Fort Bend CAD: Only Katy Area Will See Property Taxes Go Up

You have to hand it to the folks down at the Fort Bend County offices. They have their fingers on the pulse of the county. Coming hard on the heels of County Judge Bob Hebert’s predictions of “good values” in county real estate tax assessments we saw frenzied backpedaling as it was pointed out that these “good values” was based on used Kleenex and pocket fluff.

Things you find at the bottom of any Republican’s statistical basis once you remove all of the valid data.

Now, the latest entry in this saga is the prescience of Fort Bend County Central Appraisal District’s chief appraiser, Glen Whitehead, who now says that most of the county’s real estate prices will remain flat or go down.

Except for the areas around Katy.

Katy, part of which overlaps with northern Fort Bend County, is a “kind of anomaly” according to the appraiser. Whitehead sees Katy area real property as continuing its increasing trend unabated and unaffected by any national or regional downturn.

I guess that’s good news for most of us here in Fort Bend County. Our property values will not be inappropriately assessed based on data of questionable legitimacy.

That’s bad news, however for Fort Bend County residents of the Katy area.

These people in Katy, you know, with some few exceptions, have another demographic trend on top of their skyrocketing house prices.

They are what local Republicans refer to as “our base.”

Good luck on that Mr. Whitehead.

Next: Denude Our Borders

Not such a long time ago, the United States was engaged in a ground war against a brown people of diminutive size who refused to come out into the open and fight.

They would hide in the bushes. In the jungle.

Out military happened upon the obvious answer: get rid of the jungle. Denude the rainforests of eastern Southeast Asia. That way the small people would have no where to hide and shoot our soldiers.

They adopted a chemical herbicide that was called Agent Orange, to effect this, and got maximum returns for their efforts. The forests disappeared.

As a side effect, both the Vietnamese who lived there and the American soldiers who fought there started exhibiting long-term effects of exposure to Agent Orange.

Long-term effects that included cancer. Agent Orange was a carcinogen.

Today, Agent Orange is no longer used.

However, the need to keep diminutive brown people from hiding in the bushes has apparently not waned. Today, small brown people continue to hide in the bushes in their attempts to evade capture as they illegally cross the border in the Rio Grande Valley, north to America.

Today, thick carrizo cane (Arundo donax L.) occurs on the banks of the Rio Grande, up to 1.1 miles thick. This cane was planted there hundreds of years ago by Spaniards. It is not native. But it is a good cover for the small brown people.

Enter stage right a plan to denude the banks of the Rio Grande, thus depriving these people of places to hide.

There are three options in this plan”

1. Cut the cane by hand and “paint” the cane stumps with an herbicide called Imazapyr, a product of chemical giant BASF.
2. Bulldoze the cane, digging up the cane roots as well.
3. Spray the Imazapyr herbicide from helicopters. Spray it directly on the cane repeatedly until all of the cane dies.

Of the three options, the last one is obviously the most controversial. Followed by the first one. It isn’t clear whether the 2^nd one includes an herbicide.

Now I have to wonder about the sanity of wholesale spraying an herbicide, one that is non-specific and will kill anything classified as a plant. Especially adjacent to a river that forms an international border. Where the other country on that border uses the river water in its water supply system.

While Imazapyr is listed in chemical data pages and on its MSDS as non-toxic to animals, it is an irritant if inhaled or comes in contact with the skin. It is also known to cause irreversible sight loss.

It also hangs around in the environment for an awful long time, up to months, and can get into the groundwater. The only good news is that if it gets into the river, it will break down in sunlight in only two days.

But that doesn’t help Nuevo Laredo, a city that sits on the river bank opposite a targeted “cane forest”. Two days is not long enough to break down contaminants in water when they are introduced right there in front of them.

A final plan on cane removal has not materialized. In the meantime, let’s hope that sanity prevails and no one adopts the least troublesome “Final Solution” to the “Cane Problem,” the one that would be most beneficial to the corporate profits of BASF.

Energy Independence: Why “Drill Here, Drill Now” Is Not an Option

President Obama’s budget, submitted this week, contains within its $3.6 trillion price tag something that will finally put the United States on the path of energy independence.

Obama’s budget makes a provision for tax credits for research and experimentation by making it a permanent fixture in tax law.

“Overall, the budget would invest billions in research designed to reduce climate change and guarantees loans for companies that develop clean energy technologies.”

This is brilliant. It takes R&D out of the hands of the government, where it has shifted in recent years with government funding of private research firms. As anyone who has dealt with government funded research, this is a virtual bottomless money pit with no formalized objectives, no measurement of performance vis-à-vis attainment of objectives, and no mechanism for implementation of results.

