Raising Speed Limits to Raise Oil Profits

It would seem in an era of burgeoning scarcity, more attention should be paid to the policy effects that raising speed limits will have on fuel economy. It is estimated, for every five mph you drive over 60 mph, you end up reducing your fuel economy by roughly eight percent.  With Texas speed limits topping at 85 miles an hour, almost double the fuel would be used in traveling the same distances as someone driving at 60 mph. With safety also been compromised, raising speed limits looks like one more way the Legislature can act in accordance to line the pockets of oil companies.

The way the fox news article--the author is responding to--is framed, is just one more example of how a corrupt government along with a bought out media shield the real agenda behind the issues, refusing to shed light as part of the media coverage on who exactly government policies benefit and who they harm, posing a straw man debate to occupy and distract the masses. The way the best heists are carried out unnoticed, to an unsuspecting victim, is the way in which the wealth is being transferred between the classes through the political spectacle and resulting policies by Texas government. 

Conservatives Deemed "Unfit" for Office

After over 1,000 independently done clinical studies, science finally proves conservatives have the inability to discern, understand and think in the “big picture.” President Obama has since declared a state of national emergency and was quoted later as saying “We have had in our midst those incapable of seeing themselves out of the dark ages. There are many people who haven't the comprehensive ability to understand even the smallest of big ideas such as: that we exist on a small planet, circling a larger star we call the sun that is known to exist in an even larger universe, that life evolves and has lead to our present existence, that there are strands of very small molecules called DNA, that in large part determine what we look like and how we function. We have in our midst these people and have given them the power to rule our lives and determine our destinies. It has been determined with my greatest reservation to remove such individuals that named themselves or prove themselves by action and policy to be of the conservative ideology from office. It is only for the gravest concern of this nation and for the protection of democracy that I must take this most undemocratic of actions. After this day forward, any voter that may cast their vote to a conservative candidate should expect their vote to count as a fraction to any other vote.” After the speech many in Washington began to predict a second American Civil War.

Two weeks after the speech, 150,000 American troops invade Texas and detain almost every public official. New elections are set. Stampedes of Texas conservatives are said to have invaded the Texas Legislature and held town meetings in every small town in district, all demanding to know what a fraction is. In outrage, Texas Conservatives boycott the new elections. After two months of relative calm, the elections results turn out majorities of democratic representatives. Rumors that the president has insulted the conservative’s intelligence breakout. Hundreds of conservative’s burn down their own homes in protest. Several commit suicide. Oddly, the majority of conservatives do nothing. Expert on Conservative thinking explains, “The reason the response from conservatives was so muted can be attributed to the fact that the first action in the Texas invasion was to shut down all access to conservative media. It seems without that access the conservatives no longer have any ability to organize or express any political debate, what so ever—sad, really.” Other (more concerned) citizens say there is electrically charged feeling to the air looming over Texas, and believe that what seems evident as complacency or silence at the moment should be considered the calm before the storm, not any storm, but a Texas-sized super-storm.

One scientist and presidential advisor brings light the president’s vague use of the term fraction in his State of Emergency address, “It is now well understood, the conservative voter’s vacuous intellect has been deliberately used as a proxy to serve the richest and most powerful of American’s interests and, as such, should be counted appropriately. We’re still working on the correct number. Unfortunately the longer we work at finding the exact amount, the closer that number approaches zero.” Another scientist and presidential advisor defends conservatives, “Let’s not get the wrong impression, the science isn’t proving conservatives are stupid per say. How can I put this—it’s like the way some people are short-sighted and some people that are far-sighted, we’re just making it policy to take away the sniper rifle from the short-sighted guy, now that we know for sure that he is short-sighted. It’s just common sense, not rocket science or anything like that. That’s why the president has stepped out the way he has, it's not easy to do the right thing when it look so much like the wrong thing.” With the media blackout and US military armed against US citizenry, popular sentiment in Texas begs to differ upon the notion of whether or not the declaration of emergency was indeed the president doing the “right thing.” More news will be released as soon as it develops.

Spending on Higher Education for Texas Inmates Creates Budget Surplus

In the blog article "Texas Spends Millions on College for Prison Inmates" the author stipulates that education funding for the incarcerated should instead go to the un-incarcerated under the premise of relative deservedness, but there are serious flaws to merits of such a policy, primarily this is because cutting higher education for the incarcerated costs more in the overall budget than not cutting higher education for the incarcerated.

This can be easily demonstrated by breaking down the costs of higher education and its effects on recidivism rates versus continuing cost of incarceration:

The most conservative estimate found for the cost per year of the average incarcerated prisoner, $22,000 per year.

