If those of us long suffering Texans thought Slick's pervasive crony capitalism, Ayn Rand libertarianism, self-serving greed and right wing extremism would disappear with the departure of Rick Perry, one likely knows such is a pipe dream given the opening days of the Texas Ledge.
The 2015 Legislative Session has certainly opened with a bang, almost. It seems that a bunch of boys with a lot of big bad guns decided to play bad cowboys in favor of open carry. Some of the more conservative members of the Legislature have been discussing the passage of such a bill, HB195.
However, not all members of the Legislature are on board with this insanity and so the cowboys decided to have a conversation with their representative who is opposed HB195.
Long story short, the Legislature will now install panic buttons in lawmakers' offices for future potential gun brandishing incidents by angry and disgruntled constituents.
You reap what you sow, ladies and gentlemen lawmakers.
The Texas House approved the use of “panic buttons” in lawmakers’ offices after several incidences earlier this month where open-carry advocates showed up to bully and harass politicians and staffers they deemed “anti-gun.” Nothing says free and open democracy like people with guns threatening people who oppose them at the place that they work.
In a disturbing video posted to social media, open-carry advocates from the group “Open Carry Tarrant County” pile into the office of Texas Rep. Poncho Nevarez (Eagle Pass), and start demanding to know his stance on gun control. At issue is a new bill led by Texas Republicans that would repeal a century-long ban on openly carrying handguns. To his immense credit, Nevarez doesn’t waiver from his position that he is for strong gun control laws, however that position led to the group hurling ugly accusations, and finally, outright threats at him.
To my fellow non voters, this is what we get when we fail to show up at the polls. But the gun advocates incident isn't all that is weird and very unsettling about the current legislative session.
By voting for Greg Abbott or, by not voting, did we elect a more divisive and compassion challenged snake oil dealer than Rick Perry and G.W. Bush? I am beginning to get more anxious and very nervous about Greg Abbott and his threat to crack down on the state's municipalities and local governments for passing ordinances that are deemed necessary and have the support of the majority of their residents.
And so it comes as quite a shock to Texas voters to learn that our rabidly anti-federal government Govenor elect Greg Abbott wants to do to local municipalities what he accused the big bad feds of doing to Texas. While Attorney General, Greg Abbott sued the federal government for overreach more than thirty times. But now, as the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott wants to prevent municipal ordinances that ban fracking, plastic bags and tree cutting.
In one of his speeches, the Governor told a conservative business group that Texas is becoming California-ized.
Of course, Rick Perry and Greg Abbott always enjoy bashing California, almost as much as they do our duly elected President, as simple minded and apparently entitled white men would do, but the stark reality is Texas is becoming more and more Kochified. Greg Abbott's attacks on municipal governments is a prime example.
Needless to say, the Governor elect's assault on local bans has set off a flurry of stunned disbelief and outcries of hypocrisy and overreach throughout the state.
Abbott seems to be maneuvering this argument in a way to justify state intervention in the regulation of gas-fracking operations. Just as is the case when local governments have a right to establish zoning rules — limits on where heavy industrial sites can be located, for example — local governments also have a right to say whether they want noisy, polluting fracking operations within their city limits. Abbott wants to take that right away.
Amazing. This is the same guy who fought so hard against increased federal intervention in our lives. When it comes to his perspective of top-down governance from Washington, he’s against it. But, somehow, he believes in the McCity concept that establishes uniform rules that must apply to all cities across the state. We all must look, smell, feel and behave the same, according to state mandate. Under Abbott’s vision, top-down governance from Austin is better than what we, the citizens of Dallas, Austin, Lubbock, Clarendon, Muleshoe, Brownsville and El Paso choose for ourselves.
It seems to me that Greg Abbott's campaign contributors in the fracking industry expect to get what they paid for. The Kochification of Texas continues.
As if it isn't enough to feel anxious about a Koch/fossil fuel industry paid dictator for ignoring the voices of citizens by imposing edicts on what cities, towns and townships can and cannot do, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick's schemes for public education are about to take us to a whole new world of hurt.
Voodoo economics used as a rationale to implement voodoo education.
Only a ideologically blinded demagogue would drag out one of Ronald Reagan's skeletons from his failed voodoo economics closet to propose a study on education in Texas.
For those who don't know, Ronald Reagan is the father of trickle down economics. A quick cram: The promise: tax cuts for the rich will float all of our boats by creating jobs for the middle class. Reality: trick down economics has made the rich richer. The only boats that have been floated are those of the 1%. Wages for middle class workers are stagnant. We are working longer hours for fewer benefits and less compensation.
But hey, none of this matters. For Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and his tea party colleagues don't do facts and data. Nor is this group particularly compassionate or understanding of the plight of those who reside outside of their ideologically gated communities. These folks are driven by pure right wing conservative anti-science dogma with a big dose of God.
The remedy for Texas public schools? Vouchers, of course.
Get out your gas masks, folks. This snake oil is so rancid it stinks worse than an oil refinery in a town nicknamed STINKadena, just outside of Houston.
In a breathless 37-page report that reads at times like the script for a late-night TV infomercial, this economist claims one simple school reform would bring up to 985,000 new jobs to Texas. It will draw up to 1.1 million new residents. It will graduate up to 65,000 would-be dropouts, who will go on to start stock portfolios worth millions and buy "bigger, better, newer" homes worth an additional $1.2 billion.
And if these wild projections have not dizzied you yet, consider this: According to the report, the reform's long-term impact will add up to $10 trillion in present value gross domestic product to our state's economy!
The voodoo will become the bible, chapter and verse, among the far right conservatives that are in charge of education in the Legislature.