But that system does have an endless paper trail of requests for more funding.

Instead, energy companies are again given tax incentives to run their own research and development. Granted some of the above still occurs, but with accountability measurements in place, there are fewer places to hide excess.

In this research effort, emphasis will be on research to reduce climate change (i.e. reduce emissions of greenhouse gases), and on development of “clean energy technologies.”

Obama realistically expects failure. That’s my kind of guy.

“Sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed. And often it takes not just the commitment of an innovator, but the commitment of a country to innovation. Often what’s required is the support of government.”

Noticeably absent from his budget is the emphasis on current energy technology. That is, exploration and development of oil and gas, or the funding of such.

In actuality, as reported at USA Today, Obama’s budget calls for the ending of numerous tax breaks that the oil industry has enjoyed in the past, and penalizes oil companies for sitting on their proven reserves without developing them.

“President Obama's proposed 2010 budget takes pointed aim at oil and gas companies, eliminating myriad tax breaks and proposing new fees on the providers.”

“The plan put out Thursday would repeal tax breaks intended to spur oil and gas exploration and penalize companies that don't develop wells on land leased from the government. It could raise tens of billions of dollars the next decade.”

In other words, we are finally ending the insane policy of paying oil companies to explore for their own oil reserves, and giving tax breaks for sitting on their proven reserves.

And why not? Weren’t we last year beset by Republican chants of “Drill, Baby, Drill” and “Drill here, Drill now”? These aspects of the budget provide just the carrot, and just the stick, to get that done, right?

So now, all we need to wait for are the shrill cries from the sunset oil industry that the government is doing all it can to drive down domestic oil and gas production, driving up the rate at which we import oil.

OK, for those crying shrilly, I’d like to post this table of the 17 most prolific oil and gas producers, in the world. Here it is, read it and weep.

The United States has 21 billion barrels of domestic oil reserves and 3.3 billion mcf of gas reserves, enough for a reserve life of 8 years.

Contrast that to Canada and Saudi Arabia. If there were places to drill, baby, those are the places.

This table screams to those who want to listen that the United States should take itself out of the business of drilling until there’s no tomorrow, because tomorrow will come sooner than we think. It roars that we should invest full bore in alternative energy sources.

Which is exactly what the Obama budget it targeting.

Now, what were the objections to Obama’s budget again?

National Center for Science Education Has a You Tube Home Page

This is an appropriate time to spread the word that the National Center for Science Education, an organization that has been at the forefront in defending the teaching of evolution in public schools, now has a You Tube home page.

An appropriate time because starting on Thursday, March 26^th, the Texas State Board of Education will meet once more to finalize the Science TEKS that will govern how science will be taught in Texas’ public schools, and more importantly, what demands will be delivered to the publishers of science books so that Texas, a huge school textbook customer, will adopt their textbooks in the upcoming adoption cycle.

To what end you would ask. Why would the NCSE do this just now?

Well, for one thing, I as an interested party in science education have had to depend upon the kindness of strangers to provide first- or second-hand coverage of what transpires at these board meetings. People who “live-blog” the meetings. People who provide snippets of conversation through audio recordings.

But at the NCSE’s You Tube home page, you have one-stop shopping.

The NCSE has a very complete recording of the testimony of one of their own at a recent SBOE meeting. Dr. Genie Scott gave testimony on inclusion of the “strengths and weaknesses” argument in the Science TEKS, especially as found in the Biology curriculum vis-à-vis the teaching of evolution. It also shows her fielding questions from creationist and non-creationist board members alike.

It also shows Don McLeroy’s comments at the meeting, showing how by waving publications about, shouting who cites whom in them, McLeroy arrives at disingenuous conclusions that no one but another creationist would come to.

One part of this last set of videos has been “pulled” by You Tube, leaving the rest of us to speculate on whom had it pulled and why.

So if you want to go and watch our state school board in action, I suggest perusing the small library of videos there.

I, for one am enlightened, but not really surprised.

On Spending $3.6 Trillion

While everyone is still grinding their teeth about how some corporate pigs are having their latest repasts at the taxpayers’ trough, out comes Barack Obama in a media blitz including a night with Jay Leno, finishing with a whopping $3.6 trillion budget placed before Congress for its consideration.

No! will cry the Republicans. No, no, no, no, NO!

But that’s OK. We all expect that. That is what a minority of Americans will say as well.

