Tag Archives: Greg Abbott

Should the Chair of the State Board of Education Believe in Public Education?

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Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed Donna Bahorich – a former communications director for Tea Party stalwart Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick – to chair the State Board of Education.  Bahorich home schooled her children before sending them to private high school.  She appears to have little or no experience with the public school system. Even some Republicans are questioning the choice.  Republican State Board member Thomas Ratliff has called the move a mistake.

“Public school isn’t for everybody, but when 94 percent of our students in Texas attend public schools I think it ought to be a baseline requirement that the chair of the State Board of Education have at least some experience in that realm, as a parent, teacher, something,”

Some are wondering why Abbott is kowtowing to the homeschooling lobby. Abbott vetoed Senate Bill 359, which would have allowed physicians to detain patients if they are deemed to be a risk to themselves or others, after it was opposed by the Texas Home School Coalition as an attack on parental rights.

Now Red believes that you should have the right to send your children to public or private school or homeschool them if you don’t think it will drive you nuts, but it seems that the Chair of the State Board of EDUCATION should have at least a passing familiarity with the system that educates the overwhelming majority of our youth.  Just saying.

Can We have Their Names Please?

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Gov. Greg Abbott signed a sweeping border security bill that will cost the state over $300 million to fix a problem that may not exist anymore. Statistics show that crime in the Rio Grande valley is at an all time low. But that doesn’t matter to Abbott who justified the massive increase in police presence by claiming that, “Here in Houston, there are more than 20,000 dangerous gang members that are associated with cross border traffic crime.”  Abbott went on to claim that there are more than 100,000 such hoodlums In the state. Abbott cited no source for his numbers.  It’s becoming more and more clear that Abbott will say anything because Texas Tea Party voters who control the electorate clearly will not hold him accountable. Need a stat to support throwing money at a problem- just make one up.

Texas Takes Stumbling First Step Towards Legalization of Marijuana

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Gov. Greg Abbott has a choice to make.  Will he or will he not veto a bill that makes a very small first step towards legalization of medical marijuana in Texas.  If Abbot signs the new legislation, medical marijuana could be legal in Texas albeit in a very modified limited way. The Texas House has approved a Senate bill that would allow limited use of Cannabidiol oils, a marijuana derivative.  The new law might stand a chance of getting Abbott’s approval because it was sponsored by two Republicans.  The bill, crafted by Sen. Kevin Etlife and Rep. Stephanie Klick would legalize Cannabidiol oils, which don’t cause euphoria upon ingestion.  Marijuana reform, which is slowly creeping across the nation, may speed up if the reddest of the red states cracks open the door even slightly.
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Ethics Reform Not Interesting the Legislature

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Gov. Greg Abbott heavily emphasized ethics reform in his state of the state address in February.  The push for reform came in the wake of contracting scandals at the Texas Dept of Health and Human Services and revelations that former Gov. Rick Perry’s business development funds had created almost no new jobs in Texas.  Months later, the reality is that almost nothing is getting done to push ethics reform through the Legislature.  The Texas Tribune reports on the little that has been done and the heavy lifting that remains.

Right now, with no scandal raging in Texas, lawmakers have moved only a few ethics bills. One, House Bill 681, would take government pension benefits away from officeholders convicted of certain felonies like bribery, embezzlement and perjury.

Another, House Bill 1690, would take prosecutions of state officeholders away from the public integrity unit of the Travis County district attorney’s office. Republican legislators are convinced that the lawyers and juries in the state capital are biased against conservatives. And the current district attorney’s messy drunken driving arrest two years ago only added fuel to that fire. That bill is part of a deal to close House-Senate differences before the end of the session; its chance at passage is pretty good.

But the contract and income disclosures that Abbott wanted remain undone. Those would require lawmakers to reveal contracts and business relationships with government contractors that currently go undocumented. Lower limits on how much money lobbyists can spend on lawmakers without identifying those lawmakers is stuck. And the Legislature’s expected attempt to force political nonprofits to reveal the sources of their money — so-called dark money legislation — hasn’t moved. That would have been law two years ago without a veto from then-Gov. Rick Perry.

Other loose ends have been kicked around this session without threatening, so far, to become law:

• Prohibiting lawmakers and staff from lobbying for one or two years after they leave the state payroll

• Barring elected officeholders from working as lobbyists

• Requiring officeholders to file their required personal financial disclosures in searchable online form instead of on paper

• Requiring lawmakers to report pension and other income they currently don’t have to list

• Prohibiting lawyer/officeholders from accepting referral fees or requiring them to report the fees they do receive.

Some of those provisions are in Senate Bill 19, which is the most likely vessel for an ethics showdown. It could make it all the way to a negotiating room where senators and representatives can work out a compromise bill or, in the alternative, suffocate ethics legislation many of them privately disdain but feel they publicly have to support.

