Blogrolling In Our Time - special "What, We're Going To Do This Again?" edition

In light of Texas Governor Jesus H. Goodhair's expected announcement today that He Has Come At The Behest Of God To Right What's Wrong In America, I think it's time to finally blogroll Burnt Orange Report. Go. Bookmark it. You'll need it.

While he's at it, let him pray for God to rain dollar bills on his state

I'm sorry, but since wingnuts get to pound their chests and say that they don't want their tax dollars paying for abortions (and have the government do their bidding), I think I should get to say that I don't want my tax dollars paying to rebuild the homes of citizens who elect governors who talk about secession and then beg for federal help to fight wildfires in their state.

Now Texas Governor Rick Perry is hedging his bets. In case the feds say no, he's going to a higher authority:

WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought, with some parts of the state receiving no significant rainfall for almost three months, matching rainfall deficit records dating back to the 1930s; and

WHEREAS, a combination of higher than normal temperatures, low precipitation and low relative humidity has caused an extreme fire danger over most of the State, sparking more than 8,000 wildfires which have cost several lives, engulfed more than 1.8 million acres of land and destroyed almost 400 homes, causing me to issue an ongoing disaster declaration since December of last year; and

WHEREAS, these dire conditions have caused agricultural crops to fail, lake and reservoir levels to fall and cattle and livestock to struggle under intense stress, imposing a tremendous financial and emotional toll on our land and our people; and

WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto signed my name and have officially caused the Seal of State to be affixed at my Office in the City of Austin, Texas, this the 21st day of April, 2011.

Where's Burt Lancaster when you need him?

Does Perry ever think to ask his Great White Alpha Male in the Sky why, since Texas is such a God-fearin', gun-totin' state, wildfires and hurricanes even happen there?

Jared Loughner was a college student too

This cannot end well:

Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.

More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he's in favor of the idea.

Texas has become a prime battleground for the issue because of its gun culture and its size, with 38 public universities and more than 500,000 students. It would become the second state, following Utah, to pass such a broad-based law. Colorado gives colleges the option and several have allowed handguns.

Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses, such as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois in 2008, show that the best defense against a gunman is students who can shoot back.

"It's strictly a matter of self-defense," said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. "I don't ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks."

Yes, because nothing will stop a deranged gunman like a hail of bullets from a bunch of panicky, untrained college kids.

Can't we just tell everyone in Texas that yes, they have the biggest penises we've ever seen and be done with it?

If Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, why is Texas in such a mess?

If you live in New Jersey like I do, you're already seeing what happens to your local property taxes when Republican governors who buy the hype about themselves already have their eye on their next office. They cut state spending, leaving municipal governments accustomed to regarding local office as a cronyism mill to give no-bid contracts to their friends, holding the bag. Not that it matters much; towns in New Jersey always respond to the rhetoric about what will happen to the schools, or snow removal, or the condition of local ball fields, if you dare to protest the $500/year tax increase they are going to impose on you. But here in New Jersey, it matters naught to Chris Christie, who despite his overall repulsiveness, is being fellated regularly on Morning Asshole and other cable news shows.

But this is New Jersey, where Christie can blame Jon Corzine and Jim McGreevey and public employee unions for the state's fiscal condition and get a fairly long (and blind) honeymoon with voters in doing so. Because in most towns that are like mine, as long as the high school football team is ranked high and the grass on the soccer field is green, they'll do things like elect a mayor who runs on a platform of "change" after being on the council for thirty years. And they'll forget about earlier Republican governors like Christine Todd Whitman, who started the borrowing binge that got us into this mess, and was herself a rising star in her party until it went nuts -- and until she lied to all those Ground Zero recovery workers and told them that the air they were breathing was just fine.

But what about states that have been under Republican governance? What kind of shape are THEY in? Say, Texas for example. Here's a state that has been under Republican governance since 1995. That's fifteen years of Republicans. Texas ought to be in just dandy shape, having been in the capable hands of good old fiscally conservative Republicans for a decade and a half, right?

Perhaps not:

Texas faces a budget crisis of truly daunting proportions, with lawmakers likely to cut sacrosanct programs such as education for the first time in memory and to lay off hundreds if not thousands of state workers and public university employees.

Texas' GOP leaders, their eyes on the Nov. 2 election, have played down the problem's size, even as the hole in the next two-year cycle has grown in recent weeks to as much as $24 billion to $25 billion. That's about 25 percent of current spending.

The gap is now proportionately larger than the deficit California recently closed with cuts and fee increases, its fourth dose of budget misery since September 2008.

Against the backdrop of the acrimonious campaign between Republican Gov. Rick Perry and Democratic challenger Bill White, Texas' top elected and budget officials have guarded even more tightly than usual against leaks of information. But bad numbers continue to dribble out in legislative testimony and agency reports.

The bottom line: Public schools, college students and government employees, not just poor and needy Texans, might very well lose money, grants, benefits and even livelihoods during and after next year's legislative session.

"They'll have to cut," said former Rep. Talmadge Heflin, R-Houston, the House's budget chief during the last budget meltdown, in 2003. "When you look at the big numbers, I just don't think there's any way that you make it match without making some reduction in education, both higher [education] and public education," or grades K-12.