The average recidivism rate for ex-prisoner is about 52%.

“Studies suggest that prisoners who participate in higher education demonstrate much lower recidivism than those that do not. For example, one longitudinal analysis of 3,000 ex-offenders found that those who participated in prison education programs were 29 percent less likely to return to prison (Steurer, Smith, & Tracy, 2001).” 

Assuming that 29% of the 16,088 ex cons that haven't paid back $9.5 million would be back in prison without having participated in higher education, with the cost of 4665 inmates at $22,000 dollars a year, the incarceration costs alone would exceed the $9.5 million lost in unpaid loans in less than two months.

The Texas budget exists as complicated and interconnected piece of legislation. The effects of cuts need to analyzed within the larger framework to discern their overall effect. Providing higher education for Texas inmates comes at a surplus to the overall Texas budget, and should not be considered for budget cuts. For every dollar cut many from these programs, many more dollars must be spent baby-sitting the incarcerated, dollars wasted that could be spent benefiting society.

New Texas Anti-Abortion Legislation Infringes Upon Women's Rights While Paving the Way to the Next Crime Wave

 The Texas House Bill 82(R) HB 15 that Gov. Rick Perry declared an "emergency" legitimizes itself under the false premises that read:
 "SECTION 11. The purposes of this Act are to:

(1) protect the physical and psychological health and well-being of pregnant women;
(2) provide pregnant women access to information that would allow a pregnant woman to consider the impact an abortion would have on the pregnant woman's fetus; and
(3) protect the integrity and ethical standards of the medical profession."

But should read:

SECTION 11. The real purposes of this Act are to:

(1) Inflict further physical discomfort and psychological damage to women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies;
(2) force women with unwanted pregnancies to be subjected to a one-sided argument and implicit guilt trip that would allow a woman with the unwanted pregnancy to feel punished for considering the good of society and the value of her own life above the moralism of a segment of the population; And
(3) erode the integrity and ethical standards of the medical profession by bringing intrusive, unwanted and unadvised state enforced medical procedures into the sanctity of the doctor patient relationship.

If giving women access to information is of priority emergency status, then one should hope to these points be treated with equal importance and deliberation:

1. the dissemination of information like comprehensive sex education before and during puberty;
   
   
2. education on how to use birth control along with free access to it;
   
3. the reasons why a woman's right to choose whether or not to carry out a pregnancy is contingent on women achieving equal status in society.
   

Instead, state funding that was being spent on sex education is being siphoned to the abstinence programs that are proven to fail at reducing teen pregnancy; and women will be forcefully vaginally probed by the state if they are to be able to exercise their reproductive right to have an abortion.

It is expected that the tactics that would be enforced under this bill could be up to 80% effective in deterring women from carrying out abortions. It should well be known by lawmakers that the only policy proven to be effective in raising or lowering the crime rate for extended periods is whether or not women are able to terminate unwanted pregnancies. If this legislation is passed--and it is nothing shy of certainty that it will--there will be with equal certainty a spike in the crime rate in the next two decades. No debate has been made of the significance of this catastrophic effect and the damage to life and to society that will result because of this policy.

82(R) HB 15's only redeeming value is the political clout it lands its supporters. This bill should be struck down upon grounds of its hypocritical intent as well as its affront to women's rights and its impending negative consequence to society as a whole.


 



  

Texas economic policy squashes opportunity

Blogs like "Voice in the Wilderness" feed the prideful ignorance Texans that sustain the GOP illusion as a people's party. In the posts  "You Tell'em, Gov. Perry" and "Gov. Perry Takes Stimulus Money -- on his own terms" the authors act as a vapid cheerleaders on behalf of Gov. Perry’s letter to the president in which Gov. Perry tells president Obama to shove it if he thinks he can dictate how Texas spends its tax revenue. Gov. Perry's letter is a prime example of what's wrong with Texas politics. His letter is an example of political deception by mixing issues, giving confusing statistical evidence, and the cover-up of true intent of his political motivation and real constituency he is serving by his actions.

While some degree of economic inequality is inevitable, the extent to which that inequality exists in Texas is nothing short of a travesty. To the extent that the elderly are neglected, to the extent that the sick go untreated only for simple lack of healthcare, if to support the economic mandates set forth by Gov. Perry and the GOP is to fight for freedom, then up is down, black is white, and evil is the new good. The freedom to amass and maintain extraordinary amounts of wealth at the detriment of a society is not a fight worth fighting for. High taxes for the wealthy are the best way to ensure some measure of equal opportunity in a society. Without them the wealthy become a rigid ruling class, the economy stagnates. “Big government” is essential to the thriving infrastructure that supports a burgeoning and free society.