That bill’s bumpy ride tells the tale of ethics legislation this year. It was 14 pages long when it started. A Senate committee chewed up and spit out nine of those. The full Senate added enough amendments to bring the page count back to 18. It has some of the promised stuff in it, and some odd bits, like a provision that would require candidates to take drug tests. (Maybe they’ll discover something that enhances the performance of elected officials.) And SB 19 could accommodate near every proposal promoted as ethics reform, if enough lawmakers are willing.

Time is short. A House committee has the legislation now, and has until the end of the week to send it to the full House, which in turn has to act on it by May 26.

It’s Pretty Bad when Rick Perry is the Sanest Guy in the Room

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Rick Perry is suggesting that we maybe should actually trust our military to run training exercises in Texas and that Gov. Greg Abbott has gone too far in pandering to the Tea Party Wingnuts. The Dallas Morning News has more.

Former Gov. Rick Perry suggested Tuesday that successor Greg Abbott went too far last week in raising questions about U.S. military exercises in Texas.

“It’s OK to question your government. I do it on a regular basis. But the military is something else,” said Perry, an Air Force veteran, as he prepared to speak to the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth. “Our military is quite trustworthy. The civilian leadership, you can always question that, but not the men and women in uniform.”

Red doesn’t miss Rick yet, but he is sure headed in that direction.

When Did the Right Wing Come to Hate the Military?

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Digby of Salon wonders how the Tea Party came to hate the military so much.  It is a stark contrast from the traditional right-wing support of an ever-expanding military.  Remember when it was unpatriotic to oppose continual increases in defense spending or to question whether the U.S. should be sending troops to fight overseas.  These folks couldn’t fall over themselves fast enough to support W. Bush’s foolish wars and the creation of a big brother surveillance state, and call out anyone who opposed that as practically a traitor.  “You’re either for us or against us.”  Ask yourself, what has changed?

You have probably heard these lyrics at least a thousand times at televised Republican rallies:

 And I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me

Those of course are the words to “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, a song that could almost be described as the conservative national anthem. It perfectly expresses the patriotism of the Real American, the man and woman who love their country without reservation, the ones who boldly invite dissenters to “love it or leave it” and attack anyone who would dare besmirch the red, white and blue. These colors don’t run, hippie…

But something has changed. In fact, it appears that the right wing in this country has become downright hostile to the one government institution they heretofore had defended with every fiber of their being: the military. This week, members of the conservative fringe, having apparently become convinced that the army is holding a large training exercise in the American southwest in order to prepare the ground for a federal government takeover of Texas, are themselves metaphorically spitting in the face of U.S. soldiers:

“It’s the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany: You get the people used to the troops on the street, the appearance of uniformed troops and the militarization of the police,” Bastrop resident Bob Wells told the Statesman after the meeting. “They’re gathering intelligence. That’s what they’re doing. And they’re moving logistics in place for martial law. That’s my feeling. Now, I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong. I hope I’m a ‘conspiracy theorist.’”

Greg Abbott must be wondering how to quell the shit storm of adverse media coverage he has created by kowtowing to lunatics such as these.

Abbott Kowtows to Paranoid Fringe of the Tea Party

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Gov. Greg Abbott is sending Texas Guard troops to “monitor” a U.S. Armed Forces training exercise being conducted in Texas.  Abbott is apparently listening and responding to the paranoid fringe of the Tea Party who fear that the Feds are coming to take over the state.  Remember the days when the so-called conservatives supported our military?  It seems so long ago.  What changed? Oh yeah, a black man became President.  The Dallas Morning News reports on the Abbott’s latest attempt to assuage the Tea Party and provides some details on the planned operation.

The operation causing rampant suspicions is a new kind of exercise involving elite teams such as the SEALs and Green Berets from four military branches training over several states from July 15 to Sept. 15

Called Jade Helm 15, the exercise is one of the largest training operations done by the military in response to what it calls the evolving nature of warfare. About 1,200 special operations personnel will be involved and move covertly among the public. They will use military equipment to travel between seven Southwestern states from Texas to California.

On Monday, command spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria attended a Bastrop County Commissioners Court meeting to answer community questions and was met with hostile fire. Lastoria, in response to some of the questions from the 150 who attended, sought to dispel fears that foreign fighters from the Islamic State were being brought in or that Texans’ guns would be confiscated, according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman.

He was forced to rebut that martial law was underfoot and said misinformation has been spread by those with a “personal agenda.  You may have issues with the administration. So be it. But this institution right here has been with you for over 200 years,” he was quoted as saying. “I’ve worn this uniform across five different administrations for 27 years.”

Radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been sending out warnings for weeks regarding the exercise, saying it is the U.S. military positioning itself to take over the states and declare martial law.

Abbott apparently has heard the concern and ordered the Guard to monitor the training and U.S. military personnel.

“To address concerns of Texas citizens and ensure that Texas communities remain safe, secure and informed about military procedures occurring in their vicinity, I am directing the Texas State Guard to monitor Operation Jade Helm 15,” Abbott wrote in his letter to the commander of the Texas Guard.

We Just Knew Greg Abbott was a Closet Socialist

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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.