Judy Jennings for State Board of Education District 10 Democratic Primary, March 2, 2010

Please vote for Judy Jennings, Cynthia Dunbar is trying to end public education in Texas.

Unlike incumbent Cynthia Dunbar, Sam Houston saw public education as a great boon. “No longer will the means of elementary learning be limited to those whose private resources are equal to the expense, but the road to distinction in every department of science and moral excellency, will be equally open to all,” he said. And the founders of Texas considered education so essential to “the rights and liberties of the people” that they charged our Legislature with establishing “an efficient system of public free schools” in our Constitution.

The Legislature, in turn, created the State Board of Education to set policy for public education in Texas. But lately, some board members have acted so irresponsibly that the Legislature actually considered stripping the board of many of its duties. The problem: too many members caught up in fighting “culture wars” at the expense of figuring out how to provide our children with an education that will prepare them for the challenges of this new century.

What would you do if your local school board trustee cared more about pursuing a personal agenda rather than seeing to the needs of your child's school? It's hard to imagine such a trustee getting re-elected in any school district in Texas, let alone the eighty-four ISDs that fall, in whole or in part, within the boundaries of SBOE District 10.

We need board members who will be guided by effective measures of what's working, not by ideology, pet peeves or partisanship. Dr. Judy Jennings will be just such a board member, well equipped to make important decisions about meeting the many needs of a diverse and growing state. Read more about Judy here.

“In effect, [Republican incumbent Cythina] Dunbar is on the board to sabotage public education. ... Dunbar should resign and leave the governing of this state's public schools to people who use them, serve them, care about them and understand that they are the future of Texas.”

GOP Senator Opposes Using Stimulus Funding To Combat Pandemic Flu

Republicans continue to display a lack of foresight.

AIG Continues to Waste Money After Bailout

October 7, 2008

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

"Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night," Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman's investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

A.I.G. Uses $61 Billion of Fed Loan

The American International Group said on Friday that it had already drawn down $61 billion of the $85 billion emergency bridge loan it received from the Federal Reserve two weeks ago...

Another AIG Resort "Junket": Top Execs Caught on Tape

After requesting another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week. Company officials confirmed the company spent an estimated $343,000 to sponsor the 2008 Asset Management Conference. A spokesperson said much of the cost would be recouped from product sponsors at the conference.

Rolling Stones Magazine's Story on John McCain

The make believe Maverick.

• VIDEO: Five Myths About John McCain

• The Double-Talk Express

• Mad Dog Palin: The Full Story

• Karl Rove's A-Team

Whoopi to McCain: Do I have to worry about slavery again?

I have to say Whoopi is one of my favorite people.

Alaska rallies against Sarah Palin

The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin’s rally that got all the national media coverage; yet I have found no coverage of this event in the national media.

Republican Small Town Values

P Z Myers' view of what Republicans really mean by "Small Town Values".

The ones the Republicans are worshipping seem to be the narrow insularity verging on xenophobia, the judgmental meddling in other people's affairs, the backward-looking reverence for the good old days (which actually weren't that good), the worship of ignorance, the easy way authority can personally intrude on people's lives without oversight, except by a coterie of good old boys. They seem to overlook the schools in neglect, the churches sprouting everywhere like poisonous mushrooms, the alcoholism, the spousal abuse, the kids who just want to get through high school and flee to a city where something is happening, the elderly piling up and outnumbering the young and being shuffled off to cheap complexes, the despair of people caught in dead-end menial jobs with few prospects for going beyond. That's also small town America, and when I hear a Republican singing the praises of small towns, I have visions of a walmartized wasteland where everyone goes to church. It's not good.

Jon Stewart on Sarah Palin

Jon makes an excellent analysis of republican hypocrisy.

Rove said Wasilla was the second largest city in Alaska, which is a lie.

1 Anchorage 278,700
2 Fairbanks 31,142
3 Juneau 30,737
4 Wasilla 9,236

The Sarah Palin Church Video Part One

Looks like lying is not Sarah Palins main problem, insanity is.

Sarah Palin misled Republican supporters

The Governor of Alaska gave a misleading version of events over a controversial bridge project in her home state when she made her maiden speech as the presumptive nominee.

Mrs Palin told a cheering audience in Ohio that she had turned down an offer from the US Congress to build the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere", which would have connected Gravina Island with Ketchikan International, an airport in Alaska's southeast serving just 200,000 passengers a year. Mr McCain routinely cites the £100 million project as a symbol of wasteful central government spending.

As she introduced herself to Republicans and the American public on Friday, the virtually unknown Mrs Palin said: "I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress ... 'thanks, but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves."

However it emerged that in a 2006 interview with the Anchorage Daily News during her gubernatorial campaign, Mrs Palin had a different view of the bridge.

Asked "would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?" she replied: "Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now - while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

When Congressional funding was withdrawn because of an uproar in Washington about the expense of the project, she cancelled it, but in a regretful tone.

"Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island.

Sara Palin Lies in Her First Speech as McCain's Running Mate

Sarah Palin that in her first big appearance before a national audience - her introduction as McCain’s running mate - she decided to flat out lie about her accomplishments?






Republicans have been heavily touting Sarah Palin's reformist credentials, with her supposed opposition to Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" as Exhibit A. But how hard did she really fight the project? Not very, it seems. Here's what she told the Anchorage Daily News on October 22, 2006, during the race for the governor's seat (via Nexis):

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

So she was very much for the bridge and insisted that Alaska had to act quickly...

P.S. Here's a piece that Palin's special counsel, John Katz, wrote in March of this year for the Juneau Empire, assuring the Alaskan public that Palin was still very much in favor of earmarks, but sadly needed to scale back her requests somewhat (to "only" 31 earmarks this year—down from 54 last year) in response to "unwanted attention" from Congress and the press. 

--Bradford Plumer

On ABC’s This Week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) similarly argued that Palin is a reformer because she supposedly said, “I’m not going to build a Bridge to Nowhere.” This Week host George Stephanopoulos pointed out that Graham’s claim is false:

GRAHAM: To go in her state and say ‘I’m not going to build a bridge to nowhere’ — a $400 - $400 million appropriation that was passed by brute force in the Congress by two senior members of the congressional delegation, very powerful figures in Washington. And for her to say, ‘We’re not going to do this because its not necessary and its wasteful,’ to take on your own Republican party –

STEPHANOPOULOS: But Senator, she turned against that, only she campaigned for it in her 2006 race, and turned against it in 2007 only after it became a national joke.

Cost of the Iraq War

To put Stiglitz and Bilmes' $3 trillion in perspective, it's worth
comparing it to the cost estimates Bush officials bandied about before
the war began. The authors present a damning "Nightline" transcript in
which one official, Andrew Natsios, blandly told Ted Koppel that Iraq
could be completely reconstructed for only $1.7 billion. (With the war
now costing $12.5 billion a month, Natsios' estimate would have been
accurate if he had stipulated that it would pay for four days' worth
of reconstruction. Which, considering the delusional nature of most of
the Bush administration's pre-invasion estimates, may have been how
long it thought it would take to rebuild the country.) Other officials
settled on a figure of $50 billion to $60 billion. Larry Lindsey,
Bush's economic advisor, went way out on a limb, suggesting that the
war might cost $200 billion -- a figure derided by then-Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "baloney." Rumsfeld refused even to offer
a range of estimates, saying, "I've already decided that. It's not
useful." He was right: It would not have been useful for those ginning
up support for a war to predict that it might cost $3 trillion.

Did Texas Restoration Project Improperly Fund Gov. Rick Perry’s reelection campaign in 2006

The Rev. Laurence White and his wife are two of three directors on the Niemoller Foundation’s governing board. White is also chairman of the Texas Restoration Project. The foundation reported income of about $1.3 million in 2005 and spent all but about $29,000 in that year.
Expenditures covered Texas Restoration Project activities – including more than $700,000 for the six pastors’ events – and payments to organizations tied to the Texas Restoration Project.

Other ties between the Perry campaign and the Niemoller Foundation/Texas Restoration Project include the following:

• The Niemoller Foundation’s expenditures in 2005 included nearly $475,000 paid to San Jacinto Public Affairs, an Austin-based firm that organized the Texas Restoration Project’s events. The firm earned at least $4 million from work for the Republican Party of Texas and electoral candidates between July 2003 and November 2007.

• The Perry campaign subsequently communicated directly with thousands of pastors recruited by the Texas Restoration Project, suggesting coordination between the campaign and the Restoration Project.

• Press reports in 2005 indicated at least one of Gov. Perry’s pastors’ briefing speeches was considered a campaign event, with the Perry campaign releasing the transcript of his speech. (“Perry mobilizes evangelicals as gov’s race heats up,” Matt Curry, Associated Press, June 11, 2005)

• The Niemoller Foundation doled out $200,000 to Plano-based Free Market Foundation and San Antonio-based Justice at the Gates in 2005. The two groups helped recruit pastors to Texas Restoration Project events. Free Market Foundation president Kelly Shackelford and Justice at the Gate director Susan Weddington served on Gov. Perry’s reelection steering committee.

• Days before the gubernatorial election in November 2006, the Texas Restoration Project sent e-mails to pastors on its mailing list, encouraging them to participate in a statewide conference call (which took place the following week) to “discuss what we can do this election cycle to motivate our pews to vote their values.” Shackelford and David Barton, who until June 2006 had served as vice chair of the Texas Republican Party, were among the organizers and prominent speakers on the call.

Documents related to the Texas Freedom Network’s complaint to the IRS can be found at www.tfn.org/religiousright/irstxrestorationproject/index.php.

Karl Rove in a violation of the Hatch act

By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr.Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, March 26, 2007; Page A01
Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates.

