Burnt Orange Report

More from the Iconoclast

By Byron LaMasters

Well it looks like some other folks have picked up on the story of the left-leanings of Bush's "hometown" newspaper, the Crawford Lone Star Iconoclast. Although, out of fairness, their endorsements in last year's election were quite bipartian. They did endorse Rick Perry last fall, along with GOP State Senator Kip Averitt, candidate for State Rep. Holt Getterman (who lost to John Mabry) and Comptroller Carole Strayhorn. So, not really that left-leaning. I think that they, and a lot of other folks have realized, however, that they were fooled by Rick Perry, David Dewhurst, Tom Craddick and their gang of partisan Republicans. They campaigned as conservatives. They're governing as power hungry extremists. Here are some recent editorials by the Iconoclast:

On House Democratic Leader Jim Dunnam - Iconoclast of the Week:

The Iconoclast of the Week is Rep. Jim Dunnam, who led the legislative march to Ardmore and protected the voting integrity of McLennan County and surrounding counties.

The Rightist Republican Gerrymander would have pared segments of Waco into the religious radical loony land of southern Fort Worth suburbs and thrown the rest in with Georgetown and Round Rock’s white flight wealthy.

We need only to look at the debacle of Bosque County, represented by Burleson’s sanctimonious socialite who hardly bothers to campaign down here, let alone represent us.

Fighting this right-wing last straw trick to deny us representation in Washington took courage. It took intelligence. It took resolve.

Dunnam stood up to the anti-education bullies who have pushed the greatest tax increase in Texas history through this legislature.

He saw through the Rightist hypocrisy of crying “no new taxes” while handing homeowners a guaranteed ten-cent-per-hundred property tax increase statewide.

He stood on the legislative floor and called the Rightists to task.

For his efforts, the spiteful right used the House rules to stall Dunnam’s bill to increase penalties for those who pass school buses and injure children.

And these bullies call themselves Christian? These are the hypocrites who called the Ardmore Exile a procedural trick?

Of course Rightist Republicans don’t care about children. Otherwise, why would they cut out free schoolbooks, reduce teacher insurance and retirement, deny thousands of children health insurance, and give our tax money to wealthy private schools?

Central Texas should be proud of Jim Dunnam and John Mabry.

It is high time we found some Democrats with resolve and courage.

It is time to launch the Dunnam for Governor campaign.

On redistricting:

The Icons of the Week are the Texas House of Representatives members who voted to approve a new Congressional redistricting map that destroys the “communities of interest” landscape throughout the state, Central Texas in particular.

Several counties were unnecessarily split into sections. The map, if ultimately approved by the State, would have disastrous ramifications for most Central Texans.

The approval came during the 4th of July holiday without the input, consideration, or knowledge of many of the cities and rural areas that were targeted for disection. Why? Because nobody in his right mind would be for this type of gerrymandering, this type of maiming. There would be next-to-zero support, which is why it was done in the shadows.

The Senate can put a stop to this. But do its members have the guts to stand up to Gov. Perry, the instigator of this ill-conceived and extraordinarily expensive special session, and the very radical and politically sadistic Tom DeLay, who quite unbelievably has lured several legislators into his coven?

On "Osama bin DeLay":

The Icon of the Week is U.S. House Majority Leader and right-wing fanatic Tom DeLay for uniting Texas Democrats with his sneak-thief Gerrymandering scheme to deprive representation to neighborhoods and cities who question his radical views.

The current court-approved redistricting plan gives Democrats a slight edge, but not because it is set along partisan lines.

These plans are supposed to extend to the next census. They always have.

The map now in effect is based on commonality, areas that share economic and geographical interests.

Its just that DeLay and his child-stoning pharisees can’t sell their mouthy hate-mongering to everyone in the state, so they seek to deprive any voice at all to the reasonable and just.

The Republican Party must reclaim its role as the voice of reason.

The decent GOP members who gained their rightful place at Texas’ political table a decade ago decried the Democrat’s redistricting based on political power rather than popular commonality.

Did they only seek the right to apply the same injustice for their own interests?

Can we not sell our ideas without political chicanery that haunted Texas politics for a century and a half?

Now comes Osama bin DeLay, who wants power and does not care whose rights he tramples trying to get it.

DeLay knows that he cannot sell his ideas outside the strongholds of his fellow fanatics.

He seeks to force the rest of us into them.

Our personal convictions are irrelevant.

Believe as DeLay preaches. Think as DeLay thinks. Do as Delay says.

Thus saith DeLay.

Moderate Republicans should remember the words of Haile Selasse, the first victim of European Fascisim: “It is we today. It will be you tomorrow.”

