The Texas Schoolbook Massacre - Two Key Players

Part Two: Players in The Texas Schoolbook Massacre:

Cynthia Dunbar, SBOE member and author of One Nation Under God, in which she argues that the governance of the United States should be based on scripture.  And, if you're interested in a "completely whacked out resident of the wing-nut lunatic fringe" litmus test, she has opined that President Obama supports terrorism, and that public schools are nests of perversion, and maybe Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunt of the 1950s was justified.

If that's not enough to gag a maggot, consider this from Wikipedia:.

"As a sitting member of the Texas State Board of Education, in March of 2010, Dunbar proposed and won ratification of a number of modifications to Texas K-12 social studies curriculum, notably the removal of Thomas Jefferson and mention of the Age of Enlightenment (in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority)...

...According to an article in The Guardian , there are a number of changes such as these :

• ...sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.
• Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favor of examining scientific advances through military technology.
• One curriculum amendment describes the civil rights movement as creating "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among minorities.
• ...drop[ping] references to the slave trade in favor of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade"

Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US."

Dunbar's key henchman and co-conspirator is a fellow  who alleges his name is Ken Mercer and who allegedly holds some sort of degree from somewhere that is reported, mostly by him, to be in the science of biology.  I use the word allegedly advisedly since Mercer's abilities to prevaricate, hyperbolate,  and confabulate have earned him a "barely truthful" ranking from Texas Fact Check.

His agenda is relentlessly and carelessly anti-evolution, "Evolution can't be factual because there has never evolved a dog-cat".  Yeah? I want to shout, how do you account for the Duck-Billed Platypus?  Or my mother-in-law, huh?  How about that?

A quick Google search will take you to a number of websites, blogs and articles which parse, dismantle and disprove his ridiculously puerile pronouncements.  His mantra is "faith, freedom, family", and that he is "out to give teachers a well-deserved spanking"!

Now, take a breath (maybe a stiff drink would be better) and consider this. Does anything in the profile of either of these two nattering nabobs give you any reason to think they are better qualified than trained educators to decide curriculum?

The focus should be to prepare kids for the future and boards of education ought not micromanage that process, but should support critical thinking, problem solving, and research skills to prepare our school children for higher education and competition in the world jobs market.

Instead the focus of these people is the denigration of teachers and destruction of teacher's unions and the imposition of an anti-intellectual conservative agenda the K - 12 educational process.

Now, we are at the points of what can be done to combat the insanity.  After all, anyone can point out the problems, but what we need are people who can fix them.

Coming Tomorrow:  The push-back and the people out to unseat and change the make-up and agenda of the Texas State Board of Education.

Texas Textbook Massacre - The Real Motives.

Part One:  Some Background

The controversy over changes to Social Studies textbooks in Texas is, as everyone knows, based on an ideological war that has been waging, sometimes public and sometimes behind the scenes, for many decades.  The war is not being fought just in Texas.  School boards, water districts, county and municipal bodies of various ilk and make-up have been infiltrated by, in most cases, well-healed right-wing ideologues dedicated to a grassroots campaign of disinformation and subversion in order to drag the country even further to the right.


Understanding this will help you understand that which defies understanding, the current Texas Text-Book Massacre.  Why, you wonder would the right-wingers make such a big thing out of calling the United States a Democracy and insist that it be termed a Republic.  Is it because Democracy sounds too much like "Democrat"?  Well maybe, partly, after all the people involved in this really are that petty and narrow-minded.  But, here, I think is the real reason: a Republic is nothing at all like a Democracy.  In a democracy, the majority rules and minority and individual "rights" are subjected to the law of the majority.  Tie that to the right wing's perpetual persecution complex and ongoing sense of victim-hood and you have a  clearer idea of what is behind that specific issue.  The right believes that in this imagined, idealized Republic that they believe the founders actually had in mind for us, that if someone wanted to own slaves, it would be a matter of individual choice and the majority could not impose an anti-slavery rule on those who wished to be slaveholders.

Never-mind that the dumb-asses have completely forgotten that we fought a war over that very notion and closed the book--we thought--on such arrant nonsense!  What they failed to accomplish wearing butternut while under the Stars and Bars, they hope to achieve by ideological indoctrination.

