School District Superintendent Searches

When good governance demands confidentiality

In an editorial, The Dallas Morning News calls for school districts to publicly release the names of candidates it is considering to fill the position of superintendent. The News says there are 40 school districts statewide searching for a new superintendent and most will name only a single finalist. After the public has a suitable opportunity to review the finalist, the school board offers him or her the job, assuming the public reaction is favorable. The News wants more:

"Taxpayers deserve a better sense of the process and the chance to hold their elected leaders accountable. ... We urge these school boards to show real leadership and publicly disclose a short list of superintendent finalists before they make their hire."

Good in theory, terrible in practice. The trouble with this was identified in the very first sentence of the News' editorial: "Few job seekers relish going public with their employment prospects."

If you work at Circuit City, it's unlikely that your boss is going to find out when you apply for a job at Best Buy. If you get the job, you turn in your resignation at Circuit City. If you don't get it, you haven't ruined your relationships at Circuit City. But if Best Buy blabs and then doesn't offer you a job, you could be screwed back at Circuit City.

Likewise, if it becomes known that a superintendent at a small school district is applying for the open position at a larger school district, he risks ruining his relationship with his current school board, administrators, teachers, parents and students. Given that many candidates apply and only one is given the job, the result of the open and transparent system the News calls for would be turmoil at dozens of school districts for every hire somewhere else. To avoid that, if candidates knew their names would be released, the best candidates wouldn't even apply.

In short, the News' desire for a "fully transparent process" is laudable, but naive. It wouldn't serve the interests of the job seekers, the school districts or the public well.

SeeClickFix

iBurgh Now. iCOR later?

Pittsburgh is on the cutting edge of cities using technology to improve city services. Its new iPhone app received a lot of good press this week (hat tip to former Richardson city council member Pris Hayes, who continues to have "fresh ideas"). According to the story, the iPhone app "lets iPhone owners snap a picture of their favorite eyesore or attractive nuisance, attach a quick note, and send the geotagged information to the city's 311 operators."

We can only hope that Richardson, the city that bills itself as "Telecom Corridor," won't be too far behind Pittsburgh, the 19th century Steeltown. But you don't have to go as far as Pittsburgh to find cities that "get it." Even Dallas has an online app for reporting potholes. The Dallas Morning News features it on various blogs as a way for Dallas residents to "report civic problems such as potholes, graffiti, broken street lights and vandalized playgrounds in Dallas." The DMN claims that "The Dallas Public Works Department -- and anyone else who requests it -- will be notified of the problem by e-mail." It's SeeClickFix and it's independent of both the city of Dallas and the DMN, but, remarkably, neither lets that get in the way of taking advantage of a good idea.

Maybe the city of Richardson also is subscribed to SeeClickFix reports for Richardson, but if so, I can't find any evidence of on the city's Web site. There are various pages giving phone numbers or email addresses for reporting everything from barking dogs to bright lights shining on residential property, but it's all so 20th century. What does SeeClickFix have going for it that the city of Richardson's Web site does not? It has a map that pinpoints all the reports of problems. It has the facility for residents to track the reports and see what corrective action, if any, has been taken. It has the facility to allow other residents to review and chime in on the complaints ("me, too" can carry weight sometimes).

Come on, Richardson. You finally got around to streaming video of city council meetings. How about committing to subscribe to SeeClickFix problem reports and following up with status updates on corrective action?

Routh Creek Parkway

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
-- Joni Mitchell

Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News' Richardson blog, reports on the ribbon cutting for Richardson's Routh Creek Parkway, a new road serving the new Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas headquarters. Two paragraphs stood out:

"Richardson's newest street opened Thursday morning after a ribbon cutting ceremony in the Spring Creek Nature Area.

...

'This is in place because of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas,' Richardson Mayor Gary Slagel said. 'They could have moved anywhere, but they didn't. You never want to lose something you already have.'"

The city gets my nomination for today's award for unintended irony. First, for holding a new road's ribbon cutting ceremony in a nature preserve. Second, for the mayor saying, "You never want to lose something you already have."

Richardson Water Rates

Do the rates promote conservation?

At Monday's Richardson city council meeting, resident David Chenoweth suggested (Section 5, Part 3, beginning about 28:30) that the city's water rates do not promote conservation. Does he have a point? I think so, at least enough of a point that someone at city hall ought to review the situation and decide just what we're trying to accomplish with the rates. According to the city's Web site, the water rates are:

Minimum $7.00 plus per each 1,000 gallons consumed

$2.95 for 1,000-11,000 gallons
$3.19 for 11,001-20,000 gallons
$3.33 for 20,001-40,000 gallons
$3.87 for 40,001-60,000 gallons
$4.05 for 60,001 and over

At first glance, it looks progressive, that is, the bigger consumers of water pay higher rates. But David Chenoweth pointed out that that $7.00 minimum charge skews things quite a bit. For example, if you conserve and use only the barest minimum of water for a month, say 1,000 gallons, you'll pay $9.95 for that 1,000 gallons. Say your neighbor uses four times as much water as you, 4,000 gallons. His total bill will be only twice as big as yours, a total of $18.80. That's only $4.70 per 1,000 gallons, less than half your effective rate of $9.95 per 1,000 gallons. For even bigger consumers of water, that $7.00 minimum charge gets spread over many more gallons, bringing their effective rate per 1,000 gallons ever lower. Eventually, at 35,000 gallons usage, it bottoms out at $3.37 per 1,000 gallons (remember, the extreme conserver paid $9.95 per 1,000 gallons). It's not until 40,000 gallons usage that those higher rates for big users take over and the rate per 1,000 gallons starts creeping upward again. Here is the same table again, only this time showing the effective rate per 1,000 gallons.

$9.95 per 1,000 gallons for 1,000 gallons
$6.45 per 1,000 gallons for 2,000 gallons
$5.28 per 1,000 gallons for 3,000 gallons
$4.70 per 1,000 gallons for 4,000 gallons
$4.35 per 1,000 gallons for 5,000 gallons
$4.12 per 1,000 gallons for 6,000 gallons
$3.95 per 1,000 gallons for 7,000 gallons
$3.83 per 1,000 gallons for 8,000 gallons
$3.73 per 1,000 gallons for 9,000 gallons
$3.65 per 1,000 gallons for 10,000 gallons
$3.59 per 1,000 gallons for 11,000 gallons
$3.41 per 1,000 gallons for 20,000 gallons
$3.38 per 1,000 gallons for 30,000 gallons
$3.37 per 1,000 gallons for 40,000 gallons <--- lowest rate
$3.47 per 1,000 gallons for 50,000 gallons
$3.54 per 1,000 gallons for 60,000 gallons
$3.60 per 1,000 gallons for 70,000 gallons

The council members understood what was happening here. City Manager Bill Keffler quickly identified that minimum $7.00 charge as being responsible for the high unit price paid by conservers of water. He said that there's a minimum $7.00 charge just because it costs something to connect people to the water system no matter how little water they use. That's true enough. But so what? If the primary goal is to conserve water, then the city should eliminate that minimum charge. The rates for usage can be adjusted upwards to keep the change revenue neutral in total. If the goal is conservation, then residents should be charged only for the water they use and the effective rate should go up with increased usage, instead of down as the current structure has it.

