carl parkerisms

Education in Texas

2011-12-13T15:35:00.001-06:00

Both a pleasurable and informative experience for me as chairman of the Texas Senate Education Committee was serving as one of Texas’ representatives in the Southern Regional Educational Board. This board was created several years ago in an effort to try to bring southern states into the 20th Century and catch up with the rest of the United States in educating our children. There are 16 states, mostly southern, with 2 border states of Maryland and Delaware. This organization, of all of the organizations I had an opportunity to participate in while a member of the Texas Senate, was the most productive in producing ideas and studies of education. I had the privilege of chairing the legislative branch of the SREB and, as a result, still receive publications produced by them.

In perusing the most recent publication, I learned some very cogent facts about our state in comparison to many others. I have often opined we should all appreciate Mississippi because it keeps Texas from being dead last in many statistics, particularly related to education. The tables presented in the most recent publication of the SREB bear out this unfortunate fact in some respects. Many of the statistical analyses contained in the report are worth passing on to Texans, particularly, if they are concerned about education.

The most cogent facts presented in the report deal with population change and the status of educational funding and the impact of education on earnings--facts which might be helpful to parents as they are talking to their children about the desirability of getting a college degree. Statistical analysis by the SREB shows a professional degree on the average is worth $128,600 a year; doctoral degree, $400,000; a master degree, $74,200; a bachelor degree, $58,800; an associate degree, $41,500; and any college degree, $38,600. High school graduation, on average, is worth $32,800. Less than a high school education is worth approximately $19,000 in earning per year. This makes a good argument for the value of a good education. While the chart shows the value to the person receiving the education, there is an equal and corresponding value to the community in which the college graduate lives and works. The taxes he or she will pay alone for the enhanced annual salary is well worth the investment made by taxpayers in helping that person be educated.

Unfortunately, the bad news in the report is Texas is second from the bottom in the number of its public school students who finish. Were it not for Mississippi, we would be dead last. We also are losing the race for students entering college seeking a bachelor or graduate degree. North Carolina leads with 91% of their students seeking such degrees, while Texas lags behind all other states and beats only Mississippi again by 74%.

Although Texas is in the middle with increased funding for higher education, the statistical analysis does not divide the amount of taxpayer money put into higher education--rather, it combines appropriated tax money along with increased tuition.

The analysis concerning various populations of White, Black, Hispanic and Other indicates the projection for 2019 that Hispanic students will rise from 54% of the student population to 62% while White students decrease from 42% of the student population to 32%.

I have often said one of the toughest things about being an advocate for quality education is explaining to taxpayers why it is in their best interest to educate someone else’s child. A review of any statistical analysis comparing all states on the value of education can clearly demonstrate that an educated populace, including an educated workforce, brings great value to the community–not only in taxes paid, but simply social value to the community. This seems to be a cogent fact forgotten by too many members of our Legislature.

If Texas is to glean anything from this SREB report, it is that our leaders need to prepare for the contingencies of the future. Texas already employs more minimum wage workers than any other state in the Union. If we are to be a growing and vibrant state with a growing and vibrant economy, it is absolutely imperative that we prepare future generations with the skills and knowledge necessary to compete in the modern world. It is in every Texan’s interest to make it easier, not harder, for young people to get more and more education. Failure to do so will end up costing Texas in the long run.

We have met the enemy...

2011-10-18T12:00:00.000-05:00

One of the most memorable phrases gleaned from the satirical comic strip “Pogo” was, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.” Unfortunately, today it seems too many Americans have taken the saying too seriously. From clips on TV and statements of leadership, particularly from the Tea Party group, it seems some Americans view our national government as a foreign power which somehow has invaded us. Those who incessantly attack our national government do major damage to our system.

Only a short history lesson can demonstrate why our government contains greater benefits than pitfalls and greater opportunities than drawbacks to those of us with American citizenship. Our federal government has been the major catalyst in the greatest surges of prosperity in America.

As we emerged from the first Great Depression of 1929, the government put together the Jobs Program which included the Civil Conservation Corps. Many of us still wonder at the magnitude and beauty of the national parks throughout the United States. Many of those parks were built using CCC labor while providing jobs which enabled many families in America to survive the rigors of the Great Depression.

In all probability, one of the greatest advancements for the middle class and America as a whole was the GI Bill. Fashioned as we emerged from the Great War, Americans invested at a time when our national debt was at an all-time high. We invested in educating those who had served us and given of their time in the Great War. While it benefited veterans, it benefited America far more. It is a prime example of how government investment in a time of need can move us forward as it did in this instance. It moved us forward in education, innovation, investment, entrepreneurism and prosperity. America has enjoyed no greater surge forward than we did at the time we invested in making higher education affordable for a huge segment of our society–not just the rich and privileged.

The next gigantic investment in America which holds us in great stead today, without which we would be one of the poorest nations on earth, is the interstate highway system. Proposed and pushed by General Dwight Eisenhower during his presidency, we invested billions in creating a transportation system which assured the future of much of our commerce, but also it is an example of how government can in fact be the stimulus to create jobs. What advocate of making America’s national government insignificant would look back and wish for insignificance in our government’s role in creating the interstate highway system which serves us so well today?

Here’s another example: Back in the ‘60s the anti-science, know-nothing, do-nothing conservatives in America considered our 35th president’s aim of putting a man on the moon to simply be a pipe dream. However, the vision of John Kennedy and the Space Program, underwritten by our government, has resulted in numerous inventions that serve us in the form of business opportunities, human comfort and entertainment.

The plethora of patents and scientific advancements directly attributable to the quest to put a man on the moon is unmatched in any nation’s history. Advances in medicine, communication, business technology and on and on would not have been possible without our government’s investment. Had some of the naysayers in politics today been in control at that time they would have opted for a greater balanced budget and lower taxes instead of our quest to explore space.

Governor Perry, who belittles the effort of government to create jobs, conveniently overlooks the fact that a significant portion of the job growth in Texas, upon which he bases his quest to lead our nation, was fueled by government jobs.

Never in the history of our country is there a greater need for America to do what is necessary to make an investment–yes, even with borrowed money–in our crumbling infrastructure such as buildings, bridges, highways and public school buildings. We also desperately need to invest in giving the next generation access to a reasonably priced cost of higher education, training them for the kinds of jobs which will make America competitive and return manufacturing back to the United States instead of India and China.

At a time when we have gone from number one in the training of needed skills to number sixteen in the world, it is absolutely the wrong time to heed the “no tax at any price” voices. It is the time to invest in order to lift ourselves by our bootstraps out of the doldrums of an economy devastated by two wars on credit and an insane desire to have wealth prevail over the needs of ordinary citizens.

Whatever Happened to Humans?

2011-10-18T09:03:00.000-05:00

I am absolutely convinced two of the main contributors to the unemployment currently plaguing our nation are Republicans and machines. Whatever happened to pleasant receptionists who used to answer the phone and were able to explain to you whether or not their company, or anyone around, could be of assistance to you? I particularly dislike the machine which has replaced the receptionist wherein they ask you to spell the name of the person to whom you want to talk. First of all, you have to know a person. Second of all, you have to know how to spell his or her name.

If I’d had all of that information, I would have probably had their number to begin with and wouldn’t have to deal with such a creature who required all this information.

It seems to me that if machines have a purpose it should be to keep people from having to go to a lot of trouble in the business world when they seek to purchase goods or services from someone. 'Seems to me that more and more machines, particularly answering devices, are doing just the opposite. Trying to find the proper place for a simple repair is a good example.

Recently, I had need to inquire about a repair to one of my shop tools--a floor model Craftsman drill press. After finding no local number for repairs or service, I in desperation dialed the 1-800 number. After several rings I received a recording. “You have reached the Sears store in Port Arthur, Texas. However, if you are calling about automotive, appliances...” and about ten other choices, push so and so. None of the ten choices exactly fitted my needs, so I pushed zero. I was greeted by another machine which obviously did not understand plain English. I repeated my request and was promptly transferred to yet another machine containing a list, none of which fit my problem. I had yet ten more choices and the final choice on this one was for a service person. I gleefully pushed that button and was treated to about five minutes of elevator music. Eventually, some exotic sounding person-- who had neither an American-variety accent nor fluency in English-- answered. He asked if he could be of service or help, which I understood on the second try, so I informed him I was seeking repairs for a floor model drill press. He replied, “A grill?” No, I said, a drill. He obviously didn’t understand what a drill was.

I explained to him patiently I was looking for repairs to a machine which sat on the floor and was used to bore holes. He requested that I wait just a moment, whereupon I was treated to about seven minutes of elevator music. When he finally came back on the line, he had mastered the task of saying drill press. I told him yes, that’s what I wanted. Repairs to my drill press. He treated me to more music while I held once again. Finally, the fellow whom I decided was Sinbad the exotic Indian phone voice returned with, “What is your area code?” I gave it and after about another five minutes of waiting and more music he returned once again with a phone number and address for the Sears service center in Orange, Texas.

Gleefully, I called the new number and was rewarded with an answer from a voice with a decidedly Texas accent. The Texas accent knew what a drill was right away. I asked him if they could fix it. “Nope,” he says, “We’ll have to ship it off.” “How long will that take?” I asked.

“Two weeks,” he said.

I send my healthy young runner to pick up my floor model drill press and take it to the service center in Orange only to learn they do not ship off floor model drill presses, only table model drill presses. Nonetheless, I am told we can take it to a service center in Beaumont.

The following day I send my in-need-of-repair floor model drill press to the Sears center in Beaumont only to learn they do not accept items for repair. They will send a service man out to the location where the drill press is and will repair it there. “Fine, come on out,” I say. “Well, you can have an appointment 22 days from now,” he said. I asked, “Will you let me know somehow?” He says, “Well, you should call the service center.”

At first I considered seriously just throwing my hands up and start shopping for a new floor model drill press, but then I think, what sort of adventure awaits me when I start trying to make a phone call concerning a scheduled appointment of a service person to my home? I can hardly wait to find out! Perhaps it will provide enough material for another article. Stand by.

The Forgotten Amendment

2011-09-20T08:54:00.002-05:00

The Tea Party Movement seems to have forgotten precious guarantees of our United States Constitution or may purposely be ignoring it. Tea Party members, who claim to be great patriots, are endorsing almost without exception the right-wing Republican candidates who seem to be hell-bent on destroying rights guaranteed to American citizens under the Seventh Amendment. The Seventh Amendment reads as follows: “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right to trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

While much of the dissatisfaction of colonial Americans arose from the unfairness of taxes unilaterally leveled by the king, those onerous taxes were made worse by the fact they would be enforced in a court of admiralty which leveled judgments on citizens without the benefit of a jury. John Adams rightly and vigorously complained of the practice. John Adams once said, “We shall confine ourselves, however, chiefly to the act of Parliament, commonly called the Stamp Act, by which a very burdensome, and, in our opinion, unconstitutional tax, is be laid upon us all; and we subjected to numerous and enormous penalties, to be prosecuted, sued for, and recovered, at the option of an informer, in a court of admiralty, without a jury.”

Tea Party candidates continue, seemingly, to embrace right-wingers who, in the name of tort reform, appear dedicated to wiping out or disabling any right to trial by jury in the United States. The tort reform effort is not based on fairness but simply on money, and in some cases so-called efficiency.

If one reviews the tort reform program outlined by the various tort reform organizations for the last legislative session, it quickly becomes apparent the bulk of their program is to do away with, avoid, or hamper the jury system in Texas.

Changes in the Worker Compensation Law in Texas have made it almost impossible for an injured worker to be represented by counsel and to obtain a jury finding on the extent or value of his or her injury. Our Republican Supreme Court and Republican majorities in the House and Senate have embraced arbitration as an inexpensive way to resolve legal disputes. Arbitration is generally billed as an agreement by which parties agree to resolve their differences with an impartial arbitrator whose decision is final and binding and not appeal able to any court. The problem is that once one examines arbitration in reality, it is either one of those “small print” items slipped into a consumer’s contract or part of an employment agreement whereby the choice of arbitration is one-sided: Agree to it, or seek employment elsewhere. Far too many arbitrators are beholden to large corporations and render favorable decisions in their favor or face the prospect of not being used as arbitrators in the future.

Another device tort reformers use to short-circuit being tried by a jury of one’s peers is the so called multi-district litigation provision. This device allows a hand-picked judge to designate one judge, perhaps far from one’s home, to decide all cases of a similar nature. This device has been successfully used against victims of asbestosis. Designating one or two special courts far from one’s home where the trial must be held causes even people at the point of death with this dread disease to have their case disappear into the black hole of legal cases. Oftentimes it ends up the case is not tried until the original litigant is dead, buried and his will probated.

I’m certain this is not what our founding fathers had in mind when including the right of trial by jury in our national Constitution. Adams commented on this type of legal device as well, saying, “So it is also in the trial of causes between party and party. No man’s property or liberty can be taken from him till twelve men in his neighborhood have said upon oath, that by laws of his own making it ought to be taken away, that is, that the facts are such as to fall within such laws.”

Dressing up in period costumes with three-cornered hats, waving the flag and condemning taxes does not a patriot make. The devices mentioned above to avoid jury trials were sold to the American people and Texans by selling the notion that ordinary citizens do not have sense enough to judge their peers. Most tort reform measures represent a basic mistrust of twelve citizens who sit in judgment of the evidence and decide the facts of civil cases. The mistrust of ordinary citizens is amplified by the fact that the past majority of cases heard by the Texas Supreme Court involving the question of a jury finding have been reversed by the nine Republican members.

Our nine Supreme Court justices, who never saw or heard a witness in a case, seem to believe their judgment should prevail over the twelve citizens who did. Out of 30 cases heard by the Supreme Court in recent times involving the question of an adequate jury finding of fact, approximately 22 have been reversed by the Court.

Obviously, our Supreme Court does not agree with James Madison who once said, “...trial by jury in a civil case is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature.” Nor does it comport well with Thomas Jefferson who said civil jury trials are, “...the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

Remembering

2011-09-20T08:32:00.000-05:00

Oscar Mauzy, former state senator and former Supreme Court justice, had a large sign hanging on the wall of his senate office. It read, “Forgive and Remember.” Unfortunately, too many voters have not adopted the part about remembering. It is my belief too many voters do not necessarily forgive--they simply forget.

The current rush and seeming obsession with trying to reign in deficit spending all of a sudden in America clearly demonstrates that too many Americans who have vivid recollections of the Great Depression are no longer with us. Or, American leaders have collectively forgotten the lessons we should have learned at that time.

