The Texas Tribune  reports that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s committee of hand-picked Tea Partisans has come out against Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to boost Pre-K education in Texas.

In a letter dated Tuesday, the lieutenant governor’s Grassroots Advisory Board, filled with Tea Party activists and appointed by Patrick, called House Bill 4 and Senate Bill 801 “a threat to parental rights.” The bills are aimed at improving the quality of the state’s pre-K programs at a cost of about $130 million over the next two years.

“We are experimenting at great cost to taxpayers with a program that removes our young people from homes and half-day religious preschools and mothers’ day out programs to a Godless environment with only evidence showing absolutely NO LONG TERM BENEFITS beyond the 1st grade,” the letter said.

So the Tea Party is against giving the children of the poorest of the poor anything that might interfere with options that very few of them are likely to take anyway.  Okay.  Red might even concede that Pre-K programs aren’t as effective as we would like, but that is hardly an argument for shutting them down or not trying harder.  And the argument that Pre-K programs keep parents from choosing other options also might be legitimate if it were backed up with any facts.  Of course, it isn’t.  Facts and the Tea Party really don’t get along that well.  Facts tend to interfere with a reactionary agenda based on fear and loathing.  But wait, there’s more.

The Tea Party-infused group, put together at the beginning of the session to advise Patrick on major policy initiatives, said that if the $130 million program becomes law, “Texas would be sending the message to the rest of the nation that parents do not or cannot love and care for their children as well as the state can.”

It also associated the pre-K program, which has already passed the Texas House with overwhelming support, with socialism.

“This interference by the state tramples upon our parental rights,” the letter said. “The early removal of children from parents’ care is historically promoted in socialistic countries, not free societies which respect parental rights.”

Yes, Texas parents – show how much you love your children by refusing to send them to public school.  Patrick should be ashamed of having put this group of morons together.  But as with facts and the Tea Party – shame and Dan Patrick are not even remotely acquainted.