Ronnie Earle On High Stakes Testing In Texas

I shot some video of Ronnie Earle speaking to a roomful of Democratic activists last weekend. He has two hot button issues that I’d like to see discussed more in the Texas political conversation: Tax Structure and Education.

Today I’d like to share Ronnie Earle’s take on high stakes testing of our school children in Texas. He has an interesting view that most people don’t bring up very often. Doing poorly on these tests is stigmatizing.



Yes, Earle needs to get over his performance in Algebra just like Texas needs to get over over-testing its children. Testing them not to assess how much they learn, but to figure out which teacher they need to fire.

For Lieutenant Governor: Ronnie Earle

So since I early voted already I thought I would share the fact that for Lieutenant Governor I made former prosecutor Ronnie Earle my choice to run against Lieutenant Governor David Deworst this fall (I know how to spell his name correctly, I just choose not to).

I know it’s not what other lefty bloggers are doing. They are opting for the former VP of the AFL-CIO Linda Chavez-Thompson. Why they do this escapes me. The idea, I thought, of primaries was not only to choose the best candidate but also to choose the one who is more likely to win in November. Chavez-Thompson’s hyphenated name is not recognized beyond a few, especially here in union-less Texas.

Ronnie Earle, my choice, has a name that is not only recognized statewide, but nationally. He is famously noted as the point man that got Tom DeLay to pose for this mug shot, an act that eventually led to his resignation from the US Congress, a place that he ran like an iron fist. An act that eventually led to his brief stint on “Dancing With the Stars” where he demonstrated how he could nearly drop his dance partner on her keester.

And because he demonstrated this can-do approach to criminal behavior among politicians, Ronnie Earle is the guy who can bring needed change to the way the state of Texas does its business, or should I say, doesn’t do its business.

For instance, Earle is correct in his assessment that Texas’ tax structure is designed to favor the rich, who pay no taxes. Texas, Earle says, runs on the backs of the middle class. A class that he correctly believes is slowly but surely disappearing in Texas. So following this policy is fiscal suicide in the long term.

And yes, I heard Ronnie Earle speak yesterday at a Democratic Party workshop that was held in Bastrop, Texas. He came in toward the end of the workshop and spoke for a couple of minutes, and then took questions.

And yes, I got it on video. I am going to cherry pick a few clips and post them over the next couple of weeks. The first one is a response to a commenter in the audience who also lived in former Congressman Tom DeLay’s district.

Here was the comment:

“We’re from Fort Bend, we want to thank you because your work in Austin led us to getting rid of a scourge for Fort Bend County, Tom DeLay, and we . . . (applause and whoops).”

Here is what Ronnie Earle, who finds himself free of the fetters of office now and can now speak bluntly of his former case.




Even though I had already voted for Earle, I just have to say that anyone who says that going to the penitentiary wouldn’t be as embarrassing to DeLay than “Dancing With the Stars” has my vote.

Dan Patrick Looking Out For His Good Buddy Tom DeLay

Oh my.

I must have been looking the other way when Danny Boy slipped this little nugget in.

Conservative talk show host cum State Senator Dan Patrick recently introduced into the Senate a package of bills that he dubbed “reform bills”

Among them are a bill and a joint resolution. HB 630 and SJR 26. SJR 26 is a joint resolution calling for Texas voters to vote on a constitutional amendment in November. What constitutional amendment would that be? Read it and weep.

“A. Article IV, Texas Constitution, is amended by adding Section 22a to read as follows:
Sec. 22a. To the extent provided by general law, the attorney general may represent the state in the district and inferior courts in the prosecution of criminal and civil offenses classified by law as offenses against public administration, including ethics offenses, or as offenses involving insurance fraud.”

It’s a little insidious if you look at the companion bill that Patrick has filed. HB 630.

Scroll on down to line 26 to 27. You will see that HB 630 takes away the purview of the Travis County District Attorney, currently Ronnie Earle, to oversee criminal prosecutions of state officials, and gives it to a new “public integrity unit” that functions under the state Attorney General.