Let's not get lost in that illustration, I am not asserting that the owning of slaves is the desired outcome, but use the illustration to demonstrate the practical difference between a Democracy and a Republic.  The bottom line is one of state's rights, individualism and anti-Federalism.

The forces for sanity have won a couple of skirmishes and firefights in the war by forcing inclusion of the accomplishments of Barbara Jordan and Caesar Chavez which were to be deleted in the next printing.  Again, an example of just how narrow and petty are these people.

And, allow a quick digression: The fact that we are talking about these ideological issues rather than the educational needs and standings of today's Texas students is a victory for the right-wingers.  Their goal is ideological indoctrination, not education!  They would like for you believe that their mealy-mouthed posturings mean otherwise, but the simple truth remains...it is about right-wing ideology and the radical agenda of the religious right and its fellow travelers in the uber-conservative Tea Party spectacle!

Were it not so pitifully appalling and disgustingly and ridiculously tragic, the whole thing would be laughable.  If you ever attend one of the spectacles of mass hallucination of the cultural right and religious fundamentalists you would be treated to a display of at least one speaker channeling "The Founders" and their intent that "Ah-meer-ah-cuh" be a "Christian Republic".  Wait a minute here Fox, you say, ain't they picking on ole Thomas Jefferson , and ain't he one of them there founders? you ask.  Yep! sez I, and herein is the morbid humor of the self-contradictory madness of these people.  You see, while a founder, Thomas Jefferson had the heart and soul of a "Free-Thinker" who was splendidly ardent in his belief in a "wall of separation" between chruch and state, and while an anti-Federalist, he had the good common sense to utter these words, "The fundamental principle of [a common government of associated States] is that the will of the majority is to prevail." --Thomas Jefferson to William Eustis, 1809.

Hardly a man around whom to build your case for a "Republic" based on Christian principles, is it?  So, they say, "let's eliminate his poisonous beliefs from our textbooks".  Seems, that, as in some recent elections where conservatives were not conservative enough, Thomas Jefferson was not quite the Christian Republican he should have been.

Again, it is important that we understand several things at this point; these people are not acting on whim--there is a agenda and a greater purpose to their efforts, it is about ideology and has virtually nothing at all to do with education itself, and these people are not a group of like-minded concerned parents out to correct a wrong--they are part and parcel of the radical religious right and its fellow travelers from the ranks of those seen at Tea-Party spectacles.

Tomorrow:  We name some names, expose the viciously narrow background of several of the major players, and introduce those standing strong and holding hope for the future.

Long Term Care in New Health Law - Part Two

Part Two: State Incentives and the CLASS Act

Yesterday we wrote of the coming changes to Medicare and Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which will act to further a transition from institutional to "community-based" and "at home" health care for the disabled and the elderly.  Today we examine some of the finer points of that change.

In 2005, the "money Follows the Person Rebalancing Demonstration" program was created to help states transition individuals from institutions to the community.  The new health law extends this demonstration program--originally set to expire September 30, 2011--to 2015 and reduces the minimum nursing home residency requirement to 90-days, rather than 6-months.  In 2007, CMS awarded $1,435,709,479 in grants with states proposing to transition over 34,000 individuals out of institutional settings over the five-year demonstration period.  Thirty states and the District of Columbia were awarded grants.

The health reform law also provides an incentive for states to devote more Medicaid funding toward community-based services.  Currently, only 4 states spend more than 50% of their Medicaid dollars on HCBS.  Under the new health law, states spending less than 50% of Medicaid long-term services and supports (LTSS) dollars on HCBS may receive a higher federal match as an incentive ti increase their HCBS spending.  States spending less than 25% on HCBS as of 2009 must aim to reach 25% no later than October 1, 2015, while all other states must have targeted spending percentage of 50% by October 1, 2015.  CLICK HERE to learn more.

The new health law also enacts the Community Living Assistance Support Act (CLASS Act), which creates a national long-term care insurance program financed through voluntary payroll deductions that will provide cash benefits to enrollees who are unable to perform two or three activities of daily living (ADLs).  Teh program has a five year vesting period and would pay enrollees no less than $50 per day to be used to offset the cost of long-term are services, including covering things like home modifications or paying for home health care aides.  To participate, individuals must be 18 or over and actively working.  "Actively working" includes part time workers and is not based on the number of hours and individual works, but by meeting in one year the baseline Social Security earnings requirement for one quarter--which is currently around $1200.  This program should be online by October 1, 2012, but payouts will not begin until 2016.  For more information, CLICK HERE.

