'Heil, Hugo'

Dallas Blog | Tom Pauken:

“Hugo Chavez, the leftist President of Venezuela, took some additional steps yesterday to consolidate all political power in his hands as Venezuela's congress passed legislation giving President Chavez the right to 'rule by decree'. ”

Getting congress to pass legislation giving the executive power is so twentieth century. Doesn't Hugo Chavez know that the modern way to do it is to just unilaterally issue a signing statement claiming the desired powers?

Posting delays on Dallas Blog

Dallas Blog:

“Some of our regular bloggers may be wondering why their posts are not appearing automatically on Dallas Blog as they have in the past. Earlier today the Web site was overrun with duplicate posts from one blogger using various screen names of others who frequently post on the site.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

As someone who has experienced more than my share of censorship at the hands of Dallas Blog (for example, here and here), I regret seeing the heavy hand of censorship extended even more.

I personally found the posts by people such as Geoff Staples and Wilma to be left wing, extremist, predictable, and altogether counter-productive. There were similar right wing diatribes, but these did not attract so much as a raised eyebrow from Tom Pauken. Mr Pauken defends his heavy-handed censorship by saying he censors ad hominem attacks, not differing political opinions. Well, that's not quite right. Ad hominem attacks are often allowed from the right, including Mr Pauken himself, who, for example, has an obsession with my own anonymity, attacking that instead of the logic of my arguments (for example, see here).

In the few days since the moderation has been imposed, right wing opinions tend to go unchallenged. For example, the only responses to the Dallas Blog censorship announcement itself were by Bildo, James W. Walker, Jan B., Bill De Ore and G.S. McCorkle. A token moderate voice might show up before the thread runs its course, enough for the right wingers to claim Dallas Blog is fair and balanced, but the tone of the site has taken a turn to the right.

One of the conservative readers described the postings that purportedly triggered the moderation as the "kind of behavior [that] has a chilling effect on other folks that might otherwise want to join in the discussion." In fact, the chilling effect is on the voices that dare challenge Tom Pauken and Scott Bennett and the Dallas Blog institutional opinion.

Appraisal Task Force Report Out Today

Capitol Letters | Mike Drago:

“The final report from the Tom Pauken-led task force on property appraisals releases its report this afternoon in a presser with Gov. Perry. Quorum Report's Harvey Kronberg obtained an early copy, which reveals few, if any, surprises.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I've commented on this task force many times before. My bottom line has always been that Gov. Perry and Tom Pauken have used so-called appraisal reform as a cover to target their real aim: capping the growth of local government spending. That may or may not be a worthwhile cause, but it's disingenuous to use the appraisal process as a cover to attack local government.

Let's look at the task force's final recommendations to see how many deal with the appraisal process. (The quotes are from Mike Drago's story, not the task force's report itself.)

• "Require voters' approval for government spending to increase more than 5 percent year-over-year."

  EC: This has nothing to do with the appraisal process. Let the people elected by local voters do their jobs. If you don't like the budgets they draw up, vote them out and replace them. Don't trash representative government itself and institute government by referendum. It all makes one wonder: why wasn't the task force named something like "Task Force on New Restrictions on Local Government"?

• "Reform the property appraisal process by establishing minimum qualifications for appraisal board members and taking other steps to protect property owners."

  EC: There's nothing wrong with setting qualifications for these appointed positions, as long as the qualifications are professional, not political.

• "Require taxing entities to give taxpayers more specific and explicit information in their bills."

  EC: Truth-in-taxation is OK, even if it is worded in a way designed to stimulate taxpayer revolts. So be it.

• "Require the comptroller to give taxpayers better information about their rights -- notably their rights to appeal -- under the tax code."

  EC: Truth-in-taxation is OK, even if it is worded in a way designed to stimulate taxpayer revolts. So be it.

• "Change the makeup of the appraisal boards to include taxpayer representatives."

  EC: Of the current five member board, all now appointed by local taxing entities, two members would be replaced by appointments by a District Judge and one member would be replaced by the elected county tax assessor-collector. As this provides a check against potential abuse of the appraisal process by the local taxing entities, it is a reasonable recommendation.

• "Prohibit legislative actions that are in effect unfunded mandates — services that the state requires local governments to perform but does not fund. One example: Requiring school districts to lower the student-teacher ratio without providing additional money to hire more teachers."

  EC: This is a reasonable idea, but this has nothing to do with the appraisal process either.

• "Require the disclosure of property sales prices. A lack of disclosure is thought to have depressed the taxable value of property, especially on high-end residential and commercial property."

  EC: Finally, something that sounds like it will actually improve the accuracy of property appraisals in Texas. But it turns out that this recommendation technically doesn't require disclosure of the sales price at all, only the buyer's estimated value, with supporting documentation. A "liar's affidavit" in other words. Sigh.

• Give the option to city and county governments to enact a 1/2 cent sales tax dedicated to property tax reduction.