My mother, who is 96 years of age, recalls vividly how hard times were when many Americans literally did not have any idea where their next meal, or that of their families, would come from. She recalls, with some emotion, the hopelessness of many Americans during that downturn.

The lessons which apparently have been collectively forgotten by our leadership are that Roosevelt’s New Deal, with massive spending and a dedication to rebuild much of America’s infrastructure, began to pull us from the depths of America’s worst depression. The change in economics of having the government inject money into the economy was working. Unfortunately, Roosevelt, much like Obama, yielded to the hue and cry from the right-wing to prematurely start dealing with the so-called looming deficit. When Roosevelt’s focus switched from simply creating jobs by massive infusions of money, the road to recovery took a sharp downturn and led to a measurable setback in the recovery.

Currently, Pulitzer prize-winning economists and other experts on the world economy correctly advise us that cutbacks desired by the Tea Party in Congress are calculated not to create jobs but to create a reversal of a slow recovery from a recession. There is living proof that these economists are right. England has already tried austerity to relieve the joblessness situation in and it is apparently not working. Germany, on the other hand, has pretty much ignored the deficit, continued to invest in public spending and revival of its infrastructure; its economy seems to be leaping forward in the effort to recover for the vast majority of citizens of Germany.

We continue to be warned by experts that the premature dedication to austerity in America will short circuit our previous efforts to stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, the folks who uttered not a word while George W. Bush gave tax breaks to oil companies and the mega-rich, and spent like a drunken sailors on two unnecessary wars, are now trying to convince America that the neediest Americans need to double their sacrificial efforts to save the country from future ruin.

Politics in many ways is a game of self-fulfilling prophecies. Republican leadership in America vowed the election of Barack Obama would bring disaster and ruin to America. Their entire effort has not been aimed at making America a greater nation but at guaranteeing the Obama administration will be a total failure.

Our state Republican leadership, beginning with Governor Perry, has been employing much of the same tactic to maintain control in our state. Doesn’t it seem suspicious that in an election year our State Board of Education, controlled by our governor, relaxed the standardized test grading procedures so the vast majority of Texas schools appeared to have surged forward in the field of excellence?

The Coming Year: Bring on the Politics

2011-08-05T08:51:00.000-05:00

After years of watching elections, contested elections and related matters, I am absolutely convinced many of us are born with an extra political gene. We are political junkies and enjoy watching all of the machinations of those seeking public office. The coming year ought to be a real doozie for those of us with this kind of political DNA. Unfortunately, most of the action will be among the Republicans.

The retirement of Kay Bailey Hutchinson from the Senate has produced a virtual rodeo of related candidacy announcements among Republican officeholders, with the biggest hat finally thrown into the ring by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Initially, half a dozen Republicans announced they would seek the vacant Senate seat, including a former Secretary of State and two members of the Texas Railroad Commission. Since that time, a fellow named Ted Cruz also has chimed in and intends to try to parlay the combination of being Hispanic and a very conservative Republican into winning Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s slot. Two of the other candidates, both named Williams, having taken a look at the district congressional seats carved out by the recent Legislature, have decided to seek the same seat just outside Fort Worth. That should make for an interesting contest with two people of the same name seeking the same job.

Now that Dewhurst has announced he's running for the U.S. Senate , the race is on for Lt. Governor. Three statewide incumbents are already casting eyes on that slot. Jerry Patterson, an ex-marine fighter pilot, who occupies the office of Land Commissioner of Texas, has announced for the office already. Patterson is a darling of the gun lobby, very outspoken, has established connections with Veteran groups, and is flamboyant even in his method of transportation. Patterson barnstorms the state campaigning in an antique Steersman aircraft...the kind of aircraft most commonly used for crop dusting.

Another candidate is Susan Combs, State Comptroller. This is an office well suited for developing business contacts and good connections with big-moneyed folks well known for funding political campaigns. The State Comptroller makes critical decisions involving millions and millions of dollars every day, and many of these decisions have a direct impact on how well your business runs. Combs is a fairly well-known officeholder having occupied the Agriculture Commissioner seat before the one she now holds. Combs has the reputation for being a straight shooter and competent in the management of her office. Combs’ background is in farming and ranching, she is well known as a “no nonsense” person, and en route to the run for Lt Gov she has gone from the Legislature to the Agriculture Commissioner’s office to State Comptroller.

The third is known as a “good ole’ boy” from East Texas. Todd Staples came to the Senate defeating David Fisher, who appeared to be the favorite at the time--a relative of well known and revered East Texas federal judge, Joe Fisher. Staples was pretty soon adopted as a darling of conservative Republicans and blessed by some of the state leadership as a future statewide officeholder. When Combs chose to leave the Agriculture Commission office, Staples won the seat handily.

At this point there is only speculation about whether or not Rick Perry will in fact launch a campaign for President of the United States, or will be successful in an effort to be drafted as the number two person on the Republican presidential team. In any event, there is much speculation about what impact his decision will have on overall politics in Texas.

So far the only Democratic contender seriously mentioned for any of the office is former General Ricardo Sanchez of South Texas who made his announcement back in May that he would seek the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

Add up all of the above factors--and then add to it the consideration that President Obama will be seeking re-election--and what you end up with is a political junky’s dream trifecta...the equivalent of prime seats to the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the World Championship of Soccer. Indeed, let the games begin.

Why Perry Won't Run for President

2011-07-19T14:11:00.000-05:00

photo by: Bob Daemmrich

It is always risky to make predictions. Even sports analysts, who are great prognosticators, are very reluctant to predict the winner of the National Football League or the World Series. Conventional wisdom says if you claim to be an expert in something and make a wrong prediction, it somehow diminishes your credibility. Nonetheless, here goes as far as our governor’s presidential ambitions.

Having been a watcher of Rick Perry’s career for many years, and having served with him in the Legislature, I believe that much like the leopard, his spots do not change. First of all, Perry is an opportunist; and a very lucky one at that. Perry got elected as a Democrat and switched to the Republican Party to run for Agriculture Commission after having advocated the end of that office because the incumbent had the audacity to insist that farmers reveal to farm workers what poisons they were spraying on them in the fields.

Perry got elected Lt. Governor with the assistance of the Bush family in a year when there was a Republican tsunami. Mom and Pop Bush got on television and told Texas that Rick Perry was like a son to them and ought to be elected. He narrowly outdistanced State Comptroller Sharp who had reaped national claim in office as an excellent public servant.

Perry walked into the office of Governor by default when George Bush went to be president of the United States. Ironically enough, in a five-person race, in which the Bush family switched their loyalties and supported Kaye Bailey Hutchinson, Perry managed to get elected Governor of this state with 38% of voters voting for him and 62% voting for someone else. Nonetheless, Perry took it as a mandate and took a sharp turn to the right, consolidating the far-right base and demanding strict loyalty of all of his appointees, which by the most recent election was 100% of the state appointments. The bottom line is that while Perry has been praised for his political acumen, most of it has been luck and timing.

First of all, my prediction is based on the fact, and my belief, that Perry has never intended to run for President. Perry loves the attention and once again seeks the opportunity for taking advantage of perfect timing. Perry is safely in the office of Governor and can take advantage of the taxpayers of the state paying for much of his travel expense; and thanks to the most recent session of the Legislature, can do so without public scrutiny.

Perry continues his move to the far right and while making speeches all over the country, has endeared himself as the “darling” of the Tea Party group and religious right-wingers.

This is part of the reason I truly believe he will not have the guts to become an official candidate for president and endure the scrutiny that will bring. As an example, while touting his ability to fight with the federal government on such things as the environment, time has proven him wrong -- there IS, in fact, global warming and Texas’ record of producing jobs at the expense of a healthy climate is becoming more and more apparent. Perry brags about the state leading the nation in job creation but does not mention the other areas in which Texas leads the nation. These include such things as being near the top in bad statistics -- such as health for children, lack of high school graduates, and use of the death penalty.

Perry appears to be owned by the super rich in Texas. In most all cases they demand legislative action benefiting their own personal interests while ignoring the vast majority of Texas’ citizens.

Perry’s treatment of Hispanic and other minority groups will bring more focus and will come to light more if and when he is seriously considered as a real presidential candidate. A good indicator is the recent foray into San Antonio where Perry spoke to a conservative group of Hispanics who basically sat on their hands instead of giving him the usual standing ovation when he finished his speech.

Most of all his ideological bias will be revealed as intolerant, bigoted and self-serving. A glimpse into the real Rick Perry is revealed by his recent attempt to present himself as a major disciple of Christ. In politics it is true as elsewhere that birds of a feather flock together. Perry has decided to use religion to shore up his image in politics by calling for a national prayer day for Christians only. The American Family Association with whom he has joined up in this effort is a well known intolerant group which ignores the “love they neighbor” part of the Bible and seems to hate more than it loves. This group and Perry have made it clear the August 6th prayer meeting is for Christians only.

Perry's alignment with the American Family Association also hitches him to the pastor helping to lead the charge -- John Hagee. John Hagee was disclaimed by John McCain when Hagee tried to endorse McCain during the 2008 election. Hagee has asserted the Catholic Church is the “great whore.” He also said God sent Adolph Hitler to be a “hunter of Jews.”

Even worse is Perry’s dismantling of education in Texas, running his own slush fund to give to his rich buddies -- without adequate oversight and no check on flagrant pandering -- instead of giving to consumers, all of which will soon catch up with him. I believe, however, Perry’s plan is to raise as much money as possible, while teasing the Republican right-wing that he may really become a candidate, amassing his own slush fund for politics and firmly establishing himself as the “darling” of the far right, hoping that whoever wins the Republican nomination will be almost duty-bound to select him for the number two slot on the Republican team.

You heard it here. Perry is not running for President. He is running for Vice-President.

The "RULE OR RUIN" Strategy

2011-07-02T12:07:00.000-05:00

Recently the Republican minority leader of the United States Senate was being interviewed concerning the crisis of the Middle East--specifically, the relationship between Israel and Hamas. He, McConnell, observed there would never be peace between Israel and Hamas because Hamas denied the existence of Israel, and its stated purpose is to destroy it.

Having heard this, it occurred to me that minority leader McConnell’s attitude toward Obama is much the same as Hamas’ attitude about Israel. At numerous public meetings, Republicans have avowed their stated purpose of opposing everything our president is for in hopes his presidency would fail. I wonder what’s happened to us in America. Once upon a time, after the election, everybody advocated putting aside partisanship and with hope to unite behind our president for the common good and for America. It was then called patriotism. Now, apparently, it’s all politics.

Sadly, too many Americans are buying into this “rule or ruin” strategy.

Picture yourself as the coach of a football team. Suppose you made a judgment about the person who should lead the team as the quarterback, and you discovered a minority of the players were disgruntled about your pick to lead the team. This disgruntled minority conspired to lay down on the job to score, and to do the best they could in a team effort to make your quarterback look bad. Would you keep these people on the team? Would you question their loyalty?

How can you be truly a loyal American while working to keep the leader of your nation from succeeding in his job to defend the country, to promote the common good and to bring back a shattered economy he had not caused but inherited?

Harry Truman truly believed any political leader should be a student of history. He reasoned that, given a set of circumstances, human beings pretty much react in the same manner faced with similar circumstances. On the eve of the Great Depression, Republican Herbert Hoover advocated balancing the budget, cutting back on spending--most of the same things Republicans advocate now as a way to overcome a sick economy and the drastic shortage of jobs. FDR on the other hand took the opportunity for America to use its credit card to help us climb out of the depression, and at the same time invested our borrowed money on the infrastructure which in turn created jobs.

Just here in Jefferson County there remain numerous reminders of FDR Programs which helped end the depression, and left us with a better community. The courthouse, for example, was built as a part of such a program--and also the sub-courthouse in Port Arthur, and Woodrow Wilson as well as Franklin school. Most of our basic national parks were put together by Roosevelt’s Conservation Corp.

Too, in our review of history, we should not forget how we got to where we are. In recent history, one of our most prosperous times when we enjoyed a surplus was under President Clinton, prior to the Bush tax cuts. The Bush tax cuts, which cost us trillions of dollars for the last 10 years, have apparently not provided jobs for middle-America.

A major cause of our current fiscal dilemma was brought about by the deregulation efforts of Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican who spent most of his career trying to help the banking industry, which now pays him a very handsome salary to do very little but consult. Gramm’s efforts at deregulation probably are directly connected and a probable proximate cause of bursting the housing bubble which in turn was the beginning of our economic collapse. Gramm, and others, expanded their efforts for “voodoo”-type accounting practices, deregulating and removing the watchdogs from Wall Street which caused ordinary working folks to lose millions on companies like Enron.

The same folks who applauded all of the above measures are now trying to convince us that, by simply trusting insurance companies, the cost of medical care will become affordable for us all--and we will all be taken care of.

I am also having a difficult time understanding the Republican strategy that spending cuts will somehow lead to more jobs. I thought a recent quote I read made lots of sense when one fellow observed that it is difficult to starve yourself to success.

Some people bemoan the fact that liberal policies of Democrats are simply an effort to redistribute the wealth. They seem to overlook the fact that for the last 10 years Republicans have done a great job of redistributing the wealth by moving most of it to the top wealthiest folks in our society.

Instead of creating jobs, all they have done is create huge fortunes that these folks are sitting on while whining about programs which will give the elderly some comfort in their old age and Medicare which will at least give us a safety net when we are old and ill.

Aren't these among the basic things you would expect a decent democratic country--both the majority and minority--to do for its citizens?

2011-06-18T07:09:00.000-05:00

Imagine, if you will, a business selling “thingamabobs.” It has been in business for several generations, owned by the same family. Recently, a new manager of the business has been selected. The business produces very reliable and well-made “thingamabobs,” and they sell at a lower rate per “thingamabob” than 90% of their competitors. The workforce of the business works at an hourly rate at or below the rest of their competitors, and sales are fairly good. The business then gets its annual report that due to increasing supply costs and lagging sales, in the coming year the company will not have enough money to pay its overhead, utilities, salaries or other necessary expenses to keep the business going.

Even though the business could easily slightly increase the cost of their product and still remain competitive, the board of directors, under the leadership of its recently appointed manager, decides this is not an option. No increase under any circumstances of their products. The board also, under its recent leadership, decides not to use any of the money in an emergency savings account which would take care of at least half of the shortfall of the company’s income. The board of directors makes a decision to stick with the same old price, no matter what the consequences; and, in order to accommodate the shortfall of income of the company, they layoff half the workforce.

As a shareholder in the above company, you would have the opportunity to vote your shares to retain the current management or seek new leadership, what would you do?

