pts meetup

Based on feedback from PTS members, we have determined that the meetup will finally come into existence at the following place and time:

Thursday, March 10
7:30 pm
Starbucks on Georgia

Thanks for all your comments and ideas. Continue to ruminate and we'll see you on the 10th!

Was Bush "wired" in Europe?

Upon letting the dogs out in the wee hours of the morning a few nights ago, I stumbled upon this video clip from www.buzzflash.com. When I tried to find it the next morning, it was gone. I thought it must have been a dream.

Yesterday, I did a google search and alas, there it was. Please post your comments PTS, I'm curious to see how your feel about this one.

It seems like this administration just gets more bizarre, as time rattles on.

"He's an idiot, just like we had imagined!"

Panhandle Democrats Monthly Meeting

Hey, guys and girl (are there any girls in here?) don't forget the Potter/Randall Democrats Meeting this Monday night, 7:00 (come 6:30 for refreshments) at the downtown library upstairs. Be with the people from our area that have as much great sense as you do!

I went to my first meeting last month, and I was impressed. It was fun! Do come.

pts meetup

We're going to try again to have a Panhandle Truth Squad meetup. We are trying to determine the best day to meet. If you are interested in attending, please comment to let us know which day(s) or date(s) would be best for you during the next two weeks (prior to 12 March 2003). You may also e-mail us: panhandletruthsquad@blogspot.com. Some of the issues we would like to discuss are:

What would you like to see from the PTS blog?
How can we best serve our local Texas Panhandle progressive/liberal readership?
How can we improve our coverage and critique of the entire local media and how can we exert pressure on the media to be more fair to progressive/liberal points of view?
Should we divide PTS bloggers responsibilities into "beats" such as newspaper, television, City Council, national issues, local democratic politics, etc.?

Please add in comments any other questions or issues you would like to discuss with the group.

if the anti-smoking ordinance is passed, what will become of the smoke-filled room in which decisions get made in this city?

Nothing, probably. That room is by no means public.

But you get the feeling that George Raffkind is in there most of the time, along with the Seligers, and, increasingly often, Ana Estevez.

Yesterday, Jerry Hodge called a press conference to let the citizens of this city know that these Smoke-Filled-Roomies are running his campaign. Jerry Hodge's election as mayor is therefore a fait accompli. Everyone should move along, there's nothing to see here.

He also wanted to issue a proclamation that, when he becomes mayor, Maxor Pharmacy Services will phase out of its insurance contract with the city. Hodge is currently chairman of the board of Maxor, so the withdrawal is necessary to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Hodge sez (emphasis added):

"We have been thinking about running for mayor for some time prior to the time when we made our announcement. One of the concerns that I had and that the board had was that Maxor has a contract with the city of Amarillo, and has had it for a number of years."

And Hodge sez:

"But Maxor has decided as a board that if elected mayor, we will phase out of this contract as soon as possible, and we will forgo the contract with the city of Amarillo in order to avoid any appearance of any conflict between myself, Maxor and the city of Amarillo."

Hm. The royal "we" or the pharmaceutical "we"? Who is running for mayor, again? Hodge or Maxor Pharmacy Services?

As a service to our citizens, Amarillo media need to ask Hodge the following questions:

John Ward, former City Manager and current CEO of Maxor, states that Maxor will assist the city in finding a suitable replacement and will audit the company as a free service to the city. Why? Do they intend to phase the contract back in at some future date? Is this audit a means of assessing the competition? If so, how is a conflict of interest avoided by temporarily phasing out of the contract?

How will a changeover to a different health and drug plan affect 4,000 city employees? How will the loss of the contract affect Maxor and its employees? Is the election of Jerry Hodge to the mayorship worth upending the health care of thousands of people? Is it worth making the livelihood of Maxor employees less secure?

Is this run for mayor the best decision for Maxor? If it is not, how can we be sure you will be a better steward for the city than you were as Maxor chairman? If it is a good decision for Maxor, why? Will your actions as mayor be based on the city's needs or on Maxor's?

Just asking.