  EC: Again, this has nothing to do with the property appraisal process. I would vote against a sales tax increase because sales taxes are inherently regressive. Shifting the burden of funding local government from property taxes to sales taxes results in shifting the burden from the wealthy to the working class and poor. Nevertheless, if local voters want to choose such a scheme, the choice should be available to them. So, I accept allowing a vote on higher sales taxes, but I hope voters reject the idea.

Race, sex, and other irrelevancies

Dallas Blog | William Murchison:

“ Hillary and Barack have the media lobbing into our midst a question of great intensity. Is it time -- oh, yes, brothers and sisters, has the time come at last for the United States to have a woman president, or, if not that, a black one? Forgive me. I can't stifle the yawn. ... The First of His Race, the First of Her Sex -- bah, humbug, horsefeathers, all that stuff! Surely Sens. Clinton and Obama can lose on their own without tottering on so despicable a crutch.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Irrelevancies? Maybe Mr Murchison hasn't noticed that the first 43 Presidents in US history have been white males. Perhaps he thinks it's just a coincidence. That race and sex were totally irrelevant to voters in election after election, all of which resulted in a white male moving into the White House afterwards. On the contrary, race and sex have been the very opposite of irrelevancies up to now. Race and sex have been litmus tests for enough of the electorate to ensure those 43 white males their electoral victories.

Mr Murchison is absurd in saying Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton somehow have an advantage because of race and sex, that the hurdle in front of them is not a hurdle at all, but a "crutch" propping them up. Nonsense. The significance of 2008 is that maybe, just maybe, race and sex are no longer an insurmountable hurdle. Except, judging by the appearance of articles like Mr Murchison's, focusing as they do on race and sex, perhaps 2008 is still too soon for race and sex to be truly irrelevant to Americans choosing their next President.

Looking back at the Confederacy with modern eyes

Star-Telegram | Jerry Patterson:

“Any attempt to judge our history by today's standards -- out of the context in which it occurred -- is at best problematic and at worst dishonest. ... Many believe that the War Between the States was solely about slavery and that the Confederacy is synonymous with racism. That conclusion is faulty because the premise is inaccurate.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Patterson is repeating the tired old revisionist argument that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery. That instead, it was all very theoretical, all about dry political science, about principles like federalism and states' rights. Nonsense. It was about slavery.

For the first eighty years of its existence, the American nation was a balancing act between the interests of the slave-holding states and the free states. The US Constitution was a patchwork of compromises designed to balance those interests.

As long as the political power of the North and South was roughly equal, the compact held. When the North's political power grew to the point that the South felt that their way of life, i.e., slavery, was threatened, the Union disintegrated.

Now Mr Patterson would have you believe that attitudes about slavery were not sectional and therefore not a cause of war. He selectively quotes Robert E Lee and Abraham Lincoln. Yes, Lee joined the Confederate cause more out of loyalty to Virginia than slavery, but Virginia's cause was the preservation of slavery. Yes, Lincoln delayed emancipation in a diplomatic attempt to keep the border states from joining the Confederacy, but it was his certainty that the US could not endure "permanently half slave and half free" that triggered secession.

Make no mistake about it. This was a war between slave-holding states and free states. Texas' own declaration of secession leaves no doubt. Pick almost any paragraph and you'll get something like this:

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color - a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

The declarations of secession of all the Confederate states read like this. They are screeds about how slavery is threatened by Northern abolitionists, about how Constitutional federalism and states' rights protect the slave-holding states' peculiar institution, about how the Southern states are entitled to secede to protect the "beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery" which is supported by the "plainest revelations of Divine Law."

Mr Patterson really ought to put his quotes from Lee and Lincoln in the context in which they occurred. Read these declarations of secession and tell us with a straight face that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. That cause belongs in the dustbin of history and the flag that represented that cause belongs there, too, even if there may have been some honorable and noble men who went to war under that ignoble banner.

In the end, I can agree with only one thing Mr Patterson says, and only if he turns it on himself and his own attempts at revisionist history: "Retroactive cleansing of history is doomed to failure because it is, at heart, a lie."

Conservatives, our hubris created this waste of a war

Dallas Morning News | Rod Dreher:

“When 9/11 happened, I was relieved to have a stiff-spined Republican in the White House instead of a Democratic squish. ... I was a fool. Now I find myself in an unsettling position for a conservative: duty-bound to instruct my children never to take presidents or generals at their word and to always question authority.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Rod Dreher is experiencing a mid-life crisis. In other forums, he explains how he put his faith in the Catholic Church ... and was let down. Here, he put his faith in the Republican Party ... and was let down. He knows he was let down, but only dimly understands what let him down. He thinks it was Presidents and generals and authority. In fact, it was faith itself. Let reason be your guide.