Unfortunately, the above scenario appears to be the course chosen to follow by our governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the House and our board of directors, the Texas Legislature.

We often hear from conservatives that government should be run like a business. I cannot imagine any owners of a business tolerating such a ridiculous course of action as described above. Yet, that is exactly what our Legislature, with the influence of the newly elected Tea Party candidates, has chosen to do.

Texas ranks in the bottom five of taxes per capita taken from its citizens. We rank at the very bottom in expenditures per capita on state government in Texas. Unfortunately, although we appear to be gaining jobs, they are jobs of the lowest pay in the nation.

We lead the United States in minimum wage jobs.

We started this session with over 10 billion dollars in a rainy day fund to be spent in a time of need; and if only our Legislature would look, there are at least 20 billion dollars in unjustified tax breaks and loop holes for rich folks who do not need or deserve them.

Rather than even explore tax reform or the relative option of seriously damaging the future of this state by cutting educational opportunity, our Legislature appears to want to sacrifice the future of this state on the altar of “no new taxes.”

One could easily argue that by doing little or nothing the owners of this large business known as Texas will have to pay the price for tolerating such inept management. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly true. It will be the children and grandchildren of the Texas shareholders who will pay the ultimate price in a future not much better than some third-world countries.

THE SEX LIFE OF A FLY

2011-06-10T15:47:00.001-05:00

Ask any freshman state representative and he will assure you being elected makes you much smarter overnight. I can assure you of this fact because of my personal experience. As I went to Austin in 1963 freshly elected, there was hardly any problem too knotty for me to solve, or any question I didn’t know the answer to or couldn't quickly find out. After 32 years in the state Legislature, I felt I got dumber each session.

The above may be somewhat facetious, but I am absolutely convinced of one cogent fact. The Texas Legislature is a poor place to attempt to run institutions of education.

The farsightedness of politicians was demonstrated in the early 1900's when several members of Congress proposed the patent office be closed. They argued everything worth inventing had already been invented, so why spend money keeping the patent office open. The fact is that since the time these forward-thinking politicians wanted to close the patent office, there have been more things invented than all things invented prior thereto.

Some of this same kind of mind set may be observed with our current governor who continues to meddle with our institutions of higher learning. Perry has appointed his cronies to all the Boards of Regents, but what is worse, they have been pushed, by the governor, to listen to recommendations of the Texas Policy Foundation which is a right-wing think tank which would exert even more political control over the University of Texas and Texas A&M.

Unfortunately, too many of Perry’s hand-picked regents have chosen to follow these wrong-headed moves and are rapidly destroying the efforts of the past several years to make higher education institutions in Texas world class. They carp about educational institutions doing research. They are proposing faculty members be compensated on the basis of how many students they have in their classes. They would, if they had their way, be rid of professors who spend more time doing research than actual time spent in the classroom.

Just how wrong-headed these so-called “know-it-alls” about education can be is demonstrated very poignantly by the story of research concerning the sex life of a fly. Unless quickly treated and stopped the screw worm flies would literally eat the flesh off of livestock, costing Texas’ farmers and ranchers millions and millions of dollars.

Through research scientists discovered that during the life span of a screw worm fly, which was relatively short, the female screw worm fly would only breed once during her life span.

As a result of the research which had been the object of politicians’ scorn, a program was created in an old Air Force hangar down in the Valley. Trays and trays of freshly ground beef were provided, along with screw worm flies who would plant their eggs into the fresh ground meat which would eventually produce thousands of larvae. As these larvae matured into pupa, they were gathered and radiated which caused them to produce sterile screw worm flies.

Following this process, millions and millions of sterile screw worm flies were released via airplanes throughout the area of Texas where screw worms existed. The sterile, male flies bred with the native wild screw worm flies, which caused them to lay their eggs which would never hatch. The program resulted in complete eradication of screw worm flies in Texas, saving untold millions of dollars for ranchers and livestock producers in Texas.

Imagine the results from just this one little vignette concerning research thought to be silly by non-visionary politicians. Imagine what politicians may cost future generations of Texas if we allow them to impose their political will over the scholars and researchers of today. It’s as serious as the sex life of a tiny screw worm fly--and the consequences can be as costly as it gets.

THE RULE OF 100 [OR IS IT A RULE?]

2011-06-04T15:20:00.000-05:00

One of the beautiful things about our system of government is that our Constitution was designed not only to limit the power of government and protect the people from runaway government, but it was also designed with checks and balances to protect the minority of the moment against the majority of the moment.

Unfortunately, all of this can be cancelled and held for naught in the Texas Legislature, at least in the House, by the Rule of 100. This means if you can muster 100 votes in the Texas House you can do anything you want to.

Even though the direction of most bills strongly favored by the majority in a legislative body will pass mostly unscathed, occasionally a little ray of light seeps in and some significant changes can be made as a result of honest debate. Even though legislation favored by the leadership is much like a freight train on a downhill track, it can be slowed occasionally by the right kind of flag man. This can only happen if all the members of the Legislature, or a particular body considering the bill, are fully informed and the public is given a chance in open session to listen to the debate. Even if the minority cannot alter the course of the legislation, the minority ought to have the opportunity to air its frustrations, objections and even perhaps occasionally a better idea.

A perfect example of a runaway majority occurred recently in the Texas House of Representatives. Governor Perry declared the Loser-Pay Bill an emergency. The leadership of the House took its 101 majority, suspended the rules and stifled the debate, allowing no amendments, no real public discussion of the merits or demerits of this measure. Had the public had the opportunity to listen to a full discussion of this measure, those who cared to pay attention would have learned several things.

First of all, the title of the bill itself is a lie. The bill is not a loser-pay bill. The bill is a provision for a plaintiff to be faced with the requirement of paying outrageous attorneys’ fees whereby the plaintiff who received a large judgment can be required to pay the losing side’s attorneys’ fees along with court costs. This legislation is not to reduce frivolous suits but to intimidate ordinary citizens into not availing themselves of the American jury system.

With all the talk of nonpartisan approaches and cooperative spirits working best in the legislative process, bipartisanship is out the window. The Republican Texas Senate and Republican House has shown that if the shoe pinches just a little, they will change the rules in midstream to accommodate their ideology. The Two-third Rule in the Senate has worked well to require collegiality and cooperation among members of the Senate for 70+ years. When Governor Perry declared "sanctuary" cities, picture ID for voters, tort reform or required medical procedures for women emergencies, the Republican Senate could not wait to dump the traditions of many years to accommodate the Republican agenda.

In the House, the Speaker, who decried the heavy-handed tactics of Tom DeLay via Tom Craddick, has tossed the rule book in the trash. The democratic process was bypassed because the Republican leadership became frustrated at Democrat’s insistence on following the rules of the House. On Mother’s Day weekend, House Representatives used the Rule of 100 to pass more “tort reform” which prohibited debate on amendments.

A truly honest loser-pay law would simply require the party against whom the jury found would pay the other side’s legal cost. What’s wrong with that? The answer is nothing, except that the rich, fat cat, tort reformers just didn’t want it; and they’re the ones who have given Republicans more money than any other group.

As an ordinary citizen there is little you can do about this situation this time. There is, however, and will be a time in a November soon to come when you can do something about it. These folks are counting on you having a short memory and a blind spot about where your interest is as opposed to folks who care mostly about money. Find out how your representative and senator voted on this.

Investment Tip

2011-05-21T22:50:00.000-05:00

Most of us want a good return on money we invest. Here is an inside tip. If you have $100,000 lying around you really don’t know what to do with, or can do no better than 1%-1.5% interest return on a CD, there’s a way you can do better.

Take your $100,000 and contribute it to the next election of Rick Perry, whatever that may be. Even though Perry has burned up the airways traveling around making every Republican political ‘do’ he vows he is not interested in leaving the wonderful job of Governor of Texas merely to be President of the United States.

I’ve come to the conclusion that betting on Perry has good odds. Here’s a guy who managed to end a three-way election with only 39% of the vote and proceeded to act as though he’d been elected by a landslide. While obsessing over federal involvement, describing Washington DC as the “Devil’s town” and making talk about Texas being better off not a member of the Union, Perry presided over a broken budget, giving little or no attention to the future of Texas, but balancing the budget with that dirty federal money, leaving us to the horrible $25-30 billion dollar deficit we now enjoy.

Perry gets by with blithely supporting tax breaks for mega-yachts, while teachers are being laid off by the hundreds of thousands and nursing homes fear they will have to close their doors, while senior citizens scratch for some other place to live.

Perry’s hypocrisy has not seemed to rub off or cause alarm with a majority of Texas’ voters. He appears to be more “Teflon” than Ronald Reagan and more tough-skinned than “Little” George Bush. While thousands of protestors swarmed the state Capitol grounds protesting draconian cuts in education, Perry continues to insist we shouldn’t touch the $12-billion or so that we are about to have in our Rainy Day Fund.

Even more hypocritical and disgusting is the fact our governor has the gall to maintain we should continue the Rick Perry slush fund, better known as the Emerging Technology Fund. Perry has, without any real oversight, given away $350 to $370 million to “fat cats” in Texas who really don’t need it. Supposedly, it is for the creation of high-tech jobs and does not constitute loans for startup businesses, but out-and-out gifts to multi-millionaires.

People do not seem to be bothered by the fact that most of the recipients of these tax dollars also gave Perry gifts ranging in the neighborhood of $100,000 each. At least two of the companies benefiting from Perry’s largesse have gone broke; it is almost impossible to determine whether or not any of the rest of them achieved their goal of promised jobs for Texans.

Even the Republican Legislature must be getting a little nervous now in that they are recommending better oversight and transparency of the Perry slush fund. In a state where school children will be without updated school books in the coming school year, it would seem to me to be a better investment to give $300 million to buy new school books rather than give $370 million to multimillionaires who claim they have the “keys to the kingdom” and will create very valuable, profit-making businesses in the future.

It is obvious that an investment in a Rick Perry Campaign can have an extremely high yield. Many of the $50,000 to $100,000 contributors to this last governor’s race have received several million from the Perry slush funds. Where else can you make a 100-1 return on your investment?

The next time one of your friends complains about the “welfare Cadillac”; namely, the poor person receiving welfare while driving an expensive car, you should point out to them the “welfare Cadillac” drivers are pikers. Under the Perry Plan, we are giving welfare --which should be delineated as Lear-jet welfare-- by giving millions to businessmen who don’t need it to begin with.

POWER AND MONEY

2011-05-17T18:52:00.000-05:00

For a long time I have maintained that tort reform is more about power and money than reforming anything. Once again my belief has been affirmed.

While Republicans claim the recent landslide victory in the Texas Legislature, leaving us with 101 Republicans and 49 Democrats, is a result of the outcry of the people for more conservative government, there may be another factor at work. A closer examination of the results of the last legislative election reveals that tort reform groups furnished at least a half-million dollars in each open legislative race in Texas, proving once again that money matters.

Just to show how much things have changed in the last few generations, in 1962 when I ran for the House of Representatives I spent almost $5,000 total on a primary race, a runoff and a general election. Since Tom DeLay’s plan has taken effect re-arranging Texas House districts, it is not unusual to see $500,000 or more spent on a House race.

Tort reform groups would have you believe this is strictly about doing away with silly, frivolous lawsuits which cost good business people thousands of dollars. Recently, the Texans for Lawsuit Reform have weighed in on a new issue. They are now criticizing reapportionment of the House districts.

Reapportionment, as you know, occurs every 10 years, except when Tom DeLay, alias “The Hammer,” persuaded the Republican leadership of Texas to depart from tradition and re-divide the districts in the middle of a 10-year cycle. Richard Trabulsi, chief lobbyist for Texans for Lawsuit Reform, is now scurrying around the Legislature asking that the districts be made more conservative. He is worried that because of certain growth populations, particularly among Hispanic communities, his conservative strength will be diluted.

Reform groups have long since done away with any opportunity for civil suit abuses and now it appears they are looking for ways to continue to justify their existence among the business community. It is also obvious the business community is open to this long-term plan as evidenced by the millions and millions of dollars they continue to pour into the coffers of these groups to let them buy votes in the next election.

There is also more recent evidence that conservatives, including our governor, continue to play fast and loose with the truth. You will certainly recall our governor suggesting that maybe it was time for Texas to secede from the union, and repeatedly make the claim that Texans send more money to Washington than they get back. A recent revelation by Rachel Maddow, who has a late-night political talk show, revealed research showing that Texans receive more money from the federal government than the amount all Texans pay in taxes.

Conservative members of the House continue to demonstrate their hypocrisy while attacking the federal government as though it was a foreign power. They gladly accepted the $13+ billion to balance the budget two years ago, and now are accepting $830+ million which is supposed to be spent on education--but likely will not. At the same time, our governor, who purportedly hates federal funding, is begging for money to fight wildfires in Texas.

This is a little strange in that the Texas Legislature, under his leadership, in its recent budget, just cut funding to rural fire departments.

On the subject of the budget, look for a showdown between the Senate and House. The Senate, in a moment of sanity, decided to dip once again into the rainy day fund to the tune of slightly over $3 billion, making the Senate budget on education $5.7 billion higher than the House version. The House is likely to win this battle in that it requires a two-thirds vote of the House in order to spend money from the rainy day fund. This simply is not likely to happen with the governor’s threatened veto and the new Tea Party-backed Republicans vowing “no new taxes” and “no use of the rainy day fund.”

It seems our present Legislature is totally dedicated to sacrifice the future of education in Texas on its vowed “no new taxes” even though Texans are taxed less than citizens of 48 other states.

WHY VOTE AGAINST YOUR OWN INTEREST?

2011-05-06T22:00:00.000-05:00

In recent elections, according to my memory, Republicans captured two countywide offices for the first time in Jefferson County. Some attribute the results of the recent election to racism. Others attribute it to the rise and activity of the Tea Party. While yet others contend the Democratic Party is out of step with most average, middle-class citizens in America in general, and Jefferson County in particular.

For thousands of years common people have been duped into acting politically against their own interests. For thousands of years people sold themselves basically into slavery through the belief that God appointed the kings to rule over everyone else. Eventually, common people realized there were more of them than there were royalty and, thus, democracy as a form of government rose to the forefront.

Democracy, however, depends on the common folks recognizing their own interests and acting in accordance. America is rapidly retreating because too many Middle Americans are being duped into voting against their own interests. The Republican Party has been extremely skilled in shaping political opinion.

Cases in point are the efforts made to persuade America that the Democratic Party stands for nothing more than homosexual marriage and raising your taxes. Close examination of either of those theorems will not hold water. Republicans in Congress are currently urging the defeat of our president’s health care proposals passed by Congress, and every criticism thereof begins with, “The American people want...”