SPACEDARK

Republicans, Uh, Oh. . . Wrong Guy

Via thinkprogress . . .

It appears you rethugs voted for the wrong guy. . .

During last year’s presidential campaign, the wingnuts offered any number of reasons to fear a Kerry presidency. John Kerry, the typical tax-and-spender, would negotiate with the terrorists, undermine efforts to ban gay marriage, bring salacious scandals back into the White House, increase government spending while cutting vital missile defense, and get buddy-buddy with his surrender-monkey European allies, like close associate Jacques Chirac.

Or, in other words, Kerry might have…

– Suggested raising taxes to pay for the costs of his massive $2 trillion pet reform project
– Entered into negotiations with the terrorists in Iraq
– Proclaimed that “nothing will happen in the Senate” on the anti-gay marriage bill
– Nominated a possible cabinet member who once engaged in adulterous romps in a motel room reserved for exhausted 9/11 workers
– Offered White House press privileges to a partisan activist with an alleged history in gay prostitution
– Released the largest budget in U.S. history while slashing missile defense spending by $5 billion over six years
– During a “warm” and “friendly” tour through Europe, declared that Jacques Chirac could make a “good cowboy”

PHEW! dodged that bullet . . .

-Prodigal Son

champagne for breakfast

Congratulations to PTS friend Scott at Grits for Breakfast, who won a Koufax award for best single issue blog. Hm . . . . . . Tulia? We thought you covered a wee bit more than one issue-- but congratulations, anyway!

SPACEDARK

crazy / toys in the attic / he is crazy

Yesterday, I planned to give some right-wing nut named Bill Hammond a vigorous stomping. But I ran out of time.

Today, however, I realized that it won't take long to refute Hammond's ill-informed vision for improving schools, in which he recites some of the Wingnut Holy Words:

Currently, the salary scale for teachers is based on academic credentials and seniority. Compensation must be restructured to provide increased pay for teachers who achieve exemplary student performance. Again, what works in the private sector can work in Texas schools. Texas employers pay their employees based on performance, which gives them the ability to reward their best workers.

Here's the problem with wild-eyed hypercapitalists like Hammond: they assume that everyone, like them, is motivated primarily by money. Therefore, all problems can be solved by dangling money in well-chosen places.

But people are motivated by all sorts of factors in addition to greed: love, laziness, the creative imperative, the desire for immortality, the desperate need to catch a good buzz, and so on.

The assumption that you can lead teachers to excellence by tossing a trail of cash in their path rests on a very strange belief that most teachers get into the profession to make a quick buck.

Which leads me to believe that the words "president and CEO of the Austin-based Texas Association of Business" which are included in Hammond's bio must be the latest euphemism for "insane asylum".

SPACEDARK

hey, teacher, don't you fill me up with your rules

There’s a perfect storm a-brewing between the editorial page of the Amarillo Globe-News and the Panhandle Truth Squad. Because of TAKS and other reasons, AGN commentators got solvin’ edumacation on their collective mind. And in my classroom, at 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, the TAKS is over with for the year, and I have a roomful of freshmen who have finished taking their test and are just sittin’ here with nothin’ to do. (Memo to wingnut teacher-critics: Oh! This is what babysitting a classroom of kids feels like . . . hmmm, nope that’s not what my job is usually like.)

So, here we are at the nexus of Opinion page full of education solutions and teacher with a rare couple of hours of free time. Let’s party.

overTAKSed

This is it. The one day of my year that matters according to legislators. And I’m just sitting here impotently, reading the paper, walking around the room every few minutes. And blogging. Nothing, obviously, that has anything remotely to do with my job of preparing students for what’s still occasionally called-- by those pre-postmoderns among us-- the “real world”.

It’s TAKS day, and students across Texas are having their Knowledge and Skills Assessed. There’s so much to say about this system that reduces both students and teachers to a 30-page booklet and a set of numbers received around Spring Break. But for now I just want to comment on this “Texas Miracle” mythology. It’s largely been debunked now, but you still hear the phrase on the net, in the media, all over the place.

