Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For Texas To Turn Blue

Amid Democratic/progressive/liberal euphoria, most understandable after the past eight years, there's been talk that even states like my home sweet home Texas could possibly be flipped for the Dems, and soon.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Texans to turn blue. You'll literally turn blue long before. We've got another generation to go here before the demographics of this very distinctive but chauvinistic state will change that much.

The percentage breakdown (all figures courtesy CNN Politics) was 55% McCain, 44% Obama, 1% all others. That was promising, surprisingly good at 44% for a mixed-race liberal Democrat in a state that still has so many Dixiecrats.

The urban areas are where you can see the changes that are eventually coming. In Dallas County, Obama kicked McCain's ass shockingly, 57-42%. In Travis County (home of dear old liberal college town Austin) it was 64-35% Obama!!!

Onward.

Obama pulled out Harris County (Houston, America's 4th-largest city), 50-49%. There, the African-American vote, 95% for Obama, was the clear difference. He won Bexar County (San Antonio) by a decent margin, 52-47%, and that's in a place with a big military vote. The dominance of Obama in Hispanic Texas was most obvious in El Paso County, 66-33% -- and there's a big military vote there, too. He also took most of deep South Texas, my old stomping grounds.

Even in Tarrant County (Fort Worth-Arlington), which has become Texas' answer to California's right-wing Orange County, there was good news for Democrats. Fort Worth delivered for Republicans much as it has in recent years, making the county breakdown the very same as the state's, 55-44% for Big Mac. There's a lot of old oil and gas money there that more than offsets the minority voting blocs. But the Dallas-Fort Worth midcity of Arlington, home of centrally located amusement parks and sports stadiums, split 50-50%. The demographics there are definitely changing.

But there was plenty of discouraging news. Nueces County (Corpus Christi) is largely Hispanic, but went 52-47% for McCain. There must still be lots of priest-ridden Catholics down there. And when you track the vote out into the boondocks -- East Texas, outlying central areas of the Hill Country, the South Plains, the Panhandle, the rest of the west ... well, McCain just cleaned up.

Candidly, the story is just this simple. McCain and the other Republicans held on to the redneck vote.

It's discouraging, in that the Democratic Party actually fielded a fine candidate for U.S. Senate, state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston. Noriega polled just about evenly with Obama in a race against one of the most vapid (but well-funded) members of the Senate, Bush cheerleader John Cornyn.

What is clear from the results is that there is still a deeply ingrained "rube" vote in this state, the kind of people who would never, ever have given Obama any decent hearing, let alone serious consideration. I will refrain from using any stronger language about them.

Significantly, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently reported that many voters in Wise County, some of them Democrats, voted the straight GOP ticket because they wouldn't vote for any Democrats on a ticket headed by Obama. In so doing, they elected a guy to the office of constable who is affiliated with the Minuteman vigilante organization, a group devoted to chasing real or supposed illegal immigrants around the state.

Change can eventually come to places like my home state. But sadly, it is often glacial in pace. I got used to being in the beleaguered minority many years ago, so I can live with it for now. I hope, along with the optimists among progressives, to see it change before I die.

Crossposted at Manifesto Joe.

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What next on Texas Mormon compound case?

By now, most the country has heard about last week’s Texas raid on a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound in Eldorado, including the removal of more than 400 children.

Unless the state of Texas and Child Protective Services in particular get their acts together quickly, I predict the state is going to be in a bunch of trouble, including some lawsuits against it.

This USA Today column summarizes some points for national readers. After that, I’ll add local points cleaned from Texas newspapers and my own knowledge, and offer up why I think the way I do.

• Did Texas have any option short of taking the children from their families for weeks? This is the largest child custody case in Texas and U.S. history, and the seizure of so many children is both extreme and extraordinary. Authorities said they raided the compound — belonging to an isolationist group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which is known to practice polygamy — after a call to a domestic abuse hotline from a 16-year-old seeking help. The caller wasn’t found, but child welfare officials said they saw several teenage girls who were pregnant or with young children. That prompted them to remove all the children.

• Did the state infringe on the group's right to practice its religion? FLDS members have invited fear and suspicion by cutting themselves off from society. It is likely that the sect built its isolated West Texas compound in 2004 to avoid outside interference. In recent days, FLDS mothers have appeared on TV wearing prairie dresses and old-fashioned hairdos. Different, yes, but the Constitution protects religious freedom, as long as it's practiced legally.