School District and Landowner Embroiled In East Texas Land Dispute

KLTV.com | Tracy Watler:

“Henderson ISD has plans to build a new primary school, but they say in order to do so, they need a certain four acres, owned by a city councilman. But that councilman says the school's offer is just not good enough. ... The Rusk County Appraisal District says Ashmore's land is worth just 3,000 dollars an acre. ... 'We definitely feel like, from what we've been told, that $15,000 per acres for these four acres is a fair amount of money to offer for that property,' says [Henderson ISD Superintendent Tommy] Alexander. But Ashmore doesn't think so. That's why he's asking for $150,000.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Let me see if I've got this straight. The councilman has been paying property on land that's appraised at $3000/acre. A buyer offers hims $15,000/acre. He says his land is really worth $37,500/acre.

Knowing nothing more, if I were the arbiter, I would award him the $15,000 and tell him he's lucky the city doesn't take his land for the value he's been happy paying taxes on — $3,000/acre.

Governor Perry's so-called Task Force on Appraisal Reform is beating the drums to strangle the growth of local government. If they took seriously the title of their task force, appraisal reform, they would be doing something to stop abuses like this in Tyler. When landowners like this city councilman are underpaying their property taxes by, what, 10x?, that means those taxes are shifted onto someone else, probably the homeowners in Tyler, who can't hide the true value of their homes as easily as this city councilman has.

The most obvious way to achieve more accurate property appraisals is public sale price disclosure. Only when appraisers can see what properties actually sell for can they accurately set a value.

In cases like this undeveloped land in Tyler, whose situation is unique, perhaps other reforms are necessary. Perhaps landowners should be required to accept the appraised value when their land is taken by eminent domain. If he's been happily underpaying his property taxes, he ought to be happy accepting less than true market value. On the other hand, if the landowner wants government to pay him an outrageous sum for his land, he at least ought to have been paying property taxes on it in like amount. If he hasn't been, he has no right to complain he's being cheated now.

Nuclear Vision: Are reactors the answer to energy, enviro fears?

Dallas Morning News | Editorial:

“The nuclear energy debate in the United States used to be summarized in two words: No nukes. But now other threats seem far more menacing: global warming, dangerous car and industry emissions, and skyrocketing energy prices resulting from geopolitical unrest.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I used to come down on the side of "no nukes". My concern was nuclear waste. This deadly residue of our demand for energy today will remain harmful to life on earth for thousands of years in the future. I consider this to be an inexcusable crime of making our children and grandchildren (and great-grandchildren for untold generations) pay for our selfish energy demands today. I still believe this.

Why am I slowly coming around to support nuclear power? Because the alternative, fossil fuel-burning power plants, itself imposes a burden on future generations. Global warming is real. Human activity is a significant cause of global warming. Climate change threatens our environment and our livelihoods for centuries, perhaps millennia, to come.

So I now see nuclear power as the lesser of two evils. We still need to do more to develop safer waste storage sites. We still need to do more to protect nuclear fuel from falling into the hands of terrorists. We still need to do more to help ensure public safety as reactors age and/or maintenance is neglected. After all, money spent on public safety is too often a target of greedy tax cutters.

When faced with only unpleasant choices, one must hold one's nose and choose one. That's what I'm doing when I endorse nuclear power. And praying that our descendents will understand and not condemn us for our selfishness.

Conservative Congressmen call for border agents pardon

Dallas Blog | Tom Pauken:

For the information of our readers, 'fair and balanced' also uses the phony name of Ed Cognoski, and calls herself 'secular liberal', Her views (I say her because our regulars all say they know her real identity and that she is a liberal activist and former reporter in Dallas) reflect a consistency that lays out the liberal position on issue after issue, just like her comments on this story about the sentencing of our border agents. By the way, 97% of those polled online on a NBC poll thought that it was ridiculous what the government has done in this done. But not our E.C. who enthusiastically defends the government's actions in this case.

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Pauken:

1. I just quoted another news story to provide some balance to the Dallas Blog's one-sided presentation of the supposed facts of the case. I did not "enthusiastically defend the government's actions." Neither did I jump to condemn those who defend our Constitution and enforce our laws like you did. News stories should present the facts and not take sides. The Dallas Blog failed that fundamental principle.
2. I use varying aliases on Dallas Blog because Dallas Blog does not prevent others from impersonating me and signing their own ad hominem attacks with my usual moniker.
3. Your last paragraph makes a pretty good ad hominem attack itself. By the way, your obsessive accusations about me being "a liberal activist and former reporter in Dallas" are completely unsupported by fact. That reflects very poorly on the editorial judgment of Dallas Blog.

News attacks Calderon for his aggressive stance against Mexican drug cartels

Dallas Blog | Tom Pauken:

“Longtime Mexico City Bureau Chief of the Dallas Morning News Laurence Iliff attacked the new Mexican President Felipe Calderon for his aggressive use of the Mexican military to go after the drug cartels in Mexico in a front page story in Tuesday's Dallas Morning News.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

If an American President began using the US military for police work inside the US, I expect the inevitable criticism would be newsworthy here, too, and rightly so. Especially if civilian control of the military were weak in the US and the fear of a military takeover of government real.