After reorganization, investigation, firing most of the staff, bringing in a 'reform minded, progressive administrator, TYC remains at the middle of a storm of controversy.
Texas Youth Commission still plagued with problems, advocacy groups say In a formal complaint asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate, Texas Appleseed, Advocacy Inc., the Center for Public Representation and the National Center for Youth Law said the commission is unable to ensure the safety of the 1,700 youngsters it incarcerates because of operational flaws, including inadequate staffing, improper restraints and excessive force.
The complaint also alleges that:
• Youths are not being provided proper medical and mental health care and educational programs.
• Youths are improperly restrained to keep them under control, and excessive force has been used on several occasions.
• High numbers of youth-on-youth assaults continue to plague the agency's lockups in Beaumont and Corsicana - which last year won the dubious distinction in a federal report of having the second-highest sexual assault rate in the country among youth prisons.
"Our recent visits to facilities indicate broader systemic problems that TYC leadership has not resolved," the complaint states. "These problems are not isolated to specific sites, but exist throughout TYC's system of lockdown facilities."
Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst called the requirement - contained in a $26 billion job protection bill passed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday - an unconstitutional intrusion into state affairs that could cost Texas schools more than $820 million. The House is expected to take final action on the measure next week.
My short story on this one: Slick Rick out of tricks - can't use Federal monies to cover his incompetence any longer.
So, let's get this straight . If the Federal Government puts strings on THEIR ( read US Tax payers') educational aid, that would be unfair and Texas will sue. We will sue because such a requirement is an "unconstitutional intrusion into state affairs" . I am so confused. When my teenage kids were at home, I recall many times putting requirements on how they could spend my money. That they meet these requirements was a condition of receiving the money and certainly of receiving any future funding. I could do that because IT WAS MY MONEY, not theirs. I don't see any difference between these two situations. In fact Rick's choices were my kids' choices - comply or don't take the money. Additionally, they could move out , make their own money and do as they pleased. What they could not do was have it both ways - have my money, but ignore my rules.
But wait you say, Rick is the governor of a sovereign state, not your child, lightseeker.
You are right so let's take the analysis to the next level. Unlike the relationship between myself and my children, Perry's relationship with the Federal government is set by the US Constitution. Constitutionally, by case law and by tradition, states do not have to take Federal money, but IF THEY DO, they can be required to abide by rules set by the Congress for obtaining and using that money. So, Mr. Perry your complaints are born out of either ignorance or flimflamery, the hope that your voters don't get it, don't understand how the system works.
If you write off Rick Perry as a political prettyboy you do him a disservice and you fall into a trap that his critics seem to never quite overcome. Goodhair is a posturing, preening, parasite who has found the good life by using his political office to grow prosperous. He serves the usual set of Republican suspects - corporations, the affluent, fundamentalists, etc. All this is well known. What is not appreciated is his absolute mastery of hiding this servitude under the bushel basket of bureaucratic detail and obfuscation.
The short sloganized version of this tale has to be: "Rick Perry is too busy polishing his image to worry about innocent inmates facing the death penalty."
Perry's contributing culpability in everything from the TYC scandal to the torching of the govenor's mansion has never been the stuff of headlines, or at least, of enduring cycles of news coverage. Why? I answer because the decisions and inept governance that these sordid events highlight are spin by Perry as bureaucratic foul-ups which makes him the victim of everyone's favorite bete noir - The Big Bad Unelected Bureaucrat! Don't blame me Perry says, blame that little gray guy or gal over there in the cubicle.
So, when last year the Innocence Project raised the all too real specter that Mr. Death Penalty had refused to stay an execution even though there was credible expert testimony indicating that the convicted was NOT guilty Perry pulled a Perry, he used the arcana of the Texas bureaucratic process to stall the investigation. Rick Casey explains:
Dousing a troublesome arson probe Last fall, two days before one of the nation's top arson scientists was about to appear before the commission to explain his harsh criticism of evidence used to help convict Corsicana man Cameron Todd Willingham of deliberately setting the fire that killed his young children, Gov. Rick Perry abruptly named Bradley, district attorney of Williamson County, to replace the commission's founding chairman, Austin defense attorney Sam Bassett
A friend of mine visited her doctor yesterday. She has had some recurrent pains in her arm and neck. She examined to the doctor that she was a teacher and that the tension from the job built up in her neck, what could he do for her? The doctor made the off-hand remark that he had heard that school funding was being cut and he couldn't understand why we were not able to pay for public education, surely something could be done. She proceeded to inform him that the first thing to do was to vote for White and not Perry. She then gave him the basics: politicans run on tax cuts, must deliver same. School costs go up just like everybody elses do, but the state funding does not. Dump the necessary increased costs on local home owners, who protest at the burden . Politicans promise to cut their taxes, rinse , repeat ad nauseum.
