Saturday, September 18, 2021

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner at Governor Abbott's House

             Guess who’s coming to dinner at the Governor’s Mansion. That’s all you can do—guess—because Governor Abbott refuses to respond to open records requests about his visitors, for dinner or for sleepovers, even though the food and electricity are provided by taxpayers. And even though his predecessors have recognized the request as legitimate and released the information in the past. As he prepares to run for the White House, our governor is reluctant to disclose who he’s seeing away from the office, across the street at the official residence, understandably. Although he was like that before too. A request three years ago for the very same information of who’s coming to the Mansion, also during Greg Abbott’s residence there, led to release of a list of names of hundreds of individuals who had toured the Mansion—even though that was not what was asked for. This time, nada. As in nothing. This time the course of this information request through his General Counsel’s office is interesting because it tells us something about the governor and who he is breaking bread with and why.

Speaking of the Governor’s Mansion. Back in the day by the way—this is so, like, not shameless gossip, not mere grist for the rumor mill in the State Capitol. Before the millennium, before Y2K, during the tenure of Governor George W. Bush, the guest list came back from the Mansion and the only name of the dinner invitees that was surprising to my innocent eyes—among the Bush clan and proto-Bushites and wannabe Bushes who were visiting the future President and come to kiss his ring—was Rich Oppel, then editor of the Austin daily newspaper. To set the scene. This was well into W’s governorship, by the way, when he had already signed off on a hundred or so executions and had cut social services in state government—to polish his conservative credentials. And Oppel seeing the governor privately when the newspaper was criticizing him publicly, or not—isn’t that, like—isn’t that dining with the enemy? Or schmoozing with the enemy? At least Rich Oppel wasn’t sleeping with the enemy because his name did not appear among the guests who spent the night, at the time of my records request. So, like, you aren’t going to believe this. What you’re about to hear will sound completely far-fetched and mind-blowing in the extreme. But it was a different age, remember that. Among the documentation related to housekeeping accounts and work done at the Governor’s Mansion that was released by W’s lawyers was a short memo. It seemed that, during the Bush Family’s tenure in the Big House, there was a guest who slipped in and spent a night in the Mansion without Governor Bush’s knowledge or approval. 

Recall that W had twin daughters attending Austin High School, at the time, Jenna and Barbara, both wonderful young women, good students too, who also enjoyed a margarita or three and were soon to be sweethearts of Sigma Chi or whatever? To set the scene again. This was, to repeat, just before the millennium. This is my memory of the affair. There was a memo in some of the documentation that was released, by Governor Bush lo a quarter century or more ago, written by Mansion staff who were pissed off, actually, because unbeknownst to staff or security, or apparently the Governor and First Lady either, a teenaged boy, also from Austin High, spent the night in the Mansion and the staff only heard about it after the fact. You can call the episode, “Jenna’s Excellent Sleepover” or “Barbara’s Best Night In,” depending upon your suspicions, because the memo did not identify whom the young man was visiting. And at the time it seemed to me that this was a private matter, not mere grist for the Capitol’s deplorable gossip mill, although it was a close call at the time. But with Governor Abbott, nothing like that could happen, no unwanted guests, because security practically has searchlights and machinegun towers around the Mansion. Besides if there’s an indiscretion this time, it’s financial not an affair of the heart or a tryst for young lovers. If you’re thinking that Governor Abbott does not want to reveal his guests at the Mansion (the equivalent of the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom is the Sam Houston Bedroom in Austin) because they include rightwing politicians or nutjobs—the Governor had lunch with the Proud Boys or whoever—the Grand Dragon slept there. The kind of people Greg Abbott needs to be seen with publicly in order to burnish conservative credentials. Former President Trump has been here and done that with the Governor already. There is a hint from the general counsel’s most recent missive of what concerns the governor regarding releasing his guest list. It’s not political. It's financial.