According to official reports, unlike the claims made by Gov. Perry, Texas has suffered the effects of the recession on a scale much the same as the rest of the nation. The so-called "economic miracle" Perry has been proclaiming as a result of Texas economic policy is a farce. While Texas did turn out better than most of the rest of the nation in this recession, the opposite was the case in the last recession. It is only because the price of oil has been so high that the Texas economy pulled through so well this time around. There is no correlation between robust economies and having lower taxes. Perry is making this stuff up, preying on the ignorance of the public. It is no wonder that the education that would give people the tools they need to see through the charade of these political maneuvers is precisely what is being undermine by these recent political measures.

Education is the only hope those in the middle and lower classes have to rise above their station and participate meaningfully within a society. America is claimed to be the land of opportunity. In Texas that opportunity is being taken away with every budget cut being made in education. It is clear the rich are running the show in Texas. The rich have no need or interest in improving the public education system. The rich send their kids to private schools. The last time Texas was given grant money for education only a fraction of it was applied toward the education budget. Instead of spending the surplus of oil and gas tax revenue in the so-called "rainy day fund" to balance Texas budget shortfalls, Gov. Perry and the GOP party want to choke spending from the already underfunded education. It is no wonder that Obama seeks assurances that federal funds will not be squandered away this next round.

Perry's policies undermine the middle and working class. His policies are meant to sellout the power of the people and serve the power of the economic ruling class. These policies and latest GOP tactics have only been given a sugarcoating to get an unassuming public to take in a bitter and vile poison. The truth is, the smaller the government means more the power will reside in the upper class. Power of government in a democratic state best serves the will of the people. It is not in the best interest of the people to concede that power to a rich self-interested minority that don't get elected and cannot be impeached. Economic oligarchy is not the solution. Scaling back social services is not in the best interest of the people or of a society.

100 Years of Corporate Greed Still Threatened by Healthier Food Alternatives

In her article, "Raw Milk Rights," published in the Daily Texan, Kate Clabby does a good job informing her readers about the issues surrounding current and proposed laws governing the sale of raw milk in Texas. While current law forbids the sale of raw milk except under very limited circumstances, HB 75 and SB 237, currently under consideration by the Texas Legislature, would loosen the almost 100- year-old ban on selling raw milk and allow it at farmers markets, pick-up sites, and residential deliveries. Clabby supports the proposed legislation, but ignores the history of the original ban on raw milk sales, a history far more sinister than one would infer from the article. The bottom line is that the profit-driven industrialization of the food supply has undermined the very health of the population.

In the early 1900’s, industrialization was at its peak, and corporations were looking for ways to drive efficiency into every possible market. Food and food distribution had been, up to this point, provided primarily by small, local, family-run farms. But with the ever-increasing efficiency of large-scale production, corporations saw the means to take over these food markets and make huge profits.

By altering the cows’ diet to cheap, mass-produced grains, it was now possible to produce more milk for a fraction of the cost of the traditional method. In addition, cows were permanently confined to small stalls with poor sanitation. As a result, the new commercial dairies soon contained mostly sick or diseased livestock that produced contaminated milk.

The milk produced by cows on the grain diet was of poor quality. Cows unable to eat their natural diet of nutrient dense green grasses cannot produce healthy bacteria in their systems. Without the good bacteria to fight off the bad, commercial raw milk spoiled easily. It even infected and lead to the death of several people, and the commercial dairies products quick lost consumer confidence.

To combat the disease and contamination, the commercial dairies didn’t change how they raised and fed the cows. Instead, they adopted a process breweries were using to keep their beer from souring. Pasteurization solved the spoiling and disease challenges faced by commercial dairies, but it also destroyed the very qualities that make milk both healthy and digestible to humans.

Milk is a complex, living food that has been refined by over a million years of evolution. Milk's quality is directly related to the health of the animal producing it. Raw, unpasteurized milk contains active enzymes that assist in its digestion. Without these enzymes, many people develop allergies or other health problems related to the consumption of milk. Additionally, raw milk contains vitamins and minerals in precise proportions to facilitate their usage and absorption in the body. Processing milk has all but destroyed the original nutrient content of milk. In its raw form, milk also contains antibodies and living organisms commonly referred to as friendly bacteria. They protect the milk from the invasion of harmful bacteria and spoilage as well as aid in its digestion. Friendly bacteria are now thought to be essential to a healthy immune system. Industrialization of this near perfect food was a mistake. Milk was not a car or a textile. It wasn't that simple. Raw milk is complicated, and raw milk is alive.