The new political god in the United States, particularly with the recent Citizens United Supreme Court opinion, is money. The Supreme Court has decreed corporations can spend whatever amount of money they choose, with or without their shareholders’ permission or desire, on politics. What’s worse, the voters of this country do not have the right to know where the money’s coming from. If you belong to the union or are a shareholder at one of these refineries--and Shell Oil, British Petroleum, Chevron or others contribute shareholders’ money to bust unions--you are, therefore, supporting a political position adverse to you and your family.

Another way you can tell whether or not a party is aligned with your interests is to check the source of the money. The biggest contributor to the Republican Party in Texas is Bob Perry–14 million dollars donated in the last election cycle. Bob Perry is a big homebuilder who was the originator of the idea of preventing people from being able to sue developers for foisting off substandard or shoddy homes on families and denying them access to the courts. Aside from cutting taxes at the expense of school children, old folks and teachers, Perry and other Republicans continue their relentless assault on closing the doors of the courthouse to middle-class Texans.

The Republican solution to the mess we had following the hurricanes was simply to deny people the right to sue the insurance company which had messed up and denied folks their just claims for their destroyed homes.

Money obviously has begun to make a tremendous difference from Washington on down. Since 2001 the amount of money spent on lobbyists has grown by almost three times. In 2001 the amount spent on lobbyists lobbying Congress was slightly over 1 billion; today it is over 3 billion. The largest chunk of it is spent by insurance companies and health care providers. Do you really believe either of these entities is looking out for your interest?

While Republicans tout holding taxes down, they are mainly holding taxes down for the richest 1% of Americans. In the time of Bill Clinton, the richest Americans were paying approximately 30% of their income in taxes; today, they are paying approximately 16% and some are paying none. General Electric, the biggest corporation in the United States, paid none last year. How much did you pay?

We can’t say we were not warned. There is a cogent quote which goes, “A blind and ignorant resistance to every effort for the reforming of abuses and for the readjustment of society for modern, industrial conditions represents not true conservatism but incitement to the wildest radicalism.” This statement was made in 1909, not by some wild-eyed left-wing Democrat but by Theodore Roosevelt. Similar warnings were issued toward the latter part of their tenure of office as president of the United States by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, as well as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned society to be wary of the industrial military complex in the United States.

Billionaires continue to pay precious little to support the nation which has allowed them to become wealthy, while ordinary homeowners struggle to hang onto the shelter for their families. A recent comparison which is appropriate--with so many middle-class folks voting for the Republican line against their own interests--is the statement “There are too many mice voting to help the cats in hopes that some day they will become a cat.”

Endangering Our Future

2011-05-01T08:52:00.000-05:00

“When the leaders have no vision, the people will perish.” This quote appears to have connection with the current leadership of Texas. The seeming lack of vision from our current leaders does not bode well for the future of our state. Buoyed by right-wing think tanks and the Tea Party, our governor and Legislature seem intent on causing irreparable harm to Texas, education and other social services.

While giving no thought to examining an outmoded and antiquated system of taxation, our leaders would seek to correct our huge deficit on the backs of teachers, children, the ill and aged.

Often wrong, but seldom in doubt, Governor Rick Perry ignored the warning of former Comptroller Carolyn Keaton-Rylander about three sessions ago and claimed his property tax cut proposal would allow the state to reduce property taxes and at the same time fully fund education. Rylander, who has spent at least a decade estimating future tax revenues and comparing them to the needs of the state, was ignored by Perry. She claimed the Perry proposal would leave school funding about 5 billion short each year. Rylander was right.

In typical Perry fashion, the governor publicly predicted Rylander was simply an “alarmist” and the phenomenal growth he would promote in Texas would more than make up for the shortfall predicted by Rylander. It didn’t. Even worse, Perry and others continued to ignore the increasing debt raised by the inadequately funded state budget.

Hypocritically, our governor took more than a billion from stimulus money appropriated by Congress to help relieve and balance the state budget for 2009 and 2010. At the same time that federal funds were saving Perry’s and other conservatives’ bacon, Perry had the gall to suggest at a Tea Party rally that perhaps it was time for Texas to secede from the Union. It appears he didn’t recall that having been tried once before.

While taking billions from the feds to help cover up a huge deficit in Texas’ funding, at the same time, Perry, has refused to accept slightly over $800-million on the grounds there were too many strings attached to it and that the feds were trying to tell Texas what it had to do. Strangely enough, the big strings attached to the $800 plus millions was that it had been appropriated by Congress for the purpose of education; and if Texas accepted it, they had to spend it on education.

Even though the wealthy in Texas are among the lowest taxed in America, the Republicans prefer to balance the budget by firing teachers and cutting payments for people who are in nursing homes. They seem incapable of even taking a look at the possibility of changing the huge corporate giveaways such as the $23-million to the gas industry in the form of reduced taxes–even though the gas industry is turning out record profits. It also appears the approximate $300-million slush fund available for the governor to give his fat-cat friends in the name of business development is sacred. A recent attempt by Democrats in the Texas House failed better than 2:1 to take the slush fund of the governor and invest it in education for young people in this state.

Reminiscent of the 50's, right-wing politicians in our state are presuming to tell the universities how to run their business. In the 50's Texas lost some national scholars and educators on the grounds that some of them only taught 3-4 hours of class work but contributed internationally to tremendous research which proved of benefit to the future of this state. Know-nothing, brainless conservatives, for example, ridiculed the fact one of our universities was studying the sex life of the screw worm fly. By discovering the screw worm fly would breed only once during its life span, producing millions of sterile, male flies, screw worms in Texas have virtually been eradicated. The value of the millions of livestock saved by this ridiculed research can’t even be counted today. Now, right-wing “policy wonks,” pals of the governor, are suggesting we improve the efficiency of our colleges by curtailing research. These are closely akin to the know-nothing conservatives of the early 1900's who wanted then to shutdown the United States Patent Office on the grounds that almost everything worthwhile had already been invented.

The future of this state does not lie in giving away millions to fat-cat speculators and business people. The future of this state lies in developing the potential of great minds; particularly, those of our young people. We cannot fire enough teachers to replace $29-billion in our budget. Thousands of younger teachers who will be laid off will eventually find better jobs. They will be loathe to return to teaching. Fewer young people, particularly bright young people, will be more and more reluctant to enter teaching when it is not viewed as a job with a secure future. In a generation or so in the future, I am certain this state will be faced with a huge teacher shortage which will only be solved at a much greater price than keeping the teachers we have or the price of having our children taught by unqualified persons in the classrooms.

The distinguished professors who will be chased from Texas by wrongheaded thinking--that cannot see the value of research and development--will not be replaced or lured back to Texas for generations. Our colleges will pay the price of having lower standings nationally and internationally and in losing the good reputation we have gained in recent years. The price we pay today to maintain what quality of education we now possess will pale in comparison to the price of lack of vision for the future. Without doubt, it is a “pay me now, or pay me more later” situation.

Phony Reformers

2011-04-30T19:30:00.000-05:00

Testimony on bills pending in the current Texas legislative session make it abundantly clear once again that tort reform is not about reform of any kind. It’s about money and power. Talking heads and fat cat practitioners of shady deals would have you believe they only want to protect the world from frivolous lawsuits. But, they don’t give a twit about frivolous lawsuits. It’s the real lawsuits with merit they fear and would like to eradicate.

We have discussed one of these so-called reforms here in this blog. This bill would provide that if someone, through their own negligence, killed 2 or more people, or seriously injured 5 or more people, they could stop a lawsuit in its tracks simply by making an offer of settlement. The bill provides no standard of what an adequate offer of settlement would be and it punishes the would-be claimants by forcing them to pay the insurance company lawyers of the wrongdoers in the event a jury does not award at least as much as the defendants offered. They call it a provision whereby the loser pays.

The phony aspect of this is that the loser does not pay. Were the insurance company to offer a pittance and the plaintiff were to get a jury verdict for twice as much, there would be no penalty on the part of the defendant. A true lose or pay would simply provide that whoever lost the lawsuit had to pay the other side’s attorney. The so-called reform groups violently oppose such a provision.

During a recent hearing on many of these “reform” bills, an experienced attorney pointed out there are many abuses these groups seem to totally ignore. He raised the question of whether or not the defendants of a lawsuit could be guilty of abuse.

He told of a case where two people were seriously injured in an automobile accident. The defendants had violated several traffic laws, including running a red light and t-boning the defendants, injuring them probably for life. There were numerous witnesses to the accident and factually there was little or no doubt the defendants were guilty of negligence. Instead of in good faith admitting their negligence and negotiating and going to trial on the issue of damages, the defendants’ attorneys filed a motion for summary judgment. Although the defendants’ attorney knew or should have known there was no chance his motion would be granted, it required additional hours of work on the part of the claimants’ attorneys.

After it was turned down by the court and ruled without merit, there was no penalty on the part of the defendants who filed such a motion. Eventually, when the case reached the courthouse and was about to go before the jury, the defendants admitted negligence and went to trial only on the issue of damages. They did so because they knew that if they, in the presence of 12 jurors denied what was obviously a fact, it would look like they were dealing in bad faith, which they were.

From the reform groups I have named, there is absolutely no effort to curb this type practice in our courthouses. There is no effort to curtail outlandish legal fees associated with trials charged by defendants. Usually, they are charged by the huge Houston, Dallas and other metropolitan defense mega-firms.

Other evidence of the hypocrisy of the Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse and Texans for Lawsuit Reform arose in hearings concerning the Texas windstorm claims arising from the recent hurricanes which besieged the Texas coast. There is ample evidence that the executives of this insurance company-owned entity did not deal with victims of the hurricane in good faith, that in all likelihood kickbacks were made, favoritism was shown, nepotism was employed, incompetent adjusters hired and claims handled in a grossly negligent manner.

Despite all of this compelling evidence, the lawsuit reform groups do not propose reforming the insurance entity, but instead seek legislation to curtail legal fees of the very lawyers, who through their diligence and efforts, uncovered the unethical and sometime illegal conduct of these people who were depriving Texans oftentimes of their homes.

Once again this shows that these people do the bidding of their fat-cat masters and really care nothing about reforming or improving the court system in Texas. They are only interested in protecting the potential wrongdoers who are able to bankroll lobbyists and PR people in order to insulate themselves against being held accountable for their own wrongdoing.

Too many Texans seem to forget the tort system was created to bring some measure of relief to victims of negligence and bad conduct, but to deter that conduct by making an example of those who would injure and swindle their fellow citizens. Oftentimes, the only thing these people will understand is hitting them in the pocketbook in order to deter people from manufacturing shoddy houses or unlawfully taking away the quality of life from others.

Although there is no definitive study on the subject, it appears since the wave of measures being passed through several state legislatures insulating doctors and hospitals from meaningful lawsuits, that there are more and more injuries occurring during medical procedures. A recent study has pointed out that almost 1 in every 3 persons seeking medical treatment in a hospital is injured as a result of human error. The rate of infections during hospital stays is growing at an alarming rate as a result of failure to take ordinary care such as washing one’s hands before performing medical procedures.

Regulatory bodies such as the Board of Medical Examiners or attorney generals have proved effective as a measure to prevent harm due to human negligence. The best tried and true remedy to deter such conduct is holding the wrongdoers liable before a democratically selected jury of one’s peers.

It is obvious to some of us that having one’s fate decided in a democratic manner by free citizens sitting as a jury is certainly a scary proposition to some people.

...what emergency?

2011-04-19T11:23:00.000-05:00

There are some weird definitions emerging from the 82nd Legislative Session. But I could be wrong. I always thought an emergency was an urgent matter needing immediate attention. Failure to deal with an emergency, I thought, could lead to impending doom.

Either I or Governor Perry have the wrong view of what constitutes an emergency.

As our elected officials have been meeting in Austin to wrestle with knotty state problems, several matters have appeared to me to present themselves as true emergencies. First, the State’s $27-billion deficit, I believe, should rank at or near the top. And in the running for a state emergency could be the impending layoffs of tens of thousands of Texas teachers; also it might constitute an emergency that, next school year, Texas students will not have new books.

And at the top of my list are the many Texans who feel that health care for seniors or the shortage of over 650 state police officers also might have merited some early concern as possible emergencies.

Obviously, our governor knows something we don’t. You can tell by the things he has placed on the state’s agenda by declaring them emergencies and needing immediate action. Our governor’s number one emergency was directing the Legislature to immediately deal with requiring voters to show a picture id before casting a ballot. Well, Governor Perry surely has some terribly secret information on this voter fraud emergency because, from all the reports emanating from the Attorney General’s office, only one or two possible voter fraud cases have been filed as a result of a 2-3 year investigation by that office.

Second in rank of importance on our governor’s list was a bill to prevent Houston, and a few other cities, from being a sanctuary to illegal aliens--a law obviously and sorely needed by persons other than the officials of the city of Houston, who were unaware that their city was under attack, and who instead have been humanely furnishing a safe harbor from the warlords killing and pillaging just south of our borders.

Finally, I’m certain most women seeking an abortion did not realize how helpful it would be to have imposed on them the requirement that they watch a sonogram prior to having such a procedure. This is not one of those ‘jelly on the belly’ procedures--in early pregnancy, a sonogram requires a probe inserted in the vagina to take a picture. Surely doctors, not legislators, should be the judge of whether this is an emergency.

Defining frivolous lawsuits also has me confused. Based on reports from all the groups claiming to be about improving our legal system, frivolous lawsuits clogging our courts, if you can believe it, are at a crisis level and are the focus of trying to streamline the system by ridding us of these merit-less matters being filed in our courts. The Texas Association of Business, Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse and fellow travelers seem to believe that it is the frivolous lawsuits and their costs that is spiraling this country toward destruction of our entire free enterprise system.

In checking the definition, I discovered in The New College Dictionary that ‘frivolous’ is defined as “a matter characterized as lacking seriousness or sense.” The second definition is, “lacking any serious purpose.” These definitions are in part the source of my confusion. If so-called tort reform is aimed at frivolous lawsuits, I’m having trouble understanding why the so-called tort reform groups are backing bills to require a litigant Plaintiff, or a claimant for serious injuries, to pay the insurance company’s lawyer if they fail to get all the money they claim. And there's a bill by Senator Tommy Williams that would allow a company like British Petroleum, after killing more than two people, or injuring more than five, to simply shutdown a lawsuit and cutoff discovery by a mere offer of settlement. Also, it would require the family of a worker killed in such a negligently caused explosion to pay the company’s legal costs, if they fail to obtain more than the offer by the company...which is a concept somewhere beyond heinous, to my way of thinking.

