I’m stuck in an airport in Cleveland waiting for some flight delays to clear up, but I am feeling cheerful. Don McLeroy is in trouble, and the Texas legislature is considering some revamping of their peculiar system.
The legislative session so far has not been kind to the State Board of Education.
Senate confirmation of Board Chairman Don McLeroy, R-College Station, is dead in the water, the Nominations Committee chairman said Thursday.
The House of Representatives approved a constitutional amendment Monday that would move the investment decisions about the $17.5 billion Permanent School Fund away from the board to an appointed council of financial professionals.
And a bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill to take away the elected board’s authority over curriculum and textbooks.
They’re feeling the heat. Keep it up!
You’re stuck in an airport and reading about Texas? You must be bored!
Go have some bacon. And a beer.
We may be getting it right by getting rid of McLeroy the moron, but we’re getting it wrong where our social studies standards revisions are concerned.
http://tfnblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/ed-board-extremists-target-social-studies/
We just thought the science battle was bad. This one has the potential to be worse.
Thanks be to Jaysus.
This appears to be terrific news.
Wow, this suggests that there are still republicans who have some sense.
I wish I could read the phrase “I’m at an airport” without wondering if Larry Craig is in the men’s room. *sighs*
Expelled II, dentists who were expelled from government because they were morons.
All morons should be offended at that.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
This is shockingly immoral.
It means, if passed, that people can no longer use school children as ideological, religious, and political footballs.
Probably will cause the birth rate to plummet in Texas. Why bother having kids if you can’t use them as toys in adult games?
The last sentence quoted in PZ’s post makes me hopeful that major changes could be coming.
If the Texas Legislature actually disbands this council of idiots, then I may reconsider my exile.
Now they’re going after social studies. They’re going after whatever they can get their hands on, of course. They are evangelists who think Jesus is coming any day now, after all. If somebody thinks Jesus is on the way, then that’s gonna be the first thing on their minds all the time, naturally.
http://tfnblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/ed-board-extremists-target-social-studies/
Keep the heat up PZ et al. Those fools need to feel it.
Downgrading the Texas Board could lead to all sorts of horrible things. According to member Cynthia Dunbar, evolutionism leads to cannibalism.
She heard it from noted moral authority Jeffry Dahmer.
Next thing you know, restaurants in Texas will be serving the other white meat.
First they came for the biologists….
Wait till they get their hands on history, archeaology, astronomy, and sex ed.
Might just as well forget about school education in Texas with those clowns. With the rapture being imminent, all they need to know is “jesus loves you” and what to stock in your bomb shelter.
Might just as well forget about school education in Texas with those clowns. With the rapture being imminent, all they need to know is “jesus loves you” and what to stock in your bomb shelter.
Well the rapture was more imminent right before 2000, and the next big imminent number is 2012. After that, then I don’t think the rapture is gonna be quite so imminent for a while at least. :P
YES!! I can finally say I’m proud to be from Texas today…er, Austin luckily.
PZ:
Hey, you’re right across the runway from me. I’m a few hundred feet south of the NASA hangar. When you finally get airborne, wave. Or strafe. Or whatever seems right at the time.
@#13, nah, the rapture has been imminent for the last 2000 years and it won’t stop being imminent after 2012.
Okay you’re probably right #16, but the rapture was really really really really really imminent right before the dawn of 2000 though.
what? Fundies messing ’round with numerology? ’tis Satan’s handwork, ’tisn’t it?
Yes, yes, yes! It’s so good to read some good news for a change.
Go have a Cinnabon, PZ, with extra icing.
Nice to hear some good news for a change. The Texas BOE has clearly been highjacked by the fundies and is incapable of making any sensible decisions on school textbooks, so it makes sense for sensible legislators who value the future of their state to step in and remove this responsibility from the BOE.
I hope this goes well.
Strafe? Is that an option, like maybe one of the call buttons above my head?
Do not tease the evil atheist professor. You know which I would choose.
It is when you run down the aisle, naked, underpants on head, yelling I’m gonna get you sucker!
At the trial you can blame it on the fashion police not letting you have your new custume. So you had to make do with your underpants.
They’ll understand. They’ll be very understanding, and lead you to a nice comfy quiet room with extra bedding on the walls.
A machine-gun! A machine-gun! My blog for a machine-gun!
Not to throw water on what could be a good thing for Texas Education, but “an appointed council of financial professionals” sounds a bit worrisome. Are these the financial professionals that work for book companies, or wall street, or for some christian ministry?
Just a minor little scratch at the back of my brain.
Don’t be so quick to cheer — who gets to appoint the “financial professionals”? Moving these types of councils out of the public eye can be worse.
