Still Messing with Texas

Where to start? Well, let's start at the point where I learned about this controversy:

The firing of University of Texas System special adviser Rick O'Donnell sends a message to Gov. Rick Perry from the legions of University of Texas supporters: Don't meddle with UT.

O'Donnell lost his $200,000-a-year job last week after angering some state lawmakers.

Who, you may ask, was Rick O'Donnell, and why do you care? Well, he was appointed to a position as advisor to the Board of Regents of the UT system (there are several UT's besides the big one in Austin). That's the connection to Gov. Goodhair. And before O'Donnell lost his job completely, he got in enough trouble to be reassigned from his position as an advisor to the UT System Board of Regents:

O'Donnell was reassigned Thursday as special assistant for research, reporting to Scott Kelley, executive vice chancellor for business affairs, said Anthony de Bruyn, a spokesman for the system. O'Donnell will assist two panels advising the regents, one on productivity and excellence, the other on online and blended learning.

O'Donnell will continue to be paid $200,000 a year, de Bruyn said.

The controversy here is best explained by Paul Burka. O'Donnell's "advice" to the Board was to denigrate research in favor of teaching:

Another of the reforms is “split research and teaching budgets.” This may not seem like a big deal. The idea is simply to increase transparency and accountability by emphasizing teaching and research as separate efforts in higher education. But many observers, myself included, suspect that the real agenda is ultimately to curtail the role of research in higher education. Why? Because it costs money. Sandefer has written that academic research consumes two thirds of every dollar spent in American universities. Once the public sees how much more money is spent on research than on teaching, it will demand that spending on research be cut. This is why, to the UT brass, splitting budgets amounts to a frontal attack on the classic model of a research university. “Teaching and research are inextricably linked,” UT president Bill Powers told me. “Splitting the research and teaching budgets devalues the synergy between two essential components that are the essence of a world-class institution.” Like all the TPPF recommendations, the objective is not to improve the academy but to diminish public support for it in its current form.

Note those words Burka used: "transparency" and "accountability." I'm tempted to run down a side trail and point out that their casual use by Burka betrays his political leanings; but that's for another day. To continue the theme a moment, consider that "academic research" is probably code for "soft research," i.e., not the stuff associated with physics, chemistry, oil and gas engineering, etc. The University of Houston, not surprisingly, is noted for its "hard" research facilities. I don't think U of H is under attack at the moment, although Texas A&M, hardly a liberal arts outpost, is suffering its own problems from Perry's other idiotic idea: paying teachers based on student evaluations.

That's a particular hobby horse of mine, but think about it for a moment: if you, the student, know what the teacher is supposed to be teaching you, you aren't a student, you're a peer of the teacher. You don't need to be taught by that person. And if the teacher isn't making you happy, or piquing your interest, or keeping you entertained or interested? Is that entirely the teacher's fault? Is the teacher's job to please you? Or to teach you?

There aren't too many models in history of great teachers who win stirring evaluations from their students. Jesus is constantly shown berating his disciples for their inability to understand him; but that's pretty consistently the model for any teacher/student relationship.

Back to Perry, though; O'Donnell was forced to resign during the last Legislative session (6 months every two years; they're gone for good now) because UT Alumni heard about his proposals for their beloved UT-Austin, (and the system at large) and threw a fit even the Legislature couldn't ignore. Keep that in mind, because Perry's efforts aren't finished, they're just beginning:

The University of Texas and Texas A&M are public universities in desperate need of budget reform to provide transparency and accountability to the students and taxpayers that fund them. The higher education bureaucracy in Texas has created an inefficient system where:

• 22% of Faculty members do not teach a single class per semester;
• The average faculty member spends only 21% of his time teaching and the remaining 79% performing research or administrative tasks;
• The average course load of a tenured faculty member is 1.9 classes per semester;
• Yet despite these statistics, from 1999 to 2009 faculty salaries increased at almost twice the rate of inflation.

Perpetuating this wasteful spending are the “Edu-crats”, a ruling elite of academics focused on doing less, but making more, all the while ignoring the needs of students and caring nothing for the cost born by the taxpayers. Sign below to demand Higher Education Reform for Texas NOW!

We demand:

• An end to teacher tenure;
• That research and teaching budgets are separated;
• Disclosure of the salaries of tenured faculty, the number of students they teach, and the research dollars they bring in.
• That researchers keep 90% of the money their research generates;

Instituting these reforms will elevate the quality of higher education in Texas and ensure that universities prioritize the needs of students, parents, and taxpayers over entrenched, overpaid academics. Please sign below to tell the Regents at the University of Texas and Texas A&M to embrace these reforms!