But perhaps that's too radical. Perhaps the council feels there's a fairness issue here (although Bill Keffler did not say so in his response to David Chenoweth). Perhaps the council wants everyone to pay that $7.00 because that's the cost of just maintaining the pipes, before any water runs through them at all. Fair enough. Then, they should at least adjust the rates so that the unit rate per 1,000 gallons bottoms out at much less than 35,000 gallons usage per month. Lower the rate for the first 11,000 or 20,000 gallons and increase the rate for usage over 20,001 gallons. Again, adjust the rates to keep the change revenue neutral, but set the rates so that the bigger users pay more, not just in absolute dollar amounts, but in the effective rate per 1,000 gallons as well.

All this is dependent on the assumption that the goal is to conserve water. Bill Keffler implied that was the goal of the rate structure, but there are two reasons why that might not be the only careabout driving the rate structure. First, council members may want to actually favor the bigger users of water for various reasons, or at least not be seen as penalizing them. More importantly, the city contract with the North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD) guarantees the city will buy from NTMWD a given amount of water each year. Conservation below that contracted minimum won't result in any cost savings for the city at all. There might be more global reasons why water conservation would still be a Good Thing™, but the city council might not care as much if it doesn't save the city any money directly.

In summary, David Chenoweth did have a point. The city's goals in this area ought to be reviewed and clarified, then the water rates themselves ought to be reviewed and adjusted if necessary to better impact the city's goals.

Pete Sessions' Blimp

Know anybody with a blimp job in north Texas?

Or even in Illinois, for that matter? Well, there's money earmarked in the federal budget by north Texas' own Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) for blimp research and development in Illinois. Because of the furor stirred up by the health care debate, a recent news story about Pete Sessions didn't get the attention it deserved. According to a Politico story on 7/30/2009,

"Rep. Pete Sessions - the chief of the Republicans’ campaign arm in the House - says on his website that earmarks have become 'a symbol of a broken Washington to the American people.'

Yet in 2008, Sessions himself steered a $1.6 million earmark for dirigible research to an Illinois company whose president acknowledges having no experience in government contracting, let alone in building blimps.

What the company did have: the help of Adrian Plesha, a former Sessions aide with a criminal record who has made more than $446,000 lobbying on its behalf."

What's this? Pete Sessions? Earmarks? Blimps? for Illinois? Aide? Lobbyist? Criminal record? That's right. Enough keywords to fuel a silly season story for weeks (my apologies to bloggermouse for yet another reference to "silly season"). Except the health care silliness (e.g, "death panels") has starved other stories of oxygen. But one person at Pete Sessions' town hall meeting in Irving did manage to get to the microphone and ask about his sending $1.6 million dollars to Illinois for blimp research. According to Sessions Watch, this is how Pete Sessions addressed the issue (or not):

"The appropriators had it for over a year before they brought it to the floor. The appropriators knew that the United States Army and Air Force is in fact looking for the opportunity to take massive amounts of weight from the United States to the theater. Blimps are much like the hydroplanes that the Marine Corps went to where they've got hovercraft. And they spend seventy-eight thousand gallons taking two tanks overseas on an aircraft. This would accomplish sixteen tanks for three gallons. The forty thousand dollars that was spent on the engineering study before they asked for it was looked at by the Air Force and the Air Force is interested in this and you watch what happens. Thank you so very much."

So, I take it that Pete Sessions thinks that his own earmarks are good, although he doesn't use the word earmark in his reply. He also doesn't use the words lobbyist, aide, criminal record, or Illinois, either. Nevertheless, according to Sessions Watch, "The overwhelmingly pro-Sessions audience greeted this statement with wild cheers and applause, on a par with the kind Oprah Winfrey gets when she tells her audience, 'Look under your chairs...!'"

Ain't politics grand?!?

Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

To Sail Against the Wind

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) died today after a year-long battle with brain cancer. I found the following blog post in the archives that I think stands up as well today as the day it was written, May 20, 2008.

---

Jarrett Rush, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, breaks the news that Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. Rush's short blog post focuses on his and his generation's impression of Kennedy, not as the effective senior senator from Massachusetts, but as a punchline of late-night comedians.

Others of a slightly older generation remember Ted Kennedy challenging President Jimmy Carter to fight for universal health insurance. Kennedy inspired the Democratic mid-term convention in Memphis in 1978 with a passionate speech:

"There are some who say we cannot afford national health insurance. ... Sometimes a party must sail against the wind. We cannot afford to drift or lie at anchor. We cannot heed the call of those who say it is time to furl the sail."

Today, thirty years later, Kennedy's goal is still unfulfilled, the country still adrift. Voters have the best chance in generation to elect a President and a Congress who can do something about that. The wind is shifting.

Councilman fears "onerous" open records requests

Wants extra credit for answering public's questions

Monday evening, the Richardson City Council held a public hearing on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2009-2010. There was much discussion about overtime expenses, car allowances, staff salaries and other areas to keep costs under control. New councilman Bob Macy's budget concern seemed to be the cost of answering the public's questions and open records requests as required by state law. My transcript of his remarks (Item 5 Part 2 beginning 29:10):

Bob Macy: "Uh I have a comment to, to, I'd like to bring up. The uh, we have a lot of, I'm glad that we have people that come up in front of us to have comments and they take their time to look into situations and make recommendations and, uh, I, I'm complimentary about that but I also think we need a line item or a budget item to keep track of the time that the city staff has to, to, work with and prepare results, prepare answers to the questions that come up, and uh, I don't know what the magnitude of that would be. Bill, I don't know, do you have any kind of recommendation on what kind of a magnitude a budget item would be for that?"

[Bill Keffler's answer not transcribed]

Macy: "Well, do you think maybe, uh, that there ought to be some accountability on that because it's taking time from your staff that, I mean, they're hired to do a certain job so when they take time to answer these questions it ought to be something they can charge to or get credit for in addition to their regular job."

[Bill Keffler's answer not transcribed]

Macy: "I'm hearing that you don't think we need a line item, a particular item."

[Bill Keffler's answer not transcribed]

Macy: "I'm just, uh, putting out the notion that we ought to have a budget item for that. If you think it's not necessary or not advisable, that's fine."

[Bill Keffler's answer not transcribed]

Macy: "Is there a level that it becomes onerous, I mean, you know, is too much? Do we have any kind of control on, you know, when it's normal and when it gets to be, you know, out of reason?"

[Bill Keffler and rest of council's answers not transcribed]

Love that Bob.

