Bio:
Michael began writing in BOR as an incoming freshman to the University of Texas in 2007. He was dedicated to burnt orange Dems, becoming University Democrats President in 2010. He currently manages David Wahlberg's campaign for the 167th District Court.
The Texas Association of Business (TAB) must really, really like El Paso State House candidate Hector Enriquez. Enriquez is running in the Democratic Primary for an open seat against BOR-endorsed Mary Gonzalez.
Enriquez also holds the dubious distinction as being the only non-incumbent Democrat to be endorsed by TAB. (And even then, TAB only endorsed 2 House incumbents - one who is unopposed). So, they're going out on a limb for this guy. They tend to endorse Republicans, and they definitely don't endorse normal, unsafe Democrats. Not in primaries...except Enriquez.
Perhaps it has to do with their part in the school finance lawsuits. That's what the Texas State Teachers Association believes, who sent this in a press release last week:
El Paso educators today challenged District 75 legislative candidate Hector Enriquez to explain why he apparently is promoting a special interest lawsuit that could devastate public schools in El Paso County.
"Mr. Enriquez is either unaware of the damage this lawsuit could inflict on our schools, or he is joining forces with those who would destroy our public education system," said Glenda Hawthorne, president of the Socorro Education Association.
Enriquez recently re-tweeted news that the Texas Association of Business (TAB) has joined a lawsuit filed by charter and private school advocates, which attempts to strike down education standards and safeguards crucial to maintaining a strong learning environment for students. Enriquez, a candidate for the Texas House District 75 seat in the May 29 Democratic primary, has been endorsed by TAB.
TAB joined the so-called "efficiency" lawsuit, which claims Chapter 21 of the Education Code is unconstitutional. The net effect of striking Chapter 21 would be repealing the 22-to-1 class size cap for elementary students, removing all training and certification requirements for teachers, eliminating critical class-preparation periods for teachers and jeopardizing teacher retirement benefits.
While it is encouraging to see anyone take issue with this Republican Legislature's record on public education, the largest problem is the gigantic slashes to funding, not standards that keep our education from going lower.
It's hard to tell exactly how conservative Enriquez's education ideas are, but between TAB, his Perry donations, and his scant issues page, we can probably connect the dots. You would think that a candidate in a safe Democratic seat would be a prouder progressive.
On Facebook today, US Senate Candidate Ted Cruz shared about his next big event.
That's right, everyone. It's Ted Cruz and the Pauls.
Ted Cruz is already gaining steady steam, according to polls, in the Republican Primary for the United States Senate. And to try and overtake Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, Ted Cruz has decided to double down on the crazy. By appearing with Congressmen Ron and Rand Paul as the headlines to a Tea Party Express event, Ted cruz is saying loud and clear, "Fellow Texas Republicans, I think you want the most backwards government possible, and I'm right there with you. I'm Ted Paul, and I approve this message."
Who's to say if he eventually succeeds Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, but that this is seen as a worthwhile political play for a Texas Republican primary candidate proves the sad state of affairs of TexasRepublicans.
Every day it is clearer. They don't want to become your elected officials in order to improve government. They want to become your elected officials in order to strip government down as much as possible. It's Ron, Rand, and Ted [Cruz] Paul. Or, as they say about everywhere else: Crazytown.
Yesterday, the United States Senate comfortably passed a re-authorization bill for the Violence Against Women Act. It passed comfortably, too, with a 68-31 margin, which obviously included a handful of Republicans (including some Republicans who even co-sponsored!)
One might ask, "Who are those 31 Senators and what do they think is ok about violence against women?" One might also ask about the chances of the bill passing a more Republican House. While I cannot answer the latter question, I can tell you that Texas' own John Cornyn was among the 31 who voted against the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
The problem? Well, Senator Cornyn went to the editorial pages earlier this week, and we can get some clues there.
He initially complained that, "to argue that a minor policy disagreement indicates a lack of sensitivity toward battered women is simply beyond the pale."
Ok. So what's this minor policy disagreement? Senator Cornyn first claimed that Republicans are mostly on the side of, you know, equality and common sense. Except there was one thing...
The overwhelming majority of Republicans believe it should be reauthorized, and I have cosponsored legislation to do just that. Our bill contains some commonsense proposals that would bolster VAWA and also remove a series of controversial provisions from the Democratic alternative.