Let’s make that abundantly clear. A minority of Americans would oppose this budget on philosophical grounds, let alone economic ones (but let’s be honest here, one hand does wash the other here). And they convey their thoughts and feelings to their representatives, who vote accordingly.

That’s how representative government works.

But this time, we have a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress elected by Americans of all political flavors. People who feel a little differently than those who elected those from the Grand Obstructionist Party. People who told all of our countrymen last November that what they wanted was fundamental change.

Well, change is here. No more hiding the costs of war on another set of accounting books. No more avoiding the issue of getting proper healthcare in America in a world where healthcare is becoming less attainable and more costly. No more throwing our tax dollars down oil wells. The oil and gas industry is in its sunset years. Now, after all this time, is the time to steer our tax money (and tax breaks) toward the energy sources that our children and grandchildren will be depending on 50 years from now.

On his radio message today Barack Obama said this:

“I realize there are those who say these plans are too ambitious to enact. To that I say that the challenges we face are too large to ignore. I didn’t come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation — I came here to solve them.”

You don’t have to agree with Barack Obama. All you really have to do is take a look around. Do you know someone who was laid off? Do you know someone without health insurance or someone who can’t afford the healthcare they need to stay alive? Are you willing to surrender to corporations who demand the right to continue to pump greenhouse gases into your atmosphere? Are you tired of the ruling class in your country taking more and more for themselves, leaving less to you and yours?

This budget isn’t a be-all end-all. It will not fix the monumental problems we face. It is only the beginning. There is more to come and always more to do.

This budget will be uniformly opposed by the shrinking monolith that represents what is left of the Republican Party. Opposed not because it is wrong, but opposed because if this budget is allowed to pass and allowed to succeed, the party of the Dark Side has no hope of making a comeback any time in the foreseeable future.

I know, I know. We Democrats are a fractious lot, each with our own agendas. The last thing we want to do is stand in some darn fool line. The last thing we want to do is speak with one voice. The last thing we want to do is spend $3.6 trillion.

But now more than ever, the times demand that is just what we must do.

Fort Bend County Sheriff Just Doesn’t Have Enough Time

Last Tuesday the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court voted on Judge Hebert’s drafted “non-binding resolution” to the state legislature voicing their opposition to Dora Olivo’s HB 1184, a bill that would allow counties whose populations exceed 190,000 to form civil service commissions.

And they voted 4 to 1 for the resolution.

The one hold out? Richard Morrison. That’s why voters voted for Morrison, and that’s why others of us asked them to. The people needed a voice on the commissioners court, and now we have one.

And we’re waiting patiently for the other Democrat, or shall I say alleged Democrat on the court to come around and vote with the people.

Now what reason did Judge Hebert give the legislature to have this much-needed piece of legislation put down? Well, it seems that the county sheriff, Milton Wright, has complained to the judge that there isn’t enough time between now and September for him to get his department in compliance with a new set of rules governing how sheriff’s deputies are hired, paid, promoted, disciplined and fired.

It’s just not enough time.

OK, I think it is time for a lesson in English.

Here is what the bill says:

"SECTION 1. Section 158.002, Local Government Code, is amended to read as follows:

Sec. 158.002. ELIGIBLE COUNTIES. (a) A county with a population of 190,000 or more may, in accordance with this subchapter, create a county civil service system to include all the employees of the county who are not exempted from the system by the express terms or judicial interpretations of this subchapter or by the operation of Subchapter B."

[Emphasis is mine]

I think Sheriff Wright spent most of his time looking at that population number. 190,000. Because if memory serves, the most recent census records shows that Fort Bend County’s population exceeds 190,000.

So automatically, Sheriff Wright must have looked at the third and last section:

“SECTION 3. This Act takes effect immediately if it receives a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each house, as provided by Section 39, Article III, Texas Constitution. If this Act does not receive the vote necessary for immediate effect, this Act takes effect September 1, 2009.”

Sheriff Wright must be a Half Full type of guy, because he assumed that the bill wouldn’t get a 2/3rds majority vote, and would go into effect, if at all, in September.

Now the English lesson:

Sheriff Wright may not know the difference between the words “shall” and “may.” This is ironic because in law and legalese, they are two really important words.

“Shall” refers to the fact that one has no choice but to act. It is the word that legislators use mostly against teachers when they want them to do something, or when they want them to be punished for some new infraction.

“May” is a much friendlier word. It refers to the fact that the affected one has an option. They can do the thing . . . or not. If they do it or don’t do it, it’s all copasetic. “May” is a word that you almost never see used in legislation regarding the education profession.