My request was made almost exactly two months ago. The governor’s response was that fulfilling the search and providing the list of names would require staff time amounting to $225.90, which sounded reasonable. Any request on my part for a media discount, which the law allows, or a cheaper means of disclosure, which the law also allows for—the letter from the governor said explicitly that neither of those options would be possible in this case. A big bill is not a particularly original ploy to avoid disclosure, but fulfilling public information requests does take time and charging money seems fair. Usually a bill of this magnitude works like a charm with me personally and scares me off but, for a reason that remains unclear—even to me—my decision was to pay my money and takes my chances. Although $225 is a lot of money in my world. 

In any case—there are two governor’s offices in Austin, both on the Capitol grounds, the second on the east grounds, home to the big guy’s lawyers. Trekking there to pay for disclosure of the guest list, which now had the significance of a state secret, me passing state troopers with automatic weapons mounting a non-static defense of the State Capitol grounds—no fixed posts and the lawdogs moving unexpectedly, in cars and on foot, which can be a worrisome sight for black men like me. Anyway the governor’s office accepted my check and acknowledged same through email and cashed it a few days later. Two hundred and twenty-five dollars and ninety cents, not to repeat myself, a lot of money to me, not to repeat myself again. So, like, imagine my surpriseagain, a couple of weeks after Greg Abbott banked my check. Another letter arrived from his general counsel saying the governor would not release the list of names of people who have been to the Mansion without first receiving permission from me to redact names at the governor's discretion. Or his lawyers would seek an attorney general’s ruling, which the Texas Public Information Act does permit, within ten days not two months later. Be that as it may. Specifically the letter mentioned that Governor Abbott would like to redact names for two reasons, security being one—which was bullshit, since my original request was for guests not bodyguards. And for commercial reasons. That is what the letter said and that is what apparently really worries Greg Abbott. Who the Office of the Governor of Texas is doing business with. And in that regard, in this instance, regarding who has been visiting the Abbotts at the Mansion. There is a change in the usual dynamic of a powerful politician not wanting to reveal his or her guests, for fear of embarrassing the politician. In this instance it’s apparently for fear of embarrassing businesspeople socializing with this governor right now. 

Right off, three names come to mind as certainties for people who have been to the Governor’s Mansion recently and probably don’t want it known, whether they’ve done a sleepover or not. Elon Musk of Tesla fame and Space X fortune for sure is one. During the early bad reaction to the latest anti-abortion legislation, not to mention the new voting restrictions which were also laid down, and which will disenfranchise minorities, uneasiness has also been reported among some businesspeople, especially those with plans to move to Texas. The world’s richest man refused to criticize the abortion law or the governor in this regard—Musk saying that he’s “not political,” words to that effect. Another very likely guest is Jeff Bezos, the world’s second richest person. Amazon has huge interests in the Lone Star State and Bezos grew up in South Texas and the probability is very good that he has had a drink, or two, or a meal with the governor, whoever that governor may be. #3, and this is another absolute certainty—Michael Dell, of Dell Computers, who is said to be two steps to the right of Attila the Hun’s grandmother and who has had a close working relationship with both the prior Republican governors, W and Rick Perry. Michael Dell is merely the world’s 25th richest person, a pauper compared to Musk or Bezos, and for Dell the connection to the governor of Texas has historically been very important. Dell Computers was built in part on State of Texas business, when Bush was governor, and W himself has said that Michael Dell liked to come by the State Capitol to show the Governor Bush how to work his PC. Michael Dell likely knows Greg Abbott well enough to stop by with takeout. 

On the political front, on the same logic, not wanting to be seen with the governor right now, there is Chief Justice Nathan Hecht and the guys and girls on the Texas Supreme Court, where Greg Abbott served for five years, btw. Supreme Court justices and powerful politicians socialize all the time, including at the White House, but Governor Abbott’s recent political activity seems to be under constant appeal to the state’s highest court and the idea that Governor Abbott is dining with or having drinks with the people deciding those cases, in cozy evenings at the Mansion, would not look good and would lead people to believe the governor and the justices discuss cases, which they almost certainly do and probably always have done, in every state. Mostly though, as in everything else at the Capitol, it's about money. 