Life, Too Cheap to Meter if You're a Bluefin Tuna

But d*mn precious for us humans

William McKenzie, in The Dallas Morning News' late, lamented Religion blog, asks a panel of local religious professionals the question, "Do we put too great a premium on our biological lives?" Essentially none of them give a direct answer, so your lowly, humble layman correspondent gives it a go (by citing another, wiser layman, naturally):

No, we don't put too great a premium on our biological life. It's an instinctive part of our species' survival strategy. Other species have evolved other strategies. Wired magazine's Chris Anderson explains:

"Our brains seem wired to resist waste, but we are relatively unique in nature for this. Mammals have the fewest offspring in the animal kingdom, and as a result we invest enormous time and care in protecting each one ... However, the rest of nature doesn't work like that. A bluefin tuna can release 10 million fertilized eggs in a spawning season. Perhaps 10 of them will hatch and make it to adulthood. A million die for every one that survives. But there's good reason for it. Nature wastes life in search of better life."

Lockerbie Bomber & Health Care

What do these have in common?

If you guessed that freeing the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber was due to Great Britain having socialized medicine, you'd be thinking along the same lines as David Smith, who published just that assertion in the Dallas County Republican Examiner. (Never heard of Examiner.com? It's more competition for The Dallas Morning News' online product.) David Smith lists no professional medical background of any kind in his bio, but according to him:

"The Scottish system issued a death sentence on this man because its Socialized health care system could not 'work him in.' And this is, once again, my point--that this will be the end product in our system if we allow such a Socialized, or public option, or government-run, government-mandated system of co-op's to become the system here."

It's ironic that this right wing commentator is simultaneously upset that Great Britain showed compassion for a terminally ill prisoner (by releasing him) and didn't show compassion for a terrorist bomber (by not giving him better medicare care). David Smith might want to learn a lesson from the epic FAIL of Investor's Business Daily, which also passed judgment on Britain's National Health Service (NHS). In a now infamous editorial, IBD said:

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K. where the National Health Service would say the quality of life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

Well, as Steven Hawking himself subsequently pointed out, he is British, he does get his health care from the NHS, and he is here today to rebut IBD because of that care:

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

Texas Instruments RFAB

Good things come to those who wait

Is it possible that Texas Instruments' shell of a wafer fab in Richardson just might, eventually, be equipped and brought online to start producing the world's first analog products from a 300mm line? It's just possible, according to this story from Virginia. If so, the promise of jobs and tax revenues might finally be fulfilled.

SBOE Social Studies Standards

Will "Phyllis Schlafly" be an answer on TAKS test?

School's open! Drive carefully. And keep just as close an eye on what the State Board of Education (SBOE) is up to in Austin. Last week, Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, asked teachers how they are coping with the law passed by the Texas legislature a couple of years ago calling for, as Weiss put it, "the enrichment curriculum to include, right up there with fine arts and technology applications, 'religious literature, including the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and New Testament, and its impact on history and literature.'" He didn't get any teachers to respond, so we can't form any conclusions about what the introduction of religious literature into the curriculum is leading to.

In somewhat related news, The Dallas Morning News' William McKenzie reports on Kay Bailey Hutchison's campaign pledge to reverse the GOP's "shrinking majorities" in Texas. McKenzie suggests she might need to rein in the social conservatives to do that. He asks, "will she speak out if the State Board of Education goes off on a tangent in its upcoming decision about what Texas students need to know about social studies?"

We might find out the answer to that question sooner rather than later. The SBOE has taken the first step towards making conservative politics part of the basic knowledge and skills that every Texas schoolchild will have to learn to graduate. The SBOE appointed committees to draft new social studies curriculum standards. What they've come up with sounds like a new front in the partisan political wars will be fought in our children's classrooms. According to the Houston Chronicle, the first draft of new standards calls for students "to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority." Explosive stuff this. "David Bradley, R-Beaumont, one of the conservative leaders, figures the current draft will pass a preliminary vote along party lines 'once the napalm and smoke clear the room.'"

The standards will be finalized next spring, before Texas voters have another chance to dump these extremist political partisans from the SBOE. But voters should do just that in November, 2010, or whenever incumbents appear on a ballot again. The quality of education in Texas is at continual risk until Texas voters remove these members from the SBOE entirely: Terri Leo, David Bradley, Barbara Cargill, Cynthia Dunbar, Gail Lowe, Don McLeroy and Ken Mercer.

Freedom of Information Act

With liberty and data mining for all

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), signed into law in 1966, guarantees disclosure of documents controlled by the federal government. Texas has its own law, called the Public Information Act (PIA), which is in some ways stronger than the federal law, but open records requests are commonly called FOIA requests at all levels of government.

I've come across references to such requests in three separate places this week. That may be just a coincidence to you, but to me it's highly significant. The Dallas Morning News' Jim Mitchell explains, in an entirely different context, what having three of something means: "Let me piece together two news items. In journalism circles, this means that we're two-thirds of the way toward establishing a trend." In my case, I have that third news story needed to establish an official journalism trend.

First, Jeffrey Weiss tells us that the Plano ISD, supposedly notorious for requiring reporters (and presumably everyone else) to file FOIA requests to get the district administrators to reveal any bit of information, "set a land speed record releasing official secrets" this week, taking only one day to fulfill an FOIA request. The request? The DMN's Matt Haag asked for a copy of the "Top 10 List" joke told by the PISD superintendent at convocation. Why does the PISD seem to be reflexively reluctant to provide even innocuous information? Perhaps the answer is related to the next news story.

Richardson city manager Bill Keffler has had a bad week. He has had to spend way too much time talking to newspaper and television reporters, defending himself and his city. The charge? That he gets a car allowance. A pretty generous car allowance with pretty loose restrictions on how he can use that car. At least two FOIA requests, one by a private citizen and another by Ian McCann of The Dallas Morning News, revealed that 141 employees of the city receive car allowances. But slight differences in the responses to the two requests (annual data vs. monthly, year-to-date differences) led to a charge that the DMN is being used as a "propaganda and disinformation tool" by the city. Sigh. When you're dealing with a distrustful citizen who thinks he's being lied to, no amount of disclosure will ever be sufficient to satisfy (e.g., "birthers").

If you like the way things are going on the local level, you'll love the third story in this trend because you ain't seen nothin' yet. Just wait until President Obama gets the feds to open up. Wired magazine recently featured the US government's first-ever chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, and his radical idea:

"The Obama administration's most radical idea may also be its geekiest: Make nearly every hidden government spreadsheet and buried statistic available online, all in one place. For anyone to see. Are you searching for a Food and Drug Administration report that used to be obtainable only through the Freedom of Information Act? Just a mouseclick away. Need National Institutes of Health studies and school testing scores? Click. Census data, nonclassified Defense Department specs, obscure Securities and Exchange Commission files, prison statistics? Click click. Click. Click."

I can imagine that Richardson's Bill Keffler is thinking right about now that the day can't come soon enough. All the watchdogs, cranks, and believers in conspiracy theories will be distracted by the treasure trove of federal documents, leaving Keffler to go back to getting Richardson's potholes filled and summer softball leagues at Huffhines Park up and running again.