So I think that the sheriff protests too much. Too much hand wringing at what a county “may” do. Calm down, Sheriff Wright. Just because the legislature clears the way for the county to set up a civil service commission doesn’t mean that it has to do it.

That’s just common sense.

It is also common sense to wonder what Judge Hebert and what County Commissioner Patterson will have to say to the county electorate from this September until this November when they have failed to form a civil service commission.

Oh, is that what this is all about?

Fresh on the Net: a School Board Campaign Website

I don’t ever get news this fresh, but did today when an anonymous tipster hipped me to Position 6 FBISD School Board candidate Bruce Albright’s campaign website.

It is as bare bones as you can get, but if you look at the page buried here you get his story.

I haven’t been able to fathom the guy’s politics, which is usually a non-issue when it comes to school board elections – usually – but it looks to me like this guy is taking a page from Richard Morrison’s playbook.

No one will argue that Richard Morrison, a Democrat who ran in a slightly Republican-leaning Fort Bend Precinct 1 election for County Commissioner last year, was elected to the office because he “owned” the issue of toll roads in Fort Bend County. He got his name indelibly attached to the anti-toll road sentiment that has rolled across the county. A move that couldn’t hurt since his opponent’s name was indelibly attached to the pro-toll road sentiment that was waning in the same county.

Now I reported that Bruce Albright once addressed the FBISD school board on the issue of parking rules at Dulles High School. And that was it. Not because that is all there is to the guy, but because that is literally all I could find out about him.

But now we know more, don’t we? We know for instance, that Bruce Albright represents a “No vote” for the public who want to weigh in on whether they want the district to invest untold millions of dollars on a “Global Science and Technology Center.” He is against it, labeling it, as it has become to be known in the area as a “Taj Mahal.”

Bruce Albright wants his name to be indelibly associated with an “Anti Taj Mahal” movement in the district.

I think it is safe to say, no matter where you stand on the issue, Albright has staked out the turf that just might do it for him. Might just get him past the “anointed one” that has seemingly been hand-picked by some members of the BOT to succeed outgoing Trustee Steve Smelley.

Why? The timing of this issue could not be better for opponents to the Science Center, nor could it be worse for proponents of same.

“Sowing Atheism” On Don McLeroy’s SBOE Recommended Reading List

In preparation for next week’s “final showdown” on the teaching of evolution in Texas public schools (honestly, I thought the final showdown took place in 1925 in Tennessee), Texas State Board of Education chairman and avowed young-Earth creationist, Don McLeroy, has a new book that he’d like the 15 members of the Texas school board to take a look at before they render a final vote on the wording that will set in stone for the next ten years how evolution will be taught in Texas public schools.

At issue is the “strengths and weaknesses” doctrine whereby students are asked to make educated judgments on how well, or how poorly a scientific theory, or even a scientific principle is supported by scientific evidence and observation.

A task that would daunt a university graduate student, let alone an 8^th grader whose agility in text messaging far outpaces his astuteness in the area of evaluation of scientific theory.

“Strengths and weaknesses” was voted out of the curriculum by a bare majority back in January, when the board last met to discuss this issue.

Nevertheless, McLeroy is bent on educating his flock, and help them see the light, by recommending that they read the book, Sowing Atheism: The National Academy Of Sciences’ Sinister Scheme To Teach Our Children They’re Descended From Reptiles as we see here. And they don’t even have to buy the book. They can download the entire book on .PDF, much to the dismay of Amazon.com which is trying to sell it to make money for its stockholders by hawking the book for $12.95.

I’ve read parts of this book. It was written with the chief intent of refuting the 2008 National Academy of Sciences book Science, Evolution, and Creationism. A book, they say, that has been sent “to every public school principal and every science teacher in America” (I’m still waiting for my copy). Sowing Atheism has lots of inflammatory statements in it. Here are but a few:

“These are farmers of darkness, plowing into the minds of our children, planting their poisonous seeds of elitist atheistic evolution. Their deception is so systematized, so interwoven with bits of truth, that it is difficult for unwary readers to see with immediate clarity the false syllogism which animates the entire content of the NAS book.”

“The Greek word translated as stupid is moron, where we get our word for a mentally dull and sluggish person. In my judgment, only morons—more than 11,500 [Christian pastors] morons in this case—could sign a letter maintaining that the “timeless truths of the Bible” are compatible with the billions of unpredictable aberrations of evo-atheism. What do these apostate morons celebrate at their Sunday services, the lies about humanity’s origins told by Moses, Jesus, and Paul?”