Long Term Care in New Health Law

Part One:  Restructuring Medicare & Medicaid to Provide Long Term "At Home" Care

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is projected to generate $500-billion in Medicare savings by ending overpayment to Medicare Advantage plans and some reduction in provider payments. The provider payments are to be reduced by increased efficiency in the Medicare program and reducing the inflationary payments to providers.

Skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, inpatient hospitals, hospices and other Medicare providers will see a 1-percent reduction in their annual Market Basket (inflationary) updates in 2011 through 2104.  At the same time, rural home health care providers will see higher payments.  Home health agencies, nursing homes, and ambulatory surgical centers will be required to implement Medicare value-purchasing programs, which will act to further reduce costs for the Medicare program.

The aim of these new provisions, in addition to streamlining provider payments, is to address the long-term care needs of all Americans and to shift or rebalance Medicaid payments from institutions to home and community-based care.

The new health care law establishes the Community First Choice Option, which creates a new state plan option under Medicaid to provide community based attendant supports and services to individuals with disabilities who are Medicaid eligible and who require an institutional level of care.  Services would be provided based on a functional needs assessment.  States are freed from expenditure caps currently applicable in Home and Community based waiver programs.  States that choose the Community First Option will be eligible for an enhanced Medicaid match rate of plus six percentage points  for reimbursable expenses in the program. States will have the option of providing coverage for attendant services necessary to assist eligible individuals with activities of daily living and other related tasks.

States will also be able to use the funds to transition individuals from nursing homes in a number of ways, including; first month's rent and utilities, rent and utility deposits, basic kitchen supplies and other necessities that would facilitate the individual's transition from institutional to "at home" care.

These provisions goes into effect a little over a one year from now, October 11, 2011.  For more information CLICK HERE.

Tomorrow: Part Two...Class Act & Money Follows the Person Rebalancing Demonstration

Kagan. Obama's Pragmatism Betrays Liberals Again!

We are hearing way too much about President Obama's pragmatism as an explanation for his appointments, decisions, positions, and other moves that cause heartburn among his liberal supporters. You'll see what we mean as, we promise you, the talking heads and prognosticators will, over coming days  and weeks, pick the low-hanging fruit about his selection of Elena Kagan to replace Justice Stephens on the Supreme Court as an example of his pragmatism; as she is not exactly liberal and not exactly conservative, but an excellent builder of consensus.

We will not tie into her qualifications and records except to say that in some ways she certainly has the capacity to serve as a Justice and to bring to it a valued ability to craft consensus.  And, despite some entrenched Republican opposition, she ought to sail through the confirmation hearings. And, we think that is a problem.

Remember Thomas, Alito, and Roberts and their selection process and confirmation hearing?  We sure do.  They were filled with left-wing rancor and liberal outrage and progressive dudgeon. Without exception, these three have lived up to their advance billing as right-wing reactionaries who would bring conservative judicial activism to the Supreme Court in ways never before seen.

I will make another promise...while the right will make some clatter and noise about this selection, there will be no thunder and lightening, no filibuster attempts, no startling revelations or accusations.  She will be easily confirmed, and the right will be predictably annoyed, but it will end with that.

And that should be a matter of concern for liberals and the left.  The very absence of a mounted campaign of resistance and discredit from the right is a signal that conservatives are not too concerned with her selection.  They feel no fear, anger or outrage at this appointment.  If they are not upset, we on the left should be.  We would have preferred to watch the conservatives choke on their own bile and choler.  Their extreme discomfort would be a source of comfort to us.

Instead, pragmatism wins again. Which is to say simply, once again we are seeing demonstrated just how far to the right the country has been dragged over the past three decades.  Kagan is centrist right and chosen to be the "consensus builder" on a court that already tilts to the far right.  She will not be the justice that will return the court to its previous liberal base.  The court will continue to decide from the right to the right and its decisions, while not appearing to be extreme right will remain far right of center!

As to the president?  Well, from where we are sitting, it once again appears that we've elected another Clintonesque, country-club Democrat more comfortable in a Chamber-of-Commerce meeting that a union rally and better fitted for suburban wine-and-cheese parties than bare knuckle politics.

We regard that as a damned shame.