Autogate

Silly season, Richardson style

As long ago as the 19th century, late summer was known as the "silly season", when government and business go on vacation and the news media are desperate for how to fill newsprint or, more recently, air time. Animal attacks are a perennial favorite (Sharks!). So, too, are movie star scandals or crime stories. Better still if you can combine the two (Jacko Dead! Doctor Questioned!). But this summer, government is not relinquishing the stage. We've had everything from a governor adding "hiking the Appalachian Trail" to our endless list of euphemisms for having sex to nutty "birthers" and "deathers" trying to derail President Obama.

Richardson is not immune to silly season outbreaks. One current hot topic is whether the city manager is crossing the line of good governance by, a) getting a car allowance, or b) driving a land-yacht Ford Expedition, or c) letting his family use his city-leased car, or d) occasionally driving a city pool car when his family is using his city-leased car, or e) all of the above and, besides, he's friends with Gary Slagel, blech!

The story began when a citizen voiced a heartfelt complaint at a city council meeting. It gained momentum by showing up on YouTube (where else?) and being covered in the local "Conserve & Protect" blog. That led Ian McCann to be all over the story for The Dallas Morning News. McCann found that "most other cities provide auto benefits for employees" (d'oh). He also found that city manager Bill Keffler did occasionally drive a pool car when his family was using his city-leased car, but quit the practice a year ago after being asked to by then-mayor Steve Mitchell (that's right, this summer's big controversy is over something Keffler says he quit doing a year ago). Keffler now plans to quit driving a pool car altogether, even when his city-leased car is in the shop. (No word on how he will get to business meetings those days. Maybe he'll walk. Wearing sackcloth.)

Will this appease the critics? Probably not. The critics have already escalated, targeting car allowances in general, high salaries, uniform allowances, and "perks" of any kind. Further, we have charges that the city is lying to the DMN about its car allowances and that the DMN is serving the city as Pravda once served the USSR. After all, it is silly season.

Health Care End Game

Spoiler alert: How it will end

Carl Leubsdorf, former Washington Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News, predicts that last weekend's statements by President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius mark the beginning of the end game for health care reform. Obama said a "public option" was just a "sliver" of health care reform. Sebelius said it wasn't the "essential" part of health care reform. Leubsdorf said he saw such compromises on substantive parts of health care reform coming three months ago.

Compromise is one way to see the end game playing out. But Leubsdorf's playbook suffers from the fact that Republicans, so far, show no interest in compromise, even if Obama does. Key GOP players were quick to reject even the insurance cooperatives that have been offered as an alternative to a public option. And I can't imagine any GOP softening later. The anger that those Tea Party protestors have been barraging Democrats with would be redirected in an instant at any GOP Congressman or Senator who broke ranks with the party of "no."

There's another ending to this game that is more likely. Without GOP support, the Democrats are going to have to pass this bill themselves. To put that in the best possible light, they'll need to be able to say they really tried to compromise but the Republicans would have none of it. The Obama administration's coordinated hints at compromise are the bait. If, against all odds, the GOP bites, Obama gets his bipartisan bill. If, as is much more likely, the GOP refuses to bite, Obama gets to say he tried to compromise but the GOP said "no." Either way, he wins, as the Democrats have enough votes to pass health care reform without any Republicans on board, even if takes the obscure budget reconciliation process to do it. So, expect the public option to be included in the final bill and pass by the skin of its teeth.

The final vote will be really close, by design. The final bill will be crafted to get maximum reform with just enough votes to pass both the House and Senate. Some Democrats facing particularly difficult re-election fights if they vote for health care reform will be allowed to vote no, but not so many as to send the bill down to defeat. Whose arms get twisted to stay on board and who are allowed to desert, that's where the end game negotiating will play out, among Democrats. But ultimate passage of the bill is assured, just like it's always been.

One risk with using the budget reconciliation process is that some provisions of the bill having only an incidental impact on the budget might get stripped out of the bill during the reconciliation process. How that plays out may not be possible to predict or control. So, Democrats are reluctant to use this route. But they will if Republicans (and just a single Democrat) force them to. Expect Republicans to do just that. And, Democrats being Democrats, expect at least one Democrat to do that, too. So, budget reconciliation it shall be.

P.S. Texas' representatives and senators are not players in this game. Their "no" votes are cast in stone. Texas is irrelevant. And likely will remain so as long as the likes of Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and Pete Sessions represent us in Congress.

GOP's Shrinking Majority

Hutchison's prescription for renewal in Texas

Kay Bailey Hutchison is touring Texas this week, announcing for about the zillionth time that she is running for governor. But she first has to win the GOP primary against Rick Perry. Her message to Texas Republicans is that unless the Texas GOP dumps Rick Perry and elects her, the future of the GOP in Texas will be a continuation of a decade-long trend of "shrinking majorities." That time span just happens to match Perry's stint as governor. In a speech on Monday, Hutchison said:

"As Republicans, we can continue down the road of shrinking majorities. Or we can inspire, unite, and grow our party. Rebuild it from the bottom up, and reach out to Texans and say, 'If you are for limited government, lower taxes and less spending, we want you in the Republican Party, we welcome you and want you to be active in our cause.' That's how we will win elections, keep the majority and be worthy to lead our great state. And that's what we're going to do if I'm heading the Republican ticket."

My reaction to this was to yawn. It's the same story Republicans have been telling for decades. How is the same-old, same-old going to reverse the "shrinking majorities" Hutchison refers to? William McKenzie, in the The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, reaches the opposite conclusion. He calls Hutchison's comments "an honest, refreshing admission." What did she say that he found refreshing? Rather, it was what she does *not* say. No talk of God, guns, gays. No bashing of abortion, immigration, environmentalism. No appeal to the social conservatives or the war hawks. Instead, just a narrowing of focus to "limited government, lower taxes and less spending."

We'll see how long Hutchison can keep out of the debate those wedge issues that the social conservatives love. Or if she will be "forceful enough to break from the party's conservative faithful" when the issues inevitably do come up. How the Hutchison campaign plays out in Texas will determine whether the GOP renewal elsewhere is closer than we think or whether Texas continues its trend towards shrinking GOP majorities.

Atheists and Nazis

Rod Dreher is back in town.

Rod Dreher spent the summer reading about theology and Chinese medicine. Did he learn anything? Apparently not. He's back and he's just as intolerant of those who don't share his religious beliefs as ever. In a new post in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, he condemns summer camps for kids run by atheists. Only it's never just "atheists" for Dreher. He calls it "atheist fundamentalism" or "militant atheism" or "evangelical atheism". He describes "atheism's savage legacy" which he calls "no accident." You know where this is going, don't you? That's right: Godwin's Law, which Dreher falls victim to right in his original post. He warns us against allowing militant atheism to gain power. "[B]oth the communists and the Nazis justified their own monstrosities as 'scientific.'"

Sigh. Dreher ironically goes on to condemn "narrow-minded cant" without a hint of self awareness. There's not much to learn from Rod Dreher, who seems to have wasted his summer. He seems to have taken copious notes on everything he already agreed with, but was deaf to anything that could have opened his mind. But, serendipitously, there is something to learn in the comments.

