin to publish expositive articles detailing just how big of a prick you really are...)

In short - a perfect business plan for the Second Guilded Age. As post-Marxists, Periscope views phenomena like Facebook and Linked-In roughly on the same par that your average Jehova's Witness views abortion.

We uniformly advise all children that literally everything they write on Facebook, as well as everything written about them will, in the fullness of time, be published on the front page of the New York Times.  Not the first time a grown up has, with honorable intent, invented a monster to scare a child.

We absolutely love the term 'social networking'.  A perky euphemism which the data marketing industry has coined and stuffed down the lexicon tube. Periscope urges the state of the art be more accurately be described as 'skeezy advertising to idiots with valid, functioning credit card numbers'.

Most of us here think the only social good flowing from Facebook is limited to the amount of time gang members spend on the site, taking away from the time they are spending committing non-virtual crimes.

Periscope noted during our short time on Facebook that there were no positive aspects to the activity. The most disturbing negative aspect was that people who hadn't been in touch for years could suddenly pop up out of nowhere.   Some deep knowledge dislodged in us when we would follow up on these long lost 'friends'. We realized there was usually a pretty good reason we were no longer in touch with these people. Almost without exception, anyone we could possibly want to be in contact with is normally in the I-phone.

Do you really want Dabney Berkowitz from Sunny Side High School asking "What [you've] been up to lately??!!" if you didn't really share what you were up to with her when you were class-mates? 


We thought not. 

A fleeting tinge of self satisfaction was felt the day we shuttered our facebook 'account' (wonderful slang for 'granting a large transnational corporation complete, unsupervised and unfettered access to information one probably wouldn't give the entirety of to his closest associates or family'). 

We did this the day the movie 'The Social Network' was released. Somehow, it seemed the right time.

To sum up we refer you to the promotional tag line of 'The Social Network':

"You don't make 500 million friends without making a few enemies" 

We'll say. 

Count us among them.

I hear they're growing like Kudzu over at 'Linked In' too. This site is (if such a thing is actually conceivable) an even more potentially horrid thing than Facebook. Take all of the wonderful attributes of Facebook, then cut out the innocent children and harmless, facile adults. You're left with a bunch of rabid, moist-fanged middle managers anxious to put a spike in their cube-mate to secure a nine thousand dollar raise.


Now THAT's cooking with gas, don't you think?

...It's Been a While

Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole in happier times

Harris County hasn't had one of its Commissioners indicted in quite a few years.  That changed on Monday (12/20) when a federal grand jury, following three long years of froth from the DOJ's public integrity section, handed down a five counter on Precinct Four chief Jerry Eversole.

Federal prosecutors are fond of indicting people during the holidays and adhered to that tradition as Eversole was hustled over to Rusk St. in leg irons and assorted chains a couple of days shy of Christmas Eve.  To call it a media circus would be an insult to self respecting circus performers everywhere.

Was this a Merry Christmas Indictment - or should we use something more politically correct?  Holiday True Bill?

Merely stepping into the dock at this storied address can confer a certain Lord Vader air to any presumably innocent defendant.  With a cast of former characters which includes Allen Sanford , Jeff Skilling and more Mexican drug cartel bandits than anyone can actually recall, the Southern District of Texas is eclipsed in the infamy department only by its sister court on Pearl street in lower Manhattan.

(Question:  after New York City, where is the largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies?  If you didn't say Houston... you're in danger of losing your status as a truly 'Linked-In' individual.)

Houston Periscope got a peek at the 31 page indictment from a well placed source a couple of days before it hit the Commissioner in his well proportioned jaw.  We were interested to note the inclusion of the boilerplate tax evasion Count.  Having some knowledge of the IRS code - and the generally unsuccessful record of federal prosecutors in securing convictions on these sorts of charges - we wonder if Eversole was offered the chance to plead to this Count?

Our source says Eversole has been negotiating a plea in this matter for several months, but we have no specific details on the talks.

Eversole's pal, a road building contractor with the unlikely name of Mike Surface, is alleged to have provided the Commissioner with everything from silk neck ties to room service to greens fees.  In return, he seems to have been granted (by virtue of Eversole's commanding 20% voting block on Commissioner's Court) somewhere around a hundred million dollars worth of goodies.

We don't know Eversole well  (OK - now that he's been indicted, let's just say we never knew him at all - similar to the inevitable claims his 'real' friends will soon be making) but we do know that he's not exactly a simpleton.  As well, Periscope can't claim to know much about what defense attorney Rusty Hardin is calling 'a 30 year friendship' between Eversole and Surface.  But we do know a little something about political chicanery.  If the Commissioner passed out all the pork described in the indictment and only got sixty grand and a couple of golf shirts for his trouble - we'll have to revise our opinion of him.

One thing's for sure, any enemy of Wayne Dolcefino (whose highest and best use days as a radio traffic reporter are, sadly, behind him) is, if not a friend of ours, at least someone we'd like to get to know a little better.

Maybe even play a few rounds of golf with.

*  *  *

Houston Periscope has a notion that the profoundly unlikely scenario of an indicted politician being innocent may apply in this case.  

However, we still would have probably taken the tax evasion plea...

Tomorrow:  Is having Dolcefino on your ass necessarily a bad thing?  

A round of golf with the Commissioner or snacks with Wayne?  Hard choices...