That's a petition on offer from FreedomWorks, Dick Armey's lobbying group. If you don't live in Texas and/or don't care about Texas' systems of higher education, you might wonder why you should care. Well, maybe because Rick Perry is about to enter the GOP nomination race, and he's already showing up very favorably against Michelle Bachmann.

Does that mean I think Perry could win the nomination? No. I don't think he has a snowball's chance in hell, and would be delighted if he did win it. It would be 1964 all over again, with Perry playing the role of Goldwater. What worries me is that such a radical and destructive idea could ever become mainstream, or even become law in a radical legislature. FreedomWorks got its head handed to it in Texas on this issue, but that doesn't mean it won't try again, especially with the Legislature out of session. The UT Board of Regents is strong, but not that strong; it took the ire of the Legislature to get them to fire O'Donnell. Without the Legislature, they might throw away UT's academic achievements in favor of this insanity.

Which, you may still say, doesn't affect you. On the other hand, if systems like UT and Texas A&M adopt such ridiculous policies, the rot would begin, and the resistance to it might not be as strong as you would expect. And if you think our educational systems across the nation aren't already a problem for us, the Pentagon respectfully disagrees with you:

By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans -- the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow -- we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America's youth.

Those are all long-term goals; not a short-term calculus. The appeal of the position of FreedomWorks is to do something right now! that fixes everything for us. That is, of course, no fix at all. It is delivering power to those not worthy to wield it, and who don't have the public interests at heart. The statement of the Pentagon understands the nature of investment, and of the "continuing development and growth of America's youth," a promise that is always in the future. FreedomWorks wants change now!, and for its own sake. That is the radical change of mere destruction. Investment is about planting trees your grandchildren will enjoy sitting under. In education, that investment is made through research and investigation and the freedom to pursue thought that is guaranteed by tenure. The educational system may be imperfect, but it is not so riddled with "waste, fraud, and abuse", or, in the new and improved lingo of FreedomWorks, a lack of "transparency and accountability," that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If change is needed, it is not the radical change of destruction. If we need anything right now, it is more education and more thinking and more research; not less.

Maybe it would be a good thing for Perry to enter the primary race. If he can be associated nationally with this position, sunlight might prove, once again, to be the best political disinfectant.

Brother, can you spare some ignorance?

Giving this man shoes would just enable his poverty.

"The economic machinery that entrenches poverty" does not run without fuel; and is not a feature of natural law or the physical nature of the universe.  It is maintained and operated by human beings:

Donning a fake beard, Stossel sat on a New York City sidewalk with a cardboard sign asking people for help. “I just begged for an hour but I did well,” he said. “If I did this for an eight-hour day I would’ve made 90 bucks. Twenty-three thou for a year. Tax-free.”
Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who recently purchased a $4 million home in Greenwich, gasped in horror at the prospect of poor people earning $23,000 a year. Some people asking for money “are actually scammers,” Hasselbeck warned, seemingly unaware of the irony that the only panhandling “scammer” Fox News identified was Stossel.

Because he was able to successfully convince good-hearted pedestrians that he was poor, Stossel went on to chastise people who gave the homeless money because, in his view, “most are not…for real.”

He implored viewers to stop giving money to poor people because if you do, “you’re an enabler.”

Funny thing:  even Mediaite knew Stossel was full of crap: 

Those slaps must have really hurt, though, because now, Stossel attacks people who don’t hit back, mainly because they don’t exist. According to Stossel’s report,  the only fake homeless person he turned up was John Stossel, and what’s he gonna do, hit himself?

I used to write long discourses on the perception of poverty and the "proper limits" of charity.  Now I prefer to quote C.S. Lewis, beloved of many conservative Christians for The Screwtape Letters, but not necessarily for this:

"Another things that annoys me is when people say, "Why did you give that man money? He'll probably go and drink it." My reply is, "But if I kept it, I should have probably drunk it."

Now I bring this up because to qualify for Medicaid in Texas, a single parent with three children cannot earn more than $3,737 annually.

Let that sink in for a moment.  If you are a single parent with three children and your annual income is over $311 per month, you don't qualify for Medicaid.  Period.  End of discussion.