Perhaps someone should remind us all that the author of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, warned that among the chief dangers to freedom is the “tyranny of the majority.” In a truly free society, rights and ideas of the minority are heard, respected and considered, and that popular notions are seldom right.

Among the popular ideas that once prevailed in Texas were slavery, genocide, child labor, and wife-beating.

Perhaps DeLay longs for those good old days.

On Republican State officials:

The Icons of the Week are the Rightist state officials who shut down the state’s “pay-now-educate-later” tuition plan that allows parents to pay their children’s future college costs at today’s prices, and fascist gerrymanderer “Killer” Phil King for suggesting the legislature doesn’t need any more public hearings on congressional redistricting.

The Texas Tomorrow Fund, which has participation at an all-time high this year, was a plan to ensure that working people had a chance to send their kids to college by paying tuition at today’s rate while their children were young.

Republicans hated it. Now that the Rightists have passed the law which allows college administrators, rather than elected officials, set tuition, the program is being shut down because, administrators say, they have to “reassess” whether the program can still operate with the guaranteed tuition hikes the new law ensures.

State officials say they will continue the program just as soon as they get the finances straight.

Fat chance. At any rate, more than 20,000 Texas families per year who sign up for the program are now out of luck, and their kids are out of college.

Don’t Confuse Him With Facts. King redrew his obviously racist redistricting map this week because it so clearly diluted minority voting strength that it embarrassed the Republican Party.

He now claims his new map doesn’t need any more pesky input from citizens at public hearings, like the one scheduled next week for McLennan County, the Weatherford Wacko said.

Voters have been giving the Rightist Republicans such tongue lashings at other hearings they are getting nervous.

Texans are beginning to see this money-squandering redistricting session for what it it: A greedy political power grab that ignores the needs or will of the voters.

King’s map splits the Waco area up so that our votes will not be needed to elect any candidate to congress.

No wonder King and his power-grabbing Rightists don’t want to listen to us.

On Rick Perry:

The Icon of the Week is Gov. Rick Perry, who was proved an inveterate liar again this week. Throughout the campaign, Slick Rick responded to criticism by saying he knew of no waste that could be cut from state government.

Of course a guy who’s become wealthy based solely on a career of holding political office would say that. This week State Auditor Lawrence F. Alwin sent lawmakers a letter outlining $7 billion of fraud and waste at the Perry-Bush administration’s agencies. He cited mismanagement, lack of oversight, funding that was spent in ways the legislature never authorized, and outright fraud. Of particular interest was money siphoned off by private companies doing contracting to do work for the state.

This “privatization” was touted as a money-saving measure by the Perry-Bush political machine. Of course, they never specified who would save.

Perry also promised he would not cut funds for education, then this week shut off more than $220 million for high schools, colleges, libraries, and health-care educators.

The grant money was earmarked to create distance learning systems so students could take classes that are not offered at their schools. They could study and do research by television or internet networks under the best teachers in their fields, educational opportunities not available otherwise.

Tricky Ricky has proved again that to be elected one does not have to do well; only lie well.

And again:

The Icon of the Week is lying Governor Rick Perry for proposing a record-breaking Texas tax increase and hiding it so he and his know-nothing cronies won’t have to take the blame.

Cut funding for Community Colleges, said Tricky Ricky in his State of the Disaster speech last week. Take the telephone tax away from public libraries. They don’t need computers. He didn’t suggest increasing the allowable local property tax valuation cap to $1.60 per hundred, but our sources say that’s what he plans.

Our all-hat-no-cattle governor pretends not to know that Community Colleges serve the largest number of students in the state, and that the majority are first-generation college students.

A high percentage of these are people getting vocational training that “Education Reform” cut out of public schools during the Reagan disaster.

These are people learning to earn a living at places like TSTC, not take over daddy’s paneled office when he retires and they get their bought-and-paid-for degree from an expensive private school.

After all, poor students won’t be able to contribute to the governor’s campaign for years!

They’re also people who don’t even own computers to do research at home. Since the governor’s plans include a 12.5 percent cut from Community College funding levels set last year, and school library hours will have to be cut. They will have to join high school students without home computers at the public library.

But then the governor wants to cut computer technology from public libraries. Because of the lousy economy, more people are returning to school to get retrained, and most colleges have had large enrollment increases.

The governor now proposes that those schools educate more students with a 12.5 percent cut in funds set before those increases. That means local taxpayers will have to come up with the money or watch higher education in their communities die.

