Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

What is Texas competing for when it produces stories like this for international consumption?

By Natalie Gott (AP) Texas could become the only state to bar gays from becoming foster parents under legislation passed Wednesday by the House.

We find it astonishing that the sponsor of the foster care amendment — Rep. Robert Talton of Pasadena — would actually look for one more way to stink up his district. But fhew! Folks are smelling this one coast to coast.

By contrast, consider what a New York Times editorial says about Connecticut:

In the past 15 years, Connecticut has protected gays and lesbians under hate-crime, employment and housing laws, and allowed unmarried couples to raise adopted children. Just as civil union was the next logical step, so may the term marriage be finally extended someday.

The new Connecticut law establishing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples was signed by a Republican Governor who shows signs of belonging to a party worthy of Lincoln.

As we argued in our earlier commentary against the Bill to Constitutionalize Homophobia in Texas state-sponsored homophobia is a dumb thing to advertise if state leaders are serious about attracting and retaining top talent in a competitive world.

But more than this, our homophobic pandering of the 21st Century feels a whole lot like the civil-rights baiting of the 20th. And this means that Texas has failed to tend to vital questions of social health.

Responsibility for this lack of maturity must be widely shared in cowardly leadership across institutions of education, media, and church. For more of our cautionary analysis of these visceral traditions see Texas Templates of Imbalanced Power.

Like a sick puppy at an international fair, Texas homophobia places worst in show. Not only is it embarrassing, but there’s something quasi-criminal in the motive of a groomer who trots out the spectacle on a leash.

In the enclosed writings, Ramsey Muñiz speaks of
regaining the spiritual enlightenment that was
taken from our hearts and minds. Please distribute.–Irma L Muñiz

"Only in the heart of the Mexicano cosmos man
can look for spiritual strength. And if he can
keep his soul in touch with the heart of the world,
then from the heart of the world new blood will beat
strength and stillness into him, fulfilling his
destiny of creation."–Tezcatlipoca

In studying the different religions on this earth
I have come to the conclusion that if we as a race and as
a nation are to become a spiritual power on this earth,
we must return to our ancient spiritual creation. We
were here on this earth long before the Pope, Billy Graham,
or any other spiritual leader. We were so connected
to nature, Mother Earth, heaven, Mictlan, and the
Creator, that it totally amazes me how we have
survived the worst, because the best is yet to come.

I still remember during my youth when everything that
was white was alright, while we, the brown race, were
wrong from the time of our birth. Now after all these
years of suffering and sacrificing, we will become
proud to be brown. It is our duty and responsibility
as Mexicanos to share with the youth of today and
tomorrow our ancient spiritual and cultural creation.
It is written that if we fail to do this, we will
become slaves once again. As humans on this earth we
must accept our Mexicano spiritual enlightenment. We can structure the path of spirituality within
ourselves and become that shining star that our
people will follow.

Yes, I’m a proud Mexicano!
I am so proud that happiness overcomes all this
cruel darkness of America. Who am I?
That is the title of one of our cultural/spiritual
books that will soon be written. In fact, it is
already written in my heart and mind, without data
or notes.

There is much conflict in the world today.
This conflict always comes upon the masses of the
poor, the uneducated, the unemployed, the brown,
black, or yellow man.
Nuestra raza has always demonstrated valor and
courage in defending one’s country. We will witness
many more Mexicanos/Mexicanas fighting the wars and
conflicts of America. It is in our blood!

We have
such a unique sense of respect and honor that even
America has come to understand the true warriors
that we are. Yet we witness the deaths of our
sisters and brothers at the borders of America. We
also witness the highest dropout rate of students
in the educational system of this country. We witness
the population of Mexicano inmates in the federal
and state prisons of America. The saddest thing is
hearing our own Mexicano/Hispanic/Latino politicians
tell us that all is alright. It is not alright, and
it never will be until we return to our beginning
– our spiritual creation, our beliefs in the Creator
of all life on this earth.

Remember that they (different oppressors) took
enlightenment away from our hearts and minds. I was
destined to bring our spiritual enlightenment back
to the masses of our people. Remember that spirituality,
regardless of your religion, comes back to cultura!
Eleven years in these dungeons have been a long
time. Without you and your love I cannot even think
of how I would have survived. It was your love and
spirituality.

Con amor,

Ramsey – Tezcatlipoca

"Only the strong survive."
http://www.freeramsey.com

Received via email from Irma L. Muñiz, 15 July 2005.

By Sonia Santana

The Texas Senate was presented a trojan horse bill in HB2465 last night, and they accepted it. Section 8 barely concealed in the belly of the bill would kill the open public process for vendor certification at the Sectretary of State.

