Category: Uncategorized

Here’s a refreshing press release from the campaign trail in Texas–gm

Statement of U.S. Senate Democratic Nominee Barbara Ann Radnofsky:

The Ku Klux Klan has announced its intention to rally on immigration issues on August 5 in Amarillo at City Hall. I condemn the Klan’s message and history of hate and violence and terrorism. I condemn the Klan’s application of its hateful activities in the context of
immigration reform and its planned rally in Amarillo, a fine city with concerns including water and drought, with inadequate federal relief due to wasteful government spending and misplaced priorities.
I call on my opponent to also denounce the Klan.
I oppose the latest impossible immigration proposal by my opponent, the fourth in a series of expensive, unworkable proposals by our senior senator, who has voted against each of the Senate compromise
immigration solutions.

The “self deportation” immigration plan proposed by my opponent this past week relies on major waste of our tax dollars and an impossibility of human nature: She hopes people will self deport, return for years of stay in their home country, subjected like cattle to tagging and waiting an eternity for the U.S. President to
certify, after spending billions and billions of our tax dollars, that the U.S. borders are “secure” so the immigrants might then return. The Hutchison plan, which has no chance of passage, also seeks to privatize our immigration and security in a vastly
expensive and unworkable series of private centers built at U.S. government expense by private corporations in foreign lands. They will require massive U.S. funded security.

It’s a hugely expensive process which will waste our taxpayer dollars even more than the waste we’ve seen to date, while creating ill will and easy targets in foreign lands.

The solution: economic improvement on both sides of the border and a comprehensive strategy encouraging fair trade, a workable registration system which includes an arduous path to citizenship, and integrated homeland security with U.S. personnel running our sea
ports, strengthening post-graduate requirements at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy to include port service obligations.

A video press release on this issue is now posted at
http://www.radnofskyvideo.com

PRESS RELEASE (Aug. 1, 2005)
Pastors for Peace announced a victory today when its16th caravan
crossed the International Bridge from Reynosa, MX into Hidalgo, TX
after returning from Cuba. But there is still no word about release of
the computers seized from the caravan’s cargo last week.

link to press release / see also July 22 report from Democracy Now

Kronberg Accounts for Impasse; TSTA Says New Bill not New; Gov. to Un-Veto

The new legislative analysis by Harvey
Kronberg being aired on News 8 Austin finally gets down to the bottom
line that motivates Texas dysfunction today. No, it’s not the
finer contours of personality among the top three patriarchs of Texas:
Perry, Dewhurst, & Craddick. This time, Kronberg argues that material power relations between school
districts and legislators must be differentiated–with a bloc of
legislators from rural districts deferring to their superintendents,
while another bloc would prefer to micromanage. This helps us to
understand the impasse in terms of different visions of state policy.

But also, Kronberg names "IT" as the problem–Income Tax. So long
as "IT" is off the table, there is no way to fund property tax
cuts. Yet property tax cuts have become the veritable (for
PinkDome readers that’s the fucking) bottom line. And this helps
us to understand the absolute contradiction between solutions that cost
more money and tax plans that produce less.

This kind of analysis we like. A scan of Kronberg’s news clips from
Sunday includes a Washington Times article about the latest ‘growing
gap’ in USA incomes, with 80 percent of working Americans getting thin
retreads on their old annual incomes while their bosses cruise in the
passing lanes on fat, new skid-proof treads.

Not only is an income tax needed, but a progressive income tax, one
that would return to the children of workers in the form of education
the excess profits being skimmed from the paychecks of their parents by
the bosses of Texas.

Such is the material basis of a civil rights outlook for education in Texas.

Unfortunately, according to the Texas State Teachers Association the so-called ‘new and improved’ Senate Bill for education is neither,
which leaves us with the same old problems and no new solutions.
Maybe that’s why the Governor is going to un-veto the old education
bill, just sign the damn thing into law, and be done with it.

Like many classic civil rights issues, this one appears headed back to
the courthouse for insight and guidance. We’ll hope for the best.

Posted below with unique URL.

“John Miller at the AP has reported that the Idaho Department of Corrections will move inmates to the GEO Group’s Val Verde Correctional Facility and Jail in Del Rio, Texas,” writes Bob Libal at the texasprisonbidness blog. Go there. Read that.