• Did anyone inside the compound violate statutory rape, child molestation or other laws? Whatever the group’s beliefs, the age of consent in Texas is 17, and the age of marriage with parental consent is 16. On TV, at least one FLDS man said he did not know Texas law prohibited sex with adolescent girls. If the law has been violated, the girls should be protected and offenders prosecuted.

• What is in the best interest of each child? What's right for one child might not be right for all 437. Appropriately, a judge has ordered that the case of each child be heard by June 5. DNA tests are being conducted to sort out tangled families. In the meantime, the emotional toll on the parents is evident. How the children are faring can only be guessed. They are being transferred to temporary foster care after being held in a coliseum in the town of San Angelo.

Now, some Texas-level observations, some of which will provide further explanation to USA Today points.

First, we can go beyond “the caller wasn’t found.” Though nobody will say anything on the record by name, it’s pretty clear this was a prank call. Without excusing anything that may have happened at the Eldorado compound, parents know that rebellious teenagers, in some cases, will make prank calls against their parents to authorities.

The state’s failure to adequately investigate that possibility before the raid could be a matter of legal liability in any lawsuits the FLDS file.

And, things like a state district judge treating the children like cattle and not having individual hearings on their custody status will only add to that.

Second, and unsurprisingly, Gov. Helmethair, aka Rick Perry, is AWOL on this issue. Why? For the same reason that folks like the Rutherford Institute are jumping in with both feet — Rick doesn’t want to alienate the Religious Right, especially now that he has announced he will run for re-election in 2010.

Third, it’s no crime to be a pregnant teen, or our jails would be even more bursting than they are now.

Fourth, as other FLDS-type cases have shown, unless this is tried very carefully (assuming criminal charges result), you run the risk of generating a Stockholm Syndrome situation where teen brides side with their non-caffeinated sugar daddies. My confidence Texas will try this, and a judge will hear it, with that level of skill? Right now, about 10 percent.

That’s especially true on statuatory rape charges. After this fiasco, good luck to the state of Texas on proving those charges.

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Cornyn Watch: The Apparatchik Has Mucho Dinero, So Noriega Vs. Cornyn Will Be David Vs. Goliath

In Texas, we've gotten used to perennially uneven contests. They reflect a dysfunctional plutocracy, and then the beneficiaries try to pass it off as "democratic."

The latest on Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas and shill supreme for Il Doofus, is that he's floating (not swimming -- that actually takes work) atop a veritable ocean of donations. According to the April 20 "PoliTex" blog of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

The first-term Republican announced this week (now last) that he has raised $1.6 million since winning the March primary in a walk. That gives him $8.7 million in the bank for his race against Democratic state Rep. Rick Noriega. ...

Noriega's camp said the Houston Democrat raised $478,548 for the first quarter of 2008 and has about $329,000 on hand.

It's easy to understand why Texas isn't the best place to go up against the smug forces of evil plutocracy in America. It's practically Ground Zero for that: all those oil and natural gas thieves, reactionary agricultural interests, unregulated scam businesses, practitioners of the new sex slavery, human trafficking, sweatshops ... you name it, we've got it.

A fight for decency has got to start somewhere.

John Cornyn, with his laissez-faire Republican philosophy, represents, at best, an ineffectual, privileged status quo. At worst, he is a de facto mouthpiece for the very people who brought the underground Third World here. As one of the typical "conservatives" of his generation who demonizes government, he always played into the hands of the wealthy who routinely hired undocumented gardeners and maids because they worked cheap. But now, the monied ones are unseemly indignant when the restaurant help can't speak a lot of English. Such an inconvenience.

Enter state Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston. This is a man who embodies the greatness of Texas' Hispanic heritage, one who could show us the path to a far better state. If Rick can get the crucial backing he needs, I think he has a real chance to topple our reigning Ken Doll in November.

More about Rick, from his Web site:

Rick was raised in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Mt. Carmel High School in 1976 and attended Alvin Junior College on a Rusk athletic scholarship. It was during these formative years that he learned to work hard to get far in life.