"libba" patiently explains the obvious, that atheism is not the same as Nazism: "I am an atheist and I do not know any 'fundamental' atheists. All atheists I know are loving, giving, caring people who want to believe, or not, freely and allow others to do so as well."

"Glock21" gives us the real story on summer camps run by atheists: "[M]y experience with the Camp Quest in the Smoky Mountains this year was absolutely nothing like the 'atheist fundamentalist' indoctrination you are describing here. ..."

"Chucky Jesus" takes issue with Dreher's claim that campfires at atheist summer camps are places where kids are taught that the world is "disenchanted." He explains that atheists can be just as enchanted as any religious person: "Yes, this is not a demon-haunted world, but no enchantment through the eyes of an atheist? Hardly. Just gaze at any picture from the Hubble telescope and marvel at what the natural world offers, and no, it wasn't designed, which is all the more marvel."

"Chucky Jesus" goes on to explain what an atheist "church" is all about:

"I'm a member of the North Texas Church of Freethought, and you obviously have pre-conceived notions of what 'an atheist church' does. We don't celebrate 'non-existence' of anything, we celebrate life, the pursuit of knowledge based on reason, and yes even fine art and human expression.

I see you put in an obligatory link to our church, but did you even bother reading anything of the site?

This is the description of our church at out site:

We are a rational approach to religion, offering atheists, agnostics, humanists, and freethinkers all the social, emotional and inspirational benefits of traditional faith-based churches, but without appealing to tradition or superstition. Our growing community of freethinkers provides a positive, affirming environment for leading a good life, free of the illogic and intolerance of other religions based on holy books and supernaturalism."

The only thing spoiling this reasoned response is the alias this freethinker chose: Chucky Jesus. There's a thin line between ridicule and intolerance, "Chucky Jesus."

Finally, "Santi", who sounds like he is very familiar with Rod Dreher's writings, says sardonically, "I'm extremely disappointed by this column. I was fully expecting a clear headed condemnation of Woodstock."

Where Is ... the Blockhouse?

From Where Is ...

This is another in an occasional series of photos for which readers are challenged to identify the location where the photo was taken. Today's challenge: what is this blockhouse and where is it located?

I call it a blockhouse because it sort of looks like a blockhouse (to me), not because it has a military purpose. In fact, I'm not sure what its purpose is and I don't know how it works. I do know what I was looking for when I found it. Maybe I'll learn whether it's what I was looking for from readers who can identify it.

As always, readers who identify the location win a year's free subscription to "Ed Cognoski." Bonus points for identifying which recent blog topic and comment on Conserve & Protect inspired the choice of subject.

Previous challenge: Where is ... the Park Bench?

Health Care Debate

"The health care debate has gone crazy."

The Dallas Morning News editorial board weighs in on the health care reform debate. Not health care reform, but the debate. Only they don't call it a debate. They say,

"Health care reform is an enormously complex, vitally important issue, but it has become all but impossible to hold a civil discussion about it. These town halls have degenerated into ugly, obnoxious town hells."

They got that right. Read the editorial, but stay away from the comments. There were 201 comments this afternoon. There are certainly more since then. Most of them by the irony-impaired, as "civil discussion" is rare and "ugly, obnoxious" is common. Here, for example, are the most recent few comments:

"Hitler had doctors working for him."

"You can't spell liberal without l-i-e."

"No question as to where the DMN (Democrat Morning News) stands."

Perhaps the biggest irony in all this is that those "town hells" are making the politicians in Washington look thoughtful, dignified, even statesmanlike compared to the folks back home.

Deathers

Truth is the first casualty of war

That quote is usually credited to Republican Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA), who said it in 1918 in the midst of World War I. Now, we're in the midst of a political war over health insurance and Republicans are demonstrating they know well how to apply Johnson's aphorism.

Just when the "birthers," the delusional political partisans who insist that President Obama is not a natural born citizen, are losing their amusement value, they have morphed into "deathers," delusional political partisans who insist that President Obama is conspiring to kill old people. They aren't so funny in this guise, although The Daily Show satire of the deathers is pretty funny.

Today, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) joins New Gingrich and Sarah Palin as Republican Party leaders who are peddling that myth of "death panels" shamelessly. Grassley told a town hall meeting today, "We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma." Earlier, Sarah Palin decried Obama's "death panels" that were going to kill her baby. Gingrich defended Palin by telling George Stephanopolous, "You're asking us to trust the government when there clearly are people in the government who believe in establishing euthanasia."

All of this makes Pete Sessions (R-TX) sound relatively sane. The only outrageous falsehood he told at last week's town hall meeting in Texas was that the Democratic bill eliminates private insurance. Sessions didn't condemn the sign "Euthanize ObamaCare, Not Our Seniors" that was cheered by his town hall audience, but at least he didn't explicitly endorse it, either.

Isn't there someone who can calmly and rationally discuss end-of-life medical care? Someone interested in solving the health care crisis in our country and not just interested in scoring cheap, political points? Someone who might suggest something like this:

"More than 20 percent of all Medicare spending occurs in the last two months of life. Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin has developed a successful end-of-life, best practice that combines: 1) community-wide advance care planning, where 90 percent of patients have advance directives; 2) hospice and palliative care; and 3) coordination of services through an electronic medical record. The Gundersen approach empowers patients and families to control and direct their care. The Dartmouth Health Atlas has documented that Gundersen delivers care at a 30 percent lower rate than the national average ($18,359 versus $25,860). If Gundersen's approach was used to care for the approximately 4.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who die every year, Medicare could save more than $33 billion a year."

What's that, you say? Someone actually did say that, in an essay in The Washington Post? And it wasn't a socialist, granny-killing spokesman for the Obama administration? It was former Republican Speaker of the House New Gingrich, you say? As recently as July 2, 2009? How fast Gingrich's story changed when he saw political advantage in encouraging the spread of fear, uncertainty and doubt. It turns out that the American public is right to fear euthanasia. Truth was its first victim in this war.

Briefing

Know what I'm talking about?

If you know that the headline, "Briefing," refers to The Dallas Morning News' freebie newspaper that is tossed on the lawns of 200,000 non-subscribers Wednesdays through Saturdays, then Belo's branding effort is working. According to Robert Wilonsky, in a Unfair Park blog, Belo CEO Robert Decherd maintains that "the free, miniature Morning News is a money-maker, not merely a trash-generator." And he apparently gets support from Editor & Publisher.

Maybe yes, maybe no. I was more interested in the opening this blog posting offers me to question a mystery that's been bugging me ever since the thin, soggy paper started showing up on my own lawn a year or two ago. So, I posted my question in a comment on Unfair Park.

"Is anyone else receiving two copies of Briefing in the same bag? Not all the ads, just the main section. It's not just an occasional accident. It's pretty dang near every day. What gives?"