The commercial interests that the governor cited in his letter involve flows of money that go both ways. Greg Abbott is looking for political contributions but he also gives away a lot of state money, which has been problematic in the past. Governor Abbott’s predecessor Rick Perry was in constant hot water regarding dispersals from the state’s Emerging Technology Fund. Greg Abbott disbanded that high tech moneypot but he still makes loans for business development, through almost a dozen different programs, including one for spaceport development. The governor’s press office refuses to say who is getting state dollars as incentives and it’s hard to imagine that Elon Musk needs money from the State of Texas, but you can’t find out for sure because Greg Abbott is not telling, just like he's not saying who's going to dinner at the Mansion. You have to guess. Maybe the real issue is not money or politics but transparency? Is that possible? No recent governor has been worse in that regard than Greg Abbott is now. 

A requestor can sue but that is expensive and time-consuming (and the case may end up with Chief Justice Hecht and his colleagues, which is another reason to want to know who’s hanging out with Greg at the Mansion.) There's a criminal provision in the open records law, actually, which led to an interesting exchange recently with the local prosecutor who would have jurisdiction, Travis County Attorney Delia Garza. Her office wouldn’t even listen to a complaint about the governor’s compliance with the Texas Public Information Act and her staff told me to take the matter to the Austin police or to the Sheriff. Does that mean flag down a patrol car? What goes unsaid here is that violating transparency laws is in every political leader’s best interests. Ms. Garza was until this year a member of the Austin City Council, the only people with a worse history of open government than Governor Abbott. Last year, months into the pandemic, Austin’s City Attorney answered an open records request for Mayor Steve Adler’s email on COVID-19 by saying that no documentation exists. That he had, in other words, written no messages on the subject. There are, basically, two ways to thwart open records requests in Texas. A politician or political entity can lie and say no documentation exists, like the City of Austin, or tell the truth and refuse to give it up, like Greg Abbott. Somehow Governor Abbott’s approach seems more honest. 


Tuesday, August 24, 2021

The Nightingale Project

         



             

             Clay Johnston is a businessman and physician and was the first dean of the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, the position from which he retired a few weeks ago. The custom of heaping praise on a departing high-ranking academic can be skipped entirely in Dr. Johnston’s case, if you’re a member of a minority group in Texas—because outcomes have not been good. 

            When Dean Johnston started out he made no promises in that regard, actually. In an interview as he took the position of Dell dean five years ago, Dr. Johnston refused to be held to any firm numbers regarding diversity in the student body. And a good thing too, because he did a poor job on this crucial front of minority access to health care, on both ends, as patients and as practitioners. He and his right hand Vice Dean Mini Kahlon have been absolutely M.I.A. on race during their tenure in Austin. At the conclusion of last semester the Dell website announced that the proportion of minorities in class was 17 percent. In a state that is more than half black and brown. Shame, and shame again.

Interestingly, however, at the time of the interview when Dr. Johnston refused to commit, so to speak, lo those five years ago, he criticized the diversity profile of the institution he had just left, the University of California San Francisco, the most prominent health-related public university in the world. “I’m certainly not going to defend UCSF and its track record,” he said, rather huffily, at the time of is hiring at UT. “We both know it needs to be better.” It is better, actually—better than Dell’s. 

Dean Johnston promised to create in Austin a new and fairer way of choosing students—through greater emphasis on interviews and on non-traditional backgrounds. That hasn’t happened. Upper middle-class white male has long been the norm in American medical schools, previously it was white guys but now at Dell it’s a lot of white girls. As incoming dean, Dr. Johnston also promised to evaluate potential students’ problem-solving skills instead of relying merely on test scores and grades. But the faculty members who judge the students for admission are still white, as is two-thirds of Dell faculty (black and brown faculty membership is 12 percent), including a key administrator who is a white South African physician, an odd choice to assure increased diversity for blacks and Latinos in health care in the Lone Star State. That means the same old outcomes are achieved as previously, or worse. 