Even in the budget crises of the late 1980s, 1991 and 2003, Texas never cut state funding of public schools.

But declines in revenues, property values and federal Medicaid help have added between $3 billion and $4 billion this month to a late-August guess that the two-year shortfall could top $20 billion.

Ongoing expenses, including property tax cuts passed four years ago, cost between $95 billion and $100 billion in state funds, now that a federal flow of stimulus cash is winding down.

Dale Craymer, president of the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, said next year very well could bring unprecedented retrenchments, including layoffs or furloughs.

"This budget's not going to be solved with a single magic bullet," said Craymer, a top budget adviser to former Govs. Ann Richard and George W. Bush. "It's going to be solved by a number of very hard decisions that cause a lot of pain in a lot of different areas. So furloughs may indeed be part of the solution," though even far-ranging layoffs of state employees wouldn't close the budget gap by themselves, he said.

[snip]

The options are few when it comes to finding $25 billion in the state's budget. Texas already ranks 50th nationally in per-capita state spending, so big cuts will have to come from essential services.

Teachers and welfare workers are paid mostly from local and federal money, so cutting those positions won't net much savings. To give you an idea how difficult this could be, we took an imaginary whack at state government and programs.

You could eliminate

state government functions

to save ...

•$2.4 billion (22 entire state government agencies, including the offices of the attorney general and comptroller)

•$437 million (state judiciary)

•$875 million (oversight of environmental regulations, water control and parks)

•$587 million (business and economic development programs)

•$312 million (31 regulatory agencies, including those overseeing insurance, racing and utilities)

•$354 million (the Legislature: budget planning, legal advice and staff)

And you could ...

•Fire half the prison, parole and probation officers to save $1.4 billion.

•Eliminate college financial aid/scholarships to save $1.2 billion.

•Spend half of the state's rainy day fund to raise $4.5 billion.

•Eliminate all grants for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to save $131 million.

But after all that, you'd have saved just $12.2 billion, barely half of what probably will be needed.

Please. Just secede already

I know Amanda Marcotte is from Texas. I know there are many fine people in Texas. But this is, after all, the state that gave us not one but TWO Bush presidents, and there are plenty of other states that have barbecue. So I say that if Texas wants to secede and make Chuck Norris its king, please be my guest, especially if you're going to become a breeding ground for willful idiocy:

The Texas Board of Education this week will vote on science standards that critics say seek to cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

The board -- considering amendments passed in January -- will hear from the public on Wednesday. It will then take votes -- an initial one Thursday and the final vote Friday.

"This specific attack on well-established science ignores mountains of evidence and years of research done by experts in a variety of fields," said Steven Newton, project director at the Oakland California-based National Center for Science Education, a proponent of evolution.

One amendment, critics say, undermines the idea that life on Earth derives from a common ancestry, a major principle in the theory of evolution. It calls for the analysis and evaluation of "the sufficiency or insufficiency" of the common ancestry idea to explain the fossil record.

Newton said the board is considering other amendments casting doubt on well-established ideas in the earth and space sciences -- plate tectonics, radioactive decay and how the solar system developed.

School board chairman Don McLeroy has wanted to tackle questions that highlight supposed weaknesses in the theory.

For example, skeptics of evolution point to what they contend are fossil record gaps casting doubt on the scientific evidence of common ancestry.

"I'm a skeptic. I'm an evolution skeptic. I don't think it's true," he said. "You need to present other ideas to the kids."

The issue reflects the strong feelings among representatives on the 15-member board, some of whom accept evolutionary theory and some of whom don't. The size of the textbook market in Texas gives it influence nationwide, as publishers adapt their material to its standards.

The board -- considering amendments passed in January -- will hear from the public on Wednesday. It will then take votes -- an initial one Thursday and the final vote Friday.

"This specific attack on well-established science ignores mountains of evidence and years of research done by experts in a variety of fields," said Steven Newton, project director at the Oakland California-based National Center for Science Education, a proponent of evolution.

One amendment, critics say, undermines the idea that life on Earth derives from a common ancestry, a major principle in the theory of evolution. It calls for the analysis and evaluation of "the sufficiency or insufficiency" of the common ancestry idea to explain the fossil record.

Newton said the board is considering other amendments casting doubt on well-established ideas in the earth and space sciences -- plate tectonics, radioactive decay and how the solar system developed.

School board chairman Don McLeroy has wanted to tackle questions that highlight supposed weaknesses in the theory.

For example, skeptics of evolution point to what they contend are fossil record gaps casting doubt on the scientific evidence of common ancestry.

"I'm a skeptic. I'm an evolution skeptic. I don't think it's true," he said. "You need to present other ideas to the kids."

The issue reflects the strong feelings among representatives on the 15-member board, some of whom accept evolutionary theory and some of whom don't. The size of the textbook market in Texas gives it influence nationwide, as publishers adapt their material to its standards.

Sorry, Texas, but "I don't understand it....it must be magic" does not qualify as scientific inquiry. But if Texas is going to teach its children that if you can't explain something, don't examine it further, just say Jesus did it and STFU, then I say don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha. Just don't come crying to me when King Chuck makes you spend all your free time on that Total Gym for which he's shilling.