In 1984, Rick completed his undergraduate education with the help of an ROTC scholarship at the University of Houston, receiving his commission in the United States Army. He went on to earn a Master's Degree in Public Administration in 1990 at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was an editor of the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy.

Rick felt compelled to answer the call and serve in the U.S. Army in the wake of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. He was an airborne school and service commander of the 143rd Infantry Detachment (Long-Range Surveillance), an aide to Brigadier General David Heuer, and aide-de-camp to General Samuel Turk, Adjutant General of the Texas Army National Guard.

But Rick's service in the Army did not end there. He became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard, and served as deputy garrison commander of the KMTC training facility in Kabul, Afghanistan after 9/11. Rick was deployed in Afghanistan for a total of 14 months until August 2005, and he was also the Laredo Border Sector Commander in Operation Jump Start during the summer of 2006.

Upon his return from Afghanistan, Rick was tapped by Mayor Bill White as Incident Commander of Houston's Hurricane Katrina relief efforts at the George R. Brown Convention Center. His leadership with the military, as well as his record in community service, was crucial as the GRB was transformed into a virtual city that cared for nearly 30,000 evacuees, and was then dismantled in the course of less than a month. At the center, Rick coordinated medical, employment, travel, housing and food services for more than 2,000 evacuees living on-site.

There's a lot more here. I don't think anybody is going to give this man any shit if he forgets to wear a flag lapel pin some Monday morning on the campaign trail. (But, looking at his resume, he's probably the sort of guy who will always remember to do that.)

Noriega represents a unique chance for a Democrat to win statewide office in Texas, for the first time since 1990. I hope he can get some out-of-state money; Cornyn has most of the Lone Star State high-rollers lined up. It's high damn time Texas had someone besides the usual plutocrats representing us in Washington.

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Will Texas voters elect this clown AGAIN?

Despite only getting 40 percent of the vote (with the courtesy of rounding up) in 2006, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced Friday he is running for re-election in 2010.

Well, I expect he will have one, and just one, Republican primary opponent, in what should be a bruising dust-up campaign two years from now.

Yes, you heard me right. One.

And only one.

Who that “one” is, and how that race might turn out, coming right up with some more analysis.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst will indeed challenge Perry, and I believe win. And, not as a Republican, which I most certainly am not, nor as a Democrat, which I am not registered as, either, I would pay primo money to watch that fight. As Texans know, they have already had a tussle or two in the last session of the Lege. As for why I think he’ll win, read below, where I list the reasons why he would be a tougher opponent for Democrats than Perry.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson will again play Hamlet, then play chicken liver, just as in 2006, and opt not to run, then make up some bullshit excuse for why.

Trust me on this one, she doesn’t have it in her. She knows she won’t come close with collecting Religious Right votes and if Dewhurst announces before her, he’ll line up more of the financial conservative vote in suburban Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

So, scratch Kay. If McCain loses in 2008, she might accept a Republican VP slot in 2012. If not, she’ll likely retire from the Senate.

As for Democrats, they probably would like to run against Perry, and certainly would do better against him than Dewhurst. Dewhurst is less hard-line conservative, especially on Religious Right issues, than Perry. He also is simply smoother as a person. Plus, he has a metro power base in Houston. As for Gov. Helmethair vs. Dewhurst on other issues, the Trans-Texas Corridor is a biggie. Now, secretly, Dewhurst may like some of its provisions. But, so far, he’s not come off as sounding any way in favor of it.

That said, the 2006 election showed Democrats that, with state demographics, they have a better chance of beating any Republican who goes too far right. And, without Grandma Strayhorn around this time, Dem deep pockets will line up early behind a candidate.

But whom? Chris Bell might deserve another shot, but I don’t know if he’ll take it.

I’m going to throw out State Sen. Royce West. He’s denied the itch before, but by 2010 he will have spent enough time in the Texas Senate to want to move on. That’s unless he reaches some non-attack quid pro quo with Dewhurst and runs for lieutenant governor instead. He’s got enough connections through his law practice, I believe is acceptable to more progressive Democrats, has a solid legislative record, and through the recognition of being Senate President Pro Tem, has party leaders he can line up.

We’ll see how this turns out, starting about 18 months from now.