Ok, Senator Cornyn - you're against Violence Against Some Women, I guess. That's ridiculously non-inclusive, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'll say that your disagreement doesn't "indicate a lack of sensitivity toward [all] battered women." You still voted against the bill, however; one that many of your own party still agreed was sound policy. A bill in which every Republican woman voted in favor of...
You complained, too, that Democrats didn't take your proposed amendment and put them on the bill. I get that complaint. Some of your suggestions were even pretty damn good, such as an increase in funding to reduce the rape-kit backlog. (Maybe you should have proposed that amendment stand-alone.) But clearly, VAWA was still a good bill, just perhaps an imperfect one. Yet, instead of swalling the pill and complaining that Democrats would not take your amendments, you still voted against the entirety of VAWA...
Oh, I think I now understand. You are sensitive to batterred women, but you're just playing a different game. In your opening paragraph of the op-ed, you whined that "some folks are now trying to use VAWA as a partisan football to score cheap political points and raise campaign funds." I didn't realize you were talking about yourself. You jerk.
Or maybe you aren't trying to score political points, and you're just an insensitive male politician fighting a war on women, after all.
On Saturday, as we chose delegates to the State Democratic Convention in Houston, the general election officially began.
We may not have our nominees, but last week we got our campaign issue ironed out for good: Campaign finance is certain to be on the minds of voters as they go to the polls for the November elections.
District Judge John Dietz set October 22 as the trial start for the major school finance lawsuits. October 22 is also the first day of in-person Early Voting.
The real issue with timing is for the Texas Legislature to get guidance from the court system (including a possible appeal ruling or two) in time for action during the 2013 Legislative Session. Judge Dietz has implied with this schedule that he hopes to give an initial ruling before Christmas.
But the start will occur during the heat of Election Season, and Republicans across the state are probably already planning to defend their bad budget. True, the first BOR PAC poll showed that Texans would not have liked higher taxes for their schools (at least not yet, as the severity of the cuts only begin to show). But we, as Texans, still support Rainy Day Fund use.
We can already see the posturing. Rick Perry, not on the ballot in 2012, proposed a hardcore conservative Texas Budget Compact. The idea would certainly make navigation out of the School Finance debacle even more impossible. And that's why Republicans' lead legislators aren't buying it.
Republicans will try every trick to avoid blame. As the legal battle formally begins on October 22, however, let's be sure that voters remember who started it.
In just under two weeks, the ball will start rolling for the many school finance lawsuits against the State of Texas. April 16 is the deadline set by District Court Judge Dietz for a scheduling order, and other key dates are also coming up. Expert reports for the plaintiffs are due by July 30th and expert reports for the State by August 27th. These deadlines were set last Wednesday
Judge Dietz has also indicted that he will roll the four most major school finance lawsuits into one trial. The Texas Taxpayer & Student Fairness Coalition, MALDEF, Haynes & Boone, and Thompson-Horton all fighting together will make the lawsuit look more like this: Texas v. Texans. Because with as many schools that are represented in these lawsuits, it truly looks like the State of Texas will fight its entire constituent body in court.
And you can bet that the lawsuit will vibrate into the next legislative session under the pink dome, too. One might only ask, "How much?" There's a distinct possibility that the lawsuit will take place in October, casting an appropriate backdrop for the November elections.
If the trial waits until November to begin, however, an initial decision from the District Court will come down as any jockeying for a challenge to Speaker Straus might happen or while state senators brawl to determine our next Lieutenant Governor.
If you thought the State of Texas fights its constituents during Photo ID and Redistricting legal battles, however, just you wait and see how this looks.
External Finance Director Madison Garnder was supposed to be the next Student Body President. He was going to ride a pretty strong wave to victory, too, but University-Wide Representative Yaman Desai was going to run strong and hard after getting encouragement from one or two key members of the previous Student Government Administration.
Oh, but they both got disqualified.
Even still, three-term Representative John Lawler was still on the ballot, and he was picking up broad swaths of support. Lawler was the new favorite, despite the fact that some of his most ardent supporters believed privately that his chances were zero to none before the campaign started. Lawler was just running, because "Why the hell not?" -- and he found himself pretty close to victory.