God help higher education in Texas, because the governor won’t. Meanwhile, on the public school front, the governor’s only real plan to deal with Robin Hood reform is to permit local tax increases to make up the deficits. This newspaper has submitted a non-tax, investment plan to many state senators that would remedy the problem, both long term and short term, but nothing has come of it...yet.

Tricky Ricky slips and slides up and down the pink dome and around the truth, croaking his tired, empty promise of “no new taxes.” What he really means is: No new taxes that can be blamed on him.

And Again:

The Icons of the Week are Gov. Rick Perry and Rep Arlene Wohlgemuth, for their roles in allowing the state to seize the homes of those who die in nursing homes. The two lying Rightists pushed a “no new taxes” campaign during the legislative session, then sneaked in one of the most onerous taxes in Texas history.

Wohlgemuth and Perry were part of a conspiracy to levy an inheritance tax on the old, poor, and sick. Wohlgemuth employed some political slight-of-hand in getting the bill passed. Her committee made a show of denying the amendment, which is worded so that it does not even mention home siezures, but when it was added on the House floor, she said nothing.

It is not bad enough that she led the charge in denying thousands of Texas children health insurance, she allowed the state to go after the old as well. Wohlgemuth is a brave woman. She only fights children and old people.

Perry, washing his hands like Pontius Pilate, whined that he had to sign the bill because of the budget crunch. This is another example of hidden taxes that Perry and his henchmen have passed on to Texans as local taxes and fee increases. With education cuts, health care reductions, and now this home siezure inheritance tax, this administration has sneakily passed the largest tax increase in Texas history.

On the Republican War on Education:

The Icon of the Week is the Rightist Republicans’ efforts to end state college education for Texas’ middle class.

The GOP extremists who control both the House and the Senate have passed tuition “deregulation” bills that are guaranteed to increase tuition in Texas.

That is, appointed college trustees will determine Texas’ future higher education prices, not the elected Legislature.

Colleges will simply vote themselves rich. With state funds for higher education already slashed by the Rightists, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn announced this week that Texas Tomorrow, the pre-paid tuition program, will be shut down, prohibiting working Texans from paying their children’s tuition a little at a time throughout their young years.

The plan effectively freezes tuition rates for those children at today’s prices. The Rightists, who believe education should be reserved for only the upper classes, hate the program. Because her fellow Rightists want massive tuition increases at state universities and colleges to keep out the middle class riff-raff, Strayhorn wants to shut the program down.

The Republicans’ war on education may soon be over. Education will lose.

And on Dewhurst, before Dewhurst lied:

The Iconoclast of the Week is Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a true Republican who won’t go along with the Rightist gerrymandering that will allow fascists like U.S. House Speaker Tom DeLay and Gov. Rick Perry to sieze power.

After the debacle in which Democratic legislators fled the state to stop Rightists from doing away with the court-ordered, census-based congressional districts, Perry said he would not spend the $1.7 million needed to get rid of DeLay’s political enemies.

He lied. Again. But then the governor rarely tells the truth about anything.

The religious fanatic Minority Leader dictator from Sugarland specifically wants to deny Waco and Austin their own representatives because Congressmen Chet Edwards and Lloyd Doggett won’t obey him.

DeLay’s plan would include part of Doggett’s district in a long, thin strip that stretched all the way to the Mexican border. In places it was less than a mile wide. Those living in that part of Austin would have no representation at all. Waco and surrounding communities would be split up between the religious lunatics in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs and the white flight rich of Williamson County.

Clearly Perry’s phoney interest in saving Texas taxpayers’ money is a mask for a power grab. If the Rightists had wanted to save money, they could have compromised and worked with Democrats during the regular session to avoid any special session.

As it is, the Rightists’s partisan machinations, sneaky political tricks and just plain laziness took up so much time during the regular session that we now have to pay these overtime. It is sufficient to say that these anti-public servants are so caught up on power games they wrote a budget that is not balenced by their own comptroller’s admission, and had to resort to under-the-table machinations to sneak it out of Austin.

Thankfully, Dewhurst is more interested in government than in power. He has said he will leave in place Texas Senate rules that will allow Democrats to block debate on any redistricting bill they do not deem as fair. Interestingly, Dewhurst doesn’t believe the current map reflects Republican strengths, either, but he has said the principle of one-man, one-vote should be considered.

Rightists should be reminded that they had the opportunity to draw a redistricting plan two years ago. They failed, and the federal courts had to draw it for them. That failed plan was almost exactly like this one.

In every other state in the union, this debate is over. But those states are not in the dictatorial grasp of power-mad fascists. Thank you, Mr. Dewhurst, for being the voice of reason.

Note: I did not provide links for all of the editorials. You may find them by doing searches on the Iconoclast website on the above topics. Thanks.