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Texas Update: No Two-Step For Gene Kelly

State Democratic Party regulars are no doubt sighing in relief. State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, is coming in with just under 51 percent of primary vote, winning the outright majority he needed to avoid a runoff and be the nominee against Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Noriega has key endorsements and might actually stand a chance in November against Cornyn, a Bush shill and one of the Senate's most expendable members.

Meanwhile, Gene Kelly, perennial candidate for this or that (see previous post), will have to take his dance macabre home to Universal City, Texas. (He usually only left there to pay the filing fee, anyway.) Perhaps we've seen the last of the 81-year-old retired military lawyer. But it's not like Texans ever saw much of him. In nearly 20 years of seeking and never winning public office, Kelly rarely campaigned. Name recognition can only do just so much. Maybe if he'd changed his name to John Wayne and run as a Republican ...

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What Happened In Texas ...

... was that Hispanics turned out. A whole lot of them. And they voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton.

It appears that El Paso put her over. She won that urban area by a ratio of over 2-to-1. That, and her strength in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, offset a big Obama vote in Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston and Austin.

I feel kind of bittersweet about the whole thing. There are things I like and dislike about both, but I am very ready to support whichever one is the nominee.

It seems there was a strong Obama vote among those who cast ballots early, and among those who made up their minds early. The more undecided people, and those who waited until yesterday to vote, went mostly for Hillary. The experience argument seemed to carry a lot of weight with those who decided late.

Onward.

So, if you're wondering, how did I vote? I voted Democratic, as an early voter. My wife waited until yesterday, and she also voted Democratic. That's as much as you're going to get out of me right now.

You can get the exit-poll demographic breakdown here, at CNN.com.

Texas postscript: A second story is that perennial candidate Gene Kelly stands a chance to make a runoff for the Democratic U.S. senatorial nomination against state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston. This is one that probably won't be decided until much later today -- Noriega was hovering at around 50 percent of the vote, with Kelly a distant second.

Kelly has run for U.S. Senate three times, and actually got the Democratic nomination and the honor of getting clobbered in 2000 by GOP incumbent Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. He seldom campaigns. He's a retired military lawyer and judge, somewhere around 81 years old.

Observers have been trying to figure out how he's achieved this modest but noticeable level of success, and they figure it must be the name. "The dancer is dead," many party regulars are trying to tell the voters.

I can't help but think that if such a significant slice of the electorate is that stupid, then Rick Noriega's surname may not be helping him much.

Problem is, Kelly has actually done well enough to force the Texas Democratic Party into a couple of expensive runoffs. Keep your fingers crossed that he doesn't do it again. Here are a couple of links that tell more of the story: This one has the real info. This one is just for fun.

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Texas - more polluting than California and Pennsylvania combined

Not on smog, soot or ozone, but on what our Preznit-elect said in 2000 was a pollutant: carbon dioxide. If it were its own nation, the idea of which many native Texans like to brag about and many other Americans sometimes fervently wish were actually the case, it would be the world’s eighth-largest global warming polluter. It’s actually slipped from its No. 7 spot of five years ago, but only because of Canada’s massive atmospheric destruction to extract oil sands.

Here’s a breakdown of why:

Considering its role in the U.S. economy, it's no surprise Texas ranks as it does. As the nation's leading producer of energy, and with more cattle and oil refineries than any other state, it is essentially America's power plant, gas pump and beef basket. Yes, all those cows play a part. While many environmentalists focus on the methane (another greenhouse gas) produced by cows, the raising of cattle also contributes to CO2 emissions (the burning of fuel to transport cattle and meat, etc.). A study released last summer by Japanese scientists showed that production of just 1 kilogram of beef results in more CO2 emissions than going for a three-hour drive while leaving all the lights on at home.

Simple answer: eat less beef. Another reason is, if you have to eat meat, it only takes 4-5 pounds of plant food to put a pound of weight on a chicken or hog. It takes 8 pounds of feed with a cow.

But the problem isn’t just with farting cows in the country. Read on below the fold:

Here’s the real problem today, though and it’s in urban Texas:

But it's not just industry and agriculture that give Texas such an outsize carbon footprint. Texans epitomize America's penchant for overconsumption, so much so that they've even coined their own phrase for superlarge portions: Texas-sized. The state's 23.5 million residents use nearly 3,000 more kilowatt-hours of electricity every year than the average American and a higher percentage of them drive large, gas-guzzling vehicles. Of the 20 million registered vehicles in Texas, one in four is a pickup truck. Of the 245 million vehicles registered in the United States, only 16 percent are pickups, according to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Last year light trucks made up 61 percent of all new vehicles (both personal and commercial) sold in Texas, compared to just over half of total vehicle sales in the country.