This brings to mind the question that thus far has been unanswered: How can a lawsuit that is filed because more than two people were killed --or more than five were seriously injured-- be frivolous? The last time I checked, the lawsuit over the death of the breadwinner of a family was a serious matter. At least it is for the victims of wrongdoing.

I suppose whether or not a lawsuit is a frivolous lawsuit is determined sort of like the way one might determine whether or not surgery is major or minor. Clearly, our governor would define minor surgery as that surgery performed on someone else.

TAXES = FEES ?

2011-04-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Recently, I noticed an insurance ad on television in which the speaker asked, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?” He reasoned that it did.

This got me to thinking about the ever-present pledge of conservative members of the Legislature about no new taxes.

The question comes to my mind, if it’s not called a tax, is it a tax, even though it takes money out of taxpayers’ pockets?

You would never get our governor or his trusty followers to admit that raising fees is tantamount to imposing a tax. Representative Harvey Hildebran, Chairman of the Revenue and Tax Committee, seems to indicate in his remarks that at some point a fee could rise to the level of a tax. Hmmm.

In fact, the Legislature, in all probability, will raise the cost of your hunting and fishing license, your driver’s license, cost of your insurance and will increase the state charge on local criminal fines. The governor’s definition of tax seems to be – “It’s only a tax if you call it a tax.” The Legislature is not calling a tax on the additional fee for a stamp to hunt reptiles, nor college tuition, nor enhanced criminal fines. Those are just considered fees.

All of this has given me a bright idea about how we might improve the revenue income of the state.

What we simply need to do is enact an “earnings fee” whereby anyone earning money in Texas must pay a 1.5% fee on those earnings. Of course, it would not be a tax because we’d call it a fee. It only applies to those people who choose to earn money in Texas.

I’m certain those who differ with me will say it is still an income tax. Well, it’s no more a tax than calling a fee raising tuition on college students a fee and not a tax.

You can always find interesting things to write about simply by looking at the litany of bills introduced in the Legislature. For a session that has absolutely pledged in blood to enact no new taxes, there are probably over 250-300 bills introduced having to do with new taxes. Most of them, however, apply only to consumers, not to the filthy rich.

For example, there’s going to be a new tax on beer and chewing tobacco. Last time I checked, most millionaires in Texas don’t chew tobacco and are more inclined to drink champagne than beer. One of the more interesting proposals is to add a sales tax on oil field port-a-potties and certain other portable buildings connected with the oil patch.

I doubt seriously if there are many millionaires using port-a-potties, no matter where they might be.

Other things I find interesting in this session of great financial need for the state are proposals to exempt school art supplies and certain guns and ammunition used for hunting. Upon reflection, however, this probably makes sense as to the guns, but not to the art supplies.

At the rate we’re going, with all the fees being raised by these conservative Republicans, many Texans are likely to have to resort to hunting game to put food on their tables.

Exempting the art supplies for schools, however, does not make sense in that we are about to fire so many teachers--so what good will it do to have art supplies for the school and no teacher to show kids how to use them?

There are many other silly things in the tax code I’ve never been able to see the logic of.

Giving big oil companies huge tax breaks at a time they’re making record profits and classifying country clubs as agricultural endeavors to give them a bigger tax break than the average homeowner in Texas make no sense to me.

Then again, what do I know?

Schools Underfinanced

2011-04-06T22:22:00.001-05:00

Governor Rick Perry’s recent pronouncements about the budget for the State of Texas are beginning to make him sound more like Muammar Gaddafi. Perry recently announced that the impending possible 100,000 personnel layoffs from public education in Texas were the fault of local districts, not the state. All of this makes about as much sense as Gaddafi’s pronouncement that everybody in Libya loves him, while all the while he is having them bombed by jet fighter planes and shelled by artillery.

Governor Perry’s meamory is either flawed, or he is making a ridiculous attempt to rewrite history. Our governor would have us all believe the Texas crises over having a $27 billion deficit is all the fault of the United States government. He seems to have forgotten that all of this has occurred on his watch. Even though Texas has a pay-as-you go provision in its constitution to avoid deficit spending, refusing to recognize facts can still get our state in financial trouble.

If you will recall, in a great political ploy, Governor Perry pronounced he could reduce property taxes without increasing state taxes. To this end our governor came up with a plan to adopt a business tax which he claimed to be revenue neutral. This was in order to supposedly reduce our property taxes by a third. Our governor took an attitude of, “damn the deficits, full speed ahead” in spite of the fact several experts, including formal Comptroller Carolyn Keeton Rylander, who warned the state Legislature and Perry that his proposed new tax was inadequate to supply enough funding to get us through the first two-year biennium for public education. Perry insisted our Texas economy was so strong it would make up for the difference in spite of all the bad predictions.

Now, as it has turns out, Governor Perry, in all of his wisdom, was off in his calculations by approximately $5.5 billion. Still in typical fashion, which burnishes his conservative credentials, Governor Perry does not want to touch any of the state’s rainy day fund, but simply shove it off on us, local taxpayers, in the form of higher taxes on our homes and businesses.

It seems far-fetched the leader of our state could gain any credibility by maintaining he could take $11 billion from our state education system and pronounce resulting layoffs and cutbacks are not the part of the state. In fact, the conservative mantra of no new taxes obviously has not applied to “no new” local property taxes. The no new tax position is in large measure responsible for why we are where we are–in the hole.

When the Foundation School Program was adopted to fund our state system of public education in the 1940s, Texas furnished a little over 60% of the total funding for our system. Local school taxes were an afterthought to add to the quality in various local areas around the state. Currently, our state system of education is funded primarily by local property taxes and supplemented by one-third of state taxes or funds.

Believing that cuts alone can return Texas to a balanced budget and make up for a $27 billion dollar deficit is following the old conservative head in the sand technique. Ignore the problem, including widespread suffering which will occur because of cuts in education, health, law enforcement and research and everything will be alright and nobody will notice.

Some of us will notice. We will pay the price in poorly educated children, lagging behind in innovative business development and look more and more like a third-world country rather than a modern day developing state.

The current course set by our governor and conservative Republican leaders has us headed directly to a depression of our own within the borders of Texas. We are already beginning to experience unemployment akin to that at the national level. Adding 100,000 school employees, 60,000 employees of nursing homes and healthcare facilities to the roles of the unemployed, continuing to limp along without filling the 400 vacancies of our state police force and eradication God only knows how many state employee positions will cause unemployment the likes of which has not been seen in Texas since the 1920s.

Idealistic conservatives say everybody has to tighten their belt and share the pain. Unfortunately, people like our conservative governor, while living in a $10,000 a month rental unit, will share little of the pain of the average working family who may or may not have a roof over their head after the Republican recession or depression.

We need a serious antidote to people calling themselves Tea Partiers who think our best hope for the future lies in crippling government. I would suggest the strongest antidote to this non-thinking group would be a group called, “Intelligent, well-informed thinking voters.”

Schools

2011-03-16T18:49:00.000-05:00

The story goes that a preacher once asked a young lad if he wanted to go to heaven. The young man quickly replied, “No, sir.” The preacher then asked, “You don’t want to go to heaven when you die?” The young man replied, “Oh, of course, I want to go to heaven when I die. I thought you were getting up a trip now.”

Unfortunately, too many Texans, particularly in leadership roles, have the same idea about quality education. Almost everyone wants quality education; however, too many are unwilling to pay the price. Sadly, some who are not willing to pay the price are certified, card-carrying teachers in various teacher organizations.

There are three major teacher groups in Texas---Texas State Teachers Association, Classroom Teachers Association, and Association of Texas Professional Educators. The sad truth is, although all profess to be striving for the best education which could possibly be delivered to the young people of this state, none have taken action to match their rhetoric. None of the teacher organizations mentioned above have any requirement for their membership other than paying their dues.

If there is anything more elusive than finding the Holy Grail, it is defining quality in education and quality in teachers. Seeking quality in education and teachers has to be among the list of things sought by so many and yet understood by so few.

Politicians constantly yammer about keeping and rewarding great teachers and getting rid of those who are not so great or poor. The problem is no one seems to be able to give an adequate formula or description of how to determine the quality of education in general or the quality of teachers in particular. While serving on a committee which went far and wide throughout the United States in seeking how to define quality, the principals and teachers in almost every school visited were able to identify the outstanding teachers in the school. They seemed to think it was a simple matter to identify those teachers.

Unhappily, nobody could give a definitive answer as to how they made that decision.

Lawmakers are becoming more and more frustrated over the issue of trying to obtain better quality teachers in the classroom and producing better results. A recent article in the Houston Chronicle laid out a plan by the Houston Independent School District to use improved student test scores as 50% of the evaluation tool to determine teacher ratings such that good teachers by this scale would be rewarded and bad teachers would be fired.

Teacher groups consistently will tell you that tying teacher evaluation to student test scores is not fair and not a true measuring stick of the quality of the teacher. Teacher groups vigorously oppose allowing subjective observation of the teachers as an adequate measuring stick because of favoritism among school administrators and evaluators. Teachers getting the highest marks for quality could very well be those “sucking up” or doing favors for the administrators and not necessarily the ones who are the best teachers.

My warning to teachers is this: Teachers had better wake up to the fact that the general public is demanding some measure of the quality of the persons teaching their children. The best possible group to come up with such a formula should be teachers. If teachers stubbornly cling to only seniority and minimal statutory requirements, teacher groups will soon be recognized as nothing more than groups akin to industrial unions protecting only seniority as a measure for job security.

While all institutions resist change, our public education systems have resisted change far too long. The changes we are seeing in today’s world --specifically in interactive communications technology, the rapid expansion of knowledge, and ability of young people for increased comprehension--has outdistanced the traditional institutions of public education.

And not only the substance of public education and quality of teaching should change. We should be far past the line of thought that the school year and time in class should be suspended for the summer because kids need to be home helping to harvest the crops.

It’s well past time for all kinds of change, and we need leadership from our teachers to make sure it happens.

FIXING FLATS

2011-03-01T14:39:00.000-06:00

I bought my first car at age 17. For $80 I purchased a 1940 Ford two-door from Angelle Used Cars on Gulfway Drive. As you might suspect from the price of the car, it was not really a show car. The body wasn't in great shape. It had no brakes, and the tires were all suspect.

Back then the tubeless tire was not in broad use. Changing a flat tire on a car at that time was quite an adventure. The tire contained a tube which needed to be removed after breaking the tire loose with a tire iron and prying it loose from the rim. The cheap way to do it was with a cold patch. You’d cut a piece of rubber, sand down the area where the leak was and by pressure and glue place the flat piece of rubber on the hole and thereby repair the tire. Not being flush with money and very worn tires being very susceptible to having punctures, I did, as you might suspect, patch the tubes in my tires until there were almost patches on patches. Although it gave temporary relief, the real problem was caused by the fact the overly patched tires were not very serviceable.

The moral to this story is that Texas, like my old car, needs a new tire, new tube or both. Texas has been having a serious problem with its constitutional mandate since the 1960s when our national Supreme Court warned Texas it was dangerously close to denying the school children of Texas their constitutional right of equal protection of the law. The problem is, our state has attempted to avoid the education funding catastrophe by applying a series of patches. We are gradually reaching the point where our patches now have patches.

The problem with funding education in Texas will not be permanently fixed until our state has the will to adopt some rational and reliable method of funding which will grow with our needs of a rapidly expanding state. The most likely prospect of such a system is a state income tax.

A properly constructed state income tax would amount to about 1.5% of your net income and probably begin taxing your income at or above $50,000 per year. The math would quickly prove to the average homeowner in Texas that paying a state income tax of that nature would be far better than the constantly and ever-increasing property taxes on our homes and small businesses.

Our basic problem in Texas is that politicians are so adverse to even discussing the issue of taxes that citizens never get around to determining whether or not some new tax would be better than all the old and inadequate taxes we now pay.

An unreal belief is that colleges in Texas, even though enduring draconian cuts, can somehow furnish Texas’ students with a bachelor degree for not more than $10,000. Almost unanimously college administrators pronounce that attempting to furnish a baccalaureate degree for approximately $2,500 a year is unrealistic. If our governor truly believes the dollar can be stretched that far, he should attempt to move out of his $10,000 a month rental and try to find the same amount of space with the same quality at only $1,000 a month rather than $10,000 a month which the taxpayers are now paying for his luxurious lifestyle.

Another example of flawed “fairy tale vision” is that businesses can only be attracted to Texas through bribery via the governor’s “slush fund.” In the last few years, the governor has spent approximately 150-million dollars a year giving money to corporations in an effort to get them to locate in Texas. Admittedly several have taken the bait; but on the other hand, several are start-up companies with no proven record, many of whom have fallen far short of their promised employment for Texas citizens in exchange for the multi-million dollar sop given by the governor.

Another reason luring businesses through this legalized bribery is not a good idea is demonstrated in numerous studies concerning the reason businesses locate in a particular place. High on the list for most business decisions of that nature have to do with quality of life for their executives and employees. On that list are arts, music and education–all items the governor has already pronounced as not very important and should either be unfunded or seriously curtailed.

Many Republican legislators are beginning to realize that the governor’s wish to leave untouched the almost 10-billion dollars in our rainy day fund is not a rational decision. If the fiscal position of Texas is not a rainy day now, it obviously will take a monsoon to justify spending this savings account in the governor’s mind. Those of us who care about the future of this state need to be diligent in writing our state representatives and senators concerning adequately taking care of the financial needs of this state.

Closed Door Shenanigans in Austin

2011-02-23T07:31:00.003-06:00

There are two popular myths spread by Republicans; one is that Democrats simply are the party of “tax and spend,” and second, Republicans are the “responsible” party as stewards of the public’s money. Neither of these allegations will stand close inspection.

Democrats controlled the state Legislature for almost 50 years. During that time there was never a session of the Texas Legislature where Texas was in the hole as much as we are today. Recent revelations are very eye opening about whether or not Republicans trust the voting public, or whether or not the voting public should trust Republicans.

Rep. Lon Burnam (D) Ft Worth

At the beginning of each legislative session, usually the House of Representatives brings proposals for rules changes. Recently, a group of Democratic House members offered some very revealing proposed changes in the rules; all of which were voted down by the Republican majority. Unfortunately, these proposed rules changes got very little play in the mainstream press. They do, however, tell a story about trust and openness in government.

Representative Lon Burnam of Fort Worth offered a measure which would have required the budget conference committee to notify the general public ahead of time when and where they were meeting; and the meeting would have been required to be open to the public.