“Indeed, the NAS hierarchy pushes its evo-atheistic religion in the classroom with “ferocity,” and with a zeal that’s hardly matched in Christianity. We can’t properly call them evangelical, however, because that word comes from the Greek eu-angellion, meaning literally, well-message, more commonly, good news. Teaching children or adults that they are descended from reptiles is never good news. We should call evo-atheists mal-angelical, because it accurately describes what they’re doing: spreading hopelessly bad religious news.”

Now here is what I hope. I hope that the 15 members of the Texas school board take Don McLeroy’s suggestion to heart, and read this book from cover to cover. I couldn’t this morning because I am working with an empty stomach. But I want them to read the book and get out of it what I have been able to get from it. That this attempt by McLeroy and others of his ilk is nothing more than a naked assault on science by evangelical Christians. An action that completely supports, in the opposite sense, the whole point of Chapter 7 of the book that McLeroy recommends.

This effort to change how science is taught in Texas, specifically how evolution is taught, is nothing more than an assault on the “Establishment clause” of the 1^st Amendment to the US Constitution. An attempt to bring the Christian religion back into the public school system.

And we all have Don McLeroy to thank for pointing this out by recommending this book.

$110 Million in State Money Squandered at the Border

No big surprise there. It seems to be all the rage today to take money that was allocated in good faith to fight a much needed battle against, say drug trafficking and the Mexican drug cartels, and turn it into a cash cow.

The big surprise is that it took an independent watchdog group like the American Civil Liberties Union to expose this reprehensible behavior.

And the only thing wrong with that is given what your average redneck Texan thinks about the ACLU, this news of gross mishandling of government funds, a hot button in this day and age, will be shrugged off. It’s not so much a “shoot the messenger” issue as it is a “shoot the message because you don’t like the messenger” issue.

The 33 page document, prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, exposes misuse of the $110 million authorized in September 2007 by the Texas legislature, funds to be used in what became known as Operation Border Star, an agglomeration of 41 federal, state and local enforcement agencies.

The report concentrated on 11 of these organizations, local sheriffs’ departments for the most part, that used this state money for day-to-day operations. Examples follow:

“The Cities of La Joya and Sullivan City, which have between 4,300 and 4,700 residents, and their police departments combined to make 9,576 traffic stops as part of Operation Border Star. The result? 3,314 citations and 5,387 warnings issued. That is roughly one traffic stop per resident.”

The ACLU suggests that Border Star funds instead be used only to stem organized crime and to patrol “drug corridors.”

“Since 2005, the heads of three Operation Border Star participating departments have been arrested, indicted or convicted of organized crime-related activity.”

The ACLU suggests creation of an integrity unit that would investigate cartel-induced official corruption.

“Measuring arrests of aliens encourages local law enforcement to detain immigrants instead of arresting gang members. Ten of the 11 departments analyzed in this report utilized Operation Border Star resources to detain 656 suspected deportable immigrants and arrested a combined total of five criminal gang members. El Paso Police Department alone arrested 53 criminal gang members and apprehended and detained no one without documentation. This is evidence that law enforcement efforts will be more effective when they are not bogged down by attempting to verify immigration status.”

The ACLU suggests not using Border Star funds to round up undocumented aliens, but instead to use them to interdict drug traffic, as intended.

None of this surprises me anymore. Taking money that was set aside for one purpose, and using it to accomplish another one, is all too commonplace. So common that it is winked at these days.

It’s too bad, though, that the messenger in this specific case, the ACLU, doesn’t share the values of your average Texas cracker.

Happy Evacuation Day

I know. This day, March 17^th is celebrated the world around as St. Patrick’s Day.

The world around.

Like the world famous St. Patrick’s Day parade in Singapore.

Mainly, it’s a chance to drink lots of beer in honor of some guy who lived in the 5^th century and converted lots of Picts to the local version of Christianity.

And allegedly got rid of all the snakes in Ireland.

I am told, however, that this was taken care of a few millennia before, by huge thick ice sheets that also converted Irish soil to “rocks and.” As in “rocks and clay” or “rocks and sand” or “rocks and rocks.”

But I like to remember this day the way the folks in Suffolk County, Massachusetts remember it: Evacuation Day.

On March 17^th, 1776, the British army under Sir William Howe, which had laid siege to the city of Boston for eleven months, had to beat a retreat to the sea. This was the only option left to Howe when he saw that Washington’s army brought cannon captured at Fort Ticonderoga up to Dorchester Heights, effectively rendering Howe’s army’s security completely compromised.

I am also told that the watch word that was used by Washington’s troops on that day was “St. Patrick.”

Do We Own 80% of AIG or Don’t We?