Well, everywhere but one place. I’ve never heard any educator that I know talk about any “Texas Miracle.” I asked the Significant Other, since she works in several different schools at several different levels. She had never heard anyone use it, either.

Why? Isn’t it obvious? The Weekly World News was always more credible to Texas teachers than any "Texas Miracle."

Yet a significant number of educators on this sunburnt steppe still support the Emperor. I’ve asked why, and they always say, “Well, Nickleby’s the only thing he’s done that I don’t support.”

And the all-too-obvious response to that? Maybe if you were directly influenced by more of the Emperor’s edicts, you wouldn’t support those either. The USA PATRIOT Act’s just fine, too, until your cousin gets thrown in Gitmo or your child gets investigated for some library books she checked out for her research project. The closer W gets, the more fear & loathing he causes.

SPACEDARK

Republicans Prefer George W to George W

This morning's AGN reprints a Washington Post story claiming that 2 out of 3 Republicans polled would vote for the Emperor W over the guy on the dollar bill. Well, Republicans do keep telling us that we just don't get the message they were trying to send in the election.

Apparently, this is their message: We're all crazy as bedbugs!

SPACEDARK

If Jim is a "limousine liberal"....well dammit, I AM TWO!

What is a "limousine liberal"?

Dear Amarillo Globe-Republican,

There you go again. You contradicted yourself. In a February 7 editorial you praised the Amarillo City Commission for sending the proposed ban on smoking in public places back to the voters. You did it yesterday, too, going a step further and pooh-poohing those Yankee lawmakers in Maryland who plan to vote on a similar measure themselves. State legislators proposing legislation and then voting on it? Who do they think they are?

Curiously, though, yesterday's other editorial, right below the first, exalts the Borger City Council for voting on a curfew that keeps kids under 17 off the streets at night. Uh...shouldn't the Borger City Council have sent the issue to the voters so they could decide for themselves?

It would seem defending your political allies has more to do with your position than anything resembling logic.

hey, Jim, share the wealth . . .

This just in: according to wingnut Eddie McMurray in a letter to the AGN, local Democrat Jim Perkins is a ""limousine liberal".

Hey, Jim: if you've got that much money, how about helping out PTS?

SPACEDARK

What Liberal Academia? Social Insecurity

A two-fer today.
One of the latest (yawn) crusades of the right is that our universities are FILLED with professors who are liberal.

These professors supposedly push their liberal agenda on helpless conservative students who have no choice but to be indoctrinated.

Personally, I think the whining is because conservatives cannot tolerate differences in general, hence the constant complaining about nonexistent liberal media bias for example. My personal fav is thy cry that those liberals are just big meanies in Washington DC. (The R's control all three branches.) sigh.

I don't buy it at all. In fact in today's AGN, a guest editorial by AN ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT WTAMU spews RNC talking points starting with the headline "Social Security: Shall we repair it or trade it in?" CLICK HERE Why do we have to do either?

How dishonest is this column from AN ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT WTAMU? How about this gem "Some adjustments eventually will have to be made to keep SS financially viable for future generations. " Really? Where did he get this info?

Or this one " There would have to be some kind of insurance umbrella to cover people whose funds somehow perform poorly or go belly-up."

What the hell does Professor Lewer think Social Security is? It is an INSURANCE program we pay into so that if all goes belly-up, we have a minimum living standard for the elderly and disabled.
____________________
Without quoting sources, without providing back up info, we do not know where he gets his data. But curiously, he states stuff right out of the RNC playbook.

-A $10 trillion cost figure (calculated cost to infinity. no kidding, infinity)

-A "fully funded" retirement system, in which people accumulate their own savings to be invested and drawn down after retirement, appears to be immune to changes in demographics.
(But you are not protected from a market crash or depression.)
__________________
Good readers, do the math yourself, and find out how bad you would be screwed by Bush's supposed "plan". But remember he has not presented one a complete one yet. CLICK HERE

Contact info for the ECONOMICS PROFESSOR AT WTAMU.
Name: Joshua J. Lewer
Title: Assistant Professor
Phone: 806-651-2508
Email: jlewer@mail.wtamu.edu

-Prodigal Son

Recently Panhandle Truth Squad thanked Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, our closest U.S. Senator to vote against the torture lawyer.