But he fell short, too. Instead, political Longhorns found themselves congratulating a surprise victor. Thor Lund is the University of Texas' Student Body President-Elect, and he has never held even the smallest of responsibilities related to Student Government. Even the most outlandish prognostications, before the elections began, never foresaw Mr. Lund winning.
President Thor Lund. Many UT students are still confused by that name and title combination. But luck strikes from time to time in electoral politics, and the it carries people to victories.
True, in partisan elections for real governmental office, candidate disqualifications are events of our imagination, at best. But the case of Thor Lund and Wills Brown (his Vice Presidential running mate) still provides a lesson for Democrats in Texas: anything can happen.
So, Democrats should look at the wackiness of UT's Student Body Elections (which, like our primaries, were actually delayed by a court order) as a lesson to only reinforce what many of us constantly say: Run Everywhere. Every once and a while, you'll win, too. And then one of the losers will throw a whiny fit, such as that time when Mark Strama's opponent accused him of "illegally" changing the composition of people who vote. (Or, you know, getting out the vote.)
And on the 40 Acres, some losers want to abolish their entire student government. UT's "Anything Can Happen" aura, therefore, is a heavy exaggeration on what we will ever see with the politics in which we participate. But change isn't always a bad thing, as countless students signified with their 2008 votes for Barack Obama. And luck isn't bad, either. Thor Lund isn't a conniving politico who was named after a Norse God. He is a student, too. He ran for office and won. So what if he got lucky? Some elected Texas Democrats got lucky, too, and they're actually doing a pretty fine job.
Stephanie Eisner, the editorial cartoonist formally of the The Daily Texan who drew a racist cartoon, apologized pretty quickly. The Editorial Board, then was pretty quick to apologize, too.
The Texan Editorial Staff wrote:
The cartoonist, Stephanie Eisner, no longer works for The Daily Texan.
However, the decision to run the cartoon showed a failure in judgment on the part of the editorial board. We have engaged in meaningful dialogue with many people who shared their concerns and outrage with us.
We made a mistake, and we understand that the outcome of our action extends beyond Tuesday's cartoon and prompts us to reflect on a larger problem that persists at The Daily Texan and on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, something we should have done before Tuesday's paper ran.
Now, with the third instance of national Longhorn embarrassment this year, we're finally reminded that the University enrolls students. They're there to learn. They will inevitably make mistakes and improve themselves.
Perhaps UT students have succeeded so much in recent years that our standards are extra high for the 40 Acres, and that's something for which Longhorns can be proud. But I highly doubt that this ruckus would have occurred if the cartoon appeared in The Battalion. And that's because Texas A&M, like the University of Texas, is made up of teenagers and other young adults who are still preparing themselves for the bigger and better parts of life. The Battalion and The Daily Texan are not major newspapers; they are student newspapers.
The criticism they receive is definitely deserved, but we should still cut them some slack. As you may note in the Texan's apology above, they've already noticed that the outcome of their "action extends beyond Tuesday's cartoon and prompts us to reflect on a larger problem." Learning.
The Daily Texan also has a faculty adviser to teach them. Their adviser, who did not get a chance to see the cartoon before it was placed in the paper, stated in a note on Tuesday that "They're also finding out what it's like to be in the glare of the media spotlight. Having been there myself, I can assure you, it's a lesson that won't be lost on them."
It's the University of Texas at Austin. Despite the bad press, it's still a school. Even College Republicans will likely see their mistakes as potential lessons. And then, when they're not students anymore, they'll all be better for it. As the world piles onto UT for its apparently racist population, let's remember that these people are supposed to be imperfect. That's why our government helps pay for their education, right?
Despite what the presidential campaign of former Senator Rick Santorum may lead you to believe, not all Catholics wish for America to go back to the days of their bible.
Early in the month, you probably heard of multiple instances of religious discrimination from the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS). The specific stories pointed towards practices that harmed Houston's Imam Academy and Houston's Beren Academy, Islamic and Jewish schools, respectfully.
Individual schools within the organization had previously spoken out against TAPPS' practices that inhibited the religious freedom that many of the schools cherished. TAPPS, however, ignored these concerns, and the individual schools typically stayed within the organization, because it is the only one of its kind in Texas.
Now a larger group, the Texas Catholic Conference, is speaking out.