Go to an emergency room and face the bill collectors.  And even then they'll just turn you out ASAP.

Ted Cruz was terribly upset that a CNN reporter asked him what could be done about healthcare in America.  Ted Cruz said lots of people in Texas are losing their (really really REALLY BAD!) health insurance policies because of the ACA, and that was a scandal.  He said 5 million people (nationwide) have lost their policies.  Funny thing:  1,046,430 Texans will remain uninsured because Gov. Perry refused the expanded Medicaid coverage.  But since none of those people are likely to have accounts with Goldman Sachs, or haven't lost their crappy health insurance, their problems don't really matter.

So, 1/5th of the number of people who will have to get new and better policies thanks to the ACA, instead live in Texas and will have no relief at all.

And yet Rick Perry thinks, rather like John Stossel, that helping those people makes things worse:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Thursday compared the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act to one of the most famous disasters.

“It’s like putting 1,000 more people on the Titanic when you knew what was going to happen,” Perry said at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., as quoted by the New York Times.

He bravely calls this "a philosophical position."  Funny, I never thought of evil, heartless, and uncaring as a philosophical position.

Disgusting?   It is beyond disgusting.  There are not words strong enough for me to express my rage against Rick Perry and Ted Cruz and the people who elect them; people who are in fact a tiny minority of the voting population of Texas; but then that means I have to be angry with the people who don't vote, and I couldn't be sure they wouldn't vote with the voting majority anyway.   And then John Stossel says that if you don't leave the poor to the tender mercies of the marketplace, you enable their poverty; as if the marketplace that made Stossel rich isn't the very market place that created the poverty which allows Stossel to be rich; which allows Rick Perry, despite a life time in Texas government, to leave the Governor's office a rich man; which keeps Ted Cruz rich and comfortable while he insists millions in Texas go without even basic medical care.

Poverty is not a natural force, like the weather; it is entirely human-made; and it is made to benefit a few at the expense of the many.

Am I my brother's keeper?  Yes.  And I am doubly-damned in that responsibility, if my efforts keep my brother in poverty.

On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation? On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love. Only infinite love can renounce itself and, in order to become finite, become incarnated in order to love the other, to love the other as a finite other. This gift of infinite love comes from someone and is addressed to someone; responsibility demands irreplaceable singularity.

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, tr. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 50-51.

Two-Man Pinata

GOP Representatives in Washington are reportedly worried about DeLay's trial running over into 2006, an election year, thus perpetuating the "cloud" over them in their races.

DeGuerin and DeLay, in their zeal, have made that more, not less, likely:

Administrative Judge B.B. Schraub, a Republican who was to have selected the judge for the case, withdrew after Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle filed a request to have him removed. Two days earlier, District Judge Bob Perkins was removed from the case at DeLay's request because of his contributions to Democrats.

Schraub asked Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson to name a judge to preside over DeLay's trial, and Jefferson selected semi-retired Senior Judge Pat Priest of San Antonio. Jefferson's involvement, however, could invite yet another challenge.

State documents examined by The Associated Press show that Jefferson's 2002 campaign treasurer, Bill Ceverha, also was the treasurer of DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee. Ceverha was a defendant this spring in a civil trial brought by Democrats who lost state legislative races to Republicans in 2002.

Lawyers on both sides in DeLay's case have argued that political contributions by judges have harmed at least the appearance of impartiality. But in a state where judges are elected and free to contribute to candidates and political parties, it could be a challenge to find a judge who meets both sides' definition of impartial.

Prosecutors believe Schraub to be "completely fair and impartial, with a sterling reputation of honesty and integrity," Earle wrote. "However, as the recusal of Judge Perkins reflected, such is unfortunately no longer the standard in our state for the judiciary."

Lne thing about being in court: both sides can call the same tune, when it suits them. Which brings its own problems:

In his request for Schraub's removal, Earle said Schraub's financial support of Perry reveals that the judge "agrees in principle with Perry's agenda regarding Tom DeLay's redistricting map."

Prosecutors also suggested that Schraub appears politically indebted to Perry, who appointed him as administrative judge and can reappoint him in January.

Schraub, 76, has also contributed to George W. Bush's campaigns for governor and president.

DeLay objected to Perkins, a Democrat, because he has contributed to Democratic candidates such as
John Kerry and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org.

The judicial wrangling is "a great shame," said Charles Silver, a legal ethics professor at the University of Texas Law School.