Nearly a third of Texas's carbon emissions come from transportation. With so much wide-open space, Texas hasn’t needed the kind of urban planning that promotes density. Rather, it is a state of far-flung towns and cities, connected by highways and with practically no mass transit. Air quality has suffered as a result; by some estimates more than half of all Texans live in areas where the air is unsafe to breathe, as defined by the EPA's Clean Air Act.

And, here’s the attitude that seeps from Gov. Helmethair (Rick Perry) on down:

Even in the reddest of Red States, one would think that such a health hazard would cause Texas to get serious about air pollution. But it is one of only 15 states without a climate action plan in place or even under consideration. This at a time when some of the most aggressive state plans have taken shape under Republican governors, according to national climate protection groups. In 2006, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger muscled through the most ambitious carbon cap-and-trade plan of any state in the country, aimed at reducing statewide CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Last summer Florida’s GOP Gov. Charlie Crist signed executive orders to slash the state's greenhouse-gas emissions to 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty last year signed a law requiring state utilities to generate a quarter of their power from renewable sources by 2025, and in Connecticut, Gov. Jodi Rell’s Energy Vision initiative calls for 20 percent of all energy used and sold in the state to come from clean or renewable sources by 2020.

Result?

Last year the Texas Association of Manufacturers and Houston-based Exxon Mobil successfully lobbied against a bill that would have provided incentives to homeowners and businesses to install solar panels. The Republican-held state legislature even voted down a bill that would have allowed cities to increase their sales tax in order to fund the construction of light rail systems, for fear of appearing to be seen as raising taxes. When a Democratic state senator from Austin proposed a bill that would have merely set up a task force to study climate change, it was defeated thanks to fierce opposition from the business community, including the Texas Oil and Gas Association and Texas Automobile Dealers Association.

Contrary to Perry’s feeble joke attempt that the biggest source of global warming is Al Gore’s mouth, it’s his own flapping trap that’s the problem.

Help may be on the horizon, though. The Peak Oil horizon. Oil prices staying over $100 a barrel will force more more Dallasite, Houstonian, and even Austinite Red State/neck driver, all of whom are such titty-babies they slow their pickups and SUVs down to half a mile per hour for speed bumps, to junk their gas guzzlers which will never see the likes of an unpaved road, and buy cars instead.

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“Texas — it’s a whole other country” (for killing people)

The Texas slogan literally rings true, sickeningly, in the area of capital punishment. Texas has executed more people this year than all other death penalty states combined. Of course, when you have a state with an appellate jurist, Judge Sharon Keller of the Court of Criminal Appeals, who deliberately closes up shop at 5 p.m. to prevent a death penalty appeal that is based on an expected Supreme Court review of lethal injection, that says something about the state’s judicial system, as does this:

The rate at which Texas sentences people to death is not especially high given its murder rate. But once a death sentence is imposed there, said Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, prosecutors, state and federal courts, the pardon board and the governor are united in moving the process along. “There’s almost an aggressiveness about carrying out executions,” said Dieter, whose organization opposes capital punishment.

The rest of the nation is seeing the light, more and more, but not Texas.

And, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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Texas science ed director resigns over ID-creationist pressure

Texas’ state science education commissioner, Chris Comer, has resigned in what she calls a forced resignation over her refusal to turn a blind eye to possible evolution and intelligent design politics and spread.

Comer, who held her position for nine years, said she believes evolution politics were behind her ousting.

“None of the other reasons they gave are, in and of themselves, firing offenses,” she said.

The Texas Education Agency put Comer on 30 days’ paid administrative leave in late October, resulting in what she described as a forced resignation.

The move came shortly after Comer forwarded an e-mail announcing a presentation being given by the author of “Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse.” In the book, author Barbara Forrest says creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Ms. Comer sent the e-mail to several individuals and a few online communities.

Here’s TEA’s spin:

Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral," the officials said.