That’s what the talking heads on the news tell me. Since my government has given AIG somewhere in the neighborhood of $180 billion, someone did the math and came up with the fact that the American people own 80 percent of American Insurance Group, or AIG.

The same insurance company that says it is going to use $165 million of that money to pay bonuses to those employees, or many of them anyway, who are directly responsible for the financial meltdown that has robbed hundreds of billions from all of our 401(K)s.

And from what I am hearing, the feds don’t think they have any recourse but to let them have their lucre, because it is in their contracts, and we always honor our contracts, right?

Just tell the UAW workers who bent over backwards making contractual changes so their employers, the Big 3 automakers, could get financial bailout money.

So if we can’t change the contracts, because they are set in some unchangeable species of stone, can we, as the new owners of record make some changes of our own?

How about a name change? Certainly that would be appropriate, and in the best interests of our new company. Heck, Blackwater was having trouble getting those new international contracts because of the bad press they have gotten in the past couple of years, when they shot and killed innocent Iraqi market goers.

They changed their name. Now it’s called “Xe.” That’s right, they took the name of the chemical symbol for Xenon.

But they pronounce it simply “zee”

I have a modest proposal, then. Since it is de rigeur for companies who suffer from name recognition, because their names have suffered from ignominy, to change their names, I propose a new name for AIG.

Since we the People now own 80% of AIG, I propose that we rename our new corporate giant People’s Insurance Group. I know, it sounds somewhat like communist organizations, but let’s call a spade a spade, we nationalized this company, right? Why not call it what it is?

I even have a new logo for them.

I really like the new logo of my new company, don’t you?

Fort Bend County Judge Hebert: Housing Prices in the County Are Up

I don’t know how this got by me, but last week County Judge Bob Hebert was quoted at FortBendNow as saying that the value of houses in Fort Bend County are up this year.

“We’re not going to be in the 12% to 13% range,” like 2008, Hebert said Wednesday. However, “we’re going to have good values this year.”

This, I take it, is prelude to the Fort Bend County Appraisal District’s annual love letter to its property owners, notifying them that they will be assessed property taxes based on their new, and higher assessed values.

This, by the way, not only affects a homeowner’s property tax, but their property insurance rates. Yeah, they go up when the property value goes up.

So on March 5^th, Hebert was rubbing his hands with visions of property tax dollars dancing in his head, yet on the very same day, Hebert was informing county department heads that they should be ready to slash their budgets by as much as 10%. Speaking of their chief cash cow, property taxes, Hebert remarked,

“We’re going to have good values this year, but our values on Jan. 1, 2010 are probably going to be significant lower than on Jan. 1, 2009.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I think that Hebert needs a new crystal ball.

Or maybe limit his speaking from just one of his faces.

Prognostications on what home sales will look like in 2010 are a no brainer if you look at the Texas A & M data as pointed out in the first FBN article

In January 2008, 530 homes sold in Fort Bend County as opposed to 446 in January 2009 (a 15.8% drop) with total sales in 1/2008 of $108,731,310 and $85,160,271 in 1/2009 (a 21.7% drop) and an average sales price of $205,200 in January 2008 versus $190,200 in January 2009 (a 7.3% overall drop in house values).

That is, taking into account the yearly housing price fluctuation, where prices are compared during the same time period, by every metric, housing values, demand, and sales ,are down this year.

My assumption is that Hebert is cueing the Appraisal District to come through with those higher property valuations this year, despite what appears to be the case in reality.

My guess is that should that happen, there will be protests filed like the Appraisal District has never seen before.

1970’s Revisited: SLA Groupie Going Home

Waaaay back in the 1970’s we had terrorists, too. But back then they weren’t sent to Guantanamo, and they weren’t “Renditioned.” Basically the police fought them, some died, some were captured and tried, and some escaped.

Escaped to lead lives of semi normality.

That was the story of Sara Jane Olson (neé Kathleen Jane Soliah) who, as a twenty-something joined a dysfunctional terrorist group headed by a charismatic, but demented leader named Donald DeFreeze, but who called himself Cinqué (although he pronounced it sin-QUEUE) after the leader of the captured Africans who rebelled on the slave ship “La Amistad” in the early 19^th century.

During her time with the Symbionese Liberation Army, she apparently abetted in the attempted pipe bombing of a police officer as he sat in his patrol car (the bomb failed to explode), as well as being there when a 40-year old woman was shot-gunned to death during an SLA bank robbery.

But after the famous shootout between several members of the SLA and 300 or so LAPD officers, Olson fled to St. Paul, Minnesota, changed her name and became a productive member of the community.

