Category: Uncategorized

We have had very little passion for the education legislation this year
in Texas. So we are pleased to see someone try to work up an
emotion over this disaster. Read Rep. Mike Villarreal‘s letter to his 18-month-old daughter, clipped and posted at Latinos for Texas.

"This bill is like a spare tire, undersized and useful only for a
short stretch of road. It will help the governor and lawmakers get
beyond their next re-election. But in two years, our school finance
system will fail again and we will be the worse for having driven on a
spare tire so long."

Makes me think of those re-treads that you see curled up on the highway. A new metaphor for Texas ed.

For Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka, the Governor’s summer leadership
is likewise nothing but a political retread that need only last until
election day 2006. But Burka works up a kind of admiration for
the ploy when viewed as a survival plan for one of the state’s 22
million residents — the one who lives in the Governor’s mansion.
For Burka’s Governor the game is all about being Governor period.
Well, subscribers to Texas Monthly know very well what they are paying for, as voters for Perry also know their own low expectations.

For our part here, we view with growling suspicion the "tax cut" plan
that will do one thing and one thing only. No, it won’t cut
taxes, but it will reduce the status of arguments now before the Texas
Supreme Court that seek to lift the cap on local property taxes.
And with the status of those arguments reduced, the Supremes may very
well be able to also punt the whole school funding question past November 2006.

And while we have Latinos for Texas on the mind, here’s link to Latinos for America, more evidence of the Dean wing in flight (up, we hope, not away).

Note: Paragraphs on Burka and ‘growling suspcion’ added July 17.

Received via email.

It looks like this Minuteman thing is going to serve as the pretext for getting out of Iraq. Clearly, the Iraq war is lost and Bush will have to, as they say, “declare a victory and leave” before the mid-term elections. He will claim that the situation has stabilized, that Iraq is safe for democracy etc., and, of course, the Iraqis will play along with this, since about the only thing that unites them is their fervent desire to wish the last American soldier “God speed”.

The National Guard is “needed” on the border and as Governor Terminator says, if America can afford the war in Iraq (which, of course, it can’t!), it can afford to patrol its borders. Of course, it cannot do both, and everybody knows that, but nobody will be churlish enough to say so! Moreover, more young Americans may be willing to join the Guard if all it involves is, say, a month’s full-time service per year harassing the ever-polite Canadians or pushing Mexicans around. Indeed, a Swiss-style “draft”, making such service compulsory, could probably be introduced without too much opposition.

I have always believed that the psychological reaction to defeat in Iraq of Americans, still traumatized by the defeat in Vietnam, would be to withdraw into the homeland and circle the wagons. That, in fact, will be a blessing for everybody: for us in the rest of the world, who are thoroughly sick and fed up with American meddling, both public and private, in our affairs, and for Americans, who will then be able to get on with the job of taking back their country from the crazies and re-building it on a sound basis.

I also saw in the BBC website the other day a report that some conservative groups are starting to attack the gas-guzzling SUVs that Americans are so fond of on the basis that America’s profligate ways are making the US dependant on foreign oil and that should be corrected. Clearly, even the crazies are starting to realize that they’re crazy!

A final point. The EU official in me reads about this “Northern Wall” and says “Whatever happened to NAFTA?” You couldn’t build a wall between EU Member States, nor, indeed, have a system of work permits. All of this seems to amount to a tacit admission that NAFTA has failed and will now be quietly buried, although, here again, nobody will say that out loud.

Contracts and Coffee Next Week

By Greg Moses

PinkDome

Prompted by a newly-posted itinerary for a “HAVA listening tour” scheduled by the Texas Secretary of State in various counties, the Texas Civil Rights Review made a few phone calls today (Mar. 24). We reached three SOS staffers who were very responsive and who provided the following information :

(1) The present schedule, beginning March 23, was posted March 23. An offline schedule that runs through the end of April does not yet include Dallas County. I have asked for a complete schedule via email.

(2) The tour is intended to touch base with County Election Officials so they can get the money available to them through HAVA and tell the SOS “what’s working and what’s not working”.

(3) The TEAM statewide database mandated by HAVA to be completed by Jan. 1 and now under development by IBM and Hart InterCivic is nearing completion of the documentation of “business rules” for software specs.

As plans now exist, voters will be able to more easily find out online where to vote, but there will be no difference in the registration experience, ie same old cards with HAVA ID requirements for new voters, same need to fill out a new card when you move, etc.

One source, who spoke on condition of anonymity said Texas would be on the cutting edge of what HAVA requires. Which tells you that HAVA requires nothing FOR the voters.

TCRR scheduled a time next week to view the TEAM contract (500-600 pages). And we were offered coffee to go with it!

I didn’t express with any of these staffers my disappointment that the meeting with Harris County officials was posted the same day as the meeting. One staffer assured me that the press had been notified way in advance. Oh, that’s great. Please let me know if you see the story.

Scott Henson writes: “Texas prisons are full, so the Governor vetoes both legislation that would cause fewer non-violent offenders to have their probation revoked, and also money for leasing space for those offenders who now inevitably will enter the system. The veto of drug treatment money, I suppose, was just for good measure: Texas wouldn’t want any of our addicts to kick their addictions, after all, or else they might not need to be incarcerated.”

See Henson’s earlier roundup of Gov vetoes, including a bill that would have required written consent to search.

Add it up: more useless incarceration. A little Gitmo for everyone everywhere. Are we feeling safer yet?