The organization that represents Texas' Catholic high schools on Thursday called for a comprehensive review of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, calling TAPPS' treatment of Jewish and Muslim schools unacceptable.
"Failure to sufficiently improve the structure and management of TAPPS will require a re-examination of our 43 Catholic schools' continued affiliation with TAPPS," wrote Margaret McGettrick, education director of the Texas Catholic Conference Education Department.
Those schools represent 20 percent of TAPPS' membership.
She urged that a review committee represent the association's "denominational, institutional and geographic diversity, to ensure that the issues and concerns of all members are accounted for and addressed."
Finally, there may be some momentum for progress. 20% of the entire organization is significantly larger than just one or two schools here or there.
As liberals, we consistently advocate for government as a means to improve society, but stories like this one will always trump even our own calls for the government to go to even greater means to protect our freedoms. For all the lobbying we do to our legislators for equality (whether on religious, racial, sexual orientation grounds, or otherwise), we prefer society fighting for equality on its own. In a completely private organization such as TAPPS, here is such an example.
Despite the downpour Austin received last night, the Austin Water Utility knows that it will last only so long. So, they're trying out any new idea that comes to them in order to preserve.
Under current conservation rules, commercial watering regulations require a once-per-week watering schedule, but otherwise allow the water to flow as much as it can during that one week period. This causes automatic sprinkler systems to run on rainy days, and it's not necessarily ideal for the businesses, either. The Statesman reported on a different approach:
Under a pilot program the Austin Water Utility is starting, perhaps a few dozen apartment complexes and large commercial properties will be allowed to water when they like. But those businesses will have to stick to a monthly water limit.
The details are to be worked out over the next few weeks, chief among them being how much water each property can use.
But the basic point is to change the watering question from "when" to "how much." If it works - there are technical and practical hurdles to clear - the city could expand the program in a couple of years.
"The idea is not to ease up on our conservation efforts, but to see if this can help save even more," said Daryl Slusher, an assistant director for the Austin Water Utility. "We don't have a clear idea how much this will save; that's why we want to test it out first."
The idea for such a program has been around for several years and was part of a smorgasbord of proposals in a water conservation plan adopted by the city in 2009.
There's no telling if this will work, especially because the budget has yet to be set. A key component to keep the eye on, if all statistics are made available, is how the budget allowance would compare to what has been used in the current system.
This is all just part of the Austin Water Conservation Plan (which can be found here), but Austin should be applauded for following through on innovation. With the water troubles that we've had for the past few years -- we need to try everything.
On Rick Perry, Texas Tribune pollster Daron Shaw stated, "the notion that he's invulnerable is dead." Such was the reaction to this past week's poll which asked, "If Rick Perry were to run for reelection in the 2014 Gubernatorial election, how likely would you be to vote for him?"
39% answered "somewhat likely" or "very likely." So, it is true that the governor is no longer invulnerable. But it is also true that immediately after a national blunder that embarrassed the entire state, a full 39% of likely voters still would vote for the governor.
As Ben pointed out, that 39% is the same he received in the 2006 general election. So, while a majority stated themselves unlikely to vote for the governor, it is imaginable that many of those are Republicans who simply expect to vote for a different Republican or an independent. So, we must remember that the typical base of Republicans is even larger than 39%.
Even at rock bottom, 39% of the Texas electorate will vote for the crazy Republican.
That's striking, and it shows how hard it will be to ever elect a Democrat. Even if Democrats run the perfect campaign with the perfect candidate against a disaster of a Republican candidate and a campaign, the Republican will still likely receive 39%. But this isn't a fantasy world. Democrats are incapable of such perfections and we can't count on such Republican blundering at any time.
Texas Democrats must get working, because a stroke of luck simply won't ever cut it. We need higher turnout to change the game, and we need to improve our ability to churn out campaigns that can succeed at all levels statewide.
A great day for Democrats simply based on luck -- let's say 45%, slightly higher than Sam Houston's 2008 statewide percentage -- still spells less than a majority. And in the Tribune's poll, not even that many said they were very unlikely to vote for a despicable Rick Perry if he runs in 2014.
39% is a pretty good worst-case scenario. That's where Republicans are at, and I bet you that we won't be facing a worst-case scenario come a November. Instead, Democrats will have to turn it up a notch to win anything at any point. The current state of play simply won't cut it.