"It says that the judges who we elect can't be trusted to apply the law neutrally in cases that in some way, shape or form bear on their political beliefs," Silver said. "If that's true, we really need to revamp the whole system."

I agree with Silver; but DeLay started it, and Earle would be remiss not to use the same club against DeLay. What this proves to me is that DeLay debases everything he touches or is involved in.

His removal from public office cannot come soon enough.

I don't know why she couldn't swallow a fly....

Trying to get information on Fisher v. UT  is a dicey business at best, but NPR gave me some facts this morning which are supported by the brief filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of UT:

Petitioner, a Texas resident, applied for admission to UT’s Fall 2008 freshman class in Business Administration or Liberal Arts, with a combined SAT score of 1180 out of 1600 and a cumulative 3.59 GPA. JA 40a-41a. Because petitioner was not in the top 10% of her high school class, her application was considered pursuant to the holistic review process described above. JA 40a. Petitioner scored an AI of 3.1, JA 415a, and received a PAI score of less than 6 (the actual score is contained in a sealed brief, ECF No. 52). The summary judgment record is uncontradicted that—due to the stiff competition in 2008 and petitioner’s relatively low AI score—petitioner would not have been admitted to the Fall 2008 freshman class even if she had received “a ‘perfect’ PAI score of 6.” JA 416a.

In other words, as NPR reported this morning, Fisher never would have gotten into UT when she applied because her scores were not good enough.  To hear Fisher tell it in the NPR report, she was at the top of her class and she should have been a shoo-in for admission.  However, she wasn't in the top ten percent (which makes admissions race neutral so far as I can see) and so she went through the review process like everyone else.  In that process, race is taken into consideration, but as one of seven factor considered in one step of a multi-step process.  Or, as they explain it in their brief:

UT’s applicant pool is divided into applicants who are eligible for automatic admission under the top 10% law, and applicants who are not. Although most admits fall into the former category, the admission of students not eligible for the top 10% law is a critical means of pursuing UT’s educational mission and an important counterpart to the top 10% law. A Texas applicant may be ineligible for the top 10% law because she was in the bottom 90% of her class (like petitioner), or because her school does not rank students (as is true of some of the best private high schools in Texas).

After the files of the non-top-10% applicants are scored, they are plotted on a matrix corresponding to the school or major for which admission is sought, with the AI score on one axis and PAI score on the other. Each cell on the matrix contains all applicants with a particular AI/PAI combination. JA 392a. After considering the number of students in each cell and the available spaces for a particular major or school, admissions officers draw a stair-step line on the matrix, dividing the cells of applicants who will be admitted from those that will be denied. JA 386a-87a.

For each cell, admission is an all-or-nothing proposition: all the applicants within a cell are either admitted or denied. PAI scores are fixed long before this step in the process occurs, and nameless applicants clustered within each cell are not identified by race. So, as petitioner has acknowledged, admissions officers cannot—and do not—consider the racial demographics of the cell (or the race of any applicant within it) when they draw the stair-step line dividing cells. JA 387a-89a, 411a-12a; Summ. J. Hr’g Tr. 20, ECF No. 118 (petitioner’s counsel: “[T]hey use a matrix where you don’t know who’s who. Because once they’ve made a score, you become a number. So they’re not doing what Michigan was doing in Grutter.”).

An applicant’s PAI score is based on two essays and a Personal Achievement Score (PAS). JA 374a. Essays are reviewed by specially trained readers, and are scored on a race-blind basis from 1 to 6. JA 374a-76a. The PAS score ranges from 1 to 6 as well, and is based on holistic consideration of six equally-weighted factors: leadership potential, extracurricular activities, honors and awards, work experience, community service, and special circumstances. JA 379a. The “special circumstances” factor is broken down into seven attributes, including socioeconomic considerations, and—as of 2005—an applicant’s race. JA 380a. Race is one of seven components of a single factor in the PAS score, which comprises one third of the PAI, which is one of two numerical values (PAI and AI) that places a student on the admissions grid, from which students are admitted race-blind in groups. In other words, race is “a factor of a factor of a factor of a factor” in UT’s holistic review. App. 159a.

