Rancorous dialogue on the Hill from his own party has irked Gov. Bill Haslam. The Commercial Appeal has the story:

Haslam calls for more civil dialogue in education disputes

By Richard Locker

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

NASHVILLE — After days of highly charged rhetoric in and around the State Capitol, Gov. Bill Haslam said today he’s concerned that a “partisan divide” has deepened in Nashville over the last few weeks that will start to hamper solving Tennessee’s problems.

The governor’s remarks to business leaders here came hours after a Republican state senator warned teachers in a Senate floor speech Monday night that legislative “warriors” are going to “change radically… government schools in Tennessee.”

Borrowing from Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” freshman Sen. Jim Summerville, R-Dickson, said, “We will bend public education to our awe — or break it all to pieces.”

Here’s a clip of Summerville’s speech on the Senate floor:

TN Democratic Party News

Bill White has sent out an open letter to Texans commenting on the massive education cuts planned by Gov. Perry and the Republican controlled state legislature that Senate Finance Chair Steve Ogden — a Republican who Rick Perry has described as the smartest budget man he knows — has said will “decimate public education” in Texas:

Two years ago a blue ribbon panel with conservative business leaders appointed by Governor Perry reported that Texas “faces a downward spiral in both quality of life and economic competitiveness if it fails to educate more of its growing population.” The panel focused on the need to increase college attendance and to improve higher education.

Governor Perry’s budget proposes a 20% cut in state support for higher education. For the impact of the current proposed budget cuts on specific student aid programs and colleges throughout the state, click here.

Please circulate this information to other Texans, and let your elected officials know what you think about this. You can also join the discussion about these cuts on the Facebook page, www.facebook.com/BillWhiteTexas.

It is not right to blame the recession for these cuts. It is just common sense: the state’s economy hasn’t gone down by 20%!

These cuts reflect a lack of leadership and planning for the future.

The education of our workforce is the most important investment in Texas’ future. My dad came off a subsistence farm with help from the GI Bill, and a scholarship I earned opened the door to a college my family couldn’t afford. But the current budget proposal cuts student assistance by 41%. Even support for community colleges won’t be spared during a period when their enrollment is surging.

In the last decade eight countries have caught up with or tied the U.S. in the percentage of young workers with college degrees. Texas has been lagging behind other states.

If you love our state like I do, please share this information with other Texans.

Respectfully,

Bill White

For weeks now, there has been a steady stream of news stories about school districts laying off, or planning to lay off, hundreds or thousands of teachers as Texas legislators more closer to slashing billions from the state education budget for the next two years. Many districts have already started to fire administrators and other non-teachers, but is clear that many teachers must be fired given the deep budget cuts. As Texas parents become increasingly worried about their children’s education Republicans are tell them to “move along, nothing to see here…”

The Statesman: Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, a group that advocates for lower taxes and less government spending, has been making hundreds of thousands of [robo-]calls to voters around the state in an effort to push back against school districts that say the state’s budget shortfall will force them to lay off thousands of teachers.

Michael Sullivan, the president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, said his group has called about 350,000 households around the state, with an emphasis on constituents of the lawmakers sitting on the budget-writing House Appropriations and Senate Finance committees.

“Right now, public education bureaucrats are threatening to scare parents and teachers by threatening the classroom,” Sullivan says on the call. “Superintendents and school board members say they’ll start making cuts by letting teachers go. That’s irresponsible. The classroom must be protected. … Tell your state legislators to stand firm on cutting the budget and tell them that cuts must be made outside the classroom.”

Sullivan has repeatedly proven himself to be an effective communicator with the conservative grass roots. Earlier this year, Texas Monthly named him one of the 25 most powerful people in Texas politics.

The argument from Sullivan and other conservatives is that cutting the budget won’t force schools to let teachers go, but rather that schools need to stop spending so much money on non-classroom expenses. An oft-cited number around the Capitol these days is that school districts employ as many non-teachers as teachers, but educators say most of those non-teachers are the people who, for instance, drive the buses, serve the food and clean the buildings.

Read the full story at The Statesman.

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News

Question: Do you really want your kids exposed to this?

National Education Association (NEA) Lists Its Goals and Democrats Agree.

Some critics have complained that the issue of education has been conspicuously absent from presidential television debates. But the Democratic candidates did sound off about their pro-federal-government, pro-spending policies when addressing the annual convention of the National Education Association, and the nation’s largest teachers union liked what they heard.

Hillary Clinton told the NEA delegates that she will fight school vouchers “with every breath in my body.” Reiterating the message of her book It Takes a Village, she called for universal preschool for four-year-olds.

Barack Obama likewise inveighed against “passing out vouchers.” Former Senator John Edwards also announced his opposition to vouchers and proposed that the federal government pay college tuition for all students who will work ten hours a week. Governor Bill Richardson wants to “raise teacher’s average minimum wage to ,000 a year.” Rep. Dennis Kucinich goes all-out for “a universal prekindergarten system which will provide year-around daycare for children ages 3-5.”

All Democratic candidates look forward to increased federal control of and spending for public schools. And they all attacked George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law for not appropriating more funds to implement it.

After cheering the promises made by the Democratic candidates, NEA delegates buckled down to the serious business of spelling out their political goals, many of which have nothing whatever to do with giving schoolchildren a better education.

The NEA demands a tax-supported single-payer health-care plan (socialized medicine) for all residents (a word artfully chosen to include illegal aliens). The NEA supports immigration “reform” that “includes [note: this is a change from last year’s verb “may include”] a path to permanent residency, citizenship, or asylum” for illegal aliens.

For many years, and again this year, the NEA urged a national holiday honoring Cesar Chavez. The NEA must have forgotten that Chavez, a strident advocate for farm workers, vehemently opposed illegal immigration because he knew it depressed the wages of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.

The NEA supports a beefed-up federal “hate crimes” law with heavier penalties. The NEA wants federal legislation to confer special rights on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.

The NEA passed at least a dozen resolutions supporting the gay rights agenda in public schools. These cover employment, curricula, textbooks, resource and instructional materials, school activities, role models, and language (with frequent use of terms such as sexual orientation, gender identification, and homophobia).

The NEA enthusiastically supports all the goals of radical feminism, including abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, school-based health clinics, wage control so the government can arbitrarily raise the pay of women but not men, the feminist pork called the Women’s Educational Equity Act, and letting feminists rewrite textbooks to conform to feminist ideology.

The NEA supports statehood for the District of Columbia. The NEA supports affirmative action. The NEA calls for repeal of right-to-work laws, which allow teachers in some states to decline joining the NEA.

The NEA supports United Nations treaties, especially the UN Convention on Women (CEDAW), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Criminal Court. The NEA loves global education, which promotes world citizenship and taxing Americans to give away our wealth to other countries. Another NEA favorite is environmental education, which teaches that human activity is generally harmful to the environment and population should be reduced.

Here are some of the things the NEA opposes: vouchers, tuition tax credits, all parental choice programs, making English our official language, the use of voter ID for elections, and the privatization of Social Security.

High on the list of NEA policies that actually relate to education is opposition to the testing of teachers as a criterion for job retention, promotion, tenure, or salary.

The NEA reiterated its support for pre-kindergarten for “all three-and four-year-old children,” mandatory full-day kindergarten, and “early childhood education programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight.” The NEA demands that this “early” education have “diversity-based curricula” and “bias-free screening devices.”

The NEA wants the right to teach schoolchildren about sex without any interference from parents, but on the other hand wants its pals in the bureaucracy to regulate all homeschooling taught by parents. The NEA opposes allowing homeschoolers to participate in any public school sports or extracurricular activities.

Two of the NEA’s favorite words in its resolutions and policies are diversity (that means teaching that gay behavior is OK), and multiculturalism (that means stressing negative things about America and positive things about non-Christian cultures).

The exorbitant dues that teachers pay to the NEA enable its well-paid staff to lobby Congress and state legislatures in behalf of all these goals.

The National Education Association since it’s beginnings have NEVER contributed one dime to a conservative candidate running for public office AT ANY LEVEL!

But they have contributed millions of dollars and time to the Democrat Party.

Source: United States Government News

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.

The Center for Public Policy Priorities today released some devastating county-by-county analysis of the state budget cuts proposed by Gov. Perry and the Republican controlled legislature:

• Public Education Analysis
• Higher Education Analysis
• Health and Human Services Analysis
• Medicaid Spending Losses Analysis

The public education analysis projects that as many as 189,000+ public education jobs will be eliminated in Texas. Almost 14,000 public education jobs may be eliminated in Collin Co.

The state is short billion, more than one-quarter of the state’s discretionary budget, of which about 91 percent is consumed by public schools, higher education, and health and human services.

Texas already spends less per capita than almost any other state, but Senate Finance Chair Steve Ogden — a Republican who Rick Perry has described as the smartest budget man he knows, and someone he implicitly trusts with the budget — warned today the proposed budge cuts will “decimate public education.“

Texas Republicans would rather put our children’s future at risk than allow corporations to pay their fair share to help build the well educated workforce Texas businesses need to prosper in the future.

Texas Observer: Gov. Rick Perry has repeatedly said Texas’ deficit is “reflective of the national recession’s lingering impact on state revenue.”

In fact, the recession has little to do with the billion budget shortfall. Back in 2006 the Republican controlled Legislature concocted a Rube Goldberg-style [school funding and business tax reform] measure that simultaneously cut property taxes, implemented a new “margins” tax on business and rejiggered the way public schools are financed.

Problem was, as the state Legislative Budget Board pointed out at the time, the plan’s math didn’t wash because the margins tax wouldn’t bring in as much as the Legislature thought. In fact, the board said, it would leave a billion hole in the state budget every year.

The upshot: Perry, who pushed the swap, knew full well he was helping to create today’s “crisis.”

Star-Telegram: A 68-page report released by Texas Comptroller Susan Combs on Monday reveals that Texas will give business .2 billion worth of tax exemptions for sales, franchise, and gasoline and motor vehicle sales taxes for the 2011 fiscal year that ends on Aug. 31, 2011.

Exemptions to the state sales tax, the state’s biggest source of revenue, will total .8 billion for the current fiscal year, Combs said, although some items exempted from the sales tax are taxed from other sources. Gasoline tax exemptions will amount to 3 million. Motor vehicle sales tax exemptions will total 5 million.

“While sales and use tax collections totaled .6 billion in fiscal 2010,” Combs said, “the tax is limited in scope when compared with the total number and kind of transactions in the economy, because of various exemptions and exclusions,” Combs said.

A number of lawmakers are calling for the elimination of at least some exemptions to boost revenue and help offset deep service reductions proposed in preliminary draft budgets. Others say canceling the breaks amounts to a tax increase, which Gov. Rick Perry and Republican legislative leaders have vowed to oppose.

Read more at the Star-Telegram

NYTimes OpEd “Leaving Children Behind” by Paul Krugman:

Consider, as a case in point, what’s happening in Texas, which more and more seems to be where America’s political future happens first.

Texas likes to portray itself as a model of small government, and indeed it is. Taxes are low, at least if you’re in the upper part of the income distribution (taxes on the bottom 40 percent of the population are actually above the national average). Government spending is also low. And to be fair, low taxes may be one reason for the state’s rapid population growth, although low housing prices are surely much more important.

But here’s the thing: While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.

It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.

But things are about to get much worse.

A few months ago another Texas miracle went the way of that education miracle of the 1990s. For months, Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his “tough conservative decisions” had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry’s re-election, reality intruded — funny how that happens — and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)

So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.

But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state’s children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state’s already low payments to providers — raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.

The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force?

Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News

TEXAS HOUSE RELEASES PROPOSED BUDGET WITH NO NEW TAXES AND WITHOUT TAPPING THE RAINY DAY FUND.

In education the proposed budget slashes public school funding and cuts at least 60,000 college students from financial aid.

The proposed budget drafted by the Legislative Budget Board will slash an additional .8 billion from public school funding, while the student population is projected to grow by at least 80,000 students each year. Further, an estimated 109,000 children will be cut from Pre-Kindergarten early start programs and 83,000 children will be cut from the Early Childhood School Ready program. Under current funding levels, Texas ranks 44th nationally in education funding per pupil, is last in the percentage of adults obtaining a high school diploma.

In the Medicaid program, the proposed budget slashes overall spending by nearly 30 percent, cut services for adults that federal law doesn’t require states to offer and cut 10 percent, in addition to last spring’s 1 percent cut, from reimbursements to doctors, dentists, hospitals and nursing homes. The proposed budget also cut Nursing Facility payments by .57 billion dollars, which will have a tremendous impact on residents in Texas’ nursing homes.

In public safety and corrections programs, the proposed budget closes a correctional facility in Sugar Land, three Texas Youth Commission correctional facility and 2,000 private prison beds, a move that could close at least two additional correctional facilities and cut 1,562 prison jobs. Probation programs would see funding cut by 20 percent, parole supervision would be cut by almost 9 percent, and the construction and public safety and correctional facility maintenance funding will be cut by 83 percent, along with 90 jobs. And, the Victims Services Division would be eliminated.

State Senator Wendy Davis (D-10 Fort Worth)

State Senator Wendy Davis (D-10 Fort Worth) said late Tuesday night, after the budget draft was delivered, that the budget draft by the Legislative Budget Board released earlier was wrong for Texas. Full Article at Capitol Annex:

Senator Wendy Davis said the first draft of Texas’ 2012-13 budget is wrong for Texas.

The Legislative Budget Board’s budget proposal released to House members last night will cut .1 billion from current spending, even before accounting for population growth.

The budget, drafted for House leadership, will slash education funding by .8 billion, while the student population is projected to grow by 80,000 students each year.

Several primary and secondary education programs are recommended for elimination, including: pre-k early start grants; Texas reading, math and science initiatives; criminal history background reviews; and science labs. Higher education is slated to lose .7 billion in funding including significant cuts to the Texas Equalization Grants and Texas Grants programs –state-funded financial aid.

Other budget recommendations include reducing prison populations through early release of prisoners, cutting Medicaid reimbursements to doctors, hospitals and nursing home by 10 percent, and eliminating family practice and rural public health physician rotations.

”With such a dramatic budget shortfall, cuts must be made,” Davis said. “But education funding should be our highest priority. We need to ensure that Texans are adequately educated so that we do not lose competitive ground at a critical time in our nation’s economic recovery.”

Under current funding levels, Texas is already near the bottom in education funding per pupil (Texas ranks 44th nationally), is last nationally in the percentage of adults with a high school diploma, and is among the bottom in high school completion rates across the country.

“While other states are competing for dollars to race to the top in education funding, Texas, under this budget recommendation, will be sprinting to the bottom,” Davis said.

Davis said that any proposed budget that does not address the structural deficit in education funding, created in 2005 when lawmakers turned to an under-performing business franchise tax, will push the current biennial shortfall in public education funding of about billion into future budgets indefinitely.

”We have to have an honest and transparent conversation about the education funding shortfall, which is cheating our schoolchildren while simultaneously overburdening small and medium sized businesses in Texas,” Davis said.

Davis said that as cuts are proposed to strip critical services to educate our children and to address some of the state’s most vulnerable, lawmakers should do what they can to lessen that burden in other ways.

Protecting Texans’ pocketbooks through lowering homeowners insurance rates, lowering residential electricity rates and by establishing fair rules to prevent the devastating impacts of predatory lending should also be considered, Davis said.

Regardless of the bleak budget picture, Davis called on fellow lawmakers to work to positively change course for future Texas families and to address other issues that will have a very real impact on their household finances and their quality of life.

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Voices & Viewpoints Fridays at 1 p.m. & 6 p.m. (Denise Franklin, NPR WFDD 88.5) Dr. Omar Ali describes the internal and cultural struggles of Muslim Americans post 911 through observation and personal experiences. In addition, CNN, Telemundo, C-Span 2 and other news outlets frequently seek Dr. Omar Ali as a national expert about the growing movement of people choosing to be Independent voters.
• 

  host Denise Franklin

  Voices & Viewpoints
  Fridays at 1 p.m. & 6 p.m.

  Join 88.5 WFDD and host Denise Franklin for conversations with local residents who are making or have made an impact nationally – or internationally.

  The Health & Medicine Report keeps you up-to-date on cutting-edge research.

  And you’ll hear the viewpoints of our commentators on movies, books, life, and more.

  Voices & Viewpoints is a half hour of radio
  you won’t hear anywhere else!

• Obama Makes Beeline For Independent Voters (FRANK JAMES, NPR) The White House push is on for the hearts and minds of independent voters.
• You’ve Got Them All Wrong, Mr. President – Obama’s misguided view of the independent voter. (John B. Judis, The New Republic)

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Idaho Open Primary: The People v. The Parties (The Moderate Voice) Yesterday attorney Harry Kresky reported on his recent trip to Idaho to help defend independents there facing attack from a faction of the Idaho Republican Party hoping to close the primaries in order to control the electorate.
• Phil Power: Open primary would offer advantages (Livingston Daily)

ELECTION REFORM

• Drawing the lines (Salt Lake City Tribune) The best way to avoid political gerrymandering would be for Utah to create an independent redistricting commission, but Utah legislators have rejected repeated attempts to do that. An initiative petition by a group called the Fair Boundaries Coalition failed this year to get enough signatures to put its proposal for an independent commission before the voters.

BLOOMBERG 2012

• Michael Bloomberg: Independent can’t win White House (By DAN HIRSCHHORN, Politico) On Monday, The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman floated the possibility that Bloomberg and MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough, who is also a POLITICO contributor, could form an independent ticket for the White House.
• Bloomberg Denies Presidential Rumors. Again. (By Sumathi Reddy, Wall Street Journal/Metropolis)

COLORADO

• Curry concedes to Wilson in HD-61 race (by Curtis Wackerle, Aspen Daily News)

NEW YORK

• WE ARE ALL MUMIA! (By Betsey Piette, Workers World) Abu-Jamal’s supporters included a delegation from the Transport Workers Union Local 100; Charles Barron, the New York Freedom Party gubernatorial candidate; Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC; International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; and the International Action Center.
• The Godfather – With the UWS-WFP-NYT axis dominating local politics, this is Jerry Nadler’s New York (By Edward-Isaac Dovere, City Hall News)

EDUCATION REFORM

• A to-do list for N.Y.C. Schools Chancellor Cathie Black: Eva Moskowitz lays out her priorities (BY EVA MOSKOWITZ, Daily News)

LAST WORD

• Soros: Obama shouldn’t compromise (By KENNETH P. VOGEL, Politico)

The Hankster