“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.

Perry Turns His Back On Unemployed Texans

It has been in the news, first that Texas Governor Rick Perry would refuse to accept the $555 million in federal stimulus money that would go directly to relieve the very folks who are suffering from the Republican-incepted financial crisis, then how he was going to think about it some more.

Well, he thought about it, and falling in line behind South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, Rick Perry slammed his fist on his desk today and said “Ditto!”

Leaving tens of thousands of Texas unemployed workers (voters) in the lurch.

And I thought he wanted to run for re-election next year. Geez, just goes to show you how wrong you can be about these things.

But not to be concerned - yet, the fat lady has yet to clear her enormous throat.

The state legislature has yet to have a final say, and today, by a 5 to 1 vote in the Texas House’s Appropriations Committee, they voted to accept the federal stimulus offer.

Republican Chairman of the committee, Jim Pitts, broke with his party, and its state leader, and voted for the federal funds. His colleague, Myra Crownower (R - Denton) held to her Republican principles that dictate total obedience to the party at the expense of Texas families, some of them Christian families, who are now in dire need of some extended benefits that the economic recovery package would provide.

The matter moves to the state house.

At issue, then, is whether the Texas House can scrounge up one more Republican vote to accept the federal funds.

What happens next is fairly obvious with a Senate that is controlled by a 19-12 Republican majority. We should see few surprises.

So one thing is for sure. The business favors and incentives that Texas has provided to enable mass migration of Americans to the state are still in force. Businesses can feel safe that Texas government will see to their best interests, and not those of their employees.

Ironic, though, that the recent mass migrations of workers to Texas due to its state government’s anti-labor pro-business perspective has been singularly responsible for the nonstop demographic shift that will one day ensure the election of a Democratic majority in the near future.

Texas Senate Passes Voter ID Bill

We have Bob Sargent to thank for putting this whole voter ID thing in perspective.

So surprise, surprise, the Senate voted to pass the bill, SB 362, by a vote of 20 to 12.

That's one more vote than usual because when the Senate meets as a "committee of the whole" the Lt. Governor gets to vote, too.

This vote, then, goes down as the Senate equivalent of a runaway girl's basketball game score.

Fort Bend ISD BOT has 5 Candidates for 2 Positions

As mentioned here, last Monday was the last day to file to run in any city or school district office that is up for election this coming May 9^th.

In Fort Bend ISD, the Position 6 seat that was open on news from the announcement by Trustee Steve Smelley that he will not seek another term has three, count ‘em, three candidates. And not surprisingly, incumbent Sonal Bhuchar, occupying the Position 2 seat on the board will face opposition in this contentious school district.

The open Position 6 seat is being sought by Republican Precinct Chair Marilyn Glover, Consultant Bruce Albright, and Electrician and perennial candidate, Rodrigo Carreon.

Sonal Bhuchar is being opposed by Carlos Cain, a local school activist who has been, in the past, a very vocal opponent of recent school bond issues.

So who are these people, but more importantly, who is the “anointed one” that the board majority wants to be their new colleague on Position 6?

Well Rodrigo Carreon needs no introduction. He ran for the last open seat on the Fort Bend BOT, opposing David Menendez, getting 25% of the 10,354 votes cast (yes, voter turnout in school board elections are notoriously low). Carreon is a fixture at the Fort Bend ISD Monday evening board meetings, and always has a word of advice or a matter of interest to bring to the Board’s attention.

He is a community activist writ large.

So, no, he’s not the one that the BOT wants to join them.

Bruce Albright, lists himself as a Consultant. He is listed in the district’s “Ebriefs” newsletter as having addressed the Board with his concern with the process that is used in assigning parking spaces to students at Dulles High School. Albright felt that the process was not fair. [See Update below]

Marilyn Glover is all over the map when it comes to Fort Bend educational things. Not only is she an elected Precinct Chair for Precinct 2025 (Missouri City), she is currently a Director of the Fort Bend Regional Council on Substance Abuse. She joins a bi-partisan crew who support Mayor Allen Owen of Missouri City. She is (was?) on the Advisory Board of the Literacy Council of Fort Bend County. She is listed as an 8-year member of the Fort Bend County Chamber of Commerce (under Vanguard Insurance Brokers), and on the 2004 Council of Resources for the Fort Bend County Women’s Center. She is listed as an Advisor on the CAC Advisory Council for the Child Advocates of Fort Bend.