The officials said that forwarding the e-mail conflicted with Ms. Comer's job responsibilities. The e-mail also violated a directive for her not to communicate with anyone outside the agency regarding the upcoming science curriculum review, officials said in the documents.

The documents show that Lizzette Reynolds, the agency's senior adviser on statewide initiatives, started the push to fire Ms. Comer over the e-mail.

"This is something that the State Board, the Governor's Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports," Ms. Reynolds said in an e-mail to Ms. Comer's supervisors.

Ms. Reynolds joined the agency in January and previously worked in the U.S. Department of Education and as a deputy legislative director during President Bush's term as governor.

Note that neither TEA officials nor Reynolds claims to have an e-mail showing Comer officially endorsed Forrest’s book. The idea that it implies endorsement of the speaker may be true in the real world, but the TEA knows it’s not legally provable.

But, that’s small potatoes.

Why WOULDN’T Comer endorse Forrest’s book indeed?

For the TEA and Reynolds to say something is wrong with that leads to the inference they see nothing wrong with creationists trying to foist intelligent design — as already rejected by federal court in Dover, Pa. — as perfectly acceptable.

And, it’s pretty clear that is exactly what they believe.

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Texas spends $1 billion to court FutureGen

Yes, that’s the price of incentivess the state is spending to attract the experimental clean-coal technology power plant.

Just think if Gov. Rick Perry and the Lege would shell out that much to enforce current state and federal pollution regulations, toughen up state laws, and cooperate with, rather than fight, the EPA on urban ozone standards in the biggest metropolitan areas.

But, that would be so “environmentalist,” so “green,” and we can’t have that in the Lone Star State now, can we?

And, for the last time, you numbnut east Texans, the Leon County site gets no bonus points for being on top of an active coal mine. Texas lignite is way too dirty to use for clean coal technology. You’ll be seeing rail cars come from Wyoming, instead.

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Texans getting Kinky once was enough — except for Kinky

Now, the cigar-choping nutbar musician/novelist Kinky Friedman, so politically inept in the 2006 Texas governor’s race that he couldn’t figure out that people who agreed with him on gay marriage legalization and those who agreed with him that those who didn’t love Jesus should go to hell were most definitely not in the same circle of political groupings, wants to run for the statehouse again — as a Democrat.

Forget it, Kinky (other than for column fodder for we newspaper writers and bloggers). You were last in a four-horse race; besides your quasi-fundamentalist take on Jesus, your comments on “jailhouse Negros” and others will land you dead last in the 2010 Democratic primary, too.

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Interesting Email From The DSCC

This email speaks for itself

Dear Corpus Juris,

Even in the heart of Bush country, it doesn't pay to be a Republican anymore.

A recent poll conducted by the DSCC shows only 41% of Texans reporting favorable views of their home state Republican Senator John Cornyn. Moreover, Cornyn doesn't even clear 50% in a hypothetical 2008 election matchup with a generic Democrat.

As Cornyn's popularity plummets, the Texas Democratic party is enjoying an impressive resurgence. This weekend, a DSCC fundraising event in Texas brought in an astounding $1.1 million from supporters throughout the state to help preserve and expand the Democratic Senate majority in 2008.

Republicans have 21 seats to defend in 2008, compared with only 12 for Democrats. And as Republican senators continue to blindly advocate the deeply unpopular policies of George W. Bush in Iraq and elsewhere, the John Cornyns of the world will inch ever closer to Election Day defeat in 2008.

The DSCC will be watching and waiting for every opportunity to achieve Democratic victory.

Sincerely,



J.B. Poersch
Executive Director, DSCC

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Keep On Fighting, Harvey, Keep on Fighting

Houston, TX does many things right. This time every year, one of its best activities occur, the Martin Luther King Jr. Oratory Competition. Ten elementary students compose and give their own speechs on a selected topic. After the competition, the NPR affiliate plays the speeches. I have learned that if I am driving when they are broadcast, I had best find a parking lot and pull over.

Harvey Pittman II, a 5th-grade student from Lockhart Elementary won this years competition. This young man is brilliant and spot on.

If you do nothing else this week-end to commemorate this important holiday, please click this link.

http://www.kuhf.org/newsaudio/2007/01/070112mlkspeech.m3u

More info about the competition and excerpts from other speeches are here:

http://www.kuhf.org/newsaudio/2007/01/070112mlk.m3u


One more thing, IMHO Dr. King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail is the best prose ever written by an American.

http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html

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Changing No Child Left Behind?