So far, no luck. Either Unfair Park readers have moved on to other pressing topics (Jim Schutze is back at the City Hall trial; bring the popcorn), or no one else is getting double delivery (two for the price of none), or no one knows why the DMN is being so generous (word used loosely). I'm hoping readers here might be more knowledgeable than Unfair Park readers (I know we all think that, but here's the chance to prove it).

Storm Water, Redevelopment and Golf

What do these have in common?

All three are getting the Richardson City Council's attention lately, but only one really matters.

In July, at the end of a long council worksession, the council discussed a proposed new utility fee to set up a dedicated fund for storm water drainage operations instead of paying for these operations out of the general fund. The council exhibited what I considered unseemly haste in discussing how they could repurpose the general fund, with redevelopment of the Spring Valley corridor a popular option. I voiced my distaste with the process. If storm water operations is better funded out of a dedicated utility fee than out of general fund, then the general tax rate ought to go down equivalently to make the shift revenue neutral. Anything else gives at least the appearance of a money grab despite all the protestations to the contrary. And if a redevelopment fund is called for, it ought to be presented to the taxpayers as the reason why the checks they write to the City of Richardson (for taxes and fees) are getting bigger.

I called for open discussion of the redevelopment of Spring Valley corridor. Let's give it all the time and attention it requires. Let's fund it openly.

In August, the city council spent nearly two hours reviewing a report on the operation of the city-owned Sherrill Park golf course. The conclusion: Sherrill Park is operating just fine. It's profitable. It's a great example of a public-private partnership.

This time it is Andrew Laska, of the Richardson Heights Homeowners Association, who is calling for more discussion of the redevelopment of the Spring Valley corridor. In an editorial in The Richardson Echo, Laska argues that the city council should quit trying to fix what's already working (Sherrill Park) and spend more time on "real problems" (Spring Valley). I welcome his call to get Spring Valley corridor redevelopment out in the open, on the table, and thoroughly aired. Over the next decade redevelopment is going to be the biggest issue facing Richardson, not our golf courses, not storm water management, not our landfill transfer stations, not transparency in government. The more Richardson taxpayers are educated about the need and involved in crafting solutions, the better for everyone who lives or works in Richardson.

Health Care Reform and Down Syndrome

Pete Sessions introduces self-serving legislation

Wick Allison, FrontBurner publisher, and Pete Sessions (R-TX) share what Allison describes as "one of life's great joys": they both have a Down syndrome child in their families. That makes it hard for me to say anything critical of what Sessions does to improve the government and non-profit resources available for his child and other disabled children. But it doesn't stop Wick Allison. In FrontBurner, he points out one very special case where Sessions makes an exception to his opposition to the health care reform now making its way through Congress. It's a bill introduced by Sessions to make it "so that his son (and my daughter) will receive every extra dollar of federal money that can be squeezed no matter what." Read the whole head-shaking story on FrontBurner.

Disinformation About Health Care Reform cont'd

When distortion isn't working, make things up

Photo by Destiny

If you've been paying even an ounce of attention to the health care reform debate, you know that there's a lot of misinformation being circulated out there. This blog highlighted one example by a local blogger, Trey Garrison, who distorted the White House's effort to dispel misinformation as a kind of Big Brother "Inform on Your Neighbor" policy. If you thought any effort, by anyone, to counter distortions and lies would be welcomed, you'd be wrong. Such efforts are threats to the opponents of health care reform and become targets of misinformation themselves.

Today's example is more serious. It's by north Texas' own Congressman, Pete Sessions (R-TX). Sessions held a town hall meeting last Wednesday in Richardson, covered here. Sessions made a big deal over the fact that the health care bill being debated in Congress contains a section that allegedly would do away with individual health insurance policies. He even had a Powerpoint slide displayed on a screen behind him (see photo above or Destiny's video) that shows some text from the bill. Probably very few people in the room could read the text on the screen. Sessions urged the audience to read the bill themselves. Probably even fewer bothered to take him up on the challenge. I did. And what I found was that the alleged evidence that Sessions was displaying behind him not only didn't support his claim, but in fact was 180 degrees opposite from his claim.

That section of the proposed health care bill is a grandfather clause, protecting all individual policies written before health care reform becomes law. In other words, if you have health insurance, and you like your current policy, you can keep it, just like President Obama has said all along and exactly opposite of what Pete Sessions would have you believe. The bill goes on to say that insurance companies can continue to write individual policies, with new policies required to follow the new rules being enacted as part of reform. Rules like insurance companies can't deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Or insurance companies can't drop your coverage because your health care is costing them too much. You know, rules that protect the consumer.

That a member of Congress would so distort what's in the bill crosses the line into outright dishonesty. It displays a lack of good faith in trying to negotiate a bipartisan bill. It displays a lack of factual arguments against health care reform. Sessions' defense of the insurance industry status quo is so bankrupt that he is reduced to just making things up.

Pete Sessions Town Hall Meeting

Report from a stranger in a strange land

Pete Sessions held a town hall meeting in Richardson Wednesday evening. Grand Hall of the Civic Center. Inside, a festive atmosphere. An overflowing crowd. Every chair taken. People lined up two and three deep along the walls to the back and sides. Microphone connected to speakers in the room next door for people who didn't fit inside the Grand Hall.

The audience was dominated by vocal conservatives by at least a nine to one ratio. They were there for one overriding reason. To express hearty disapproval of anything smacking of health care reform. From the young man with the "John Galt" name tag to the old man marching down the center aisle with the sign reading, "Euthanize Obama 'Care' Not Our Seniors", it was clear that Pete Sessions had nothing to fear from this crowd. No one was going to ask him how holding fundraisers in Las Vegas burlesque houses is consistent with family values. No one was going to ask him how inserting earmarks for dirigible research at an Illinois company associated with a former aide is consistent with cutting government spending.

The crowd wasn't there to hear Pete Sessions. They were here to vent. Sessions played the crowd masterfully. He let everyone say their peace, speaking up mostly when someone left any doubt that Pete Sessions might not be one of them, but usually just letting the crowd do his work for him. And that they did. I don't have a recording of any of the proceedings, but here are snippets of what I remember. I use quotation marks for the audience questions, but loosely. I don't claim every quote is verbatim. (Reactions by the crowd or Pete Sessions are denoted in parentheses.) [My own editorial comments are in square brackets.]