No automatic advantage or value is assigned to race or any other PAS factor. JA 379a-81a. Each applicant is considered as a whole person, and race is considered “in conjunction with an applicant’s demonstrated sense of cultural awareness,” not in isolation. JA 397a, 130a. “Race is contextual, just like every other part of the applicant’s file,” JA 169a, and “[t]he consideration of race helps [UT] examine the student in ‘their totality,’” JA 129a. Adding race to the mix in whole-file review “increases the chance” that underrepresented minorities will be admitted. App. 434a. But because of the contextualized way in which race is considered, it is undisputed (JA 130a) that consideration of race may benefit any applicant (even non-minorities)—just as race ultimately “may have no impact whatsoever” for any given applicant (even an underrepresented minority). JA 381a, 397a-98a; see JA 207a-09a, 285a, 434a; App. 29a, 46a.

 Sorry for the tedium there, but I figure this is important.  It's important because I still can't shake the fact that this is a curious case for Supreme Court review, for one simple reason:

The procedural posture of this case defines the scope of our review. There are no class claims and both students deny intention to reapply to UT. It follows that Fisher and Michalewicz lack standing to seek injunctive or forwardlooking declaratory relief. This principle is rote. To obtain forward-looking equitable remedies, a plaintiff must show she faces imminent threat of future
injury. Without that threat, these two applicants only have standing to challenge their rejection and to seek money damages for their injury.

That's from the opinion of the 5th Circuit.  Frankly, it seems to me to put the entire question of the rejection squarely on the facts of the case; and yet the 5th Circuit writes a long, complex opinion examining the status of college admissions standards following Hopwood and Grutter (especially the latter).  I'm perplexed because if the facts of the case are undisputed as to why Fisher was denied admission (well, she disputes it, but her argument, at least from the NPR report, seems to be she should have gotten in because her parents did, and because she's white), then where's the beef?  I understand the issue is about whether or not race should have played any consideration in the admissions process, but in this case the evidence is even if it didn't, she still wouldn't have suffered damages by not gaining admission to UT.  As the 5th Circuit puts it:

Texas applicants falling outside the top ten percent group face extreme competition to gain admittance to the University. There are approximately 16,000 students competing for only 1,216 fall admissions slots. The competition is so great that, on average, students admitted from outside the top ten percent of their high school class, regardless of race, have even higher SAT scores than those granted automatic admission under the Top Ten Percent Law.... It requires no empirical study to observe that those excluded under this Law have been a rich source of Texas leaders over its history and that for some applicants, admission to the flagship school of Texas is little more possible than admission to Harvard.

 So the appellant is complaining because she didn't get into the school of her choice, and the evidence is that she was denied admission because of a perfectly fair admissions procedure that takes race into account in order to assure a diverse student body, but doesn't do so in order to create even (as the appellant's lawyer put it to NPR this morning) a "back door quota system."

Oh, and there's also this:

Texas applicants are divided into two subgroups: (1) Texas residents who are in the top ten percent of their high school class and (2) those Texas residents who are not. Top ten percent applicants are guaranteed admission to the University, and the vast majority of freshmen are selected in this way, without a confessed consideration of race. In 2008, for example, 81% of the entering class was admitted under the Top Ten Percent Law, filling 88% of the seats allotted to Texas residents and leaving only 1,216 offers of admission university-wide for non-top ten percent residents. The impact of the Top Ten Percent Law on UT’s admissions has increased dramatically since it was first introduced in 1998, when only 41% of the seats for Texas residents were claimed by students with guaranteed admission.
...
Although this completes the admissions process for the fall portion of the freshman class, no Texas resident who submits a timely application is denied admission. Instead, those residents not admitted to the entering fall class are offered admission to either the summer program or the Coordinated Admissions Program (CAP). Marginal applicants who missed the cutoff for the fall class are offered admission to the summer program, which permits students to begin their studies at UT during the summer and then join the regularly admitted students in the fall. About 800 students enroll in the summer program each year. All remaining Texas applicants are automatically enrolled in CAP, which guarantees admission as a transfer student if the student enrolls in another UT system campus for her freshman year and meets certain other conditions, including the completion of thirty credit hours with a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher.

In other words, if UT was Fisher's dream, she could have simply tried again later by transferring into UT Austin from another school in the UT system.  But apparently the state of the law now is that even the mention of race taints the admissions process; even the barest hint of consideration of race is too much.  That is the state of play in this case, and in a case where I might have expected the appellate court to toss out the entire complaint on the grounds of standing (i.e., the plaintiff had suffered no legal injury, since she had recourse for seeking admission later.  Everyone in Texas knows if you don't get into UT the first time, you transfer in next year.), the Court instead writes a lengthy opinion examining carefully the validity of race as a consideration at all.  Given that it's the 5th circuit, and Patrick Higginbotham to boot, I suppose I should be grateful the Court didn't note that we have a black president now, so discrimination has ended in America and we can stop talking about race altogether.