She is also proudly listed as a Republican Precinct Chair that supported the candidacy of former Sugar Land Mayor Dean Hrbacek for U.S. Congress. You remember The Dean? The one who had his head photoshopped onto the body of (allegedly) David Wallace.

So, what, I ask, are the chances that the “One” we are looking for, is the latter of these three?

Position 2 Trustee Sonal Bhuchar faces opponent Carlos Cain.

Now that’s a name and a half.

Not only is it alliterative, but both “C” sounds are “hard.” The name speaks like a nuclear chain reaction.

Like the devil himself has come to call.

So who is this guy, Carlos Cain, and what does he bring to the table? Well, he also lists himself as a Consultant living in Sugar Land (honestly, is there anyone but Rodrigo with an honest to goodness job title? What are all these consultants doing running for a non-paying job?).

Carlos Cain, it would appear, is the local county seer. Way back in 2007 Cain went on record as opposing the Fort Bend ISD bond issue to raise funds to build new high school, middle school and elementary school campuses. Growth projections in the district showed that at the current rate of growth, FBISD would be bulging at the seams, and would need these new facilities within 10 years in order to stay ahead of the population curve. Here is what he wrote in FortBendNow:

"If We Build It, Will They Come?”

“What if they don’t come?”

“As a concerned parent and voter I have been reviewing the FBISD bond issue on the November ballot. I believe they are overstating the future needs of Fort Bend ISD and the cost of this “potential” growth. Who will pay for this? WE WILL! Every tax payer in FBISD. If passed, the new bond issue would push FBISD debt to approximately 1.5 Billion dollars. That is ($1,500,000,000.00). Think about it, and call 832-859-5783 for more information.”

That is, clear back in October of 2007 Carlos Cain foresaw the housing crisis and the downturn in real estate sales everywhere, including Fort Bend County.

Cain has also come to the conclusion that the Board of Trustees propose inflated bond issues so that unspent bond money can be used “for purposes other than what was initially approved by voters.” Former FBISD Chief Operations Officer Mike Seale as well as Superintendent Timothy Jenney have labeled these accusations as “false.”

Fort Bend ISD voters were not swayed by Cain’s arguments, however, despite his singular effort in organizing robo calls to 2,200 homes in the district. In November 2007 voters approved the massive $428 billion bond issue by 65% to 35%, with over 16,000 votes cast.

Now, come to find out, Cain was spot-on correct. Not about the financial gyrations that he was accusing the Board of going through. About the “will they come” thing.

According to Fort Bend County projections, “they” stopped coming.

Now, I have to ask this: will Carlos Cain take credit for the downturn in real estate sales in Fort Bend? Or is he just the unwelcome bringer of bad, bad news? Or is this guy’s far-sighted vision just the beneficiary of pure dumb luck?

UPDATE: A campaign website has appeared for Position 6 candidate Bruce Albright (thanks to an anonymous tipster). It is here.

Who is Testifying at the Senate Hearing on the Voter ID Bill - - - and Who Is Not.

The call out to the public to come to Austin today to give testimony before the Texas Senate on the Voter ID bill, SB 362, currently being considered, was a rousing success. At last count, 120 individuals signed up to address the Senate. At 3 minutes allocated for each, that is 480 minutes of individual testimony.

That’s eight hours.

Minimum (will more speakers sign up yet?).

Plus the minutes spent between speakers.

So the public, intensely interested in this veiled attempt at voter suppression in Texas, in a state that threatens to turn over the majority to Democrats for the first time since 2003, has reacted with the righteous indignation that the bill deserves.