There are a few things worthy of remark in this simple exchange. First , my friend knowing how to explain the basics of the situation so very well. Sadly, even some of my political friends don't know how to do this. I get angry and me, Mr. Civil Conversation, just spews. All power to our unnamed allies who do this small group advocacy every day.
I got busy last week and this story slipped right past me.
Texas agency gave inaccurate air pollution test results to Fort Worth The state agency in charge of testing for air pollution gave inaccurate test results to the city of Fort Worth about toxic emissions from gas wells in January, and when it realized what it had done, it failed to notify the city or the public for weeks, according to an audit made public this week.
A top official at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality acknowledged Thursday that the tests were wrong but said the agency has learned from the mistake.
"The way we do our sampling has got to change, and it has," said John Sadlier, the agency's deputy director.
Well, I mean , Governor, I am sure you have heard of President Obama's troubles with the Minerals Management Service. I see that you put out a statement on this problem...
Texas agency gave inaccurate air pollution test results to Fort Worth "The governor has confidence in TCEQ's oversight of our state's air quality," Perry spokesman Allison Castle said. "He expects the agency to provide accurate and timely information to the public, lawmakers and local officials concerning the Barnett Shale air emissions data."
But Governor Perry, I mean this slap comes on the heels of the Feds taking your environmental watchdogs to task for a long and dishonorable history of being lapdogs for industry instead of vigilant promoters of cleaner air for Texans. (Covered here by Libby Shaw) Remember this?
Perry asks Obama to rein in EPA action EPA regional administrator Al Armendariz this week notified the state that it is taking over the permitting process for the Flint Hills refinery in Corpus Christi and threatened to take over all air quality permitting from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Of some comfort is the fact as Offthecuff points out that the methodology is a bit experimental. Beyond that, Perry is below 50% and that means the race CAN be competitive if White pays his cards correctly.
I admit I find this result mystifying. March polls: 48.3 Perry, 42.6 White. What good news has pushed Perry upward, what bad news has pushed White downward? Are Texans so clueless that shooting a coyote with your laser guided pistol counts as evidence of leadership ? Is being rated one of the worst governors in the US an endorsement?
Gregg Phillips was the state's No. 2 social services official several years ago, and he led a push to hire a private company to evaluate applications for public assistance.
Now his Austin-based company, AutoGov Inc., has received $207,500 since November to help the state eliminate errors in deciding whether an applicant gets food stamps or other aid and how much recipients get. AutoGov was hired without other companies having a chance to bid for the work.
Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said that the agency's commissioner, Tom Suehs, and his predecessor, Albert Hawkins, agreed that the company's software might alleviate the problem.
"They both faced the same problem - high error rates - and thought it offered a potential solution," Goodman said.
What does that quotation even mean? The one saving grace of greedy crooked people is that they can't help themselves. They keep on being greedy and crooked. It is like an addiction, they can't help themselves.
Although Texas schools are ranked 2nd to last nationwide, Rick Perry recently turned down the opportunity for competition to bring up to $700 million home to improve our schools, even though the Texas Education Agency spent 700-800 hours preparing the application for the federal funding. Image by nonnie9999 At HYSTERICAL RAISINSPresident Obama's answer:Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – Texas school districts may be able to bypass Gov. Rick Perry's decision to not compete for up to $700 million in federal education funds, under a plan announced Tuesday by President Barack Obama
Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from....
The institute's recent decision to abandon the field was a compromise. Some members had asked the institute to take a stand against the death penalty as such. That effort failed.
Instead, the institute voted in October to disavow the structure it had created "in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."
