Texas runoff elections recap

Not much to add to what Brains had to say, but I'll do a few notes.

First, living in SBOE District 9, it was gratifying to see gay prostitute monger Mary Lou Bruner go down to defeat in the GOP runoff. I think her appearance on WFAA's talking heads last Sunday killed her. Bud Kennedy wasn't harshly confrontational, but he and his cohost strongly grilled her, her conspiracy theories, and the conspiracy theory-driven lies she and her campaign spread about opponent Keven Ellis' campaign. Her staff probably told her, or she told herself, she couldn't afford to duck the appearance once the offer was made to both, but she probably should have. Ellis got a lot of exposure, and her nuttery (collected at this spot) got just as much.

Second, to snark ... if religious conservative Wayne Christian is the GOP nominee for the RRC, then shouldn't he want to clean up the messes by Big Oil? After all, oil spills and fracking waste are both noxious enough they can cause spontaneous abortions, I'm sure, and abortion is right up his alley.

To be more serious, the win of Grady Yarbrough on the Democratic runoff for RRC underscores another point.

The Railroad Commission, along with Court of Criminal Appeals Place 5, is one of two MUST-FOCUS races for the Texas Green Party to hit the 5 percent threshold and maintain party-line ballot access in 2018. Yarbrough is a doob.

Unfortunately, as of this time, all Green candidate Martina Salinas has is a Facebook page with no updates in more than three months, and no website.

(The other is Place 5 for the Court of Criminal Appeals. Judith Sanders-Castro is the Green nominee. As I blogged during primary filings, Betsy Johnson appears to have been a last-minute Dem recruit with a mix of just wanting to fill out the Dem slate and perhaps wanting to cockblock Greens. Given what I read about Gilberto Hinojosa, no surprise. That said, I can't find even a Facebook page for her.)

A basic, Wordpress-driven website costs what, $39 a month to host with GoDaddy or something? A professional, but part-time, web/IT person, for a third-party candidate on a quasi-volunteer basis, shouldn't cost more than $100 a month right now, maybe $100 a week after Labor Day.

So, Salinas, and Sanders-Castro, it's time to up the ante. And, I've Tweeted Texas Greens already to pass this along.

Texas GOP voters: You reap what you sow

Texas Supreme Court
Justice Don Willett

For the first time ever, in the two-decade-plus history of multiple school financing lawsuits against the state of Texas, the state won on Friday. The full opinion is here.

And hence, the headline of the post. It's like "What's the Matter with Kansas," only more so.

Yes, the Texas Supreme Court's been all-GOP for some time, but it has shifted steadily further right. And steadily backward.

Sounding like something from the pre-Brown v Board of Education era, straight out of Plessy v Ferguson, Justice Don Willett, who wrote the opinion (there were two concurrences) said that money doesn't equate to educational quality.

Really? Then why do urban parents move to richer suburbs, from either the central city or poorer suburbs? Part of it is racial, but part is financial.

That said, out in small towns and rural areas, there's no rich suburbs where to move. But, people continue to vote against their own self-interest.

I'm in a part of the state where one of the two State Board of Education candidates believes President Obama used to be a gay prostitute, and stuff arguably even weirder. How does electing a candidate like that help rural schools get more money from the state?

It doesn't.

Worse yet, Bruner used to be a kindergarten teacher herself.

And, contra Cherokee County GOP Chairwoman Tammy Blair, Bruner is NOT "a nice older lady." Bigotry normally has hatred behind it. Her comments appear to reflect racism that she's projected back onto Obama (East Texas, especially Deep East Texas, still has plenty of that), gay-bashing, and more. There's nothing nice about that.

And, contra her opponent in the runoff, Keven Ellis, sorry, but for many people, thoughts like hers ARE conservative, and ARE Christian.

That said, there's no guarantee Ellis will be that much more enlightened, should he win the GOP runoff, and presumably, the general election.

And, it's the Texas Lege, not the SBOE, who make the funding decisions. And, so far, my Republican state rep and Republican state senator are both practicing duck and cover politics on this issue. And, that's with my state senator not up for election this cycle and my state rep facing no general election race.

Per the header, I feel sorry for Texas children in central cities, poorer first-ring suburbs, and small towns and the country.