One thing the appellate court decision gets right is the critique of the Ten Percent Law.  As local news has pointed out, in reporting on this story, there is a sharp drop off in minority students in UT programs after the sophomore year, especially in the more competitive and rigorous degree plans.  Why?  Not because minorities can't compete, but because so many of them are ill-prepared for college by the public schools they attended.  The problem is not in the admissions process, but in the fact Texas has such spotty public schools.  And Rick Perry's solution to this problem?  Texas has already slashed funding for public schools.  Now Perry wants to tie the money state universities receive to  the number of students they graduate.

Which would effectively turn even UT into a diploma mill.

Such is the state of play in education today.  We strain at gnats and swallow camels.  And the courts are terribly concerned with the conditions for white people.

As Chris Rock says:  "There's not a white man in this room who would change places with me, and I'm RICH!"  But whites are persecuted; at least when it comes to education.

I'll retire to Bedlam.

Update:  the oral arguments confirm my fear that the Supreme Court isn't the least bit interested in the standing of the plaintiff (what harm has she suffered if there is no evidence race considerations caused her to be refused admission?), and are only concerned with conditions for white people in education.

Texas, Our Texas....

"(People) through their elected officials clearly send the message 

of their comfort with the amount of oversight"--Gov. Goodhair

Charlie Pierce is right, the problem in West, Texas is that, well...they need the money.  Which means they need the fertilizer plant.  But the people of West, Texas, aren't quite ready to have that discussion in front of the rest of the world.

Some residents were hesitant to embrace the idea of a new fertilizer plant and declined to speak publicly because of the delicacy of the issue. Mayor Muska said he heard some angry comments when he raised the topic at the town meeting.

"It's too soon to be talking about another plant when the damage from the old one isn't fixed yet," said a middle-aged woman from West who declined to be identified.

This is a small town that lived with the benefits of this plant for 50 years.  One might think, from the overwhelming silence of the townspeople since the blast, that they were ready to rebuild and return to status quo.  Nope, not really:

If a new plant is ever built, it would be made of and concrete with a proper sprinkler system, something the previous plant was lacking, Muska said.

"We want it back in West, but we need to have it safe. We need to have it zoned correctly so people don't build around it - we learned that important lesson," Muska said.

Back in West means, not in the town, though:

"It would be a service to our community if we had another fertilizer plant, but it needs to be located outside of town and maintained properly," said Mimi Irwin, owner of the downtown Village Bakery, which sells Czech pastries called kolaches.

You don't get the sense people in West are really comfortable with "no regulations" and the "let bidness be bidness" posturing of Rick Perry.  They lived with this disaster; they don't want to live with it again.  And I can't blame them for wanting another plant nearby.  When the explosion occurred at Texas City in 1947, the port wasn't shut down and mothballed.  People gotta eat.

Still, I can't help but think there's more concern for a new plant, and for how it will be built, than there was before.  I hope there's even some concern with what the plant has stored onsite, and who else knows about it:  like governments local to federal, firefighters, "first responders," etc.  Mostly, though, my heart goes out to the silent people of West; the ones who don't want to air their opinions even anonymously to a Reuters journalist.

They are the ones who need to be heard, and who need representation by someone other than Rick Perry and the government of the state of Texas.

The Legislature is still not interested, and the fix is pretty much in:

Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas at Austin law professor and an expert on regulation, said he also doesn't expect to see more than "a modest bill that the industry can live with and that allows legislators to claim that they have addressed the problem."

"The West tragedy is already fading in the public memory, and the absence of similar tragedies in the interim has reduced the sense of urgency that is typically needed to impel regulatory legislation through the Texas Legislature," McGarity said.

Who knows, though?  Maybe something will happen.  Ask the right questions, and the Mayor of West might even give you the right answers:

Joyce Gregory, a 15-year West resident, said her daughter's family lived seven houses away from the fertilizer plant when the explosion happened. The family since has relocated for jobs, but she said the loss of lives changed her view about the need for government regulations.

"If there are rules, then the state or whomever should make sure they are following them," said Gregory, a waitress at the West Auction Barn Café. "If that means new rules, so this can't happen, then I would hope everyone wants to follow them."

