Pedantic Political Ponderings: Texas

Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts

18 June 2012

18 June 2012: Marriage News Watch

14 March 2012

Praise: Overruled! a Lambda Legal victory movie

This movie tells the story of the overruling of sodomy laws by the United States Supreme Court. The achievement of Lambda Legal in Lawrence v. Texas. Twenty minutes of fascinating history.

30 January 2012

30 January 2012: Marriage News Watch

26 December 2011

FollowUp 1: Rick Perry Double Dipper

Let me confess now that Governor Perry is the candidate that I like least of all of the 2012 contenders. This has nothing to do with disagreement over issues, and we disagree on most issues. This is about liars and cheaters. If Mr. Perry were one of my students, I would be documenting every time he lied and every time he cheated to make sure the "F" would stick.

It is bad enough that many candidates don't understand certain issues. Mr. Perry alters data when facts don't match his agenda. He is hypocritical about government spending. The most recent example is one of hiding information and hypocrisy regarding travel expenses.

In June, the Governor asked the legislature to hide travel expenses related to his security entourage. The Houston Chronicle reported the story.

Gov. Rick Perry's office has asked lawmakers hammering out details of a school finance bill to include an unrelated provision that would keep secret the expenses of the Department of Public Safety team that provides security when he and his wife, Anita, travel.

This is not necessarily about trivial amounts of money for a state.

Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News writer Peggy Fikac reported last October that Texas taxpayers had spent close to $1 million for security during 23 foreign trips taken by the Perrys over a seven-year period.

In August, the Washington Post reported that legislation was passed and will keep the public from knowing the travel costs the Governor Perry accrues during the campaign until after the November 2012 election. The article also discussed more of the burden that Mr. Perry is on the Texas taxpayer.

Although security around public officials has been tightened considerably since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the secrecy that surrounds Perry’s travels is unique, according to Ken Bunting, executive director of the Missouri-based National Freedom of Information Coalition.

And the governor’s critics contend that it has as much to do with politics as safety — especially after the embarrassment for Perry when taxpayers learned that they had been paying for scuba gear and golf cart rentals for officers who accompanied Perry and his wife to the Bahamas in 2004.

On Christmas Day, the Texas Tribune reported that Mr. Perry's security contingent is now costing Texas taxpayers as much as $400,000 each month.

Aside from President Obama, Perry — the only sitting governor in the 2012 race — has the largest security contingent, and apparently the only one on the Republican side financed by taxpayers.

Weeks before he officially announced his presidential bid, Perry said it was appropriate for the Texas Department of Public Safety to pay for his security and called any criticism of his government-provided protection a “diversion.” He also said that Texans would benefit from his travels.

“I’m going to be promoting Texas,” Perry said in July, as he began to traverse the country. “I’m going to be traveling to places where the Texas story needs to be told, and we will tell it.”

If the state of Texas is to benefit from their governor's travels, they are in need of a better spokesman than Rick Perry. Aside from fumbling at numerous speeches and his failure to place his name on the Virginia primary ballot, Governor Perry calls for smaller government and tightening government expenditures while simultaneously spending large amounts of Texas tax dollars for his national campaign and endeavoring to hide much of that information from the public.

Rick Perry is a liar, a cheater, and a hypocrite. He is not worthy of the office of the President of the United States.

Thanks to Joe My God for the heads up.

18 December 2011, Original Pedantic Political Ponderings post.

21 November 2011

Praise: OWS call for Student Loan Forgiveness

For years I have told my students that college is worth it. I would point to old data that showed that earning a B.A. or a B.S. would nearly double their lifetime earnings. That old data might still be true, but the cost of attaining a tertiary degree has been climbing too high. A science cartoon, Calamities of Nature, brought this into stark focus this morning.

In response, students and former students involved in Occupy Wall Street are calling for student loan forgiveness. That may sound extreme, but compare the support students received from Pell Grants starting in 1975 to just the year 2000.

Over the ensuing twenty-five years, the Pell Grant program did not keep pace with the rise in college costs. By fiscal year 2000 the maximum Pell Grant provided only 40 percent of the cost of attendance at a public four-year institution. While total Pell Grant spending had grown 691 percent over the preceding twenty-five years, federal loan volume had increased 2000 percent over the same period, thus shifting the foundation of the Title IV programs from grants to loans.

So, the cost of higher education is increasing dramatically and the funds to attend college have shifted from grants to loans that, with interest, sometime climb to more than $100,000.

This is happening as some Republicans are calling for the opposite of assisting students will college. Former Texas Congressman Dick Armey spoke a year ago on CNN

The federal government has the military academies and it’s an important thing they should continue to do that. But the education of our young people oughta be under the jurisdiction and auspices of the state governments. The state of Texas has a great university system that has not been made any better by federal money involvement.

What we need to rejuvenate the United States is not austerity. We need investment. The history of federal assistance to universities and unviersity students should be a guide. Historian Stephen Ambrose spoke of the GI Bill on the PBS Newshour a decade ago.

Listen, that GI Bill was the best piece of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress, and it made modern America. The educational establishment boomed and then boomed and them boomed. The suburbs, starting with Levittown and others, were paid by GIs borrowing on their GI Bill at a very low interest rate. Thousands and thousands of small businesses were started in this country and are still there thanks to the loans from the GI Bill. It transformed our country.

Historian Michael Beschloss continued later in the same discussion.

At the time that the bill was debated in Congress it passed only by a very slim margin, and, in fact, a lot of -- particularly Republicans -- said let's not pass this thing because a big part of the GI Bill was to give returning vets $20 a week for 52 weeks. They felt that would encourage sloth; that people would not try to get jobs. They thought that this would extend the welfare state, rather than do the opposite. But the other thing I think really endures as a part of America's philosophy is this linked the idea of service to education. You serve the country; the government pays you back by allowing you educational opportunities you otherwise wouldn't have had, and that in turn helps to approve this society. That's something that goes al the way back to the time of he Revolution, and I think it's one reason why we think of it so fondly.

This sounds a lot like the current crop of Republicans. Using this history as a guide, it is clear to me that it is time to invest in American education.

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