But hey, this year, it has a nifty new name that doesn't even mention vouchers, or schools, for that matter: the Taxpayer Savings Grant Program.
It's got the most powerful politician in the state pushing it - Republican Lt. Gov.-elect Dan Patrick. And it's got this hyperbolic report from a guy who has pictures with Reagan and was paid to produce it by the loudest voucher drum-beaters of all: the Texas Association of Business and the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
So, why am I wasting your time with it? Because all session, this report will be the bible that people like state Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, place their palms on while swearing up and down that vouchers are the answer, the salvation, and that we have a "moral obligation" to let public school students use state money to attend private and parochial schools.
Of course, Laffer didn't do his own study on vouchers. He simply "analyzed the issue," cherry-picking other study findings, sprinkling in some wild extrapolations, and mixing well.
H/T to Ms. Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle for giving us the heads up on this very scary threat to public education in Texas.
But the stink gets even worse if that's possible. I didn't know there was anywhere in the state that could possibly stink more than than Pasadena, aka STINKadena near Lt. Governor Dan Patrick's home town of Houston, but it seems that the state agencies and institutes run by Perry appointees are surrounded by a moat oozing with raw sewage.
Remember the scandal a couple of years ago surrounding the Cancer Institute CPRIT in which the Perry appointed foxes guarding the hen house allowed certain cronies to loot millions of dollars of taxpayer funded dollars in the form of grants? With no oversight, scientific or commercial review, thank you. All it took was a wink and a nod among Perry's appointee and his profiteering cronies.
Not suprisingly, it seems that CPRIT has a first kissing cousin.
Rick Perry's appointees can't seem to keep their grimy hands out of the states' cookie jars. Of course Perry's financial gutting of the public integrity unit makes it easy for his appointees to rob taxpayers blind. State institutes and agencies have become ripe for the picking and serve cash cows for political cronies.
Stick, a former member of the Texas House and former deputy inspector general for the health commission, was promoted this year to be HHSC's top lawyer.
In recent months, his involvement in a $110 million contract for Medicaid fraud software, awarded to Austin-based 21CT, has been the subject of intense scrutiny. A series of stories by the Austin American-Statesman delved into how 21CT won the deal not through competitive bidding, but by being selected by HHSC from the state's computer services catalog managed by the Texas Department of Information Resources, or DIR.
In this case, DIR had a list of vendors who had previously met — through its competitive process — the requirements for a state contract in the "security products and related services" category. HHSC has confirmed it chose 21CT from the DIR list of those pre-approved vendors without a competitive process.
Once the state's watchdogs trained a bright light on the cockroaches, all scattered as quickly as they could into the dark. Jack Stick resigned and other employees were placed on administrative leave. State Senator John Whitmire (D-Houston) has called for the resignation of Kyle Janek, top official for the Health and Human Services Commission. Apparently the Commission pays the tuition for
MBAs for certain employees.
In violation of its own policy, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission paid $97,020 so a top aide to Commissioner Kyle Janek — and former aide to ousted chief counsel Jack Stick — could pursue an MBA degree, The Texas Tribune has learned.
Casey Haney, now Janek's $159,075-a-year deputy chief of staff, has been working on his graduate business degree at the University of Texas at Austin. His tuition was paid to UT up front out of the HHSC budget, a rare academic reimbursement deal that was approved in writing by Erica Stick, who is Haney's supervisor, Jack Stick’s wife and Janek's chief of staff.
One would think that a person earning a six figure salary could afford his own tuition.
Meanwhile Lt Governor Dan Patrick will continue Rick Perry's quest to de-fund and cripple the public integrity unit. This makes me wonder what fresh hell will be visited on us from Dan Patrick's ideological cronies in addition to voodoo public education. His donors expect some pay back too, no doubt.
The earlier inquiry, which concerned Texas Department of Public Safety contracts for Perry's highly touted and controversial border-security program, lasted more than a year before abruptly shuttering, said Gregg Cox, director of the Public Integrity Unit at the Travis County District Attorney's office.
"We lacked the resources to continue that investigation," Cox said. "Because the staff was cut when our budget was vetoed."
A wink and a nod while Texas officials take a nap.
The news also raises questions about whether a continuation of the inquiry could have alerted officials much earlier to vulnerabilities in the so-called "Cooperative Contracts" process.
The process, which allows state agencies to bypass competitive-bidding, but was designed for smaller purchases, was used for both the Department of Public Safety contract and the scandal-ridden Medicaid fraud detection deal given by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to Austin technology company 21CT.
The above is only the tip of the iceberg. Rick Perry's urgency about border security had everything to do with his re-election and nothing to do with the safety and security of Texas.
Officials said the earlier Public Integrity Unit investigation focused on more than $20 million in no-bid contracts given to Virginia defense contractor Abrams Learning and Information Systems, Inc., to help Texas develop its border security strategies.
The Virginia firm, founded by retired Army Gen. John Abrams, initially got a $471,800 contract in March 2006 to help the state establish a Border Security Operations Center in Austin, according to a state documents. The deal went through the no-bid process because officials said it was in response to "an emergency."
An internal memo that later surfaced in news reports showed that the declaration of an emergency was based on public statements by Perry, who at the time was in a tough re-election campaign in which border security was a big issue.
Three months after its first contract, Abrams received a second emergency deal, for $679,600, that greatly expanded the company's responsibilities.
G.W. Bush and Rick Perry have left one hell of a Kochified legacy on the once great state of Texas. Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick will no doubt follow the same path. Voters who vote R or don't bother to vote at all do so at their own peril.