• "How can AARP support this health care bill?" (Crowd boos AARP.) [Sessions wisely sidesteps criticizing AARP.]
• "How can Congress vote on a thousand page bill without reading it?" (Sessions agrees. He tells the public to read it.) [Uh huh.]
• "Will you commit to never vote for a bill without reading it?" (Sessions says he has voted on lots of bills without reading them, but he "meticulously scours" "substantive" bills.) [That's a no to that commitment.]
• "How did you vote on such and such a bill?" (Sessions says he doesn't remember every vote.) [How can you remember what you didn't even read?]
• "You say you oppose health care reform because of cost. Yet you voted for a trillion dollar tax cut, a three trillion dollar war, a trillion dollar Medicare drug benefit, and a trillion dollar Wall Street bailout. How do you reconcile these?" (Puzzled crowd reaction. Do we boo Sessions' hypocrisy or boo the insolent Democrat asking the question? Sessions says something about Nancy Pelosi and the crowd laughs and hoots.) [Sessions skates.]
• "The Democratic government passed a budget knowing it would drive up unemployment." (Sessions says he was a paperboy and never missed a day of work.) [Huh? My notes must have missed something.}
• "Remember, the economic downturn began under George Bush." (Boo, hiss from audience.) [We refuse to remember.]
• "I don't have health insurance." (Shout from audience: "Get a job.")
• "There are 5 million in Texas without health insurance, including a million children." (Head shakes of denial from audience. Sessions says he opposed SCHIP because it results in parents dropping their own insurance to go to Parkland instead.) [Huh? My notes must be missing something again.]
• "I founded a school in northern Iraq. I come back to America to find myself stabbed in the back. Will you commit to never voting for a bill that is against the Constitution?" (Sessions doesn't address the question.) [Sessions missed an opportunity. Who can't commit to that?]
• "Congress works for us. How can they vote benefits for themselves that aren't available to their employers?" (Sessions says he doesn't accept Congressional health insurance. Crowd erupts in cheers.) [Best line of the night by Sessions.]
• "The reason given for 'cap and trade' legislation is global warming. The theory doesn't hold water. It's bogus. A hoax." (Crowd cheers. Sessions says we need "nucular" energy. Says people with children in wheelchairs need SUVs. Says we do need to worry about the atmosphere but government shouldn't set standards. Government action will drive jobs overseas.) [A great sidestep. Sessions didn't have to take a stand on global warming or have to explain just how we should address it without government action.]
• "Why should we give amnesty to illegal aliens?" (Sessions challenges the crowd to "write a bill that doesn't just throw everybody out of the country." Crowd shouts back, "Why not?" Sessions quickly pivots to saying he favors adding immigration enforcement to local police responsibilities. Crowd is back with him.) [This was Sessions' only question that he risked a position contrary to the wishes of his audience, but he recovered quickly.]
• "80% of people are happy with their health care. Why can't government just leave us alone?" (White-haired lady, almost certainly a beneficiary of the single-payer, government-run, Medicare program, applauds. Sessions says government should work on the 20% that's the problem, not the 80% that's working right. Then, inexplicably, he says we don't have enough doctors for that 20%.) [Huh? Again, my notes must have missed the logic that ties these statements together.]
• "I'm afraid that in another three months, six months, a year, we'll be so far gone I won't have a place to go to the polls." (Standing ovation from crowd.)
• "Without a public option, how do you keep insurance companies from responding to the needs of Wall Street instead of the public?" (Puzzled reaction from audience as I imagine them wrestling with the thought, if we oppose the public option, does that mean we support Wall Street? Sessions resolved the conflict by replying, blah, blah, blah, Nancy Pelosi, and the crowd is back on the right page again, booing lustily.)
• "What would your single page health care reform bill look like?" (Sessions says tort reform, a personal responsibility statement, prohibition of denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, pre-tax allowance for health care savings, a monster risk pool, and more competition among insurers.) [No one asked why neither Sessions nor any other GOP member of Congress introduced such a bill, if only to to be able to point to a better alternative. Correction: The GOP did introduce their own $700 billion bill on 7/29/2009.]
• "Why did you vote for the Wall Street bailout?" (Sessions says the bailout would have worked except the new Congress decided it didn't want the money back and Barney Frank decided to give to Acorn whatever money was paid back. Crowd anger now directed at Frank and Acorn.) [Sessions skates.]
• "When I was a 20-year-old single mother, $5,000 for a health savings account would have been impossible. Have some compassion." (Boos, hisses from audience.)
• "America is the most compassionate country on Earth." (Wild applause from audience.) Seconds later, same woman, "I'm tired of paying for the education and health care of these people." (More wild applause from the self-professed compassionate audience.)
• "I'm Dave from London and a member of the Texas Tea Party." (Cheers.) "I became a US citizen yesterday." (Louder cheers.) "If you are poor and sick in this country you are better off today than under 'ObamaCare'." (Still louder cheers.)
• "I'm a US citizen but spent several years in Canada and was extremely pleased with Canadian health care." (Shouts from audience: "Go back.")
• "The biggest lie is that our health care system is broken. Everybody in this country has access to health care. Go to the hospital emergency room." [My notes show no reply by Sessions, which was typical for positions that I can't believe even Sessions sympathizes with. Or does he?]

Finally, fifteen minutes past its alloted ninety minutes, Pete Sessions closed the town hall meeting by thanking everyone for attending and complimenting everyone for "respecting each others' opinions." It was a fitting irony to a perfectly surreal and entertaining evening.

Disinformation About Health Care Reform

A case in point

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has been paying an ounce of attention, but there's a ton of disinformation about health care reform being spread. Trey Garrison, in his own blog, reports on a new White House request that Garrison calls an "Inform on Your Neighbor" policy.

More accurately, the White House asked Americans, not to "inform on their neighbor", but to help dispel "disinformation about health insurance reform out there." The White House doesn't care who your neighbors are. They care about what disinformation is being spread, so they can explain the truth. Trey Garrison's distortion of the White House request is an example. And he's a supposed professional journalist (albeit one with a PayPal donation button on his blog). Imagine the distortions, myths and lies being spread by unscrupulous opponents of health care reform. In his defense, Garrison does close by saying he's confused.

Texas Projection Measure

How much can you learn in a day?

Many odd questions get debated late at night, over beers, in college dorms. Given the demands placed on students with lectures, labs, research and homework, it shouldn't be surprising that one such question that arose was, "How much can you learn in day?" Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott now faces a similar question, "How much progress over a school year is good enough?"

William McKenzie, in The Dallas Morning News Education blog, reports that Scott is trying to answer that question as part of the accountability ratings for schools. This year, for the first time, Texas is looking at not only how many students pass the TAKS test, but how much students have progressed during the year. Have enough students show enough progress, even if they don't pass the test, and a school could still be given a an acceptable or better rating. Despite some mockery (lowering standards, rewarding for failure, fuzzy math), this makes a lot of sense.

Take for example, two sixth grade teachers. The first has a class of bright students who all start the year performing at grade level. During the year, they learn what's required of sixth graders and pass the TAKS. Good job.

The second teacher finds herself with a class of students who have been left behind. None are performing at grade level. Some are performing two or more grades behind. But, through hard work, diligence and skill, she brings all of the students along, all progressing at least one grade level and some two grade levels during the school year with her. How do we just this teacher's, this school's performance? The old way would judge them unacceptable because so few students passed the TAKS. But most reasonable people would recognize this teacher is doing superior work because her students are making so much progress. Another year or two of such teaching and these students might catch up. The old ratings had no way to recognize that.