This modest proposal was voted down overwhelmingly by the Republican majority.

Rep. Pete Gallego (D) Alpine

Pete Gallego, longtime Representative from Alpine, proposed that all research documents having to do with spending the public’s money be made available to any member of the Legislature. This too was voted down.

Even though the Republican majority now speaks as though there is no alternative to the draconian cuts in the budget, Roland Gutierrez from San Antonio offered an amendment which was also voted down by the Republican majority. He simply proposed that with any budget cut the Legislative Budget Board, a non-partisan group working for the Legislature, would be required to publish an impact statement concerning the effect such cuts would have on each county in the state.

Rep. Garnet Coleman (D) Houston

Representative Donna Howard of Austin and Garnet Coleman of Houston offered a rule which would have prohibited the state from pushing off responsibilities which would require spending on local government. The amendment of the rules would have prohibited the state passing an unfunded mandate on local government unless the state reimbursed the local government. This practice will be particularly onerous when it comes to cutting mandated Medicaid funds for cities and counties throughout the state. Local governments will face the prospect of seeing nursing homes closed and no health facilities available for the old, sick and children unless the local government wants to tax and make up the difference.

Finally, Representative Armando Walle proposed the budget bill must be published at least five days before being voted on so that each member of the Legislature could examine it thoroughly to decide on its merit.

Rep Armando Walle (D) Houston

The general public should be aware of two other revelations coming forth this week in Austin. The Governor Perry led tax reform, which was to reduce everyone’s school taxes while at the same time not increase state taxes, has been declared by the state’s Comptroller (our official budget estimator) to be short 5-billion dollars each year. In other words the scheme pushed by our conservative Governor to adequately fund public education while at the same time not raising taxes is leaving us 10-billion dollars in the hole every two years.

Another conservative scheme has left our highway funding in a mess. A brain child of Rick Williams, former chairman of the Transportation Commission and good pal of our governor, has left us shorthanded for the future of our highways and roads. As you know, our highways are funded solely by a tax on gasoline. This tax has not been increased in many years and its net revenue to the state is declining even though we have more and more cars on the highway. Fuel efficient automobiles are becoming more popular; therefore, fewer gallons are being used in Texas and less money is being produced for our highways and roads.

Under Perry’s leadership the Highway Department was authorized by the Legislature to issue bonds and borrow money to build roads immediately. Unfortunately, much of the money was spent acquiring rights-of-way and helping scheme to have more toll roads in Texas. As a result of the borrowing and spending by our Republican administration, we now are paying more in interest on a yearly basis than is being produced for future development of roads.

It seems to me taxing and spending is certainly no worse than borrowing and spending. It’s time Texans took a close look at what’s happening in Austin.

Texas budget headed in the wrong direction

2011-02-21T08:43:00.000-06:00

After the initial release of the Republican state’s budget, four Republican members of the House, led by James Keffer of Eastland, proclaimed their own party is off on the wrong foot. Virtual abolition of four community colleges and pre-kindergarten programs in Texas is not so attractive as a way to balance our budget to these representatives; mainly because in essence, the proposal comes close to doing away with community colleges in their district.

The proposed cuts in public education will create a mini-depression in Texas costing local districts approximately 100,000 jobs; or will require massive increases in the taxes on your home or business. No new taxes at the state level, although it will help the Governor’s pledge of no increase in taxes, will result in increased taxes at the local level. Even worse, taking a bite out of one of the most critical programs as public education will end up costing America in the future.

Education experts, based on long-term studies, state a potential drop out from school can be predicted as early as the second grade. One of the most effective ways to ensure students will get a decent education and stick with the learning process through high school depends on the success of early intervention programs such as pre-kindergarten.

Too many Texans send their children to school totally unprepared for formal education. They have never seen a magazine or book in their home; they are not subject to educational activities with their parents and they enter the school process completely intimidated. It is difficult for such a child to learn in the early grades and soon becomes frustrated to the point they cannot succeed in secondary education.

Our leaders who cannot see this, or will not admit to this, are creating a perfect formula for Texas to continue with the lowest paid number of jobs in the country and a huge drag on our economic engine.

For many years, I have read that persons with alcohol or drug problems are not very likely to succeed in rehabilitation unless they first recognize they do in fact have a problem. Unfortunately, our current leaders in Austin appear to be making the same mistake. Our Governor, for example, and others, refuses to recognize we have a record deficit budget which may need to be solved. To reinforce this belief, or persuade you to think the same way, they have “phonied up” a way of calculating our budget’s shortfall.

Courtesy Texas Tribune

Traditionally, the state Comptroller calculates the revenue available for the next two years and then forecasts what will be the necessary expenditures based on the projection of needs such as education, healthcare, highways, etc.

If the Comptroller had calculated using this method, the budget deficit would amount to 25-27 billion dollars However, she abandoned this method and produced a figure by simply subtracting the forecasted revenue from the current level of spending.

Unfortunately, the Comptroller’s estimate does not add into the expected need for revenue the growth of public education and the increased numbers that will enter into our public schools. Nor does it account for an aging population which will have a greater need for Medicaid and other health services.

Even worse, our Governor has proclaimed he will see that Texas does not touch its “rainy day fund.” Apparently, he is enjoying the bright lights of the Governor’s office without looking outside to see whether or not it truly is a rainy day.

What do Americans really want?

2011-02-21T07:26:00.001-06:00

America’s new Congressional majority justifies its actions to repeal health care reform by saying, “It is clear Americans want to do away with Obamacare.” It saddens me to realize how fickle public opinion can be and how it can be manipulated.

During the presidential race, one of the strong points of the Obama campaign pledges was to do something about health care. As a matter of fact, millions of Americans are without health care coverage; and although, in this country, we do have the best medical technology in the world, we have one of the poorest health care systems. Unfortunately, the real death panels in America are those which allow millions of Americans, many of them children, to perish for lack of access to adequate health care.

It seems since the campaign rhetoric discussing health care in America and the time that health care reform was presented to Congress, there has been a shift in public opinion. Current polls show slightly more Americans favor doing away with the recent health care reforms than those wanting to keep it. Republicans talk as though there has been a big shift in public opinion simply because Americans have awakened to the fact that what they describe as “Obamacare” is not a good thing. Because of such a shift in public we should take a look at exactly why the current opinion runs with the Republicans and against keeping health care reform. This shift in opinion did not occur simply because Americans have now realized health care reform is a mistake.

Unfortunately, too many Americans are buying into the Republican blather that health care would be much better if we simply let the market control and provide health care. The principal reason there is such a prevalence of this attitude is the fact that money interests in the United States have now spent almost one million dollars per member of Congress. Special interests provide 4 lobbyists per member of Congress and millions in advertisement and public “spin-doctors.” All in order to persuade Americans that health care reform is bad.

If closely examined, the idea of solving the problem of so many millions of Americans with no health coverage could be solved by the free market is one of the most irrational things ever dreamed up. The free market on health coverage is the market provided by insurance companies. Insurance companies do not give a trifle about trying to relieve suffering or provide people with adequate health care. The whole game of health insurance companies is to avoid giving sick people, or people likely to be sick, any health coverage whatsoever. Insurance companies make money by avoiding payment of doctors and hospitals, not by providing service good for America or individual Americans.

If you ask conservative Americans whether or not they believe in personal responsibility, they would quickly answer, “Yes.” The whole theory behind mandatory liability insurance for drivers is to make sure people driving protect other drivers in the event they injure them through their own negligence. Similarly, healthy people who refuse to purchase insurance to cover their own illnesses or injuries put us all at risk. If they are injured or fall ill and cannot pay for their own medical needs, we, those of us who pay, pick up the cost through higher insurance premiums, or through our tax dollars which provide for charitable health care.

Persons without health insurance coverage, who present themselves to the emergency rooms of our hospitals, annually run up billions in uncompensated health care. Hospitals do not pick up this tab alone. They make it up in increasing charges for those of us who pay for hospital services. The amount we pay is not determined by someone we elect; but rather an insurance executive or hospital administrator decides what it will cost us for these uninsured victims who present themselves to the hospital.

If all Americans were responsible enough to provide for their own medical needs, the needs of all American citizens would be met at much lesser cost. Substantial reduction in medical costs in America would move our economy forward more than any other single item. Not only would it provide lower cost health care, but it would improve health care for us all.

P. T. Barnum once said there is a sucker born every minute. Those Americans who believe the free market will ultimately provide adequate health care for all Americans simply prove the truth of P. T. Barnum’s words.

Recent Happenings in Austin

2011-02-15T00:43:00.002-06:00

Add caption

Former Senator and Supreme Court Justice Oscar Mauzy had a motto inscribed on a poster he hung on the wall in his office. The poster said, “Forgive and Remember.” It is with grudging admiration for their political acumen that I remember how we lost the state Senate race for District 17 of which Port Arthur is a part. If you will recall, Chris Bell, who ran Rick Perry a good race for governor sometime back and was the congressman who blew the whistle on Tom Delay’s heavy-handedness in Congress, should have won the state Senate seat for District 17.

Chris Bell

In a special election, called due to the resignation of the district’s senator, numerous candidates filed for the spot. It appeared for a while that Chris Bell, being the only announced Democratic candidate, would walk away with the race. As predicted, Bell ran and came within a few votes of winning the seat outright. Unfortunately for Bell, at the last minute a 44-year old, African-American, female lawyer filed as a Democrat. As to her Democratic credentials, Stephanie Simmons was suspect at best. There was little or no evidence she had ever participated in the Democratic primary process; and even though there was testimony that she in fact did not live in the district, she qualified by claiming residence at her mother’s home which barely sat in Senate District 17, just outside the boundaries of Harris County.

The Republican strategy was to siphon just enough votes away from Bell to cause a runoff with the leading Republican in the race, counting on the fact that minority voters traditionally do not turn out as well in runoff elections as do affluent, conservative Republican voters. Sure enough the strategy worked. About half of the minority voters in the Jefferson County part of District 17 showed up for the runoff, and Bell was defeated by Joan Huffman, a conservative Republican who lives West of Houston.

Stephanie Simmons

This week in Austin, Stephanie Simmons who caused the runoff in 2008, handing the Senate seat to Republicans, was rewarded for her party loyalty by Governor Rick Perry. Perry just appointed Stephanie Simmons to the Risk Management Board of Texas. This Board makes recommendations concerning risk management of insurance, particularly that along the coast. No one has been able to uncover any particular qualifications for Ms. Simmons holding this position other than the fact that she obviously was of great service to the Republican Party when she ran as a Democrat.

Despite the crisis of a 27-billion dollar shortfall, this past week found the House busy flailing away at some of the issues our Governor deemed to be emergencies. One day the House spent almost all of the morning session debating and passing a resolution giving advice to the U. S. Congress on how to balance budgets. It seemed to me it could be likened to a seminar given by priests on how to develop good marital relations.

A tiny bit of good news emerged this recent week in Austin, however. It now appears at least some leading Republicans in the House are not going to walk lock-step down Governor Perry’s desired path of not touching the “rainy day fund.” The probable chairman of the House Public Education Committee has indicated he favors tapping at least a part of the 9.5 billion dollars in that fund to make up for the 5-billion dollar shortfall in this biennium’s budget for education. During the current biennium Texas school districts are likely to get 5-billion dollars less from state aid unless the Legislature takes quick and decisive action. It appears Governor Perry’s scheme to replace property taxes with a business tax in Texas is off by 5-billion dollars per year. The Perry tax produces about that much too little to fully fund educational needs each year.

There is an old saying about two different types of military leaders. There are “do as I do” officers and “do as I say” officers. It appears the current statewide leadership falls in the latter category. While demanding that institutions like Lamar University return approximately 10% of the money they have been appropriated to help with the shortfall, I have yet to read of any state leader who has offered to take a 10% pay cut. This includes our Governor who is living in a $100,000 a year rental using up approximately $40,000 a year for landscaping.

I can only hope that somewhere our current leadership in Austin is working on a booklet of advice for our youth on how to compete in this world economy with the better educated young people from India and China. If we continue on cutting the budget at any price pathway, this is where we’re headed.

DO POLLS NECESSARILY PRESENT FACTS?

2011-02-12T01:50:00.000-06:00

Those of us who are not political addicts may not be familiar with push polls. A push poll is a thinly disguised political tool to influence the opinion of potential voters by asking a question in such a way that it “pushes” them toward adopting a predetermined political viewpoint.

I recently received an official Republican Party document entitled, “Listening to America.” My examination of this document, at least in my mind, raised more questions than answers. Also, a close examination of the questions asked reveals exactly how tilted the questions are; and as we lawyers say in many of our objections, the questions assume facts not in evidence.

For example, Question No. 1 asks “Should the House Republicans unite in opposition to all of President Obama’s planned tax hikes?” This question made me wonder if there is something I missed, because I even watch Fox News on occasion and I do not remember hearing of any tax hike planned by President Obama. I do know there was some effort to leave the legislation passed under George Bush’s administration in place which would have restored tax rates for people making more than $1,000,000 to the level they were under the Clinton administration. I’ve not heard any announcement from the Obama administration that they plan any legislation to raise taxes.

Another question under the spending section asks, “Do you support passing strict budget caps to help reduce federal spending?” In case you weren’t aware, there have been caps on the federal budget in place for several years. Unfortunately, these caps have routinely been suspended even when the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. The question makes me wonder what kind of cap we could put in place to stop the current Republican House of Representatives from suspending it in the near future. In their typical, hypocritical way, among the first actions of the new Republican controlled House of Representatives was to repeal the rules put in place by Democrats requiring “pay as you go” on any proposals to pass the Congress.

A real zinger in the questionnaire asks, “Do you believe Medicare and Social Security should be modernized, starting with fraud and abuse in each program?” It has been my experience that most of the fraud uncovered in recent years has been on the part of medical suppliers such as doctors and hospitals, most of whom are absolutely supportive of Republicans and opposed to health care reforms. I’m also struck by the choice of words in this question by asking whether or not Social Security needs to be modernized. I suspect what they’re talking about is going back to the old George Bush proposal of turning our Social Security over to Wall Street. Wouldn’t that have been nice in the recent Wall Street bust!

The questionnaire also asks whether or not we should reform our tax code. The key word here is reform. I’m not sure so-called reforms of the last two generations under either Democrats or Republicans have amounted to reform. A study of our whole national economy shows that every time we change the tax code we give another bite to the super-rich.