A Million Texas Children between 1996-3003 Did Not Graduate

"In 2001-02, Texas schools enrolled 364,270 freshmen – and 225,756 seniors. The state's official annual dropout rate: 1 percent." (Source: The Dallas Morning News - August 31, 2003)

Hundreds of thousands of Texas students never made it to graduation from their high schools in the past seven years, but the reported dropout rates of many Texas school districts came through in small single digits.

A miracle? Hardly. More like a disgrace, a statistical sleight of hand that does more to cover up failure than demonstrate success.

The Texas ATTRITION RATE (on the right) provides a far more revealing (and harsh) portrait of what actually happens to many Texas students.

Where are those thousands of children today? Were they simply LEFT BEHIND? Discarded? Many were lost, forgotten, neglected and in some cases even PUSHED OUT. Push out the weak students and you will see test scores skyrocket.

If you were running for President or Secretary of Education, which number would make you look better, the dropout rate or the attrition rate?



Enrollments for the Houston ISD in 2001-2002

Source: The Dallas Morning News - August 31, 2003

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Homemade key unlocks Diebold voting machine

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White House Opposes Surveillance... Of Its Own Surveillance Policy

Since it was formed in 2004, on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been blasted by civil libertarians
as a tool of the administration, more interested in whitewashing War on
Terror–related privacy violations than serving as a genuine check on
government intrusion. One of the board's five members even resigned in protest,
citing among other things "the vast array of alphabet soup agencies and
bureaucracies in the national security apparatus" that sought "to control and modify the Board's public utterances."
So last year, Congress sought to give the board greater autonomy by
moving it out from under the aegis of the White House and
reconstituting itself as an independent boad within the executive
branch. The response of the White House, Wired reports, has been to drag its feet in appointing a new board -- meaning there is no one on the board as of January 30th -- prompting bipartisan criticism from top members of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee.



The board's second annual report
(pdf), released late last month, does not exactly inspire confidence in
its assiduousness as a privacy watchdog -- even when staffed. After
touting its excellent working relationship with the White House, it
moves to a "nothing to see here" review of the post-9/11 use of the
material witness statute (MWS) as a detention tool. Aside from one
"terrible mistake," the report asserts the board "was not made aware of
specific problems with the use of the MWS in the anti-terrorism
context" and cites a claim by the Justice Department that "on only nine
occasions since the attacks of September 11, 2001 has the MWS been used
in terrorist-related investigations." That is hard to square with the
findings of a joint report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union,
which found some 70 instances of 9/11-related detention, though the
discrepancy may be explained by the frequent use of immigration
violations as a pretext for detentions that were actually related to
terror investigations.

Bush War on Science Continues

GW Bush has vetoed a bill that would give NIH an additional $1 billion per year, raising the budget from $29 billion to $30 billion; saying that Congress is on a "spending spree." Yet he continues to fund a war of idiocy to the tune a over a billion a week.

The bill, which was passed by Congress last week, sought to increase NIH funding by about $1 billion from a 2007 budget of about $29 billion to a 2008 budget of about $30 billion.
In a statement released by the White House after Bush vetoed the bill, the president decried the Democrat-led Congress for engaging in what he called a "spending spree," and said that the legislative majority was "acting like a teenager with a new credit card."
The bill, H.R.3043, also sought to bolster the budgets of the departments of Labor and Education, and carried a request for a total of $150.7 billion. Since its introduction in July, Bush has said he would veto the bill because it overshot his own budget recommendations.
"We were hoping that [Bush's veto] wouldn't be the case," Carrie Wolinetz, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) spokesperson, told The Scientist. "But the threat had been there."
The NIH budget has been stagnant over the past few years, with government funding increasing by only about $1.4 billion between 2003 and 2006.
The vetoed bill also included a provision requiring
NIH-funded researchers to post the full text of their research papers on the National Library of Medicine's publicly accessible PubMed Central website within a year of publication. This provision survived an attack by Republican Senator James Inhofe in October to remain intact in the final version of the bill sent to the president.
The bill cleared the House of Representatives only three votes shy of the two-thirds majority it would have needed to avoid Bush's veto. As H.R.3043 returns to Capitol Hill, where legislators will hold a veto override vote, Wolinetz said that FASEB will continue encouraging its 80,000-strong membership to urge their legislators to support the bill and overturn the presidential veto.

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets

You would almost think that Bush is working for the Terrorists, or is he really this stupid?

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 9, 2007; Page A01

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun
downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The Republican War on Science

Science has never been more crucial to deciding the political issues facing the country. Yet science and scientists have less influence with the federal government than at any time since the Eisenhower administration.
In the White House and Congress today, findings are reported in a politicized manner; spun or distorted to fit the speaker’s agenda; or, when they’re too inconvenient, ignored entirely. On a broad array of issues—stem cell research, climate change, abstinence education, mercury pollution, and many others—the Bush administration’s positions fly in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus.