TX House Speaker Joe Straus Names Committees

Speaker Joe Straus announced appointments to House Committee positions today. With House Committees staffed the various committees can begin to consider legislation in earnest. Progress of the various House bills that have been filed can be tracked on the House Calendars.

The House Appropriations Committee chaired by Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, will immediately begin to consider a proposed 2011-2012 budget the Legislative Budget Board sent to House members last month. (available to the public online)

The Legislative Budget Board’s budget proposal released to House members last month will cut $31.1 billion from current spending, even before accounting for population growth.

The budget, drafted for the House, will slash education funding by $9.8 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 $1.7 billion in funding including significant cuts to the Texas Equalization Grants and Texas Grants student aid programs.

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.

The Elections committee chaired by Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, and the Select Committee on Voter Identification and Voter Fraud chaired by Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, will take up the Voter Government Issued Photo Identification bill. Keying off Gov. Rick Perry's declaration that this legislation is an emergency, the Senate last month voted to bypassed the usual committee process and turned itself into a committee of the whole to pass voter identification legislation (SB14) on a party line vote. The Committees will consider the House's version - HB624.

The idea behind this legislation is that to combat in person voting voter impersonation fraud voters must present Government Issued Photo Identification to election clerks.

Any voter who does not have a photo ID, or who election clerks consider does not look like his or her ID photo will not be allowed to vote a regular ballot. Those voters will only be allowed to cast a provisional ballot. Those voters who do vote a provisional ballot must then present their Government Issued Photo Identification to the County Election office by the sixth day after the election or their provisional ballot will not be counted.

The Redistricting Committee chaired by Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, will take up the task of redrawing various district lines. The decennial census for Texas totaled to 25,145,561 people living in the state in the first half of 2010 for a 20.6% increase over the 2000 population count, courtesy of the burgeoning Texas Hispanic and Black populations.

Based on the 2010 Census count of 25,145,561 people, the ideal population of a Texas congressional district is 698,488, the ideal senate district is 811,147, the ideal state house district is 167,637, and the ideal State Board of Education district is 1,676,371.

Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution calls for a census of the nation's population every 10 years to apportion the U.S. House of Representatives seats among the states. The 2010 apportionment winner is Texas with four additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas also gains four more presidential electoral votes and will be eligible for a greater share of federal money for various services and programs.

While the Texas House Redistricting Committee will begin preliminary work this week, serious redistricting efforts can't take place until the Census Bureau releases its detailed census breakdown. The Census Bureau expects to release the detailed county and block level population data needed to redistrict in late February or early March. (Census data release schedule - Texas redistricting information)

Committee Chair Assignments:

Committee	Chair	Party	City
Agriculture &Livestock	Rick Hardcastle	R	Vernon
Appropriations	Jim Pitts	R	Waxahachie
Border &Intergovernmental Affairs	Veronica Gonzales	D	McAllen
Business &Industry	Joe Deshotel	D	Beaumont
Calendars	Todd Hunter	R	Corpus Christi
Corrections	Jerry Madden	R	Richardson
County Affairs	Garnet Coleman	D	Houston
Criminal Jurisprudence	Pete Gallego	D	Alpine
Culture, Recreation &Tourism	Ryan Guillen	D	Rio Grande City
Defense &Veterans' Affairs	Joe Pickett	D	El Paso
Economic &Small Business Development	John Davis	R	Houston
Elections	Larry Taylor	R	Friendswood
Energy Resources	Jim Keffer	R	Eastland
Environmental Regulation	Wayne Smith	R	Baytown
General Investigating &Ethics	Chuck Hopson	R	Jacksonville
Government Efficiency &Reform	William Bill Callegari	R	Katy
Higher Education	Dan Branch	R	Dallas
Homeland Security &Public Safety	Sid Miller	R	Stephenville
House Administration	Charlie Geren	R	Fort Worth
Human Services	Richard Peña Raymond	D	Laredo
Insurance	John Smithee	R	Amarillo
Judiciary &Civil Jurisprudence	Jim Jackson	R	Carrollton
Land &Resource Management	Rene Oliveira	D	Brownsville
Licensing &Administrative Procedures	Mike Hamilton	R	Mauriceville
Local &Consent Calendars	Senfronia Thompson	D	Houston
Natural Resources	Allan Ritter	R	Nederland
Pensions, Investments &Financial Services	Vicki Truitt	R	Keller
Public Education	Rob Eissler	R	The Woodlands
Public Health	Lois Kolkhorst	R	Brenham
Redistricting	Burt Solomons	R	Carrollton
Rules &Resolutions	Ruth Jones McClendon	D	San Antonio
Select Committee on Election Contest	Todd Hunter	R	Corpus Christi
Select Committee on Oversight and HHS Eligibility System	Fred Brown	R	College Station
Select Committee on State Sovereignty	Brandon Creighton	R	Conroe
Select Committee on Voter Identification and Voter Fraud	Dennis Bonnen	R	Angleton
State Affairs	Byron Cook	R	Corsicana
Technology	Aaron Peña	R	Edinburg
Transportation	Larry Phillips	R	Sherman
Urban Affairs	Harold Dutton Jr	D	Houston
Ways &Means	Harvey Hilderbran	R	Kerrville

For Complete Committee Membership Rosters, Click Here.

Gov. Rick Perry's State of the State Speech

Gov. Rick Perry boasted about the strength of the Texas economy and downplayed the $27 billion Texas budget deficit during his State of the State speech Tuesday.

Perry won re-election last year by touting the strength and health of the conservative Texas economy, a familiar strategy he has consistently repeated since taking office in late 2000.

"The mainstream media and big-government interest groups are doing their best to convince us that we're facing a budget Armageddon," Perry said in the speech in the House chamber to representatives and senators. "Texans don't believe it, and they shouldn't.".

But, away from the television cameras and microphones, Perry's office released a budget plan (PDF) that largely resembles those put forward by the state House and Senate in recent weeks.

Those plans cut $31 billion in spending from the Texas budget, which will cause layoffs for tens of thousands of teachers, close of community colleges, eliminate tuition support for 60,000 college students, close correctional facilities and lay off correctional officers and a drastically reduce state services for the poor, elderly and young and those with mental health problems.

In 2010 the state created only 230,800 new jobs to replace the 359,000 jobs lost in 2009. The Texas Workforce Commission reports the unemployment rate in Texas was 8.3 percent in December, up from 8.2 percent in November. Layoffs caused by the $31 billion cut in state spending will continue to deepen Texas' unemployment rate, which is already at 22-year highs. The state layoffs will also cause even more Texas families to lose health insurance coverage and Texas already leads the nation in the percentage of residents without health insurance. The state ranks last in the country in percentage of adults with a high school diploma and the cuts to education will lead to ever more students dropping out of school.

The governor also called on state lawmakers to quickly approve a list of "emergency" proposals. These include implementing stricter voter identification requirements, requiring women seeking an abortion to first view a sonogram, targeting cities that provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants, strengthening the rights of property owners in cases of eminent domain and calling for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Perry's bottom line assessment of the state of the state is that it's all good.


Gov. Rick Perry State of the State Speech

Re-Framing The Climate Change Discussion

Last month Sudhir Joshi wrote an Op-Ed in this blog about Message Framing. This blog article continues the "message frame" discussion on the topic of Global Warming and Climate Change.

Over the last several weeks, we’ve seen snowstorms of historic proportions roll across the country from New Mexico to New York. Scientists think events like this, the heat wave in Russia, the floods in Pakistan and Australia and the unusually bitter European winters are troubling examples of the kind of severe weather that will continue, and likely get worse.

Every decade since 1980 has been warmer than the previous decade and every year of the last decade was warmer than the previous year as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to climb higher than at any time over the last 500,000 years. 2010 was not just the hottest year this decade, but the hottest year in recorded history. This is why the National Academies of Science found last year that “climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activities.”

Military planners in the Pentagon have concluded that “global warming is now officially considered a threat to U.S. national security.” In its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, Pentagon planners reported that climate change could result in food and water scarcity, pandemics, population displacement, and other destabilizing events that could create conflict.

“The American people expect the military to plan for the worst,” says retired Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, a 35-year Navy veteran now serving as president of the American Security Project. “It’s that sort of mindset, I think, that has convinced, in my view, the vast majority of military leaders that climate change is a real threat and that the military plays an important role in confronting it.”

President Obama speaks about investing in clean energy technologies at Penn State Univ. to create new jobs, grow the economy. February 3, 2011.

Yet, as dire as global warm may seem, we have an opportunity to reduce the green house gas emissions that are disrupting our climate and at the same time put the pieces of our economy back together by investing in clean energy technologies.

Clean energy investment will help slow climate change while creating good-paying jobs for everyday Americans.

But to make that optimistic goal a reality we must learn how to re-frame the climate discussion.

Frames are interpretive story lines that set a specific train of thought in motion, communicating why an issue might be a problem, who or what might be responsible for it, and what should be done about it.

George Lakoff, a renowned cognitive linguist and political thinker, asserts that people reject facts that are outside the frame with which they see the world.

Audiences rely on frames to make sense of and discuss an issue; journalists use frames to craft interesting and appealing news reports; policymakers apply frames to define policy options and reach decisions; and experts employ frames to simplify technical details and make them persuasive. That frame, or framework, is often created by values that are instilled during childhood.

The frame ensures that we see the world, and only the world, that agrees with our values. In other words, we block out facts and reasonable arguments to ensure that our core values are justified.

Framing is an unavoidable reality of the communication process, especially as applied to public affairs and policy. There is no such thing as unframed information, and most successful communicators are adept at framing, whether using frames intentionally or intuitively.

Conservatives with a vested interest in making the public believe that burning fossil fuel does not contribute to global warming and climate change have "framed" the debate to their advantage. A framing that poll results indicate have had a negative impact on public understanding of climate change and recognition of the urgent need to address it. Those who dispute the science of global warming have financial ties to the oil, auto, electricity and coal industries that a vested interest in maintaining status quo in fossil fuel commerce. (PBS)

Frank Luntz, in a Frontline special "Hot Politics," explains his 1997/1998 memo that became the playbook for how conservatives framed climate change as really a matter of "scientific uncertainty" and "economic burden."

During the 1990s, based on focus groups and polling, Republican consultant Frank Luntz helped shape the climate skeptic playbook, recommending in a strategy memo to lobbyists and Republican members of Congress that the issue be framed as scientifically uncertain, using opinions of contrarian scientists as evidence.

Luntz also wrote that the “emotional home run” would be an emphasis on the dire economic consequences of action, impacts that would result in an “unfair burden” on Americans if other countries such as China and India did not participate in international agreements.

This framing strategy was effectively incorporated into talking points, speeches, white papers, and advertisements by conservative think tanks and members of Congress to defeat major policy proposals along with the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that would have committed the United States to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The communication campaign also promoted distortions in news coverage. As political reporters applied their preferred horse race frame to the policy debate—focusing on which side was winning, the personalities involved, and their message strategies—they also engaged in the same type of false balance that has been common to coverage of elections and issues.

In other words, by giving equal weight to contrarian views on climate science, journalists presented the false impression that there was limited expert agreement on the causes of climate change.

In fact, a survey published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal reveals that 97 percent of scientific experts agree that climate change is real and is caused mainly by human activity. That same study by Stanford University researchers also found that the small number of climate contrarians have a clear lack of scientific credibility.

U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), former chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has been the loudest voice of climate skepticism. In speeches, press releases, and on his Senate b log, Inhofe casts doubt on the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other major scientific organizations, selectively citing scientific-sounding evidence. To amplify his message, Inhofe takes advantage of the fragmented news media, with appearances at television outlets, such as Fox News, on political talk radio, and Web traffic driven to his blog from the Drudge Report.

In a February 2007 Fox & Friends segment titled, “Weather Wars,” Inhofe deceptively argued that global warming was in fact due to natural causes and mainstream science was beginning to accept this conclusion. Inhofe asserted, unchallenged by host Steve Doocy, “those individuals on the far left, such as Hollywood liberals and the United Nations,” want the public to believe that global warming is manmade. Similar frames of scientific uncertainty and economic consequences continue to be pushed by other conservative commentators, including influential syndicated columnists George Will and Charles Krauthammer.

Charles Krauthammer uses one of Luntz's frames

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer recently attacked a Nobel Prize winner by claiming that the scientific consensus that backs climate change is essentially a religious institution. "Look, if Godzilla appeared on the Mall this afternoon, Al Gore would say it’s global warming, ... Look, everything is - it’s a religion." Charles Krauthammer said on PBS’s Inside Washington Saturday.

Inside Washington's host Gordon Peterson had kicked off the discussion, quoting former vice president Al Gore in a recent interview with a New York Times columnist. “There is about four percent more water vapor in the atmosphere today than there was in 1970,” Gore told Gail Collins. Gore further explained that the extra water appeared because the warmer oceans and air returned to earth as heavier precipitation.

To the Gore quote Krauthammer exclaimed, "You find me a single piece of evidence that Al Gore would ever admit would contradict global warming, and I’ll be surprised," he said. BUT, conservatives will not accept a single piece of evidence that climate change driven by global warming does exist.

Climate Change Frames that Reinforce Partisan Divisions

What explains the stark differences between the objective reality of climate change and the partisan divide in Americans’ perceptions? In part, trusted sources have framed the nature and implications of climate change for Republicans and Democrats in very different ways.

Conservative think tanks, political leaders, and commentators continue to hew closely to their decade-old playbook for downplaying the urgency of climate change, which includes questioning whether human activities drive climate change while also arguing that any action to curb it will lead to dire economic consequences. The strength of the decade-old conservative frames on global warming and climate change linger in popular culture, political discourse, and the memory store of many audiences.

In contrast, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, many environmentalists, and many scientists have attempted to counter the scientific uncertainty and economic consequences frames by emphasizing looming “climate crisis.” To instantly translate their preferred interpretation, these advocates have relied on depictions of specific climate impacts, including hurricane devastation, polar bears perched precariously on shrinking ice floes, scorched, drought-stricken earth, blazing wild fires, or famous cities or landmarks under water due to future sea-level rise.

Publicity for Gore’s documentary on climate change’s effects, An Inconvenient Truth, dramatized climate change as an environmental Frankenstein’s monster, including a hurricane-shaped plume spewing from a smoke stack on its movie poster and a trailer telling audiences to expect “the most terrifying film you will ever see.” With an accent on visual and dramatic effects, the catastrophe strategy triggered similarly framed news coverage. For example, a 2006 Time magazine cover featured a polar bear on melting ice with the headline, “Global Warming: Be Worried, Be VERY Worried.”
One of the unintended consequences of this line of communication is that it plays into the hands of climate skeptics and further reinforces the partisan divide in climate change perceptions. Andrew Revkin, who has covered climate change for nearly 20 years for the New York Times, argues these claims are effectively countered by critics, such as Inhofe, as liberal “alarmism,” because the idea that mir mortals could cause warming and climate change on a global scale is simply silly crazy talk. For many it is a matter of faith that God created the earth and the climate that sustains us today about 6,000 years and only God has the ability to change the global climate.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), the new head of the House energy committee, today denied that climate change is man made at a public meeting. Upton, who received $20,000 from Koch Industries in his most recent campaign, introduced legislation with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to overturn the scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that greenhouse pollution threatens public health. Upton was pressed by National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein as to why the Upton-Inhofe bill describes climate change as “possible.” After repeated attempts to avoid the question, Upton finally explained his stance: he accepts that the planet is warming, but not that the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are a cause.

Contrarians can easily exploit the perception of over-dramatization to dismiss climate change as a problem. Polls suggest that the conservative-leaning public is likely filtering information about climate change through their frame of a liberal media bias. Such filtering results in Republicans who not only discount the climate change problem, but who also agree that the mainstream news media is exaggerating its severity.

In Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger advocate a move away from the frame of dire environmental consequences if greenhouse gas emissions are not radically reduced. They offer an alternative communication strategy, which involves turning the economic development frame in favor of action, recasting climate change as an opportunity to grow the economy. The two authors argue that only by changing the message frames of “innovative energy technology” and “sustainable economic prosperity” can diverse coalitions be created across partisan lines for meaningful action on climate change. With this framing strategy, they seek not just to engage the wider public, but also catalyze a more diverse social movement — perhaps even engaging support for energy policies among Republicans, who think predominantly in terms of market opportunities, or labor advocates, who value the possibility of job growth.

The morality and ethics frame is also featured in Gore’s WE campaign, which launched in Spring 2008. The WE campaign to “Repower America” attempts to unify U.S. citizens by framing climate change as a solvable and shared moral challenge. For example, in television and print advertisements, the WE campaign attempted to break the gridlock of partisan perceptions by pairing unlikely spokespeople such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with Republican and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and self-professed liberal and conservative clergymen, respectively, Reverends Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson.

Other WE TV ads featured actors as ranchers, construction workers, and autoworkers, stress the economic development frame, emphasizing job creation and growth. Importantly, these ads are placed during daytime talk shows and entertainment programming and in leisure magazines, which all reach non-news audiences who might not otherwise pay attention to coverage of climate change.

The Obama Administration continues to promote ideas to slow CO2 emissions and global warming through the frames of “creating green jobs and fueling economic recovery.” Yet the optimism of clean energy solutions is also open to the conservative counter-frame of uncertainty and more big-government tax and spend. In his State of the Union address, President Obama declared, "this is our generation's Sputnik moment" as he made the case for greater government investment in biomedical research, information technology, and clean energy technology. Sarah Palin was quick to respond to the president's speech, saying his proposal was misguided, and would lead to the kind of excessive centralized spending that doomed the Soviet Union.

E. O. Wilson offers another potentially unifying interpretation in his best-selling book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. Wilson frames environmental stewardship as not only a scientific matter, but also as one of morality and ethics. In writing the book as an open letter to a Baptist minister he shares a common value and respect for nature, what the Bible calls “creation.” In this manner, he engages Christian readers and media outlets that might not otherwise pay attention to popular science books or appeals related to climate change. Paralleling Wilson’s interpretation, an increasing number of Christian leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI and evangelicals, such as Richard Cizik and Rick Warren, are emphasizing the religious duty to be “stewards” of God’s creation. (Video: God and Global Warming)

The world’s leading economies and companies are engaged in a race to develop new 21st century technologies to support a global clean energy future. If we want to remain competitive in the global economy, the United States needs to lead this effort. Studies show that comprehensive clean energy and climate policies can generate a net increase of almost two million new American jobs — jobs that can’t be outsourced and that use the skills of today’s workers. Developing and using clean energy technologies would revitalize our manufacturing sector, providing a needed boost to the U.S. automotive industry and to states that are struggling from the loss of factories and mills during the recent economic downturn. Other countries are already taking those jobs away from American workers: General Motors uses a Korean company to supply the battery cells for the new electric Chevrolet Volt vehicle – because the most advanced technology of this kind comes from Korean manufacturers — not American manufacturers. With an eye towards the future, China has adopted the most aggressive energy efficiency program in the world, providing incentives and support to rapidly grow their own domestic clean energy economy.

America is founded on a spirit of optimism, ingenuity, innovation, and hard work. Americans should be leading the transition to a global clean energy future. But, climate change contrarians who continue to claim there is no need for America to even enter the global clean energy technology race, are letting those two million new energy technology are jobs are quickly slipping from the grasp of American workers and into the hands of foreign offshore workers. That is the correct frame for the global warming / climate change discussion!

LATimes: Texas' Finances Not As Rosy As They Seemed

Los Angeles Times: Texas prides itself as a model of conservative spending and responsible budgeting. But, the $27-billion budget gap undercuts Texas' image as a business-seducing, fiscally adaptive state.

The lecturing from Texas leaders about how California wouldn't be in such a budget mess if its politicians did business the way it is done in Austin has been relentless for years. Texas Gov. Rick Perry delights in telling tales of his California "hunting trips" — hunting for businesses ready to flee the Golden State. The $27 billion budget gap puts Texas in the same league as California among states facing financial meltdowns. The gap amounts to roughly one-third of the Texas state budget.

Texas has a two-year budget cycle, which allowed it to camouflage its red ink last year, thanks in large part to [Gov. Perry and conservative law makers taking] billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. Now, however, "someone just turned the lights on in the bar, and the sexiest state doesn't look so pretty anymore," said California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, with evident satisfaction.

In a place where government is already lean, there aren't many areas to make up that kind of cash. The Republicans who dominate the statehouse won't be closing loopholes that emerged in a recently enacted business tax change, costing the state billions in anticipated revenue. Instead, the budget blueprint Texas Republican lawmakers are mulling [that would cut $31 billion from state spending to cover the deficit] means layoffs for tens of thousands of teachers, closure of community colleges, and a severe reduction in state services for the poor and elderly and those with mental health problems.

The Texas budget crisis is prompting some experts to reconsider what had been dubbed the Texas Miracle. The state has much lower unemployment than California, but economists note that many of the jobs are low-paying. One out of three wage earners in Texas earns too little to keep a family of four above the federal poverty level, according to a 2009 study by the Corp. for Enterprise Development, a Washington-based nonprofit. That is double the percentage of similarly low-wage Californians.

Such figures call into question whether Texas' economy has really transitioned into a new 21st century model, or whether it has been buoyed by high oil prices and lots of loosely zoned land where construction of cheap houses endured through the recession.

"You have to separate out what your public policies have done for you and what God has done for you," said Scott McCown, executive director of the left-leaning Center for Public Policies and Priorities in Austin. "People shouldn't be fooled by what is going on here."

Some Texans question whether business leaders will tolerate the resulting deterioration of public infrastructure, particularly in the education system.

Read the rest of the story at the Los Angeles Times.

Texas' budget problems will not go away when legislators eventually sign a balanced budget later this year, senators heard on Monday. A $10 billion budget shortfall will reappear in future legislative sessions again and again unless lawmakers better align how much money comes in and how much goes out, said John Heleman, chief revenue estimator for Comptroller Susan Combs, in testimony before state senators last week.

Pressed by Democratic senators on the Finance Committee, John Heleman said the state will have a $10 billion structural deficit in future budgets.

That structural shortfall comes from a tax cutting "tax swap" measure that lowered property taxes and substituted, or swapped, a new business margins tax to offset the lost property tax revenue.

Even at the time, the swap was projected to be $5.9 billion short of balancing each biennium. That tax cutting measure ended up being at least $14 billion short because the new business tax produced less than half of the needed revenue and the property tax cut cost more than promised. Lt. Governor Dewhurst and others rightly say the 2006 tax swap created a structural deficit.

Up to now it Texas Republican lawmakers covered the shortfall with federal Recovery Act (stimulus) money—all of which is gone.

"We need to not fool ourselves that this is a one-time phenomenon," says state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who instigated the discussion at the Senate Finance Committee meeting. "We need to be grown up and deal with reality and make plans for the future of Texas."

Republican state leaders have attributed the state’s budget woes to the recession and have dismissed calls to raise taxes, or fix the 2006 tax swap mistake, to deal with the current budget shortfall, saying they can cut their way out of that hole.

Electric Bills To Spike Due To Rolling Statewide Blackouts

Prices spike limit up to $3000 per megawatt hour Wednesday

Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) officials, haven’t, as yet, given a full explanation of what happened to cause rolling blackouts last Wednesday, but we do Texas home owners will see huge cost spikes in their next monthly electric bills, or future fixed rate contracts, because electric utility companies turned off home owners' lights and heat throughout last Wednesday morning.

Huge electric bill spikes because speculative commodity traders took advantage of the power emergency on Wednesday to bid electric commodity prices up from an average of about $40 per megawatt hour to as high as the legal ceiling of $3000 per megawatt hour. Starting around 5 a.m., prices in the wholesale market surged to the market cap, $3,000 per megawatt-hour, and stayed there, off and on, until around noon. Just another one of the benefits Texans enjoy from having a fully deregulated electric commodity market to power Texan's homes.

The Texas power grid is usually only taxed in the middle of summer when air conditioners run almost continuously. Yet on Wednesday Texans woke to news of rolling blackouts statewide. ERCOT imposed rare rolling blackouts as frigid sub-zero wind chill temperatures swept across the state, leaving nearly one million homes without electricity for periods lasting from 15 minutes to over 2 hours.

Texas transmission utility companies, including American Electric Power Co., CenterPoint Energy Inc. and Oncor Electric Delivery Co., picked the locations and durations of the outages. Hospitals, nursing homes and other critical-need customers were not to have been included. In Dallas hospitals were blacked out, but Cowboys Stadium, where Superbowl preparations continued as planned, downtown Fort Worth, downtown Dallas and Hotels providing accommodations for Super Bowl officials and attendees were spared the rolling blackouts.

The rolling blackouts were imposed before sunrise Wednesday morning due to an imbalance in the state's electric grid between the power being demanded statewide and the generation capacity available in the morning hours of Wednesday.

The Texas power grid is mainly disconnected from the rest of the U.S. power grid, but the state does have limited connection to the electric grid in Mexico. By mid-day Wednesday ERCOT called off the statewide rolling blackouts after Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission started supplying nearly 300 megawats to the Texas grid via the Sharyland Utilities interconnection, built and owned by the family of Dallas billionaire Ray Lee Hunt. However, the following day Mexico said it was suspending its offer to provide electricity to Texas to help the U.S. state weather an ice storm that forced rolling blackouts, because of severe cold and power grid strains in Mexico's own territory.

ERCOT manages Texas’ electricity markets as well as the state's electric power production and transmission for about 22 million customers on an electric grid that connects 40,000 miles of transmission lines to more than 550 power generation units. ERCOT blamed Wednesday's power shortfall on the unusually cold weather that rolled into Texas during the day on Tuesday.

On Wednesday night, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst said that ERCOT reported that 50 of the state's 550 power plants had been knocked off line by the severe cold conditions, causing a loss of 8,000 megawatts to the power grid. Dewhurst said the problem appeared be inadequate weatherization and that the trouble centered on two new coal-fired plants owned by Luminant (a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings, formerly TXU) which suffered frozen valves and broken pipes.

"This is unusually cold weather for Texas, but we obviously need to ensure that we are adequately prepared," Dewhurst said. "That's why we will continue to work with state agencies and energy providers to find out where problems occurred and how to prevent them in the future."

In fact, 82 power plants were offline on Wednesday. How did the cold weather knocked the other 80 power generating plants off the grid. Did pipes and valves freeze all at the other 80 plants? Some of those 80 plants were natural-gas-fire plants, but was natural gas in short supply at all gas fired plants?

To supplement coal-fired electric plant power generation during periods of high demand, generating companies will fire more of their natural-gas generating plants to fulfill demand. Unfortunately, natural-gas fired plants reportedly couldn't fire up Wednesday morning. That was because Atmos, the natural gas supplier in Texas, had curtailed delivery of natural gas to industrial customers, including natural-gas-fired power plants, in order to maintain gas delivery to residential customers. That left Texas homeowners with natural gas, but no electricity, to run furnaces.

State Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said some of Texas' power problems Wednesday was the policy that allowed Atmos Energy reduced natural gas pressure to industrial customers, including natural-gas-fired power plants.

Ron Kitchens, retired executive director of the Texas Railroad Commission and current chairman of the Texas Energy Reliability Council said at a Railroad Commission hearing that the gas industry delivered the gas that was guaranteed by contract to its electric-power customers. But, he said, an unknown number of electricity generators had opted for contracts that allowed their gas service to be interrupted in exchange for cheaper gas. Without gas, the generators couldn't produce electricity.

Complicating the electricity outages, Kitchens said, was a "substantial loss" of gas well production because many gas producers were not exempt from the rolling blackouts. Electric gas wellhead pumps were blacked out along with the million Texas homes. Gas utility operators tapped natural gas reserves stored underground, including from salt domes, to make up for substantial production losses in the field. But, Kitchens warned, that the industry would have struggled to meet the state's gas needs if the cold weather had continued for three or four more days.

• TX Trib: Will Texas Blackouts Cause Higher Electric Rates?

U.S. House GOP Declares War Against Planned Parenthood

NYTimes: The Republican controlled House of Representatives has declared war against Planned Parenthood. They’re going after an organization that provides millions of women with both family-planning services and basic health medical care, like pap smears and screening for diabetes, breast cancer, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.

“What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?” demanded Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the chief sponsor of a bill to bar the government from directing any money to any organization that provides abortion services.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t use government money to provide abortions; Congress already prohibits that, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. (Another anti-abortion bill that’s coming up for hearing originally proposed changing the wording to “forcible rape,” presumably under the theory that there was a problem with volunteer rape victims. On that matter at least, cooler heads prevailed.)

Pence has 154 co-sponsors for his bill. He was helped this week by an anti-abortion group called Live Action, which conducted a sting operation at 12 Planned Parenthood clinics in six states, in an effort to connect the clinic staff to child prostitution.

“Planned Parenthood aids and abets the sexual abuse and prostitution of minors,” announced Lila Rose, the beautiful anti-abortion activist who led the project. The right wing is currently chock-full of stunning women who want to end their gender’s right to control their own bodies. Homely middle-aged men are just going to have to find another sex to push around.

Live Action hired an actor who posed as a pimp and told Planned Parenthood counselors that he might have contracted a sexually transmitted disease from “one of the girls I manage.” He followed up with questions about how to obtain contraceptives and abortions, while indicating that some of his “girls” were under age and illegally in the country.

One counselor, shockingly, gave the “pimp” advice on how to game the system and was summarily fired when the video came out. But the others seem to have answered his questions accurately and flatly. Planned Parenthood says that after the man left, all the counselors — including the one who was fired — reported the conversation to their supervisors, who called the authorities. (One Arizona police department, the organization said, refused to file a report.)

Still, there is no way to look good while providing useful information to a self-proclaimed child molester, even if the cops get called. That, presumably, is why Live Action chose the scenario.

“We have a zero tolerance of non-reporting anything that would endanger a minor,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood. “We do the same thing public hospitals do and public clinics do.”

But here’s the most notable thing about this whole debate: The people trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business do not seem concerned about what would happen to the 1.85 million low-income women who get family-planning help and medical care at the clinics each year.

Read the full story at the NYTimes.

Unauthorized Immigration Peaked During Bush II Years

Pew Research Center: As of March 2010, 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, virtually unchanged from a year earlier, according to new estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. This stability in 2010 follows a two-year decline from the peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009 that was the first significant reversal in a two-decade pattern of growth.

The number of unauthorized immigrants in the nation's workforce, 8 million in March 2010, also did not differ from the Pew Hispanic Center estimate for 2009. As with the population total, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the labor force had decreased in 2009, from its peak of 8.4 million in 2007.

The number of children born to at least one unauthorized-immigrant parent in 2009 was 350,000, essentially the same as it was a year earlier. An analysis of the year of entry of unauthorized-immigrant parents indicates that 61% arrived before 2004, 30% arrived from 2004 to 2007, and 9% arrived from 2008 to 2010.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, unauthorized immigrants made up 3.7% of the nation's population and 5.2% of its labor force in March 2010. Births to unauthorized immigrant parents accounted for 8% of newborns from March 2009 to March 2010, according to the center's estimates, which are based mainly on data from the government's Current Population Survey.

The decline in the population of unauthorized immigrants from its peak in 2007 appears due mainly to a decrease in the number from Mexico, which went down to 6.5 million in 2010 from 7 million in 2007. Mexicans remain the largest group of unauthorized immigrants, accounting for 58% of the total.

The decline in the population of unauthorized immigrants since 2007 has been especially marked in some states that recently had attracted large numbers of unauthorized immigrants. The number has decreased in Colorado, Florida, New York and Virginia. The combined unauthorized immigrant population of three contiguous Mountain West states -- Arizona, Nevada and Utah -- also declined.

The number of unauthorized immigrants may have declined in other states as well, but this cannot be stated conclusively because the measured change was within the margin of error for these estimates.

In contrast with the national trend, the number of unauthorized immigrants has grown in some West South Central states. From 2007 to 2010, there was a slight increase in the combined unauthorized immigrant population of Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. The change was not statistically significant for these states individually, but it was for the combined three states. Texas has the second largest number of unauthorized immigrants, trailing only California.

The size of this population grew by a third since 2000, when was 8.4 million.

The estimates are produced using a multistage method that subtracts the legal foreign-born population from the total adjusted foreign-born population, with the residual then used as the source of information about unauthorized immigrants. The source of these data is the U.S. Census Bureau's March Current Population Surveys.

Read the full report at pewhispanic.org.

LATIMES: Surge of immigrants from India baffles border officials in Texas - Thousands from India have entered Texas illegally from Mexico in the last year. Most are Sikhs who claim religious persecution at home.

State's Rights, Nullification and Civil War

In 1832 South Carolina passed state legislation to nullify a federal tariff law passed in 1828. That legislation to nullify federal authority thereby brought the issue of State's Rights vs. Federal Supreme Authority to the center of the American politics.

The Tariff Act of 1828 was a federal tariff that attempted to form a compromise between opposing regional views on tariffs and free trade. Provisions of the compromise angered people on all sides of the debate and led to heated arguments of State's Rights over nullification of the federal law.

While many southern states sympathized with South Carolina, they were not prepared to join South Carolina to secede from the union over the issue of tariff nullification. This, combined with the threat by President Jackson to send federal troops into South Carolina, compelled state's leaders to seek a compromise tariff law which defused the situation.

The Crisis of 1832 was the first spark of debate over Federal Supreme Authority vs. State's Rights to nullify federal authority that smoldered for twenty eight years as southern states saw northern states gaining the upper hand in abolishing slavery through federal mandate. Southern states increasingly talked of their right to nullify federal authority, if the northern states gained enough votes in Congress to pass legislation abridging "their right" to maintain slavery.

The November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who southerns regarded as an abolitionist, precipitated the secession of the Southern States from the Union. Seeing Lincoln as an abolitionist who would abolish their "state's right" to slave ownership, South Carolina and other southern states claimed they had a right reserved to the states to secede from the union.

By February 1861 South Carolina convened a constitutional convention with six other states to establish the Confederacy. The majority of the Southern leaders who attended the convention expected a peaceful secession; they did not anticipate that their action would lead to bloody conflict. They were wrong and the bloody four year war was consummated in the afternoon of April 12, 1861 when South Carolina militia under Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the Provisional Forces of the Confederate States, opened cannon fire on Fort Sumter.

Gov. Perry has many times referenced the Ten Amendment to defend the concept of State's Rights Supremacy over Federal Authority. In July 2009 Perry invoked the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to reject health insurance reform and suggested other states would do the same. Several Texas Republicans filed legislation for the 2011 Texas legislative session aimed at reaffirming states’ rights and providing a constitutional mechanism to annul federal laws and regulations. Conservative Republican lawmakers in Idaho are moving forward with federal law nullification legislation, as are Conservative Republican lawmakers in other states.

Members of the Arizona Legislature, led by Republican Senate President Russell Pearce, have introduced a bill that attempts to grant the state the power to ignore federal laws it does not want to comply with.

If passed and signed into law, Senate Bill 1433 would create a 12-member committee within the state legislature with the power to review and recommend to the full Legislature laws they think are unconstitutional. The full Legislature would then have the power to nullify the federal statute by a majority vote.

The legality of the proposed legislation is questionable, as it runs counter to Article VI, Clause 2 and the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which have been interpreted as making federal law trump state law.

Article VI of the Constitution, commonly known as the Supremacy Clause, states that, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."

Likewise, in a set of decisions that has come to be known as the "incorporation doctrine", the Supreme Court of the United States routinely ruled that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment prevents state and local governments from violating most provisions of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

Senate Bill 1433 is not the only piece of legislation in the Arizona legislature that conflicts with the 14th Amendment. In January, members of the Arizona House of Representatives introduced legislation that seeks to eliminate the long-standing 14th Amendment guarantee that all people born in the US and under its jurisdiction are citizens of the US.

"Babies born to illegal alien mothers within US borders are called anchor babies because under the 1965 immigration Act, they act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent US residency," Senate President Pearce's website stated.

"With illegal aliens who are unlawfully in the United States, their native country has a claim of allegiance on the child. Thus, the completeness of their allegiance to the United States is impaired, which therefore precludes automatic citizenship."

Rolling Electric Blackouts Hit Collin County And All of Texas

The cold weather has forced the State of Texas into a statewide power emergency. The requirement is being led by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the state’s power transmission grid operator. The move follows an existing plan to distribute power shortages throughout the entire service area. The outages could last ten to 45 minutes per neighborhood circuit. A circuit powers between 1,000 to 3,000 customers.

The rotating outages was implemented before sunrise Wednesday morning to compensate for a generation shortage. ERCOT is urging consumers and businesses to follow these steps:

• Limit electricity usage to only that consumption which is absolutely necessary. Turn off all unnecessary lights, appliances, and electronic equipment.
• Businesses should minimize the use of electric lighting and electricity-consuming equipment as much as possible.
• Large consumers of electricity should consider shutting down or reducing non-essential production processes.
• Without this safety valve, generators would overload and begin shutting down to avoid damage, risking a domino effect of a region-wide outage.

The state’s power grid system must shed 4,000 megawatts of power, and of that, Austin Energy share of that is about 158 megawatts, according to ERCOT.

All generators in ERCOT are required to participate regardless of whether particular electic power generators have sufficient power capacity for there particular locality. ERCOT reports this emergency is due to an imbalance in the statewide electric grid between the power being demanded statewide and the generation online at this time.

Shapiro: Put Teachers On Unpaid Furloughs And Cut Their Salaries

HOUSTON CHRONICLE — School districts should be allowed to give teachers unpaid furloughs and cut their salaries to help deal with a funding shortfall that one estimate says could cost 100,000 jobs, says State Senate Education Committee Chairman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano.

Under budget proposals to cut $31 billion from state spend, school districts would get $9.8 billion less through the next two years. One expert has estimated 100,000 school district jobs will be eliminated in Texas through the next two years.

“One of those burdens that we have placed on our school districts is that they cannot decrease teacher salaries and they can’t furlough teachers. It’s not allowed in the law. The only option is to fire,” said Shapiro. “We need to give them the ability to lower teacher salaries.” Shapiro said she hopes to have a committee meeting “the very first thing out of the box” on so-called unfunded mandates, such as the salary issue. “The last thing we want to do is put people on the unemployment rolls,” she said. “So we’ve got to make sure that that particular part of the law is erased.”

One teacher group said the idea [of cutting teacher salaries forcing teachers to take unpaid furloughs, as Shapiro proposes] is another example of the state looking to go backward to close the funding gap.

School superintendents are pushing for flexibility that would allow them to furlough employees, if necessary, on non-instructional days. “It’s something that superintendents are looking for flexibility on,” said Jenny Caputo, spokeswoman for the Texas Association of School Administrators. “Certainly nobody wants to furlough employees,” Caputo said, calling furloughs a lesser evil than layoffs or eliminating positions.

Richard Kouri, a Texas State Teachers Association spokesman, said his group is split on the issue of furloughs and salary decreases. It does not want to limit options to deal with the funding crisis but believes the state should be increasing professional development days and “getting our salaries out of the bottom third in the country” to recruit and retain the best, he said. “If we’re going to look at a long list of things that are bad options that are going to take public education in Texas the wrong direction instead of the right direction,” he said, “they might as well be on the list of things that are going to take us in the wrong direction.”

Read the full story at the HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Fast-growing Frisco ISD may take one of the hardest hits in the region with cuts of up to $84 million and and Allen ISD faces $18 million in cuts. Plano ISD is already planning $65 million in cuts.

Texas Depended Most On Federal Stimulus Of Any State

Gov. Perry has been a consistent critic of government spending, frequently pointing to Texas as proof that conservative budget austerity -- spending cuts coupled with low taxes -- works.

Gov. Perry raised his national profile by repeatedly criticizing the Obama administration’s support of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. federal stimulus) in response to a near collapse of the American economy during Pres. Bush's administration.

In contrast to Perry's criticism of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Texas legislature used federal stimulus funds to fill almost the entire budget deficit for fiscal 2009-2010, even as Perry scored political points grandstanding against the Federal Government. According to a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures released Monday, Texas relied more heavily on stimulus funding to patch over its structural budget deficit problem than any other state:

Turns out Texas was the state that depended the most on those very stimulus funds to plug nearly 97% of its shortfall for fiscal 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Texas, which crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1 billion rainy day fund untouched.

As Texas grappled with its 2009-2010 state budget deficit during the 2009 legislative session Gov. Perry made headlines for months proclaiming that President Obama’s economic stimulus plan was unneeded and unwelcome in Texas and "we can take care of ourselves.”

Perry, speaking in support of conservative fiscal ideology, said that federal money from Washington is so onerous to "all" Texans that we may rise up in revolt and secede from the United States by invoking the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Yet, Gov. Perry wrote a letter to President Obama accepting all of Texas' $17 billion share of the federal stimulus money made available by the stimulus legislation signed into law by Obama. (Read Perry's letter to President Obama) On the same day Perry asked Pres. Obama for the bailout money, he started a petition called "No Government Bailouts."

"Join our fight and add your voice to a growing list of several thousand Americans who are fed up with this irresponsible spending that threatens our future," Perry wrote on his blog on Feb. 18, 2009.

Texas used Recovery Act stimulus money not only to fill the state's 2009-2010 budget gap, but also to fund billions of dollars in infrastructure projects over the past two years.

After nearly two years of criticizing the fiscal policies of the Obama administration and touting “the hard work that Texas and states like ours have done to make prudent fiscal decisions,” Texas faces a budget fiasco on par with that in California.

Gov. Perry says the state's conservative budget austerity yields "fertile ground for job growth," yet in 2010 the state created only new 230,800 jobs to replace the 359,000 jobs lost in 2009. The Texas Workforce Commission reports the unemployment rate in Texas was 8.3 percent in December, up from 8.2 percent in November. As unemployment continues to deepen Texas'unemployment rate remains near 22-year highs.

While tax revenues have steadily declined due to a sluggish economy and job cuts across Texas, Gov. Perry has continually dismissed the idea that Texas has a growing structural budget deficit problem.

With the economy still sluggish the state comptroller estimated that tax revenues will further decline in fiscal 2012-2013. But, now, the Federal stimulus money to make up the difference is running out. The state comptroller now projects Texas has a $27 billion deficit for fiscal 2012-2013. State lawmakers last week released an austere budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal years that cuts $31 billion in spending. Public schools, colleges, collage students, Medicaid and social services, public safety (police and prisons) and transportation will all be hit hard.

If Texas can not produce a well educated workforce, or build and maintain roads, or keep crime off the streets, how does that make "fertile ground for job growth?"

President Obama: JFK On The 50th Anniversary Of His Inauguration

President Obama celebrates the 50th anniversary of JFK's Inauguration Kennedy Center

President Barack Obama last Thursday paid tribute to President John F. Kennedy on the anniversary of his inauguration 50 years ago.

"We are the heirs of this president, who showed us what is possible," Obama said. "Because of his vision, more people prospered, more people served, our union was made more perfect. Because of that vision I can stand here tonight as president of the United States."

He said Kennedy led a "volatile America, in this tinderbox of a world," with a steady hand, "defusing the most perilous crisis since the Cold War without firing a single shot."

Pres. Obama also noted Kennedy's work to help blacks attend their choice of college, launch the Peace Corps of goodwill ambassadors around the world and set America's sights on landing on the moon. "He knew that we, as a people, can do big things. We can reach great heights. We can rise to any challenge, so long as we're willing to ask what we can do for our country," Obama said, recreating one of the more memorable lines from Kennedy's inaugural address.

As President Obama prepares to give his State of the Union address before Congress on Tuesday, I hope he remembers some more of JFK's words:

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
September 14, 1960 - From JFK Library Archive

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population, which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be needed than goodwill missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving leads.

In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."

This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort. The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.

I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that [this time] be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.

I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers...

John F. Kennedy Democratic National Convention
Nomination Acceptance Address
15 July 1960, Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles
-------------------------------------------

President John F. Kennedy's Inauguration Speech
January 20, 1961

Other Speeches by JFK

Texas Economy Struggling Under Republicans

Posted at Jobsanger
by Ted McLaughlin.

The following headline appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Texas added 230,800 jobs in December, Workforce Commission says

[But, the first paragraph of the Star-Telegram story says, "Texas employers added 20,000 jobs in December for a total of 230,800 for all of 2010, the Texas Workforce Commission said Friday.]

That 230,800 jobs did not come close to making up for the 359,000 jobs lost in the state. And the number of jobs created in December did not even keep up with the number of people entering the work force. The unemployment rate actually climbed by 0.1% in December and now sits at 8.3% (not counting the people who's benefits have run out, who have given up looking for work, or who are working part-time because they can't find full-time work).

And that doesn't count what the Republican legislature is fixing to do to the Texas economy. The House's Legislative Budget Board has recommended massive cuts to the state budget (and the Senate's recommendations are expected to be as bad). These cuts would eliminate around 10,000 state jobs and make huge cuts to education -- cuts that some think could result in the lay-off of 100,000 teachers and other school employees statewide.

[These cuts in employment will ripple through the state economy causing additional lay-offs across other private businesses. That will result in a further hit to the state's sales tax revenue and create another state budget deficit which will result in future rounds budget cuts and lay-offs ad infinitum.] In spite of all this, our governor continues to brag about the state's economy. He's not just wrong -- he's a fool.

The Texas economy is not doing well at all, and when the legislature finishes there work this session it will be doing even worse. We are probably looking at another year where job losses outnumber job creations. As usual, the Republicans have taken a booming economy and thrown it in the dumper.

Departure Of Keith Olbermann From MSNBC

Juan Cole says it best:

People are blaming the abrupt departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC on that company’s merger with Comcast and Olbermann’s loss of the protection and patronage of Jeff Zucker, the former head of NBC programming. MSNBC says that the issue has nothing to do with Comcast.

Whether Comcast is the villain of the piece directly, things like the Comcast merger with MSNBC are responsible for there being very few voices on American television (and despite the proliferation of channels) like Olbermann’s. And for there being relatively little news on the “news” programs. Time Warner, General Electric and Comcast (partners in NBC), Viacom, Disney, and Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp own almost all television news. In other words, six big corporations determine what you will hear about the world if you get your news from television. There are fewer and fewer t.v. news outlets that do not belong to one of these six, a process called media consolidation.

For reasons of profit-seeking, when Disney acquired ABC, it looted the company’s news divisions. Profits are not to be had in hard news, but rather in tabloid news. It used to be that human interest stories would be ‘dessert,’ but they have become the main meal.

Ironically,former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was one of Olbermann’s biggest critics, afraid that the latter’s flamboyant and polarizing style would tarnish the reputation of regular NBC newsmen for objectivity.

What Brokaw seems not to have noticed is that NBC and MSNBC did, like most television news, a miserable job of covering the Iraq issue in 2002-2003–mainly buying White House propaganda. The powerful bias toward the point of view of the rich and powerful and well-connected in Washington demonstrated by all the major tv news outlets in 2002-2003 makes Olbermann look like a staid centrist.

We’ll miss Keith. But it isn’t about him. It is about the ever-narrowing character of public comment in the US, about the few having most of everything. It is about media consolidation.

TX House Budget Proposal Slashes $9.8 Billion From Education

More about the proposed budget: Dallas Morning News Fort Worth Star-Telegram Houston Chronicle San Antonio Express Austin American-Statesman

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

The state comptroller has calculated that a continuation of state services at current levels of would result in a $27 billion budget shortfall.

About $7 billion in federal government stimulus funds could reduce that budget shortfall to about $20 billion. The state could then use its $9.4 billion "rainy day fund" to lower the budget deficit to about $11 billion. Broadening the sales tax base slightly could eliminate most of that remaining $11 billion shortfall, without any further tax increase. This strategy would maintain the current level of state services.

Republicans, however, are sticking with their new new taxes and no federal stimulus money pledges, and then some. The Legislative Budget Board sent a proposed budget to House members Tuesday night that cuts $31.1 billion from current spending.

In education the proposed budget slashes public school funding, cuts at least 60,000 college students from financial aid, closes at least four community colleges and likely raise college tuition fees. College education has already been priced out of the reach of many working and middle class students and the high tuition fees will price even more young Texans out of a higher education.

The proposed budget drafted by the Legislative Budget Board will slash an additional $9.8 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 with a school dropout rate of 30 percent.

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 $1.57 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.

The proposed budget does not cut any of the state's corporate welfare programs. Many claim the corporate welfare programs, advertised as “business incentives to create jobs," throw wads of taxpayer cash to Republican campaign donors, who actually deliver few jobs.

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 $31.1 billion from current spending, even before accounting for population growth.

The budget, drafted for House leadership, will slash education funding by $9.8 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 $1.7 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 $7 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.

Lt Gov. Dewhurst: 8,000 State Jobs Could Be Cut On $27 Billion Deficit

Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports thousands of jobs cuts due to the looming $27 billion Texas state budget deficit.

With some top state leaders warning that Texas' dire fiscal situation will lead to the loss of several thousand state jobs, House budget writers will release their first draft budget today. Some state leaders have begun to warn that the state’s dire fiscal situation will lead to the loss of several thousand state jobs.

House Appropriations Chair Jim Pitts didn’t pull any punches when it came to his assessment of job losses. He spoke last week with Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune. “There will be less state employees when we’re completed with this budget process. Because we’re gonna have a whole lot less money to spend,” said Pitts.

Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst went a step further and put a number to the cuts. He thinks about 8,000 state jobs could be eliminated. But there are thousands of other jobs dependent on state funds that fall outside of those projections. Cuts to Medicaid and Medicare provider reimbursement rates could lead to health care job losses. Teachers could also face layoffs.

Linda Bridges is president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. She says it won’t be clear how many education jobs would disappear until after legislative action and money begins to work its way back to the local school districts. From there, it will be up to school boards to figure out a way to make it work.

“Are they looking at eliminating positions through attrition?” asked Bridges. “Are they looking at eliminating programs? We just don’t have a handle on that yet. A lot of it’s speculation.”

And there’s still another especially hard jobs equation to still figure out. A recent report by state Comptroller Susan Combs suggests getting rid of the cap on elementary class size as a way to trim the budget.

“If you do that math on that it comes up to about 12,000 elementary school teachers could be laid off,” said Bridges.

Another thing to consider is these kinds of cuts don’t happen in a vacuum. Economist Ray Perryman says there’s the “multiplier effect”. He says public sector layoffs will have a multiplier effect of about two and a half.

“What that basically means is that in addition to the direct job that’s lost you have one and a half additional jobs in the economy that are lost,” said Perryman. “Because it impacts suppliers. It impacts – the payroll not there. It impacts spending on food, clothing, shelter other items that are made in the state.”

Republican budget writers haven’t said the cuts will be easy. But they have argued that making cuts is a better solution than raising taxes. Because they say increasing taxes slows the state’s economy by limiting private sector spending…which can also lead to layoffs. Perryman says cutting state jobs could even help bolster the economy.

“If it’s something the state’s doing that’s inefficient that they could effectively do with fewer people, then society is better off if we take that resource and use it somewhere else that’s more productive. Either the public sector somewhere else or the private sector,” said Perryman.

But this budget isn’t about reshuffling resources. Money cut from one state program won’t be going to pay for another. It will simply be cut.

MLK: I Have A Dream

Click here for "I Have a Dream" Speech Text

Internet Users Are More Likely To Volunteer With Political and Service Organizations

Pew Internet & American Life Project: The internet is now deeply embedded in group and organizational life in America. A new national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has found that 75% of all American adults are active in some kind of voluntary group or organization and internet users are more likely than others to be active: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non-internet users. And social media users are even more likely to be active: 82% of social network users and 85% of Twitter users are group participants. Read the complete report at: Pew Internet & American Life Project