Of Dell Medical School’s 14 department chairs, under the good Dr. Johnston, 11 are white and three are Asian, again in a state that is more than half black and Latino and, the U.S. Census just reported, is getting blacker and browner every day. The context of Dr. Johnston’s time at Dell has to be considered as well, if one is interested in these poor outcomes for minorities in admissions. He came on board (as dean and as UT vice president of medical affairs, at a salary of $750,000 a year) at a time when the university was reeling from an admissions scandal, an issue that may be particularly pertinent here. The then-university president was found to have offered places to unworthy undergraduates who were politically-connected to Texas elites.

second admissions scandal erupted three years into Dean Johnston’s tenure—code-named “Operation Varsity Blues” by the FBI—involving eight major higher education institutions, across the country, including UT but not the medical school. A corollary question arises therefore, given this history, and given what should be higher numbers of minorities at Dell Medical School. What are the chances that these very prestigious and very sought-after places, at Dell Med, have been awarded in some cases to the well-connected, as has happened in the past at UT and at UCSF also, btw, whence Dean Johnston came? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Considering the university’s non-diverse past, you might say. 

Although former Dean Johnston criticized his ex-employer the University of California, a lot of faculty at Dell are actually ex-UCSF, including the above mentioned Associate Dean Kahlon. Before and during the pandemic there’s been an exodus from San Francisco to Austin and also from UCSF to Dell. The danger here is that while people flow from the University of California, so does the culture in Baghdad by the Bay, which is not good. An NPR report recently quoted a former UCSF medical student saying that he was still hearing black patients referred to as niggers on rounds there just a few years ago. There’s also a lot of UC propaganda in cyberspace, which is a sign that administrators know there’s a problem but are trying to hide it. For example the University of California’s common practice is to show photos of happy-looking isolated black students on its website, to make the student body appear more diverse than it really is—a practice that has been adopted wholeheartedly by Dell. Bad behavior has flowed from Texas to the Bay Area also. UC System’s Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, Dr. John Stobo was fired for sexual harassment of an assistant just last year. He arrived at UC from UT Medical Branch on Galveston Island where he was president (John Stobo’s signature is on my nursing diploma from Medical Branch, btw, for the record.) And then there’s Dr. Johnston himself, who has shown a particular talent for ethical not sexual compromise.

While still at UCSF, the Dell ex-dean authored a paper arguing the novel position that prices for medicines are not high enough and he co-authored another in which he bemoaned conflict of interest accusations against medical researchers. 

That is Dr. Johnston's legacy, you could call it, at the University of California San Francisco. His favorite business case, btw, when he's presenting papers or giving talks, is the growth of the American railroad industry, back in the day, during the Industrial Revolution or whenever, and he likens that history to American medicine today. Here in the Live Music Capital of the World, among his first efforts was the unsuccessful attempt to lure pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to the city in order to harvest healthcare data from minorities.

Traditionally one of the biggest holes in Big Pharma’s data resources involves blacks, Latinos and Asians, while whites are overrepresented. To design treatments and meds, companies like Pfizer need as much representative data as possible, and that means minorities need to be in the mix. And it is there that Dean Johnston’s reputation and his legacy at Dell Medical School may have just been rescued by history. Pfizer took a lot of heat and eventually dropped plans for a hub here but was soon replaced in the enterprise by Google Health and its Nightingale Project. With an assist by Dell Medical School and the good Dr. Johnston, who has done what he was brought in to do, basically, to create a Big Medicine-UT axis, which may help to save all of our lives one day, actually, whether Dean Johnston is a good guy or not. 

He was brought in to do a job—to establish the university’s business ties with Big Pharma or Google, or whoever, as the case may be, like back in the day with the railroads and the Robber Barons and all that—and let’s all hope he got it right. 