I recall that day in 1974 very well. The local CBS affiliate in LA, KNXT, had just acquired a new kind of technology that they called a “mini-cam.” It was one of the first field uses of video tape technology, and the first time something like this was caught on tape for live prime time airing. The scenes, commonplace today, were riveting at the time. It took no time at all for all other news stations (and then national news) to pick up the feed with these live scenes as the house that the SLA had commandeered was surrounded, bombarded with tear gas canisters, and then erupted in a massive volley of return automatic fire.

So Olson escaped that madness and lived for 25 years in comparative peace, marrying and having children.

Only to be identified in 1999 by a tip from the “America’s Most Wanted” television show.

A show, ironically, that made its bones using video tape made at sensational scenes of police chases and captures.

Olson was tried and sentenced for her participation in the SLA crimes, and has now served the minimum sentence of 7 years at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. She will be paroled to her mother’s residence in Palmdale, California, which she hopes to use as a point of departure for a final reunion with her family and friends in Minnesota.

Olson will not be problem free, however. Despite the fact that her family and friends are waiting to welcome her back to the life she made while in hiding, others, who made a financial killing on her unmasking, are waiting in the bushes.

St. Paul gun store owner Mark Koscielski, who sold bumper stickers back in 1999 that said "Fight Terrorism — Jail Kathleen" is back in the news pronouncing his sentence upon her: “She's a ... terrorist and she shouldn't be out of jail.”

Now that the words “Terrorist” and “Terrorism” carry new meaning, this should prove to be a boom year for Koscielski. Who knows, he might already have T-shirts, bumper stickers and coffee mugs already for the coming market. Koscielski probably isn’t doing too badly anyway, given the “Obama Effect” that has taken over frantic gun sales nationwide, and is responsible for the fact that you can’t get a single shotgun shell or round for your “nine” in Oklahoma to save your soul.

Bill Would Exempt the Institute for Creation Research from State Regulation

Acting as a surrogate for Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of the World, State Rep. Leo Berman (R - Tyler) has filed HB 2800. This bill would execute what could be termed a cosmic end-around. A Machiavellian move to make is easier for students of “Creation Science” to receive their Master’s degrees in Science, and allow them to teach their brand of science in a school.

How to do this is simple in the extreme.

The Texas Education Code, an instrument that is used to promote quality education in Texas, regulates the efforts of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to do the following (from Subchapter G Sec. 61.301):

“It is the policy and purpose of the State of Texas to prevent deception of the public resulting from the conferring and use of fraudulent or substandard college and university degrees; it is also the purpose of this subchapter to regulate the use of academic terminology in naming or otherwise designating educational institutions, the advertising, solicitation or representation by educational institutions or their agents, and the maintenance and preservation of essential academic records. Because degrees and equivalent indicators of educational attainment are used by employers in judging the training of prospective employees, by public and private professional groups in determining qualifications for admission to and continuance of practice, and by the general public in assessing the competence of persons engaged in a wide range of activities necessary to the general welfare, regulation by law of the evidences of college and university educational attainment is in the public interest. To the same end the protection of legitimate institutions and of those holding degrees from them is also in the public interest.”

To this end State Rep Berman seeks to incur such a “deception of the public” by filing HB 2800 which would exempt from the oversight of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board any “non-profit institution” that

• “does not accept state funding of any kind”
• “does not accept state-administered federal funding”
• “formed as or is affiliated with or controlled by a nonprofit corporation or nonprofit unincorporated organization” and
• “offers bona fide degree programs that require students to complete substantive course work in order to receive a degree from the institution”

That is, any private educational organization like the one described above may confer any kind of advanced degree it wants to without any kind of regulation or oversight by a Texas educational governing body.

This, friends and neighbors is educational deregulation writ large.

Why would he do such a thing? Why would State Rep Berman open up his state to any fly-by-night organization to confer educational degrees within its boundaries, solely because no government dollars go to support it?

Because the fly-by-night organization that State Rep Berman wants to help out is the infamous Institute for Creation Research, a privately funded organization that seeks to promote the pseudoscience of Creationism, where adherents, and it is a belief system, claim that Earth is 10,000 years old, Noah’s flood and all of the Genesis stories actually happened.

And they can by God prove it.

With science.

A very odd form of science that requires one to believe that something has occurred and then set out to prove, with science, that it did. That is, science education using the Scientific Method, but written backwards.

A science that, by the way, a minority of Texas State Board of Education members adhere to.