Much of the furor comes from not knowing what exactly the plant was doing, West Mayor Tommy Muska said. Longtime residents, he said, remember when the plant was simply a place where bags of fertilizer were stored after arriving on rail cars.

"The bags morphed into something else," he said. "At some point, it became a blending plant and all those materials showed up."

Muska said the blast should be a wake-up call for communities like West.

"Every volunteer fire department in Texas, hell, in the country, should have learned something," he said. "Find out what is in your backyard."

Maybe a Democratic governor would even help.....

Dan Patrick: “All Texans Means…”

The seething resentment against tenure has always been a thing, but if Texas wants to destroy its flagship university - one of the best in the country - then Texans have a right to be stupid. https://t.co/Nf08ij7wgz

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 29, 2023

"...the ones who agree with me. The ones who don’t are just being divisive, and must be excluded from society.”

Tom Nichols is right about what happens next. But Patrick and Abbott also want to raise the reputation of the state universities. Obviously they are stupidly working at cross-purposes.

Back when Rick Perry was governor, he tried to promote state universities hiring more adjuncts and fewer professors on tenure track. UT Alumni made their opposition quite clear, considering what that would have done to the university’s reputation and academic standing. I’m wondering if they aren’t going to rise again.

If that doesn’t happen, Patrick and Abbott are going to be left explaining the exodus of professors and the falling reputations of all the state schools. That would probably begin within a few months after the laws took effect.

These guys are Sooper-geniuses! Except for the damage it would do, I’d almost look forward to them facing the consequences of their stupidity. Because they really are just a pack of god-damned fools who think people who don’t think as they do, don’t matter. I’d like them to finally and irrevocably be proven wrong.

Turn out the lights....?

Donald Trump supposedly "broke" history by winning the GOP nomination (it still doesn't surprise me; this is the party that elevates Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert to positions of national attention, and did you see that clown car in the GOP primary?  Who would have been better?  Huckabee?  Santorum?  Perry?  Cruz?).

So I suppose it's possible he'll break history again, and fail so badly in the national campaign that it will almost be over before the convention.  I mean, he's certainly trying:

On the call with his surrogates, the real estate mogul also reportedly contradicted instructions distributed to surrogates by his own staff member. A memo sent Sunday by a staff member and obtained by Bloomberg told surrogates that they were not at liberty to discuss the Trump University lawsuit publicly.

"Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks?" Trump said, as quoted by Bloomberg. "That's one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren't so smart."

The memo was distributed to some of Trump's campaign staffers, including Hicks, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and a top aide to Paul Manafort, who is Trump's top strategist.

"Take that order and throw it the hell out," Trump said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

I mean (and I record it here for posterity, though I don't have a system for finding this stuff in six months, when the future will be clearer than it is now), even the GOP is running away from him:

“I still believe we have the institutions of government that would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told the New York Times last week in a piece highlighting how legal scholars are growing increasingly worried about Trump's authoritarian tendencies. “We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. We’re not Romania."

In May, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a similar proclamation when he was asked in an interview whether he had concerns about the divisiveness Trump's message evoked even from within the Republican Party.

"What protects us in this country against big mistakes being made is the structure, the Constitution, the institutions," McConnell told CBS News last month. “No matter how unusual a personality may be who gets elected to office, there are constraints in this country. You don’t get to do anything you want to.”

Republican strategist John Feehery (who believes Trump won't be that bad) argued in a blog post that if thing got really bad, Trump could always be impeached.

"I am not of the opinion that the Republic would fail if the voters select somebody like Trump and if Trump turns out to be half as bad as some conservative pundits would have you believe, there are plenty of legal mechanisms to either contain his worse impulses (the Congress and the Supreme Court, for example) or remove him from office should his transgressions become too toxic," Feehery wrote.

So Trump has no control over his campaign, and no sense of restraint (Josh Marshall quotes him:  "We will overcome. And I’ve always won and I’m going to continue to win. And that’s the way it is."  The ancient Greeks called that hubris, and would place it at the very beginning of the tragedy, to explain the inevitable outcome.), and even the GOP recognizes what a Frankenstein monster they've created.  And I can't help but think, as I listen to Bernie Sanders on the radio this morning screaming about the "momentum" he has (screaming?  Or is it just, as Larry David said on SNL, that Sanders talks like he's on the far side of the river?), I can't help but think how much he sounds like Trump.  Both men think their vision, or attitude, or defiance, is all that is needed to lead.  But we don't elect Presidents to be revolutionaries (it's a contradiction in terms); we elect them to show guidance.  Trump promises to act on behalf of people who agree with him, just like Sanders.  And they show disregard for anyone who doesn't agree with them (Sanders dismisses the South, Trump dismisses Muslims, "Mexicans," women; anyone who isn't a white male, basically).  Yes, there is a difference in kind between Sanders and Trump, but in style, they are much the same.  That's the reason Sanders got no further than he did, and the reason Trump will get no further than he has.

Although I'm still not convinced Trump won't continue to implode, and by the time of the GOP convention be a very loose, and very empty, cannon.

“Only Connect”

This would have been the message from Fox News if it had been around in 1963:

Martin Luther King deserves to be in a Birmingham Jail.

Any politician who cites his letter from jail is soft on crime and pro-criminal.

We need to ban that letter from being taught in any classroom. https://t.co/O2BRIgjJMw

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 15, 2022

Yeah, dudes, the opposition to CRT was always principled and reasonable. You weren’t getting played as rubes by cynical censorious hacks at all. Be proud, be really proud. https://t.co/6Fp6wcgVLt

— TireSlashingHat (@Popehat) February 15, 2022

Rick Perry tried to force UT to hire more adjuncts and so save money that would otherwise be spent on pointy-headed liberal professors.

UT Alumni reminded him he was an Aggie and that UT was intended to be a university of the first degree (language of the State Constitution establishing UT).  They handed him his head, IOW. They’ll do the same thing to Patrick, and he knows it. This is for consumption by primary voters. But it won’t stop there:

And while that may not be a problem for our Lieutenant Governor, it's going to raise some pretty difficult questions for those same UT administrators to answer about both what they told the faculty last fall, and what their plans for the Institute are now.

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 16, 2022

Piss off the faculty, it reaches the aforesaid alumni PDQ. They take the reputation of the school very seriously (lorry nose they’ve had nothing else to brag about since Darrel Royal retired.)

If anybody remembers CRT by 2023, I’ll be surprised. Besides, UT has a law school that might actually teach CRT. And a school full of lawyers will happily sue to overturn such a stupid law. With any luck, that suit would undo the law affecting lower schools, too.

"There's No Voter Suppression In Texas!"

Hervis Rogers captured national attention in March 2020 when he waited for hours to vote on Super Tuesday.

Now, Rogers is being prosecuted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office for allegedly voting illegally.https://t.co/eyT0B4SeuK

— Houston Public Media (@HoustonPubMedia) July 9, 2021

Ah, don't you believe it:

When Hervis Rogers went viral on social media for being the last person in line at Texas Southern University to cast a vote at 1 a.m. on Super Tuesday, he was applauded as a tenacious, civic-minded man who worked hard to exercise his right to vote.

Now, Rogers is being prosecuted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office for allegedly voting illegally.

Rogers was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison for burglary and intent to commit theft in 1995. 

He was out on parole May 20, 2004, and his parole was set to end June 13, 2020.

Rogers was one of millions of people in America without the right to vote, due to laws prohibiting people on parole from participating in elections in many states across the country, including Texas.

Rogers was arrested on Wednesday in the South Acres neighborhood in Houston and he voted in Harris County, but the AG's office is prosecuting the case in Montgomery County. Rogers is charged with two counts of illegal voting. His bail is set at $100,000.

Yes, Super Tuesday. In 2020. And why Montgomery County? Because Harris County is deep blue, and neighboring Montgomery County, isn't.  Forum shopping, in other words.  Whether that can be successfully challenged is honestly an open subject.  That this prosecution shouldn't happen, is not an open subject.  It shouldn't.  Period.

Then again, Mr. Rogers was presumptively voting in the Democratic primary; which, as far as Mr. Paxton is concerned, should be illegal anyway.

Under a bill approved in 2007 by both the Texas House and Texas Senate, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice would have been required to notify people released from custody about their eligibility to vote. However, former Gov. Rick Perry vetoed that bill.

I mean, then what's the point of the law, amirite?

A similar bill filed this week by State Rep. John Bucy would require the state to give people convicted of felonies more information about their eligibility to vote.

I give this new bill about as much chance as the old bill.

And Paxton? Well, he’s in Dallas this weekend, at C-PAC. Coincidence? I think not.