Do I feel sorry for their parents, though?

If they voted Republican, not really.

Their own scriptures tell them that, in the old KJV: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," or in modern English: "As a man sows, so shall he reap."

Yes, the state Supremes, as well as the Texas Lege and the statewide executive offices, have been all-GOP for more than a decade. But, their holders, and their party, have drifted barreled hard farther right in the past half-dozen years or so.

I mean, former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson was a plaintiffs' lawyer! The court rejected a man formerly one of its own, who was part of the 2005 school finance ruling that said, yes, Texas did have a de facto statewide property tax.

UPDATE, May 18: The surest sign yet this ruling was fucked up is that Justice Willett is on Trump's SCOTUS short list.

If you think the Texas SBOE is bad ...

A losing candidate can be even worse.

Ann Althouse defends Texas SBOE, history distortions

Under the guise of claiming a Washington Post story on the new State Board of Education standards are bad history itself made quotational errors, libertarian-dabbler ditz Ann Althouse defends the SBOE.

Well, I didn't go through all her critique, but she has two OBVIOUS problems herself:

1. On the issue of 1960s Southern Democrats and civil rights. LBJ was a Southern/Texas Democratic president who pushed for civil rights. A leading defender of civil rights on SCOTUS was Southern Democrat Hugo Black. And there were others. It's not just that this issue makes today's Dems mad, it's that it's designed to do so, via obfuscation. (And, Ann, I think you know that, but, I'm not totally sure. How does someone like you get to your status? The idea that America is meritocratic is refuted.)

2. The correctness of Venona transcripts in no way vindicates McCarthy or McCarthyist tactics. That's such an illogical "fail," even for you ...

That said, another poster nailed her in an even bigger error. The WaPost story WAS directly quoting ... from the original March meeting of the SBOE, and make that clear enough that Ann just drove past it.

And, beyond that, her stance, especially on the civil rights issue has brought all sorts of Southern "Lost Cause" supporters out of the woodwork, denying slavery was the ultimate and primary cause of the Civil War. Now, Althouse doesn't support Rand Paul's reasoning, but neither does she appear to call out these posters.

Why is Don McLeroy a racist?

It's not enough, now, for McLeroy and his Christian conservative cohort on the Texas State Board of Education to deny children the right to critical thinking by barring discussion of the First Amendment from social studies textbooks.

No, now they're into racism, too, denying that any Tejanos were killed at the Alamo.

"I cannot go back to my community and say I participated in perpetrating this fraud on the students of this state,” said board member Mavis Knight, D-Dallas, one of the four negative votes.

Yep, it's a fraud against history, a fraud against student education and more. A Texas high school diploma should probably be stamped with that word, the way things are going.

One of the ultraconservatives on the board claimed the Tejanos weren't "leaders" there:

Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth, questioned the need for the requirement, noting that no Hispanics were considered leaders at the Alamo.

"They were just among the other people who died at the Alamo. It would be awkward to say that teachers and students should identify people who died at the Alamo," she said.

Really? A Texas city is named after Juan Seguin, but, he's not a "leader"? I guess the racial winners write history, eh? Jim Bowie married a Hispanic, became a Mexican citizen and converted to Catholicism, but Tejanos don't deserve to be considered as "leaders" because ... they were darker-skinned and Catholic? (Note: Most of the Anglo "leaders" did not do either one, though both were required by the Mexican government, thereby initiating the general Anglo-Texan disdain for the rule of law except when it suits one's own interest.)

Why does Don McLeroy hate the First Amendment?

Along with his theocratic compadres on the Texas State Board of Education? The seven social conservatives, joined by three more "moderate" GOPers on the board, blocked a provision that would have required high school social students students to learn about the First Amendment:

(Board member Mavis) Knight said all she was trying to do was encourage study of the First Amendment language that states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Oh, no, we can't have Texas school children being taught analytical thinking.

And, of course, that's of a parcel with not just the SBOE, but fundamentalists in general.

After all, if "we" have all these fundamentals, concrete and inerrant, there's nothing to analyze. And, no need to question the "powers that be."

Unless, they're a bunch of libruls, let alone stinking godless communist real libruls.