In the mid 1970s, Dexter Manley was graduated from Jack Yates High School, an inner city football power house in Houston. From an academic point of view, he was totally illiterate. Of course, he also spent four years earning passing grades at Oklahoma State. In the mid 1980s, Manley was the poster boy and the chief piece of evidence for education reform in Texas. From then on, any person who wanted to be elected Governor of Texas had better be extremely outspoken on behalf of education reform.

Calls for reform led to calls for more money. Calls for more money, led to demands for accountability. Comprehensive testing is seen as being the most efficient way to promote and implement accountability. The interesting thing about the No Child Left Behind Act is that it not only impacts money, but the very life of a given school.

The concentration on test scores impacts the pay and job security. Good deal, right? Not so fast.

Three examples:

Superintendents are hired based on promises to improve test score. There is much turn over. Their deservedly high salaries are greatly influenced by 200-2000 employees. A thoughtful professional will protect the family’s income by moving to a less problematic district as soon as issues of concern appear on the horizon. In six years, I worked with 3 superintendents.

Building principals are given yearly goals and are paid bonuses or fired based on test achievement. I worked for years in a high school whose student population was undergoing vast and constant demographic change. I worked under 4 principals in ten years. Most principals have a plan, a bag of tricks that has worked for them. Yet, they are keenly aware of the diminishing marginal utility of their plans. So again, they come in, work their magic and get out before the trend line drops (farther).

In Texas, part of a teacher’s pay is based on scores and now the legislature want job security so attached as well. Let’s take my old district – school A is in a great long established upper middle class neighborhood with a history of superior test results; school B is in a “transitional” neighborhood with many highly mobile families and English competency issues. These kids need great teachers. However, a blue chip candidate for a teaching position would be silly to consider school B if school A was on the table as well.

This is just one small slice of the harmful unintended side effects caused by NCLB.

In view of this, as I scanned an overview of John Cornyn’s remarks at the Heritage Foundation I felt a rush of hope. Soon I was to find that his comments were just a tad bit longer than the name of the bill he is cosponsoring, the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (A-PLUS) Act of 2007.

I felt teased. Important notions were only vaguely hinted at:

more decision-making power to parents and teachers… cutting the red tape and bureaucracy… eliminating the regulatory burden that invariably attends Washington control.

http://cornyn.senate.gov/index.asp?f=record&lid=1&rid=237281

Soon I will be reading the Senate bill (I attended public school in Ohio) to find out just how they plan to do those wonderful things listed above.

Its worth noting that Cornyn is up for reelection in ’08. While there is little indication of who his main competition will be, he undoubtedly knows that he needs more in his resume than his (formerly) rabid support for the war and all things Alberto Gonzales.

There's more: "Changing No Child Left Behind?" >>

Hello

Gosh, I am humbled to be with such company. I will try to keep you informed about those Texans who represent the Houston area in the 110th Congress.

I will concentrating on the folks representing my homeland – Sens Cornyn and Hutchinson, Reps Gene Green (D), Ted Poe (R), Nick Lampson (D), John Cubertson (R) (my own), and the inimitable Sheila Jackson-Lee (D). Hardly the brightest crayons in the box, but if Rep.Green tried he could be a star as he is both knowledgeable and witty. Think a straight Barney Frank.

Committees I will be checking in with are:

House committees: Rules; Natural Resources; Education and Labor

Senate committees: Natural Resources and Public Works; Health Education and Labor

And as time allows, I will be posting on John Boehner’s wardrobe.

A quick lap of the block shows me that none of the above folks have issued a statement about The Speech. Cornyn recently made a speech at the Heritage Foundation on NCLB. I will post on that shortly. In the near future, Culbertson will be having a neighborhood meeting next door to me at Rice U. A focus will be border security. I will try to attend. I want to ask him why he continually misuses the term amnesty? Ignorance or manipulation?

Doclarry's post below reminds me that I would also like to ask him about the min wage. Conservatives always speak of potential harm that raising the minimum will cause, but where are the historical stats that back this up? Basic level microeconomic theories of supply, demand, and price are interesting, but not always applicable. What does the real world record tell us?

There's more: "Hello" >>