It’s like putting the wolf in charge of the hen house.

This is clearly an ill-disguised way to take prosecutorial power away from one of the most liberal counties in Red Texas, and place it in the hands of one of the most pliant and obsequious offices in the state. Greg Abbott prosecutes Tom DeLay for money laundering? Greg Abbot brings Tom DeLay to trial for conspiring to turn $190,000 of TRMPAC money over to the campaign funds of state representatives and senators?

Don’t be ridiculous.

And finally, to top the whole thing off, to call for a constitutional amendment vote in an odd-numbered year is to request for voters to vote in a bad amendment that works against the interest of the people. Remember Proposition 2 in 2005? It was a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as “the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

I remember standing in a long line to vote on that day. Everyone, and I mean everyone in line knew each other.

They all went to the same church.

It varies by state, but in general the percentage of people who are in favor of (or just don’t care about) gay marriage to those who oppose it is generally a 50:50 split. In Texas, I suspect it’s more like 40:60. Do you wonder what the statewide vote tally was on Proposition 2? From the Secretary of State's election results website:

Prop. 2 Same sex marriage denied legal status

IN FAVOR 1,723,782 76.25%
AGAINST 536,913 23.74%

So let’s get another bad amendment voted for in an off-year election in numbers that do not reflect in any way, shape or form, the consensus of Texas voter opinion.

It’s Democracy with a capital T.

Nobody Told Me Not to Mow the Carpet

Travis County, Texas District Attorney Ronnie Earle made his case to the state Court of Criminal Appeals today. Earle claims that Tom DeLay and others conspired to funnel corporate PAC money to individual State Senate and House campaigns in the 2002 election. It goes hand in hand with his money laundering charges.

By law, corporate PAC money cannot be used to fund individual campaigns, but only to offset some housekeeping expenses like buying paper clips and post-its. That this money was eventually used to fund glossy mailouts for the 2002 election, which helped elect a Republican majority, is the big issue. That and the fact that it was a crime that was planned in advance.

Where’s the rub? Well it turns out that the conspiracy part of the law wasn’t enacted until a year after the crime was committed. DeLay’s lawyers argue that you can’t file charges on a crime committed before it was specifically identified as a crime.

Earle argues that conspiracy law is on the books, just in another set of books. The restrictions on corporate PAC contributions are found in the Texas Election Code. The crime of criminal conspiracy is found in the Texas Penal Code. Tom DeLay’s lawyers say that the existence of a later conspiracy addition to the Election Code means that it really wasn’t a crime of conspiracy before 2003. That is, they made it a special case in ’03, so the Penal Code’s anti-conspiracy law can’t be used.

I have to admit, they’ve got a lot of nerve. Tom DeLay is at it again. According to this logic now, we have to come up with specific laws that govern conspiracy. If it becomes a crime to conspire to steal aspirin from a pharmacy in 2007, you can’t be charged with the crime committed in 2006 even though there is a blanket conspiracy law on the books.

Earle is right. A ruling in DeLay’s favor puts all conspiracy law at risk. We have to anticipate every single crime that could be committed, and pass a law making it a crime to conspire to do it. Texans are exposed to all sorts of criminal behavior. If the conspiracy law cannot be used as a blanket law covering all crime in all Texas codes, we are in deep trouble.

It reminds me of Lily Tomlin’s character that she played on “Laugh In” several decades ago. My favorite of all time is a scene of her swinging on a swing singing “Nobody told me not to mow the carpet”, a little ditty where she complained about being punished for doing something not specifically forbidden.

Tom DeLay and five year old Edith Ann, Tomlin’s character, share common logic and reason.

Trouble is, it will make a horrible precedent.

DeLay’s lawyers are confident in beating this one off. I wouldn’t count on it. People in this state, and it doesn’t matter of what party affiliation, are mad as H-E-Double Hockey Sticks at him. That he’s now trying to undermine our laws so that he can beat a conspiracy charge tips the scales.