That last sentence contains some pretty dense lawyer talk, but it can be untangled. What the institute was saying is that the capital justice system in the United States is irretrievably broken.
A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience had proved that the system could not reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers were underpaid and some were incompetent; risked executing innocent people; and was undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.
Any questions?
Now, I will wait for you and your party to lead us out of the Dark Ages on this issue and turn all death penalties into appropriate forms of life in prison.
What's that you say, I should not depend on miracles? Probably not. I guess that kicking you guys out of power is the only hope for getting this done. So be it.......
This is Rick Perry's Texas. From a social justice publication out of Loyola University, New Orleans I read this:
Inequality in Texas There are a number of ways in which the poverty of some people in the state, contrasted with the resources of others, is a reflection of fundamental inequality within Texas society. The primary inequalities often are race- and gender-based. First, in terms of income, we saw above that while 1,111,851 households had less than $15,000 in annual income, another 705,330 had more than $150,000 in annual income in Texas. Women in the state make only 78.3 cents for every one dollar that men earn. In addition, when compared to white workers, black workers make only 72 cents for each dollar earned by whites; and Hispanics make only 64 cents for each dollar earned by whites. Second, in terms of education, while 32.4% of the white population has completed college and only 9.9% dropped out before finishing high school, the numbers are quite different for the black population, where only 18.0% have completed college and 17.3% dropped out before finishing high school. For Hispanics, only 10.3% have completed college, but an astounding 44% have not finished high school. Third, in terms of the very beginning of life, the infant mortality rate for a white person in the state born in the period from 2003 to 2005 was 5.78 per 1,000 live births, while that for black infants was 12.29 per 1,000. For Hispanics, it was 5.62 per 1,000 live births. Fourth, unemployment continues to impact minority workers much more acutely than white workers. Currently in Texas, the unemployment rate is 5.3% for white workers, but for black workers it is 11.8% and for Hispanics 8.1%. By the second quarter of 2010, it is projected to be 6.1% for whites, 13.6% for blacks, and 9.4% for Hispanics.
Why should anybody care about statistics like these? Several reasons.
State Auditor John Keel on Wednesday said the review will include an examination of food stamp operations in other parts of the country in an effort to improve the Texas system.
Federal law requires that applicants be processed within 30 days. More than 40 percent of the Texas applicants are not processed within the monthlong period.
Keel offered no time frame for the audit.
As a oped in the Houston Chronicle points out this is simply business as usual in Rick Perry's Texas. Does anyone believe that anything will come of this diversionary "study" with no time frame?
There is an image of the "ivory tower" intellectual - somehow presumed to be a liberal - standard in most people's minds. Well, like most stereotypes, this one is more than a little misleading. For example, why not an elected official who insists on bending reality to fit his pet theory? Seems such a person would definitely fit the "ivory tower" image. Except this official makes no pretense of being an intellectual, if anything his image is the opposite. Not thoughtful, but cunning, not principled but manipulative, pandering to the uninformed with patent lies and misstatements . I am talking about Rick Perry of course, and the past two weeks have seen Rick's ivory tower reveal itself as the house of unreality it is, a house of cards built up with lies and evasions and arrogance.
State Senator Eliot Shapleig in his new book calls out the Governor for what he is , an uncritical functionary who governed not well, but faithful to the principles of the National Republican Party and one Grover Norquist. You know the guy who famously said:
There is a sickening sameness to stories about how Texas treats its least powerful citizens. The pattern usually starts with some perceived need to economize, usually brought on by efforts to maintain public
services on the cheap. There is also the element of irresponsible tax cuts . Unfailingly the red herring of "abuse" by the victims justifying more odious rules and arbitrary hoops to be jumped through is injected, this is accompanied by the explicit or tacit appeal to "our" moral superiority to them - poor people, poor children, those who must use and work in public schools, the unemployed, those without health care the list is endless.
Now comes the latest installment of this sad and tawdry soap opera with its standard casts of characters - the Food Stamp approval scandal.
Let the usually reserved William Ludwig, USDA regional chief, explain:
"All states are feeling the pinch right now because of the economic recession, but I'm not aware of any state that is having it to the degree that Texas is"
[snip]
Ludwig, who rarely gives interviews, oversees food stamps for Texas and four other states. He attributed the state's problems last week to a "whole series of missteps, mismanagement over the last four years," starting with thousands of state workers getting pink slips in advance of a massive privatization effort.