Now the wingnuts are targeting him.

Apparently, they think that hispanic people will vote against him because the torture lawyer is nominally hispanic.

Why? Do the wingnuts think they're all related?

I was perfectly happy to rant against John Ashcroft, even though he was white like me. And I have no doubt that Latinos will understand the issues involved and support Bingaman's stance against the torture lawyer. He'll need our help, though, before the wingnuts spend a bazillion dollars to make him look like Virgil Van Camp.

SPACEDARK

well, it's official

All that effort and all that expense in Iraq had led to the installation of an Islamist theocracy. If Iraq was trying to get WMDs, they were going about it the wrong way round-- all they had to do was go to war with the US and install a government that would be able to get them from Iran.

SPACEDARK

Welcome to Howard Dean

I've said previously that I believe that Gov. Dean understands what the party needs to do. If he can keep his mind on that, he will be a great help to the party. This has nothing to do with ideology, and I don't think that Dean will seek to be an ideological chairman, though the other side and the media can be counted upon to try to bait him, as in the Washington Post's reaction.

Sen. Kerry and other party leaders have warmly welcomed Dr. Dean, indicating the great unity of the party. Keeping that unity is one of the main functions of the party chair. The other two are fund raising and building infrastructure. Appearing on tv from time to time is also part of the job, but not the decisive part. Dean understands that he can't represent the party well by helping to inflame old disputes. That's why he refused to give CBS an interview this week when they wouldn't agree not to show 'the scream'.

We grassroots Dems have our own jobs to do, and Dean will be successful to the extent that he helps empower us. We need to be about the job of organizing our community. We need to also remind those in charge of their responsibility to provide us the tools and resources we need to do the job effectively.

DEMOPHOENIX

Howard...my kinda guy!

I, for one, am thrilled with the prospect of having Howard Dean as the DNC chair. Heck, he was my #1 choice for our democratic nominee to run for president. And to think, it all ended with the "I had a scream" speech..........ah well.

Dean is a "straight shooter" and does not mince words when he has the stage, bringing some sense and sensibility in opposition to the insane rumblings from the other side.

Good luck to Howard Dean, as he has one happy Texas chick that will support him untill the last scream has been scrumed (?)...........screamed..........you know what I mean.

a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase

I've been thinking about Social Security. As Demophoenix has blogged, Michael Kinsley has logically proven that privatization cannot work. That should end the discussion, but doesn't. So we need to think about the motives of the pirateers. Over to you, Prodigal Son.

Prodigal Son has pointed out that when you tell pirateers that you'll support their plan if they guarantee the principal, they begin to spit and sputter and stammer and whine like jocks at the end of a Revenge of the Nerds movie. Which should lay bare their true motives. And should end the argument.

Only it doesn't. So I'll throw in my two cents, even though I'll probably need those pennies when I'm a old man begging in the streets in 2055 in the United States of Bush.

I once worked for an agency that was piratized by the Emperor W-- the Texas Workforce Commission. Here are just a few things that happened after piratization:

• The first pirate company to take over our Workforce Center declared bankruptcy a few months after taking the contract.
• The second pirate company to take over our Workforce Center walked away from the contract at their first opportunity.
• The third pirate company to take over our Workforce Center fired a good friend of mine.
• Okay, maybe you're a bean counter who thinks it's a good thing that my friend was fired. Here's the problem in bean-counter friendly language: he was a frontline supervisor, dealing directly with clients. The layers and layers of Supervisors of Red Tape are still there.
• Bureaucracy actually increased, evidenced by more paperwork and more layers of supervisory personnel.
• Confidentiality became a joke. Pirate companys, including both current and former contractors, now have access to the work records of all Texans. Have you seen the ACLU video?
• Okay, they did adopt hip, new capitalistic lingo. Clients are now customers.

Yeah, yeah, I know this is just one isolated, anecdotal example. I'm sure the President's Social Security plan will work much better.

May I have my two cents back?

SPACEDARK