Specifically, Dell Medical School and its partner Ascension Seton, which is a Catholic non-profit and operates a dozen hospitals in the Austin area, have teamed up with Google to transfer information on patients. Everything from zip code to hemoglobin level, for Big Data analysis. Before the pandemic this agreement was made public—revealed by the Wall Street Journal just before Covid broke out, to widespread horror on the part of privacy activists. This Big Data agreement was considered yet another Big Tech invasion and an attempt to profit from patient information. Which it was, in another era. But since the pandemic the ground has shifted under everyone’s feet. As we enter the second wave of Covid-19, one can only hope that data is flowing like the Mississippi, from hospitals and labs. The danger of the dreaded Big Tech-Big Medicine hookup, facilitated by academics like Clay Johnston—the Nightingale Project, as the endeavor is called by Google, or by any other name—pales in comparison to the danger of the next virus, which could feature a more virulent strain or a faster-moving outbreak. Big Pharma (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and others, companies synonymous with the vaccine makers) have actually performed well in the COVID-19 crisis. You have to give the devil his or her due.

A lecture delivered last semester at UT by a Big Pharma scientist revealed that the Moderna vaccine was designed in a day-and-a-half—with the succeeding months, before rollout, spent on testing, production, and regulatory approval. The Nightingale Project preceded the pandemic, and was a bad idea then, but it’s a great one now, hopefully Dr. Johnston took care of business, like the professional he is. There is a risk that Google or whoever will become even more powerful, through access to raw patient data, much of it from minorities—who are being denied access to seats in the Dell Medical School, by the way, not that there's anything wrong with that. But that risk can be lessened by de-identifying healthcare data and making it a public good, free to everyone. The fear of medical data release—like the fear of masking and of vaccination—is real and may be just as deadly. 

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Throwing out DaBaby with da Bath Water


             





             What about Eric Clapton? That would probably be DaBaby’s question if anyone asked. DaBaby—a rap artist whose music is happily unknown to me—was cancelled last week, literally, when concert impresarios C3 Presents struck his name from the famed Austin City Limits festival in October. Stop me if you’ve heard this before—for homophobic and highly ignorant comments. And justifiably so. But Eric Clapton who is white and is rock ‘n roll royalty has said a lot worse and will still be performing in Austin this September at the University of Texas’s Special Events Center. There’s been no call to cancel his visit, by promoters or by fans. In fact a good argument can be made that Clapton’s comments (“Stop Britain from being a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white . . . .”, hmmm), which led to the Rock Against Racism movement, actually, are worse, because they were directed against the very black people to whom Eric Clapton owes his music. There’s a silver lining to this episode, however, because DaBaby's time-out presents such a rich environment for puns—and also shines a long overdue light on the murky world of concert promotion in Austin, Texas, the World Capital of Live Music. 

C3 Presents is da baby of Charlie Jones, Charles Attal and Charlie Walker—the 3 original C’s—and was born in this burgeoning River City fifteen years ago. An early backer of the company was said to be cyclist Lance Armstrong. His longtime agent, Bill Stapleton, who is a former Longhorn swimmer and Olympian is somewhere in the early C3 mix too. Connection to Lance Armstrong is not necessarily a good thing, considering the famed athlete’s recent troubles, but we won’t get into that here. Indeed C3 has some very impressive credentials. Because the company also puts on the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, and came to the attention of the Obama clan, C3 was picked later to put on events at the White House. My source who has worked as a contractor for C3 said that regarding the company’s use by President Obama, “They did everything for him from rallies to his acceptance speech in Grant Park and Easter egg hunts at the White House.” C3 is described as highly non-diverse (and declined to respond with its minority employment breakdown.) What’s interesting is that the company that cancelled DaBaby—and rightfully so—and also puts on a lot of shows in casinos—was bought out by Live Nation which previously merged with Ticketmaster. (It was the Obama administration, btw, that allowed Live Nation to take over C3, despite antitrust fears.) Live Nation’s former chairman is music mogul Irving Azoff, the former manager of the supergroup The Eagles. Azoff is also former CEO of Ticketmaster, and is founder, together with Tim Leiweke, former CEO of AEG—the largest sports promoter in the world—of “Oak View Group” which together with Live Nation has a $338 million contract to build and manage the new Moody Center in Austin to replace the old University of Texas Special Events Center where Eric Clapton will play next month. If it sounds like a small world, it is, and it gets smaller. The Moody Center will be home of Longhorn men and women’s basketball and music events. Enter Matthew McConaughey. Per Musicrow.com: “McConaughey, University of Texas at Austin professor, Distinguished Alumnus (BS ’93) and Academy Award-winning actor, has signed on as Minister of Culture of the Moody Center and will work on ideas including but not limited to suite designs, bar placement, color schemes, and other concepts, to create a symbiotic relationship between the arena, the city, and the university.” You couldn’t make this up.