A book I have been reading recently points out and documents that the wealth of the top 1% of Americans has more than quadrupled since mid-1970. Most of it is attributable to the fact that every tax break passed by Congress gives a much bigger share of the wealth to the super-rich than to middle-America. It also pointed out this type favoritism to the super-wealthy is rapidly depleting America’s middle-class which for over 200 years has been one of the great strengths of our nation.

How about earmarks and pork-barrel spending? Talk about hypocrisy! One of the greatest critics of rampant spending by Congress is Sarah Palin. However, we need to remember, it was during her tenure as governor of Alaska that earmarks broke the record for a single state. Although she now criticizes the practice, I do not remember her ever sending any of it back to the U.S. Treasury.

Speaking of assuming facts not in evidence, one question asked, “Should the Republicans immediately repeal the most damaging regulations that President Obama and Speaker Pelosi imposed on job creators?” First of all, the Speaker of the House is not in a position to pass regulations. They can vote on the change in the law but not regulations. Republicans obviously want to continue to keep doctors and medical providers in their corner the best they can by asking whether or not the voters support medical liability reform by cracking down on junk lawsuits against doctors.

As I have pointed out numerous times in this column, it is not the junk lawsuits that doctors fear. It is the one where they are clearly negligent and through their carelessness cripple someone for life. A case in point is a woman in San Antonio whose medical provider wrongly amputated both of her legs. She has found it almost impossible to find a lawyer to file suit for the doctor’s mistake. If that’s what they call cracking down, I certainly would have to answer that question “no.”

Let’s hear it for patriotism. Republicans pile on by asking whether or not you believe foreign terrorists should be given military trials and kept out of civilian courts. Actually, some of us believe that what has set America apart from rogue nations --which have no concern for humanity or individual rights-- is the fact we believe justice is a human right.

Having a “play-like” trial before a military tribunal does not ensure protection of those rights in the American tradition of justice for all. I would dare say most of the right-wingers who favor denying trial for people accused of international criminal activity would just as soon execute the so-called terrorists without a trial. They are wondering why waste our money going through such a charade? Have we already forgotten we just got rid of a vice president who openly advocated torture?

Two other questions start summing up the Republican philosophy by asking, “Should congressmen cite the Constitution as authority on any bill that is up for a vote and should they install cameras in the powerful rules committee so that voters could see how bills are brought to the House floor?” I would certainly favor both, if I had any assurance that those listening to the Constitution being read would understand what they hear.

I would add to the proposal of the additional cameras in the congressional realm by suggesting they put one in the Republican caucus so the American people could see what they were really thinking when they adopted their policy of bills to favor and oppose.

I just have one observation about the so-called push poll sent to me. As far as I’m concerned, whoever sent it can take it and shove it.

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE

2011-01-19T18:27:00.000-06:00

The current Texas Legislature faces one of the greatest challenges of our time. It is required, not only to balance a budget while looking at a 27-billion dollar plus deficit; it is faced with the real challenge of picking and choosing what programs are essential to the future of Texas and its unborn children. Admittedly, I have been somewhat critical of our Texas Legislature and statewide leadership. I do believe one should not be critical without offering constructive suggestions; in that spirit, I offer the following.

In balancing the budget, education, both public and higher, should remain sacred. For many years Texas has struggled to maintain a position at least better than Mississippi and developing nations of the world. We have maintained a passable education system because of higher tuition and local taxpayers’ willingness to sacrifice. Any cuts in funding our colleges and universities or public education will exacerbate our state’s efforts to educate our children. It will also dramatically hamper efforts of pulling ourselves to the top in educational excellence. At present, we are near the bottom.

Use the rainy day fund. We have put aside almost $10-billion which many of our conservative leaders say they want to continue to preserve. Not spending this money to help balance our budget with “no new taxes” makes as much sense as a family with a large savings account standing by and allowing their house to be foreclosed

Do away with duplicate or unnecessary state agencies. The Railroad Commission has long sense outlived its usefulness and should be immediately merged with the Public Utility Commission. Not only would it save several million dollars, it would allow the people of Texas to truly understand what state agency has a serious effect on your home utility bills. Texas is one of the few states, if not the only state, to have two supreme courts. We have a Supreme Court and a Court of Criminal Appeals. By giving the Texas Supreme Court jurisdiction over appellate criminal cases, we could do away with an entire court and its staff. Millions would be saved. There is no special reason the same judges could not judge the criminal law as well as the civil law in this state. It is already being done by all of our Courts of Appeal throughout the state

Overhaul the criminal justice system. Meanness and enforcement of criminal laws may sound good for politicians who want to talk tough, but it is not nearly as effective as a modern criminal justice system where we substitute oversight of minor criminals to incarceration. We are spending almost as much tax money keeping a young person locked up as we do sending them to medical school. States which have de-emphasized incarceration and emphasized supervision have seen dramatic decreases in their crime rate. Even Texas, since the 1995 overhaul, has seen a significant reduction in crime. A well-funded probation/parole system will be more productive and cost only a fraction of what it cost to keep people in cages. Of course, we must reserve our prison beds and cells for those who are dangerous and cannot be trusted to respond to supervision or assistance in getting back on the road to good citizenship.

Preventative health should become a mantra of the Legislature instead of continuing to pay more and more for things such as kidney dialysis and blindness caused by diabetes. Our current system seldom addresses prevention. For example, it is well known that over 50% of the debilitating effects of diabetes can be controlled by life style changes. But Texas offers almost no attention for screening for such diseases, counseling or assistance in altering lifestyles to avoid blindness, kidney failure or amputations. Changing this can save billions, not only to the state, but can relieve untold suffering of Texas families.

Let the managers manage. In productive and well-run businesses, owners generally allow great leeway for their managers to determine how many workers each task needs and what they should pay. Currently, if a state agency needs to reduce its force, or if its workforce is reduced by natural attrition such as retirement, the worker is simply replaced without regard to whether or not additional pay could be an incentive to the remaining workers to take up the slack. In most situations it has been proven that where there is a crew doing a certain job and one leaves, for less than the cost of the departing worker, slight increases in pay to the remaining workers could accomplish the same task with fewer employees. Managers of state departments do not enjoy this luxury because of quirks in our appropriations process.

Encourage departments to be more efficient and reward them for doing so. The same quirky provisions in our state’s appropriations process makes it impossible to reward a state institution such as Lamar University for efficiency. For example, currently if Lamar receives an appropriation for campus maintenance, and it figures out a way to do it more efficiently and at the end of year has a sizeable surplus, it is rewarded by being allowed to watch the Legislature take the surplus and spend it elsewhere. The state should encourage innovation, thriftiness, good will and more efficiency and allow agencies such as Lamar to keep, from year to year, what they saved. The agencies then would not have to ask the Legislature for as much special funding.

No new taxes should include “no new taxes” for local government. Almost every Session for the last ten has helped maintain the statewide boast of politicians that they completed the Session with “no new taxes.” Unfortunately, too often the load has simply been shifted from the state to local school boards, county commissioners and city councils. Our statewide politicians should quit condemning and damning that dirty federal money and make full use of every available federally funded program which would help Texas pull out of the hole. Stop the rhetoric, take the money.

The Legislature should search, not only for waste, but for unfair tax breaks. They are abundant in little special cubbyholes, generally for undeserving corporations which want to avoid taxes.

The governor’s slush fund of over $300-million that he has doled out to his political supporters should be abolished. The $300-million should go towards reducing our deficit.

I urge the voters of Southeast Texas to pay attention to what happens in Austin in the next 140 days. It is important not only to you, but particularly to your grandchildren.

HAVE WE QUIT GIVING?

2011-01-19T18:09:00.000-06:00

The season of giving recently past set me to thinking about where we are with our nation. Growing up, graduating from high school and attending college in the ‘50's filled most of us with ambitious hope for the future--not only for ourselves, but for our country. Most of us wore our patriotism like a badge of honor, expressing love for our country at every opportunity.

The election of John Kennedy seemed to spur an even accelerated desire to serve one’s country and give back some of the blessings we had received as Americans. Young people graduating from college during the Kennedy era, dubbed Camelot in America, showed an increased ambition to do something significant to help people throughout the world. Thousands of young Americans volunteered for the Peace Corps, domestic and foreign, and found self-satisfaction in serving both our nation and the world.

I would suspect, without fear of correction, that a great number of young Americans graduating from college today would not list public service or service to humanity as their first thoughtful ambition. More than likely their ambition would be directed toward working on Wall Street and making thousands of dollars and ultimately becoming part of the ultra-rich in the United States.

Rather than considering living in the United States as a blessing to be enjoyed and reveled in, I fear too many of our young Americans believe our federal government to be an enemy to their lofty ambitions of becoming rich.

I can’t really blame young Americans when so many of our leaders engage in a non-stop diatribe which would make the average listener believe the federal government was a foreign power poised to invade our cities and states and enslave free Americans. Tea Party leaders and others want to shrink our nation’s government to the point it could be drowned in a bathtub.

Incoming Republican leaders of the House want to dismantle health care reforms, undo reform regulations on banks and stock traders--as well as insurance companies--and give more tax breaks to big corporations which are daily shipping American jobs overseas. Even the governor of Texas, in an unguarded moment, suggested secession of Texas from the Union might be a good thing.

How can young Americans truly have respect for our nation and our system of governing with such toxic rhetoric emanating from so many sources?

Without a doubt, the greatest enemy to self-government is ignorance. When a population reaches a point which those who can’t or won’t discern truth from fiction outnumber conscientious, studious citizens, society itself is in trouble. Recent polls show a vast number of Americans believe:

that our President was born outside the United States,
that the recently passed health care bill does, in fact, contain a panel which can order death to a citizen, and
that taxes under Obama have increased when in fact they have decreased.

None of these assertions by Clearly, ignorance is gaining a foothold at a level which is becoming alarmingly dangerous to our way of life.

One of the favorite clichés among dedicated conservatives is that welfare is responsible for our growing deficit. Complaints about illegal aliens sucking the lifeblood from our economy by seeking free medical care and free education in the United States are among favorite stories of Tea Party members.

However, to the contrary, studies have shown that the United States gains more economically from our “uninvited” guests from the South than we pay out in benefits.

And, in fact, single mothers and the elderly receiving food stamps or medical care cost U.S. taxpayers far less than even the recent corporate giveaways in the so called extension of the Bush tax cuts.

And here is just one glaring example: a provision lobbied by highly-paid lobbyists into a bill in Washington, DC to allow companies a greater break on earnings made outside the United States will cost our treasury over 6-billion dollars. There are at least 5-6 other multi-billion dollar corporate giveaways in the bill, including a tax break for those manufacturing rum in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. I dare say educating people within our borders and assuring some measure of health and dignity to our elderly benefits America far more than tax benefits to rum runners.

My hope for the coming new year is that more Americans will pay more attention to what’s really happening and make a greater attempt to filter the false in search of the truth.

WHOSE SACRIFICE?

2010-12-27T23:04:00.083-06:00

With the impending session of the Texas Legislature, there is a great deal of conversation about sacrifice. One of our statewide leaders recently said the people of Texas are going to have to “tighten their belts” in order for the state to survive the coming session with no new taxes. The big question that comes to mind, “Who will be sacrificing?” or “Who will be sacrificed?” as a result of the hole of 25 billion plus Texas finds itself in. I doubt any measurable personal sacrifice will be found among our state’s top leaders.

Our governor has become a multi-millionaire since coming to the Legislature as a West Texas poor boy, and he is currently living in a rented, multi-million dollar mansion at the state’s expense. Our lieutenant governor is one of the wealthiest people of the state; and our speaker of the House is the son of an old-money family from San Antonio. I seriously doubt that any sacrifices on their part will compare to those felt by the average, middle-income Texan; and certainly will not compare to the sacrifices felt by the poorest Texans.

If you work for a living, you are the one whose belt will most likely be tightened the most. Even worse, all of the sacrifice won’t be yours. The future of your children and grandchildren will be sacrificed on the altar of short-sighted, no-vision, no-new-taxes at-any-cost philosophy.

Since the early 1960's, Texas has launched a program of contributing less and less to the greater needs of public education, pushing off the responsibility on local school districts and local property owners. The attention to quality education in Texas began its decline in the late 1960's until the Legislature, in an act of courage, passed in the 1970’s, the Education Reform Act. The Perot Committee traveled far and wide studying not only education systems in the United States, but throughout the world; and made a set of recommendations, many of which were incorporated into Texas law.

The evaluation of teachers was improved. Attention to classroom work and learning was brought a step closer to parity with extracurricular activities through “No Pass, No Play.” Research clearly indicated that children in the early grades did much better with a teacher/pupil ratio of 15:1. As a major compromise, mainly to accommodate spending less money, 22:1 was adopted rather than 15:1. Even though the 22:1 teacher/pupil ratio was not ideal, it was a substantial improvement to the 30 to 35:1 teacher/pupil ratio which existed at the time throughout the state.

Already, leadership of the Texas Legislature is saying one way to help meet the deficit is by abolishing the requirement of a 22:1 teacher/pupil ratio.

Higher education is yet another area being mentioned as a source for slashing our state’s budget. At a time when India, China and other developing nations are emphasizing education and training their young for high-tech jobs in a vibrant, growing economy, Texas, apparently without vision, is talking about making it harder and harder for middle class and poor children to obtain a quality higher education–a wrongheaded policy which will not serve us well in future international competition for the high-paying jobs.

This lack of vision on the part of the leadership of Texas will condemn our state to continue to lead the nation in the number of minimum wage jobs of any state in the union. It will also mean higher tuition for those struggling to educate themselves.

Our “no new tax” policy, even to the extent of indexing our tax which provides maintenance of our roads, bridges and highways to maintain the same level of support, is causing us to suffer with crumbling bridges and pothole filled state highways. The current solution, apparently on the part of many of our leaders, is simply to give away our highway right-of-ways to foreign corporations to create toll roads and suck more Texas dollars out of our state.

Although many of our legislators boast of never voting for a new tax, each session for the past 10 years, they have blindly voted for increased fees on everything which carries a fee in Texas, including hunting and fishing licenses, admissions to state parks and renewal of almost every kind of license imaginable. Call it a fee, if you will. It is in fact nothing more than a thinly disguised tax.

The “no new tax” mantra which so pervades conservative thought in Texas brings with it a consequence, possibly unintended, which forestalls any conversation about tax reform. Simply because a tax is new does not necessarily mean it would better serve the people of Texas and be more efficient or fairer than many of the old taxes. In all probability, special interest groups who have an unwarranted tax break because of the old structure are among those who shout the loudest about no new taxes. I doubt very seriously giving multi-million dollar country clubs an agricultural exemption from their property taxes serves us well.