The old way of rating schools was blind to such progress. The new Texas Projection Method is designed to identify such progress so that teachers responsible for superior progress can be identified, rewarded and learned from. It's a good goal. Parents, legislators, the public ought to give it a chance to work.

Senator Bill White (D-TX)

Could a Democrat win in Texas?

Martin Frost, former Democratic Congressman from Texas, has an opinion piece in Politico in which he outlines a scenario in which a Democrat, Houston Mayor Bill White, could end up winning the special election held to pick a replacement for retiring Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. It goes like this. The Republican field attracts many candidates. They split the GOP vote badly. An unelectable candidate (think a Ron Paul) manages to outpoll all other Republicans with only a small percentage of the vote, say 18%. The only Democratic candidate in the race, White, gets all the Democratic votes to make it into the run-off with the unelectable Republican. In the ensuing run-off, White attracts enough Democrats and moderate independents to win.

How likely is this scenario? Not very, in my opinion. But you can't rule it out. Frost points to just such a scenario that resulted in John Tower winning the special election to replace Lyndon Johnson, becoming the first Republican to win Texas since Reconstruction. Of course, first there has to be a special election. Kay Bailey Hutchison continues to play coy about that. Bill White may need a lot of dominoes to fall just his way, but if they do, he's putting himself in position to benefit.

RISD Superintendent

Superintendent resigns unexpectedly

In a story in The Dallas Morning News, Jeffrey Weiss reports that "Richardson schools superintendent David Simmons resigned late Monday in what one board member called a difference in philosophy."

There's certainly nothing wrong with the board wanting to see improvements in areas other than TAKS scores, including more National Merit scholars, higher SAT scores and more participation in vocational classes. In fact, there's a lot to like in that. Why the board doesn't consider David Simmons to be the right superintendent to carry progress into those areas is probably a matter we'll never know. In any case, he should be commended for preserving the legacy of quality education in the RISD. Everyone ought to wish him well in his future endeavors.

SNAFU with DMN Web Site

But don't turn to your local paper to read about it

In case you missed it, The Dallas Morning News Web site was seriously troubled for most of last Friday. Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, explained it as "the virtual hamsters who power the dallasnews servers were out of commission. Or something." Later, when service was restored, McCann explained, "we worker bees don't got a clue what happened, and I doubt they'll be telling us."

This is another example of my pet peeve with the news media. Why isn't a snafu that shuts down a major metropolitan daily's Web operations considered newsworthy? Until the DMN can learn to cover itself, there's a big hole in its coverage of anything local. If the future of the news is local, the DMN is doomed.

UT-Dallas Police Scandal

Brass Pig Award? What were you thinking?

The UT-Dallas police chief resigned without explanation in May, after having been placed on administrative leave in April. Hints of scandal hung over her head. Last week, clues to what was behind the actions began leaking out. According to Holly K. Hacker in a story in The Dallas Morning News

"The former police chief of the University of Texas at Dallas ran personal errands in her state-leased sport utility vehicle, several employees allege. They say she ordered employees to drive her family to the airport for vacations, and to do work for her consulting businesses. ... [O]fficers objected to the 'Brass Pig Award,' created by Ridge and given at an annual awards banquet to the officer 'with the most embarrassing mishap of the preceding year.'"

All in all, petty and tawdry. Good examples for that management training chapter titled "What Makes a Bad Boss."

Are there any larger lessons to learn here? That remains to be seen. How did the situation get out of control? Were these longstanding offenses that were widely known but overlooked? Was oversight of the police chief herself lax? Did the university discourage employees from reporting abuses? The sooner we can get past the juicy details about the chief's SUV and her brass pig and get on to the meatier details about who in the higher-up UT-Dallas administration let the campus police department get so far out of control, the sooner UT-Dallas can put this whole sorry chapter behind it.

Transparency in Gov't

Guess who's the leader of the band?

The Richardson Coalition, a political action committee whose slate of candidates swept the Richardson City Council elections this year, is praising recent plans by the council to broadcast and stream council meetings. The PAC's latest editorial is titled, "Transparency... Finally, some progress!"

"While it is a fact that there is already a great deal of transparency in our city affairs, we have had a real need to make a significant improvement. For the past two years there has been much talk and not much action in this very important area."

After the spit-take, I had to go back and check that it was, indeed the Richardson Coalition that published this editorial. The candidates who did the most to make transparency an issue in the recent council election campaign were universally opposed by the Richardson Coalition. Thanks to these challengers for making it an issue, all of the candidates, including those eventually elected, had gone on record during the election campaign supporting the video streaming of council meetings.

But not the Richardson Coalition itself. On its Web site, the Richardson Coalition publishes issues it urges the city council to take action on. Transparency is not among them. Searching its editorial archives, the only time the word "transparency" appeared before now was in an editorial criticizing the Richardson Fire Fighters Association for supporting candidates in the election.

Finally, some progress, indeed. Now that it's almost a done deal, the Richardson Coalition is at the head of the parade cheering this progress. Next time, show some leadership.

NY and TX and Semiconductors

NY's bet pays off

Semiconductor International, not the usual place you find a discussion about horse racing, takes us to Saratoga Springs to tell us a tale of two bets, one that paid off, one that didn't. The winner was New York's investment in semiconductor fabs in upstate New York. The loser was the state of Texas, whose subsidies for Texas Instruments' empty fab in Richardson have yet to yield results.

There are no lessons here to help us make better bets in the future, but maybe the story offers consolation to the taxpayers in Texas to learn that maybe it wasn't necessarily a stupid bet. Some horses pay. Some don't. That's how gambling works.

Hat tip to Pris Hayes. Follow her on Twitter.

Shop Class

It's not your father's Oldsmobile fix-it class any more

Jeffrey Weiss, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, reports that Lake Highlands High School fell just short of achieving a rating of "Recognized" this year from the Texas Education Association (TEA) because its drop-out rate was over the limit by just two students. LHHS plans to appeal the result, as it claims there are at least four students counted as drop-outs who simply transferred to other districts without notifying the RISD.

What caught my attention were reader comments such as this from "PegTxEx":

"Ugh. This makes me physically ill. I wonder if these two students would have stayed in school if they were learning a 'trade' through some of their classes."

I wonder how many Richardson residents are unaware of just how rich the course offerings are in the RISD? RISD recognizes that a university degree is not right for everyone. RISD offers a wide range of career and technology education (CATE) courses including trade and industrial education in fields such as

• Building Trades - LHHS only
• Electrical Systems - BHS and RHS only
• Metal Technology Systems - RHS only
• Cosmetology - LHHS and BHS only
• Criminal Justice - LHHS only
• Geographic Information Systems - PHS only
• Transportation Systems (Automotive) - RHS only
• Infinity Project (Engineering) - PHS only
• Project Lead the Way - BHS STEM Academy only
• Robotics - RHS only

Through CATE and other programs, RISD does seek to provide a benefit for all students to stay in school, whether they intend to go on to college or not. Its because of this proactive approach that RISD has been "Recognized" by the TEA four years in a row, the largest school district in the state to be able to make that claim.