In addition C3 Presents has the contract for the Moody Amphitheater in the newly reopened Waterloo Park, smack center of downtown Austin, a couple of blocks from Irving Azoff’s new special events center on campus and a stone’s throw from the state Capitol and Greg Abbott’s crib. If the governor opens his windows he can probably hear the music. Interesting that these deals, which have led to Mr. Azoff becoming the single most important guy in music in Austin, in a very short time, through public-private partnerships, were done without apparent bidding or public scrutiny? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Mayor Steve Adler who will soon preside over the reopening of Waterloo Park has declined requests to explain what the public is getting out of all these music industry machinations. It’s like the privatization scandals of a prior Republican era, except instead of prisons it’s music. This template (creation of a new music venue at a public park, and handing over management of the venue to a non-profit that does not have to explain its contracting process or answer open records requests) will soon be applied to Zilker Park. That is corruption City of Austin style. The UT deal was executed, btw, by former university President Greg Fenves, in consultation with Mayor Adler, among others.

However everything shakes out, this is likely to be a big payday and another increase in power for Irving Azoff who is a legend in the music business and who has also been accused of a monopoly-like control in the industry in the past. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, either. (Mr. Azoff would not comment.) The music industry may have made the correct call with DaBaby but it’s weird that what is right or wrong or not permissible, regarding race or culture, in live music in Waterloo Park is now in the hands of a bunch of white guys, mostly living in L.A., who have made no effort to diversify a very Caucasian group of music industry businesses. Back to DaBaby, who is presently in time-out. It’s been noted elsewhere that his recent gay-bashing was not his first offense and that the LGBTQ community is trying to make a stand against longtime prejudice in the music industry. How gays do that is a gay rights call and should be supported by the black community, because it ill-behooves blacks to complain about use of a social revolt playbook that we wrote. You feel me? What one would like however is more consistency in how sanctions are applied. 

Unfortunately, Eric Clapton may not be the best artist to start with. First, his comments were made almost half a century ago, during a time in which he has described himself as “semi-racist,” whatever that means. Even if you drop the semi—and add his recent anti-vaccination comments, he is simply, on one level, an unrepentant old white guy, age 76, who happens to be a CBE, courtesy of Her Majesty the Queen who is also dotty. Be that as it may. As for DaBaby, he needs a spanking now—that’s the best argument—while it may have an effect on future behavior. Which is unlikely to be the case with Clapton. Now we can address the real determinant of forgiveness and punishment in the culture wars, Eric Clapton’s artistry. “Layla,” “Cocaine,” “Lay Down Sally, the Yardbirds, Cream, Derek and the Dominoes among his former associations. DaBaby may have a biography like that too one day but Eric Clapton already does. This is Slowhand himself, people. There are fans who would push their own grandmother out of the way to get the ticket. He’s not God but he plays electric guitar like Him or Her. Anybody who can see Clapton play now—live—should.