Update, March 12: Now McLeroy and cohort are racists, too, denying that any Tejanos were killed at the Alamo.

McLeroy out from Texas SBOE!

I didn't blog about this last night, but, Don McLeroy lost his primary battle for the Texas State Board of Education to a much more mainstream Republican, Thomas Ratliff, son of former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff. (More on that name below.)

McLeroy was a former board chairman and the ramrod of the Religious Right on the SBOE. His loss, combined with other results from last night, seem to mean the SBOE may take a notch or two (though probably not much more than that) to the center next year.

So, we need to fight the current SBOE even more between now and then.

As for Bill Ratliff? If Jim Hightower had been less arrogant and presumptuous, and run a better campaign against Rick Perry for Ag Secretary in 1994, maybe Ratliff would have run for election to Lite Guv in 1998 and Texas would be a whole lot different.

Texas' most nutbar state agency, the SBOE!

If you're in Texas, and not a religious fundamentalist, and you know something about the state's politics and culture, you would surely agree that the State Board of Education is its most nutbar institution.

If you're not from Texas, and you don't know that the SBOE not only directly influences Texas public school textbook choice, but indirectly influences that of most other states in the nation, you need to read this in-depth profile of the loony bin by the New York Times Magazine.

James Kracht, a professor at Texas A&M’s college of education and a longtime player in the state’s textbook process, told me flatly, “Texas governs 46 or 47 states.”

Yes, it is that powerful, and no, led by a former chairman, several board members are on a "Christian nation" kick right now.

Uhh, NO, Texas State Board of Education, the Founding Fathers were NOT Trinitarian Christians, for the most part.

That said, Russell Shorto does offer a nuanced article about the role of Christianity in American history. Is America sociologically a largely Christian nation? Certainly. But, it never was politically or legally a Christian nation, which is what the Don McLeroys of the SBOE in particular and Religious Right world in general try to claim.

At the same time, though, Shorto, even in a 10-webpage article, doesn't delve into how, on the sociological side, the Religious Right likes to conflate religious belief with morality. He also doesn't cite or interview someone like Garry Wills to refute the whole "reference by incorporation" that claims the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were on the same page. All one has to do is look at the issue of slavery, as did abolitionists, Abraham Lincoln and others (as Wills points out in his writings) to see how laughable this idea is.

So, I note this observation of his:

Ask Christian activists what they really want — what the goal is behind the effort to bring Christianity into American history — and they say they merely want “the truth.”

And, immediately think of Jack Nicholson's response to Tom Cruise in "A Few Good Men."

Beyond this, Shorto's piece is a good read for pointing out the generally ill-informed background, and lack of logical reasoning skills of the McLeroy faction of the SBOE. And, not just on church-state issues.

Perry names Lowe to chair SBOE; afraid of Kay?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry named Gail Lowe, publisher of the Lampasas Dispatch Record, to chair the State Board of Education. It’s better than Cynthia Dunbar, at least. A semi-chastized Rick Perry? Playing to more moderate Republicans because of Kay Bailey Cheerleader fears?

Of course, Lowe is not that much better than Dunbar, and her more easygoing personality and modicum of flexibility may lull some people to sleep as to just how ardent she is on not just creationism, but per the KERA link above, other education issues, too.

For example, she’s been right there with other board righties in trying to keep Cesar Chavez out of textbooks. And even Thurgood Marshall.

Science in public schools gets a reprieve in Texas

A split vote by the State Board of Education keeps the creationist/IDer camel’s nose of evolution’s “strengths and weaknesses” out of classrooms. My SBOE rep, Mavis Knight, recovering from surgery, cast her vote the right way, by video.

Faith-based English in Texas?

Texas says “we will teach goodly English.”

We just will ignore our state’s English teachers’ ideas on how to do that.

That’s the Religious Right, euphemistically called “social conservatives” by their quasi-cohabitator Dallas Morning Snooze, doing another stealth job.

“It is disheartening that the board has completely discounted the recommendations of teachers who are in the classroom teaching these subjects,” said Cynthia Tyroff of Texas Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts, one of 17 teacher associations that worked on the teacher-backed plan.

You know what’s also disheartening? We’re stuck with the state’s new English instruction standards for the next decade.

Hasta la vista, good grammar!