Contrast that to two individuals who will not be showing up to give testimony in this upcoming debate: Texas Attorney General Gregg Abbott, and Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade.

Abbott says testimony represents a conflict as he will be having to defend the law in court when it gets challenged.

Andrade is out of town on a previous commitment.

I guess no one told Hope Andrade that this bill, if enacted into law, will have a singular effect on her office, and her ability to carry out her responsibilities in running the state’s elections. It will be people at the bottom of the Elections tree that will be having to enforce the restrictive Voter ID rules. It will be her people who will turn voters away from casting their votes at the polls.

But Andrade had a previous engagement.

Abbott, I can understand. This sleight of hand that he proffers, that he cannot comment on a bill that he is all set to support in the courts, gives one pause. Does this mean that he doesn’t really support the bill and cannot comment on it because he must do so in court? That would make more sense.

Fact is, Abbott not only supports the bill, he provides the paltry ammunition that is the bill’s reason for being: there is voter fraud in Texas and this bill will prevent that.

Fact is, if he shows his face in the Senate, he will be open to questions from Democrats who will ask what results came of his $1.4 million investigation in voter fraud in Texas. The answer, I hear, is truly embarrassing.

The point is, 120 (or so) private citizens thought it important enough to make their views heard, and probably went out of their way to do so. Getting time off on a workday is not an easy thing to do.

Abbott and Andrade would have been paid to testify.

But, those are the priorities.

Obvious, isn’t it, that there is no chance for this legislation to be defeated in the Senate, huh? Republicans are just biding their time

And ducking their responsibilities.

Nothing new under the sun.

Voter ID Debate Set to Begin Tomorrow

All year it has been like an approaching maelstrom. The Voter ID Bill, also known as SB 362 authored by Republican State Senator Troy Fraser (R – Horseshoe Bay) is set to be debated, and individuals who want to give testimony against this bill are being solicited to appear tomorrow and be heard.

The first thunderclap was a rule change in the state senate. The usual 2/3ds rule, where a bill cannot be considered in the state senate without a 2/3 majority vote, was waived on the second day of the 81^st Legislature. Now, and for this matter only, this will require only a simple majority in the Senate for the bill to be brought to the floor.

It will be remembered that during the last legislative session, a similar voter ID bill was turned aside in the senate by a single vote, that of State Senator Carlos Uresti, who took a gamble with his very life and had his hospital bed trundled into the senate to cast his vital “No” vote to prevent the bill from being debated in the Senate.

Senator Uresti was recovering from a very recent liver transplant operation.

So the bill is a shoe-in in the state senate, with a 19-12 Republican majority.

The state house, though, is a whole different animal.

With a very tight 76-74 majority in the House, Republicans are less assured of a victory there.

Especially given the past performance of two returning Republican State Reps, Rep. Delwin Jones (R – Lubbock), and Rep. Tommy Merritt (R - Longview). Both Jones and Merritt voted against the 2007 Voter ID bill.

This article in the Austin American-Statesman reveals that while neither of them will say how they will vote in the upcoming foecal storm, saying that they are going to wait and see what happens in the Senate, Jones has said in the past that poll workers would be harder to recruit if they were required to ask for the proper photo ID from voters, adding “I haven't seen any strong evidence of illegal voting.”

By the same token, Senator Merritt seems to be equally lukewarm to the notion of having a voter ID law in Texas: “The party is not focused on what's important to the people.” Of greater interest to his constituents, claims Merritt, are “economic woes, the decline in their 401K funds and how to survive in retirement”

And it is true that there is no evidence of voter fraud in Texas, the condition that SB 362 seeks to remedy. Despite the excessive efforts of Texas AG Gregg Abbott, who has, according to reports, spent $1.4 million investigating alleged voter fraud cases throughout the state, he has yet to come up with a single voter fraud case. Abbott has not seen one successful prosecution, only a bunch of harried senior citizens of the minority persuasion.