Err…I’m glad control is being wrested away from creationist lunatics, but does no one see danger in having these things decided by an appointed body? If a fundamentalist nutjob is appointed, there would no longer be any way to vote them out.
Or are we relying on the idea that our elected officials who appoint these positions can’t be religious wackaloons?
Well, we’ve seen the danger of an elected body, and that ain’t workin.
The potential benefits of using the legislature to appoint a body:
1. The legislature have more important things to do than shoot themselves in the foot over this one tiny issue.
2. People pay attention to legislature elections, unlike SBE elections.
3. The media pay attention to legislature elections, unlike SBE elections.
4. Many members of the legislature are actually competent, and just want things to work. They would rather be getting kickbacks from oil and gas companies over steak dinners than be on the front page of the paper because of some textbook controversy.
Welcome to Texas, where the only thing that supercedes the 10 commandments is the 2nd amendment.
Strafe? Is that an option…
It is when you run down the aisle, naked, underpants on head, yelling I’m gonna get you sucker!
No, That’s chafe, not strafe.
To be honest, this brings up an entire major issue. The debate over whether popularly-elected officials in a state (of delusion) should have effective control over their own finances seems silly, but by taking that away and giving it to a non-elected position, is more damage being done in the long term?
Is the popular election more effective than appointment at the whim of a(n also popularly-elected) governor?
I’m being skeptical and serious here. Clearly, the Texas SBOE is currently standing for bollocks right now, has an eventual goal of being sued under Establishment clause issues, and only serves to sneakily try to take money away from children trying to be educated. I have outright laughed at Don McLeroy in all of his statements of “standing up to these EXPERTS!”, and have NOTHING but disdain for him and his ilk.
But, in the end, by just taking away the power of popular election at the SBOE level just means that the DI will focus their efforts on the state level, or whatever level of popular votes, in whatever state, ends up electing the most creationists. I hate to bring up “the children” here, but they really are the future. Is there a solution to the never-ending Culture War, that doesn’t end up stripping the various “factions” of their rights, but also serves to teach our next generation factual, science-and-reason-based evidence?
It has always ended up on the side of science and reason (with the obvious exception of the Scopes trial, which is why this is a worthwhile effort), but is there a real final solution for this? I ask, because the readers are bright, and should be able to come up with something…
I love it!!
Bollocks wrote, “Is the popular election more effective than appointment at the whim of a(n also popularly-elected) governor?”
As an elected official I’ll take a stab at this one. I’ve only been in office since last November, but I’ve been amazed at a few things I’ve found out.
There is a huge difference between politics and government. Politics is how you get elected, and at times how you get the resources and approvals to do things.
Government is, in many ways, like any other job with tasks which need to be done competently. So, for example, many cities have an elected mayor, and a position which is administrative called a city manager. Guess who does most of the work planning the operation of the government? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the mayor.
Which doesn’t mean the mayor, in a situation like this, doesn’t have a full-time job (although not all mayors are full-time positions). The elected officials are the public face of government, and they do set priorities for government based on the citizens requests and needs. These are the things you really want your elected officials to be answerable for.
The purpose of government is to help the community of citizens it represents, having the leaders of government answerable to the citizens appears to be the best (although not fool-proof) way of ensuring this occurs. The fact that an appointed official may really be making most of the decisions is not a problem so long as the elected officials can replace them.
We already have quite a few of positions within our various levels of government where a non-elected person is hired for their expertise in doing a job rather than requiring an elected official to be an expert all the functions of a government.
The concern, of course, is that a single elected official could appoint people to positions of power not because they are experts in their field, but because they share ideologies or as rewards for political favors.
This is where confirmation hearings come in. Should Texas decide to appoint SBOE members rather than having them elected, to prevent abuse of appointments they should establish confirmation hearings with a board of experts to ensure that they people they are hiring are truly experts in the area they will be overseeing.
Of course, this can’t eliminate the possibility of abuse, but it can make it significantly harder. There have only been a few politicians I’ve known of who could take a system like that and still make it an ideological matter, politicians like Hewey Long or John F. Kennedy.
Finally, even with the efforts of our last federal administration to maintain secrecy, there appears to be an overall increase in transparency in all levels of U.S. government. I’m not saying there is any increase in rationality, just transparency, and that alone is enough to make politicians a little more careful about appointments. If they choose an person obviously unqualified they will be ridiculed, which is death to a politician.
In politics, the greatest weapon is the horselaugh.
You made sense right up until this statement. If you genuinely believe that we have not seen ideological abuse in recent history, not just limited to the reigning champion Bush administration, then you weren’t participating in the same history that I was.
The point you seem to be making, and that I made previously, is that important elections (president, congress, governor, state legislature) gets more attention than confirmation hearings, but confirmation hearings get more attention than most other elections, including SBOE.