Many of the newly elected members of the Texas Legislature, who have never served in an elected office, paint themselves as deeply devoted Christians. Some have even suggested the Legislature is so bent toward Christianity they would not favor allowing a Jewish speaker to preside over it.

I am struck by a quote from the book entitled, God’s Politics by Jim Wallis, in which he wrote, “You can tell whether or not an officeholder is truly Christian by looking at his budget.” Time will tell in the very near future as to the level of Good Will -- Christian or otherwise -- of our Legislature.

EXAMPLES THAT SHOULDN'T BE FOLLOWED

2010-12-23T06:30:00.001-06:00

As most states of the union, Texas will face a monumental challenge in dealing with its budget, or lack thereof. Depending on whom you believe Texas will face a deficit of between 14-28 billion dollars. According to the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House, everything is potentially on the chopping block. In addition to the budgetary issues, we will have issues related to law and order and immigration. Bills have already been filed ranging from abolishing the death penalty to authorizing a new crime for driving while drinking, whether you are intoxicated or not. Our governor has already made mention of the fact there is a real possibility of opting out of federally mandated or sponsored medical programs. He in fact mentioned Medicare.

There are some ways many of these same issues have been dealt with by other states which I would certainly hope Texas will not emulate. First of all, opting out of Medicare has been tried by the state of Arizona. If Governor Sara Palin fears real death panels, she needs to cast her eye on the Legislature and the Republican government of Arizona. There are people in Arizona actually at death’s door and will die because of Arizona’s policy of opting out of most of the federally funded medical programs. Specifically, people who need transplants have been informed they will no longer be able to obtain a transplant paid for by a government-sponsored medical program. If they want to continue to live, they will just have to figure out some way to pay the huge costs associated with medical organ transplants. This sounds like a real death panel to me. Texas already has a modified version in that private insurance companies can make the decision that they have spent enough on you no matter how long you have paid for your medical policy; and in effect condemn you to die, if you don’t happen to have lots of cash in the bank.

Immigration is another area where Arizona has taken the conservative lead, and, again, I hope Texas will not follow that lead. Several ultra-conservative members of the House have already introduced Arizona-type bills which would give police authority to simply stop you on the suspicion you are not a bonafide citizen of the United States. I seriously doubt they will be stopping blonde-haired, blue-eyed people who speak good English. This is not only a bad idea from the standpoint of abusing civil rights of real citizens, but it doesn’t make sense in a down economic year because it is costly to the economy of the state. Independent studies have already reflected that because of lost conventions and tourism in Arizona, millions have been lost directly attributable to the Arizona law to fight illegal immigrants.

The third area where Arizona and Texas seem to be on the same track is in the area of handling prisoners. In one sense Texas is slightly ahead because Texas incarcerates more of its citizens than most nations in the world. Arizona, proportionately, has a pretty good record of locking up people as a solution to solving crimes and other social problems. Unfortunately, Arizona has gone overboard in attempting to cut costs by employing privately run state jails. Based on my personal past experience in the Legislature, state jails seem to pop up more as a result of lobby efforts by the private prison lobby than based on real need or social efficiency in fighting crime. Texas already has a large number of private jails, and I will almost promise you that in the coming tight budget session there will be enormous pressure to relieve the state of the cost of building any more jails by simply turning it over to private enterprise. In the long run, such a strategy will cost the taxpayers of this state millions, if not billions.

Aside from the waste of money in yielding to big-time lobby interests, private prisons and increased jail facilities are a mistake. We pursue this out of two mis-begotten beliefs. One is the longer you sentence someone, the more likely it is that person will not commit another crime. The second is probation and parole is simply not punishment. The reason both of these arguments are flawed is that study after study demonstrates the likelihood of being apprehended and placed in the criminal system is a greater deterrent than the length of sentence. Most people studying criminal behavior and punishment agree 3-4 months behind bars is as effective as 3-4 years as a deterrent. If the person is going to be deterred from a life of crime, simply seeing the inside is generally as effective as a longer sentence. If 3-4 months won’t do it, probably 3-4 years will not do it either.

The second misdirected belief is that parole or probation is not punishment. Wrong! It is in fact punishment, and it is in many cases more effective than simple incarceration. We spend more money locking up young people for minor crimes than it would take to put them in a highly successful educational program in one of our colleges or universities. Most people end up being incarcerated because they do not know how to deal with society. They make poor choices which could be avoided were they assigned to a person to monitor their behavior and direct them on better paths to success. Parole and probation operate, if adequately staffed, more successfully as a deterrent most of the time than incarceration; and at a fraction of the cost. Texas’ problem is mainly that the Legislature generally will not deal with prevention, but only the consequences of bad acts and have never adequately funded probation departments or the parole officers of this state.

Another area where I believe Texas to be off on the wrong foot is the attack on our 200-year tradition of open and free beaches. We have had for as long as memory serves open beaches in this state where people cannot claim ownership. It is even embodied in our constitution. Unfortunately, our all-Republican Supreme Court has put private property concerns ahead of public concerns about our state’s beaches. In a recent decision our Supreme Court ruled that even if the mean high tide marker passes where a structure is built and the structure is right in the middle of the beach, it still is private property; and the state cannot force its owner to move it.

It seems to me the next logical step in this bad decision is that people may now claim, based on this Supreme Court ruling, that they have a right to fence off certain areas of the beaches. Florida and some other so called resort states are famous for allowing big, plush resorts and hotels to claim ownership of the prime beaches. Get ready because Texas appears to be headed in that direction under the influence of our free enterprise conservative judges.

The last bit of insanity which appears to be heading for popular acceptance in our coming crises year is the decision of our leaders not to use Texas’ rainy day fund.

Apparently over the past several years we have had enough money coming in from tax revenue to create a savings account. This being the case, we should have been paying less taxes instead of putting it in the bank. Nonetheless, if we have in fact created a savings account of Texas’ taxpayer money, I doubt there will be in the near future a year any worse for our financial status than the one coming up. It seems as silly to not dip into the state savings fund for absolute necessities as it would for a family to go hungry with a big CD in the bank.

Well, as I’ve often said, being right is too often the consolation prize in the world of politics.

HARDBALL POLITICS AND THE TEXAS SPEAKER’S RACE

2010-12-13T01:18:00.001-06:00

Article 3, Section 9 (b) of the Texas Constitution says: “The House of Representatives shall, when it first assembles, organize temporarily, and thereupon proceed to the election of a Speaker from its own members.”

Speakers’ races in the Texas Legislature have always been colorful--most of the time controversial--and generally influence the course of the legislative session. The Legislative Session of 2011 will meet all of those criteria.

Past speakers’ races generally provide great entertainment for those of us who thrive on watching politics. The coming year’s speaker’s race demonstrates clearly once again that Democrats and Republicans have one thing in common. Once they obtain power by defeating the other side, they generally turn to fighting with one another for who will get to exercise the recently gained power.

The 2008 election produced a closely divided Texas House of Representatives. Only 2-3 votes separated the number of Democrats and Republicans. There was a good deal of bitterness over Speaker Craddick, who used the Tom DeLay School of hard-nosed politics, and who exercised dictatorial powers over the House to the extent that he offended many Republicans. There was a House revolt of moderate Republicans who joined with a large number of Democrats and proceeded to elect a moderate Republican, Joe Straus, III, of San Antonio, speaker of the House. Most people throughout the 2009 Session found Straus laid back and judged him to rule the House evenhandedly. Apparently, evenhandedness and openness does not suit the new Republican majority of 99 in the Texas House of Representatives.

No sooner had it become evident that Republicans had obtained a near super-majority in the Texas House of Representatives than the clamor arose for a more conservative type of Republican to be speaker. Before all of the votes were counted, Representative Christian of Center, Texas, chairman of the Republican caucus, started contacting new members and informing them that the Republican Party expected them to toe the Republican conservative line and that non-conservative Republicans would not be tolerated. Further, Christian and others began running up the trial balloon that the Texas House, like the United States House of Representatives, should elect its leader by caucus.

In other words, if the Republican caucus were to meet with its 99 new members and 46 of them decide that someone other than Straus should be speaker, the Republican leadership proposes that person should be the speaker. It doesn’t seem to matter that, by that method, 104 members of the House would be disenfranchised from having any say in their own presiding officer.

An even nastier aspect of hard-nosed politics has arisen in the current speaker’s race. Apparently right-wing Republicans are sending out robo-calls and mass mailings to conservative members’ districts urging them to vote for a “Christian” speaker and urging them to support one of the two ultra-conservatives running for speaker. Straus is Jewish. Even nastier comments have been posted on blogs urging members not to vote to let “Jewish Bosses” take over the Texas House of Representatives. As one House member said, “It’s so distasteful, it could give Christianity a bad name.”

These instances provide evidence that we have not advanced much beyond the worst elements of our civilization when policymakers are unable to see, much less eradicate, either ignorance or antisemitism from their own ranks.

Thus far it appears Straus is holding onto approximately 100 votes to re-elect him speaker. To their credit, all but three or four Republicans have not yielded to the right-wing, bigotry pressure to vote against Straus because of his religion or because he is a moderate influencing the House. I predict Straus will succeed in being re-elected speaker for at least one other term.

In the late 1950's the selection of the speaker changed slightly. Prior to the late 50's selection of the speaker of the Texas House was largely a good ole boy, insider process. Handshakes were used more than written pledges and personal relationships and friendships were probably more important than political philosophy at that time. Unfortunately for liberals in Texas they developed the system that worked once, but it was better suited for special interests and big-money lobbyists.

During the election in 1960 Jimmy Turman, a fairly liberal educator, was selected speaker. Labor and more liberal groups campaigned by supporting various candidates for election based on their commitment to vote for Turman as speaker. It was the first time that a speaker’s race had become involved in the election of individual members. The so-called Texas liberals soon learned they had made a bad mistake. This was a process tailor-made for special interests and lobbyists who were able to fund large sums of money in the election of House members. After the election of Turman, conservatives used the same technique to elect Byron Tunnell, Ben Barnes and Gus Mutcher. Then, for the first time, a scandal brought some reform to the way speakers were selected. It came in the form of Sharpstown.

Speaker Mutcher was convicted of accepting a bribe. Over 60 new members were elected to the House and Price Daniel, Jr. was elected speaker as the reformed leader of the Texas House. Although Daniel refused to accept or solicit written pledges for speaker, he would accept a commitment for a vote of a member during election time by that member holding a press conference and pledging to vote for reform in the form of electing Price Daniel, Jr. speaker. Daniel was elected and brought to the office with him several needed reforms. Accountability of money solicited and spent in the effort to elect a speaker was required for the first time; openness in the process was required. Unfortunately, although many of the Daniel reforms stayed, pretty much the same old system of getting written pledges became the norm after Daniel.

Allowing the Democratic or Republican caucus to select the speaker of the House would be a giant step backwards. In fact, the current pledge system means many of the members of the House have little or no say in naming their presiding officer. A much needed reform in the selection of speaker would require that no written commitment could be asked for or given prior to the general election which immediately preceded the regular session. The penalty for doing so should be a small fine and a disqualification from holding public office. It would be enough deterrent that no sane member of the House would risk forfeiting his right to hold office in order to try to get a pledge card from a member.

This reform would also remove the specter of withholding campaign funds from a candidate for the House of Representatives unless he committed to a certain speaker. It would also allow everyone in the House to be on equal footing and have an equal say in who their presiding officer would be during the period of time between the November elections and the January Regular Session.

I doubt seriously if this idea will gain any more traction than it did when I introduced this reform in the late 1970's in the House of Representatives. But as I have frequently said, being right is too often the consolation prize in politics.

POLITICS VERSUS JUSTICE

2010-11-30T15:27:00.000-06:00

Texas is rapidly gaining more prominence for the wrong kinds of things. It is emerging as the leading state in the union for having wrongly convicted people and sentenced them to life in prison or death. An example was revealed recently in Washington County where a man had spent 18 years for being an accomplice to a murder he did not commit. The account in daily newspapers reporting on the subject described egregious misconduct on the part of prosecutors from covering up evidence to hiding witnesses and intimidating possible defense witnesses. A substantial portion of the Texas population, although not a majority, opposes the death penalty for these very reasons. The death penalty is a final result being delivered by an obviously imperfect system.

Almost everything in a democratic society has political overtones; and for the most part, in representative government, elected officials should represent the people. However, if any part of American government should be held to an imminently higher standard, it should be our judiciary. Unfortunately, Texas seems to lead in another shameful category. The institutions supposedly acting as "watchdogs" for our judiciary are obviously becoming both political and partisan.

A recent example of blatant politics in which wrongdoing is not only overlooked but actively covered up has occurred with the handling of the case against Judge Keller of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The quality ascribed as judicial temperament should include, above all, a basic concept of fairness. In our criminal system as rife with flaws and shortcomings as it is, judges should at all cost bend over backwards to give true meaning to "innocent until proven guilty." Judge Keller obviously gave in to her basic instincts favoring the death penalty while showing a callous disregard for the possibility that an accused might be innocent.

Traditionally, a single judge on the Court of Criminal Appeals is assigned responsibility for handling special appeals, particularly emergency appeals in death sentence cases. Judge Keller had been assigned this duty in the case of Michael Wayne Richard, a man facing death by injection, on an appeal of a 2007 murder case.

Texas legal scholars for the most part agree that Judge Keller callously disregarded traditional handling of death penalty appeals. Many even advocated that her conduct was such that it possibly merited removal from office; and at the very least, a formal reprimand for misconduct. After a full hearing conducted by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Judge Keller was found in violation of ethical rules for judges. Judge Keller was issued what was considered by most a simple slap on the wrist in the form of a warning. Not even satisfied by that mild result, Judge Keller brazenly appealed to the all-Republican Supreme Court of Texas asking them to sit as a special court of review. They did, and they set aside the simple warning on the theory that although the Commission had authority to issue a formal reprimand, removal or suspension, they did not have authority to issue a lesser punishment in the form of a warning. Therefore, Judge Keller escaped any punishment for her misconduct. To most observers the ruling of the Supreme Court defied logic as well as common sense.

It seems that this Republican-favoring ruling ranks up there with the recent ruling of the Texas Ethics Commission which ruled during the investigation of the Tom DeLay money laundering episode that failure to report a check did not amount to a violation of our political contribution rule since it was not in the form of cash. If you will recall, this is the incident where a large check was given; the Commission held that simply reporting the recipient received "a check" was adequate to obey the law of disclosure of political contributions. Covering up misconduct and ethical violations solely to protect one’s party member is not only wrong, it is dangerous and makes a mockery of the principle of equality under the law.