Now my guess is that this bill of Berman’s will suffer from neglect and die long before this seemingly endless legislative session ends in May. After all, the state legislature has so many pressing issues on its plate, like Voter ID, getting rid of the illegal immigrants, and preserving everyone’s 2^nd Amendment rights that they just won’t have time to deal with this one.

Thank God.

Pete Olson Home After Cardiac “Event”

My congressman or the congressman who votes against nearly everything that I hold near and dear, Pete Olson, is home this weekend, after having experienced a cardiac “event” while lifting weights in the House of Representative's gym.

This brings up two things. I never knew that they had a gymnasium built and equipped especially for the use, free I imagine, of US Congressmen. If I want to lift weights, I have to go into my back yard and lift piles of the facade bricks that were left behind after the builders finished with my house all those years ago.

That is what is free for me.

But the congresspeople we elect, who pull down over four times what a 1^st year teacher in Texas earns yearly, have their own exclusive gym.

Well, if we pay them that much, I expect we want them to be healthy, right?

The other thought that this event evokes is “Whaaaaat?”

Pete Olson doesn’t look like he has an ounce of fat on him. Sure he has had lots of years of high living in Washington DC to compound any health issues, but the last thing you expect to hear about, as a result of all of that, is a heart that beats too slowly.

So slow that it needs a pacemaker to speed it up.

Whatever.

Whatever the case, all we need right now, despite the fact that he doesn’t vote my way most of the time, is an ailing congressman.

For two reasons.

In 2010, when CD 22 switches political colors again, we don’t want a sympathy vote for the Republican. We want Pete Olson to be hale and hearty for his knife-edge defeat in the next election cycle.

By the same token, we don’t want the voters to be making their decisions based on which of the two candidates can best serve in office based on their health. Some would say that any advantage that gets a Dem in office is good enough. I would respond that the advantage you have in 2010 is a non-advantage in 2012.

Just ask any ex-congressman who ran against a write-in candidate in 2006.

So I just wanted to wish Pete Olson a speedy recovery. May he be fit and well by the time the next election cycle comes around.

HB 1184 Would Allow More Texas Counties to Create a Civil Service Commission

Gee, just when you think there is nothing new under the sun, something new under the sun appears. My State Rep, Dora Olivo, has filed HB 1184, a bill that would allow, among others, the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court, or the voters of Fort Bend County, if they fail to do so, to create what is called a Civil Service Commission.

This is a group of elected county officers who oversee all county employees, with some exceptions. But one group that is not excepted under some circumstances mainly predicated on the county’s population, is the county sheriff’s department.

So this is good news, huh?

Well, not according to County Judge Bob Hebert, or County Sheriff Milton Wright. FortBendNow files their objections:

“County Judge Bob Hebert could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon, but his office has drafted a resolution opposing Olivo’s bill.”

And

“‘It’s not necessarily a bad thing,’ Sheriff Milton Wright said of civil service. ‘It protects people from a sheriff or police chief who’s vindictive. We’re just against doing it on this short notice.’”

Short notice? Has the Sheriff not read the bill?

The Commission doesn’t simply appear in September. The County Commission makes it happen. And absent that, and it looks like Judge Hebert would definitely want it to be absent, the county voters could create such a commission.

Surely, not a possibility until November.

Or really, not a possibility until after the 2010 census confirms what everyone already knows, that Fort Bend County has well over half a million souls within its boundaries now.

So . . . "short notice" Sheriff Wright? Are we a little nervous about something?

Like how Montgomery County has organized its Civil Service Commission, perhaps?

As in this part of their county civil service regulations:

NEPOTISM

2.14 State Law: A county employee shall not be hired in a manner that would violate state laws against nepotism or any local rules that have been passed prohibiting nepotism. Elected officials/department heads or their appointees are prohibited from evading nepotism rules by trading favors in appointing relatives for each other. Such trading is prohibited by State Law and constitutes grounds for immediate removal from their office or position.

Or is it just the whole thing about giving all of that power up to another separate commission that can do things, and investigate things outside of the influence of, say, the County Judge?

How is President Obama Doing? MSNBC Wants to Know

Last week MSNBC put up this poll on its website asking readers to give Barack Obama a grade for his performance in his first 7 weeks in office. I voted “A” and so can you. Or whatever.

Republicans got a whiff of what was going on and frantically flooded the site with votes. Since then those of the Party of NO have all but petered out, leaving the rest of us to file in calmly, and cast our votes.

Go and vote.

They won’t ask you to present a photo ID in order to cast your vote like they are planning to do in Texas. They just want to conduct this thoroughly unscientific poll.

And it doesn’t even cost anything.