By the way, I think you meant Huey Long.
Ordinary Man wrote, “If you genuinely believe that we have not seen ideological abuse in recent history, … ,then you weren’t participating in the same history that I was.”
Heh. No. I’ve seen plenty of abuse in recent history as well. I just choose a couple historical examples because these types of examples are usually less controversial. (Although even those examples may still raise the hackles of some.)
And yes, I meant Huey, thanks for the correction.
I did see your point earlier, and I agree with it. However, my point was not quite the same. It’s not that confirmation hearings get more attention than local government elections, including SBOE, but that certain positions in government require expertise generally unavailable in the pool of elected officials. So appointments are made by the elected officials so that non-elected experts can be found to fill those positions.
These appointments are unavoidable, we need experts to do those jobs. However, we also need confirmation hearings to avoid non-experts being appointed by a single elected official who has a ideological bias or political favors to repay.
“Welcome to Texas, where the only thing that supercedes the 10 commandments is the 2nd amendment.”
Not quite. We don’t have Open Carry for handguns yet (some other states do), and don’t yet allow concealed carry on campus (Utah does).
Good that SBOE is getting heat…if it does become appointed, I’d rather the Ledge do the appointments (better chance at bipartisanship) than the sitting Gov (more likely to be partisan). If Rick Perry gets to do the appts, might as well keep the elected system going.
I also think people in TX *WILL* pay more attention to SBOE elections from now on, if they continue to be elected positions. I still think the main reason so many of them got on were due to “stealth” campaigning, keeping mum about their crazier views during the election, only to reveal themselves once in office. That only works once.
People know who the loons are now, and their days are (I hope) numbered.
And then there is this:
Texas Congressman: College Bowl System Equals Communism
……he’s introduced legislation barring the NCAA from using the words “national champion” until it concedes to his wishes. Anything else, according to Barton, is “communism.”
http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2009/05/texas_congressman_college_bowl.php
And they let these kooks pack heat?
Rock on! That’s the best news I have heard all day.
And they let these kooks pack heat?
Knocks a bunch of ’em out of the gene pool every year. That and a few random edge cases who made the mistake of being in Texas, or weren’t able/healthy/smart enough to dodge. Keep that darwinian pressure up!
Since nothing you can legally shoot in Texas carries far enough to land very far out of the state, it’s only a problem for people who make the lifestyle choice of being Texans, or flying in low-flying planes.
damn, you just made my weekend ..and it’s only friday
Today’s Rude Pundit shoot’s everything all to hell. McLeroy isn’t the only religidiot here in Tejas.
Well, at least they are doing something right. I’m sure many of my friends in Texas will be slightly relieved, but of course I also know an army of uneducated anti-science twits down there as well who irritate me to no end who will probably cry and bulk up this sort of bollocks.
Let’s congratulate those legislators. Contact them and let them know they are appreciated. That’s how they thrive.
Also leave your comments on the site that PZ linked.
To the general public, its the quantity, not quality, that most matters, so lets give ’em our quantity (which is based by us on quality)
Yeah, shouldn’t be this way, but hey.
Well, at least this is some good news to an ex-Texan. When I left Texas (ten years ago) I wasn’t old enough to be worried about this crap. Now that I am, I am out of state. The shitty thing is, when I was there a decade ago, I don’t remember the average Houstonian being concerned about this sort of crap. I guess Donny came up after I was out of the state.
Oh well, good on the legislature for trying to stop this bullshit.
I hate to say I told you so… but…
You know not all Texans are stupid ignorati, and Texas DOES NOT need to go back to Mexico. Especially since you can find stoopid just about anywhere (Dr. Meyers has been complaining about a certain politician quite a bit lately, and Canada’s science minister is a quack, too.)
Yep. As a South Carolinian I get real tired of the idiotic geographical stereotype myself.
But his name is Myers.
Oops! Sorry Dr. Myers! Spelling isn’t my forte!
Sheesh, PZ…if this happens and McElNutz is given the boots back to his prehistoric dentist chair…who will you find to fill the vacuum here?
I don’t think Ray Comfort has enough intellectual material. Are we to be reduced to be nothing more than poll crashers? OMFSM!
“And a bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill to take away the elected board’s authority over curriculum and textbooks.”
Yeah that’s great except… the plan in the proposed bill moves the authority for oversight of the money (that’s $17.5 BILLION) from an ELECTED body to an APPOINTED one.
And since it removes control further away from the voters (ie, the board should consist of elected members…), I don’t think it’s such a hot idea. If you want to move the oversight to a different group, great. But that’s NO EXCUSE for eliminating the vote of the people from the process.
see my comments here: http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2009/04/30/texas_sboe_used_as_excuse_to_remove_vote_3