That and a set of suspect documents from South Texas. Documents suspected to be doctored.

Whatever the outcome, tomorrow will be a display of vintage Texas Politics, the politics that make you cringe when the Legislature comes in session, and the politics that make you wish for a real legislature made up of people who spend all of their time in public service.

And are paid a living wage for the service.

McLeroy’s Evolution Vendetta: Tempest in a Primordial Soup Tureen?

The State of Texas, through its State Board of Education, has for years enjoyed a singular place in the nation’s struggle to bring a quality education to all Americans. Because Texas acts as a unit in its school textbook ordering policies, publishers are usually more attentive to the wishes of how Texas SBOE members think content should be presented in these texts. It’s more expensive, you see, to make separate printings tailored to the desires of each individual state.

That being said, let’s switch to the Texas SBOE’s most recent restructuring of how English Language Arts are to be taught in Texas, a rendering that is a fait accomplît, and to the ongoing effort to revamp the state’s Science curriculum.

Over the strong objections of experts in the field of English instruction, the state board adopted last May new rules that are widely held to be from old school or traditionalist views of English language instruction.

The back-to-basics view is that grammar is a separate subject from reading and should be taught separately. Recent research shows that reading for comprehension and acquisition of grammatical skills go hand in hand. Remembering by rote the rules for grammar does not help a student read for comprehension.

But the state board was not finished. Since late last year the state board has begun to tackle the onerous chore of revamping the states science curriculum. Most disciplines of science have been treated with an almost blasé approach. Not so in Biology.

In Biology, the central principle of evolution has come under fire by this traditionalist board that is nearly dominated by creationists. While a recent aggressive move to include the “strengths and weaknesses” or even the “sufficiency or insufficiency” clause in evolution instruction, where students are required to make judgments on the strengths of evolution as an explanation for species diversity – a skill for which any K-12 student is woefully unprepared for – has been turned aside by a board majority, the fight is not over.

So says SBOE President and Dentist, Don McLeroy.

Set to be finalized this month, Don McLeroy promises to maintain a tough stance on acceptance of “evolutionary dogma” in the biology curriculum, as seen in this article in today’s Austin American-Statesman.

McLeroy has a new argument, no doubt cobbled together by any given pro-creationist think tank, that wishes students to make still more uneducated judgments, this time comparing cell structure to natural selection.

From the Austin-American Statesman:

“In addition to asking teachers to engage Texas students in a discussion of how gaps in the fossil record might undermine the notion of common ancestry, McLeroy says he will ask board members to adopt a curriculum standard that would ask students to explain how the complexity of cells does or does not support the idea of natural selection, an explanation of how organisms evolve.”

Asking a graduate student these questions might yield some strongly supported remarks in these regards, remarks that would probably not be to the liking of McLeroy and others of his ilk, but asking a 9^th grader to make these comparisons are sure to serve only to confuse.

McLeroy is asking students to reflect on a finished product, a somatic cell, and speculate on whether evolutionary processes could possibly have brought that about. In the face of sheer ignorance, which is what you do face at the 9^th grade level, the outcome is guaranteed.

This reminds me of an unattributed quote:

“Give me a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards.”

That is, the earlier you can hurl ignorance at an empty vessel, or a child, the less work you have later to convince them of your beliefs.

Bringing me back to my original thought, that things mandated in Texas are necessarily carried across state borders by virtue of Texas’ monotlithic textbook purchasing policies.

Not so this time.

Textbooks in Texas are purchased through the state’s “Permanent School Fund” a thing that sounds, well, permanent, but a thing that isn’t anymore. This is because the Texas Permanent School Fund is invested in the stock market. And guess what? The “permanent funds” have gone the way of countless thousands of 401Ks – rendering them somewhat impermanent.

Texas may not have the funds to buy textbooks this year. At least not on the scale of prior years.

Given that, how much would I, in the position as a textbook publisher, rely on the renderings of a narrow-minded and somewhat backward-looking penniless state school board?

Exactly.

Nada.