The bill passes the Senate last night on a recorded vote of 31-0. HB2465, authored by Elections Committee Chairwoman Mary Denny (R-Flower Mound), had a carefully worded caption promoting public hearings conducted by the SOS, when in fact the bill does exactly the opposite in closing a process that should be open to the public.

Initially the House bill, was in fact only a requirement for a public hearing, after the examination process, to be conducted by the SOS. Public hearings are great; who would be opposed to a public hearing, right? That was exactly the point of Denny’s strategy. Write a nice little innocuously captioned bill and get all kinds of support for it including the ACLU-TX.

Why was it important for ACLU-TX to be on board supporting the bill? Well because the ACLU-TX and The Electronic Freedom Frontier Foundation (EFF) had sued the Secretary of State last year to open those secret vendor certification meetings, and they had won a temporary injunction in district court.

The Secretary of State and the Texas Attorney General contend that this appointed board of examiners is not subject to the Open Meetings Act because they aren’t a governmental body. District Court Judge Stephen Yelenosky reviewed
the documentation and recorded tapes of those secret meetings and disagreed with the Attorney General. Yelenosky ruled that these meetings were subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act.

When a substitute HB2465 was voted out of the Elections committee, it contained a poisoned pill in Section 8 that reads “An examination conducted or determination made under Chapter 122, Election Code, before or after the amendments made by this Act, was and continues to be not subject to Chapter 551, Government Code.”

That single word “not” in that section has now created a very bad law for Texas voters. Texas voters now do not have the right to substantive review and input into the examination process of our voting systems. You just have to trust the Secretary of State to do the right thing, a sort of “faith based” public policy.

I do encourage Texas voters to come to the next examination hearing. It will be the last time they get to view the examination meeting in an open and transparent process, the way it was supposed to be.

Texas voters may get an interim study for a verified paper ballot trail. That amendment was successfully added to the Senate version of the bill. Hopefully that will be acceptable to the author Mary Denny. [Stay tuned for the date.]

As a footnote Representative Eddie Rodriguez (D-Austin), authored House bill HB3383 that specifically wrote into our election code the right of the public to view this examination process. That bill was killed in committee by Representative Mary Denny.

Change of Data Sources Yields Anomalies

By Greg Moses

A Texas agency charged with taking over Civil Rights analysis has decided to stop basing its civilian workforce report on data collected by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Instead of basing its analysis on data collected for civil rights purposes, the Division of Civil Rights at the Texas Workforce Commission in its debut report this year used less precise figures reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

In the past, noted the report, the Texas Commission on Human Rights had compiled the civil rights report from data provided by the EEOC. As a result of the switch in data sources, the first table of the Texas Equal Employment Opportunity Report shows some civil rights anomalies.

For example, Caucasian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans collectively represented 128 percent of all Texas workers; and all three categories of race-ethnicity cited were under-represented in Administration jobs. While these anomalies are common in reports from the BLS, they make a poor basis for analyzing civil rights.

Since the civil rights report is supposed to compare state agency employment figures with civilian workforce numbers, the choice of BLS data as a baseline raises further questions about the “comparison charts” presented in the report.

Chart One for instance (not Table One) presents numbers on the employment of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Females in the Statewide Civilian Workforce. Numbers used in the chart for race and ethnicity are taken from the overlapping BLS categories.

Chart One in turn is compared to employment of protected classes in state agency employment. From attachments, it appears that state agency employment is calculated according to more rigorous EEOC standards, where protected classes do not overlap.

Throughout the report, numbers are presented in such isolation that it is difficult to scan for internal consistency or disparate impact. Why does no chart present a complete spectrum of protected classes including Asian Americans or Native Americans. Why do colorful graphs of employment rates not also show comparison bars for Anglos or Males? Why are women rarely considered as various races or ethnicities? Why are discussions, analyses, and footnotes so scarce?*

In the end, the reader wants to know, what purpose is this report intended to serve beyond simply complying with some law that says a report is to be issued? Do the laws themselves not have a civil rights context that can serve as the basis for stating the purposes, findings, and recommendations of this report?

Perfunctory is the word that would most charitably describe this report. Evasive is the word I would rather use. From start to finish, the reader gets the impression that no one has really set out to present the condition of equal employment opportunity in Texas in a way that the plain language of civil rights demands.

NOTES:

The Texas Equal Employment Opportunity Report:
http://www.tchr.state.tx.us/EEOrptsum205.pdf

The BLS distribution of employment report 2003:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/gp/pdf/gp97_complete.pdf

The EEO-1 Aggregate Report for 2002:
http://eeoc.gov/stats/jobpat/2002/state/48.html
[What a Civil Rights report looks like.]

First posted 3/27. *Paragraph revised 3/29 to include “disparate impact,” Asian Americans, and Native Americans.