Sometimes it seems that the divide between Conservatives (especially Neo-Cons) and Liberal/Progressives is that Conservatives love ideas and are indifferent to real, individual human beings and their sufferings, while their counterparts' priorities are the reverse.
A while back I quoted a Paul Krugman column on this phenomena:
Paul Krugman....back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan "in any form," because "its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas."
[snip]
There are arguments you can make against programs, like Social Security, that provide a safety net for adults. I can respect those arguments, even though I disagree. But denying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you're afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong.
The larger point that Krugman is making is my point: when helping people gets in the way of ideology, ideology should be prioritized, the triumph of the abstraction trumps real human suffering every time.
From the Rasmussen Reports . I don't trust'em normally, but since they are reporting on their "chosen party", maybe the information is accurate.
2* How would you rate the job Rick Perry has been doing as Governor... do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove of the job he's been doing?
20% Strongly approve
49% Somewhat approve
17% Somewhat disapprove
12% Strongly disapprove
2% Not sure
3* Suppose the Republican Primary for the 2010 Governor's race were held today. Would you vote for Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison or Debra Medina?
Governor Pander, I mean Perry, has done much to, I mean for, education in Texas, most of it counterproductive. Continuing his saga of hypocrisy and ideological cant, the Gov used the stimulus money in this past session to fund key education budget items.
While railing against taking federal unemployment money which, he claims , has strings that would cause future budget increases, he does the same thing in dealing with the education budget. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram rightly points out:
But here's the rub: The Legislature and Perry require that at least half of that $120 per student be spent on teacher pay raises. The minimum raise is $800, but most teachers will get significantly more.
Some school administrators say the same thing about Austin as Perry does about Washington: If they really wanted to help, lawmakers would have sent the money with no strings attached.
Of course, Perry was talking about federal money for unemployment benefits, and unemployed people don't have much political clout. Apparently when the target is education and the money goes to teachers, he not only discards that maxim but is also willing to help tie the strings.
Ultimately, taxpayers pick up the tab. That will become apparent in 2011 when legislators have to fill in the budget hole left when the stimulus dollars go away. The teacher pay raises will be a permanent fixture, as will other spending enabled by the stimulus money.
The Legislative Budget Board estimates the cost for the 2012-13 budget at $2.8 billion. There are no projections about where to find the money, but it will either come from taxpayers or from school budget cuts.
Who knew?
The big problem , of course, is how we fund government here in Texas, property taxes. Unless and until that problem is solved, expect more gimmicks and more legislative schemes that seem to cut or cap taxes, while forcing local districts to raise them or cut educational spending in all too painful ways.
AUSTIN - Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states' rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president's healthcare plan, which he said would be "disastrous" for Texas.
Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas' WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as "Obama Care." But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a "number" of states might resist the federal health mandate.
"I think you'll hear states and governors standing up and saying 'no' to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare," Perry said. "So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I'm certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats."
On the flip is the "state rights" Perry is defending...
Bioscience is big business in Texas. And it's growing at a rapid clip. A study last week said the life sciences industry injected 75-billion dollars into the state's economy last year and supported well over 200 thousand jobs. But a new national report comparing science education in public schools across the country puts Texas near the bottom of the pack.
Mitch Horowitz: "Our focus is on middle and high schools, not because they by themselves can do the job, but if you don't do it right there, you miss the pipeline."
That's Mitch Horowitz with Battelle. One of the organizations that helped compile the state-by-state analysis of bioscience education in America. Using data from the U.S. Department of Education, the study ranked Texas 41st on A-P science and biology scores. Texas 8th graders did a bit better, ranking 35th nationally in science tests.
So, what else is new, um? Well nothing really, and that is what is sad. Our governor wants to keep ensure that our hold on the bottom spot in science will endure.
Glenn Beck just doing his thing. I mean the gasoline skit was vintage Beck theater- pointless, tasteless and clueless. But we expect as much from him. What makes this moment worth reporting here at TexasKaos is who followed fast on the heels of this stunt - our very own governor 37%.
Image by nonnie9999 At 