The pasteurization process gave commercial dairies the edge they needed with the ability to prevent their inferior raw milk from spoiling by sterilizing the milk in sealed containers. Pasteurization prolonged the milk's shelf-life, getting rid of all bacteria good and bad. The milk no longer soured or spoiled. The dairies then used pasteurization as an advantage over small farmers who lacked the expensive pasteurization equipment saying unpasteurized milk was unsafe. With the public scare over bacteria in raw milk, big business lobbyists were able to influence state legislatures across the country to pass laws outlawing of the sale of raw milk for the safety of the public.

Small farms that wished to continue to provide milk were forced buy expensive machinery and conform to the new industry standards, but the consequence was turning their superior raw milk into the same dead product the large commercial dairies were producing with a massive increase in operational costs. That put nearly every small dairy farmer out of business.

The real tragedy of the victory of big business in the dairy market is not small dairies going out of business or the corrupt business practices that were employed or even the inhumane treatment the cows were subjected to. The tragedy is that when the small farm dairies' raw milk was no longer freely available to public, outlawed by the states, the whole nation lost its healthiest food, a staple of the human diet for thousands of years, replaced with product that creates illness rather than cures it. It is even reported that Pasteur sadly lamented, "What are they doing to my wonderful food?" when informed that pasteurization was being used for milk.

Without knowing the history of the industrialization of the dairy industry it is impossible to fully understand the laws that affect the industry today and the true motivation of the parties fighting for and against it. When it comes to food and health, misinformation is rampant. It is critically important that the public regain access to the healthy foods required for long and productive lives by freeing the restrictions on small farms. Without access to healthy and affordable food, a people cannot prosper. In Texas, local small farms are in a position to provide the healthiest and freshest foods possible.

It is time to recognize the harmful agenda and corruption of corporate interests, how they are set to make gains no matter what the cost, and strike down the corporate misinformation campaigns that cleverly disguise the real issues. It’s time to take back the rights of the small farmer, again freeing him/her to support the health of the nation. Supporting HB 75 and SB 237is an important first step toward restoring the fundamental well-being of human beings.

Texas Responds to Economic Demand for More Education in the Job Market with Cuts in Spending to Critical Institutions

When the glaring fact that more, not less, education is critical for the turn around in the local and national economy, making cuts to the education budget  is showing how Texas government is leading the way bull headed and backwards toward the precipice of economic disaster. Not only is more education continually being required to get a job in a global market where constant growth and integration of technology is replacing unskilled labor, but with trend of exponential increase in Texas population, more schools and faculty are needed every year just to keep up with the growing numbers of students. The cry of there being "too much wasteful spending" is the out of touch with the reality that the society that upholds and supports those that would make such proclamations takes money and effort to maintain. Without adequate taxation to support a workable budget, the greater civil causes like equal opportunity in education will not have the support to be instituted to the public.

Education is the leading indicator of the qualify of life of an individual and as a society. The cuts being made in education are not what is going benefit Texas as a whole. Texans stand to suffer in the longterm by producing a majority of the workforce unfit to fill the jobs that will be needed in technology sectors as well as passively enforcing the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. You can only squeeze so much juice from a lemon before the results you get become less than worth the effort. As so, you can only make so many cuts in the education budget before what you have left over is just one mangled and unworkable mess. And according to statistics, the state of education in Texas was already mangled before the proposed budget cuts.

As Texas is part of the United States of America its inhabitants pay taxes into the federal government, and when that money comes back, as it is suppose to, in the form of grants and aid which are meant to improve and maintain the civil institutions like education for those tax payers, Texas Governor Rick Perry turns that money down. In his own words:

“I will not commit Texas taxpayers to unfunded federal obligations or to the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national curriculum standards and tests,” Perry wrote. “Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education."

Governor Perry might want to consider that Texas taxpayers already committed to working with the federal government the moment they started paying their income taxes. It is unjustifiable that Rick Perry is essentially throwing away 700 million dollars of money already payed out by Texas workers and business owners while slashing an already crippled state budget. One might even speculate on the notion that they are being ripped off by this policy. Even so, this sort of unbalanced policy implementation of paying in and not being able to cash out is unsustainable. Eventually, something is going to have to give.

• Texas is #49 in verbal SAT scores in the nation (493) and #46 in average math SAT scores (502).
• Texas is #36 in the nation in high school graduation rates (68%).
• Texas is #33 in the nation in teacher salaries. Teacher salaries in Texas are not keeping pace with the national average. The gains realized from the last state-funded across-the-board pay raise authorized in 1999, which moved the ranking from 33 to as high as 26th in the nation, have disappeared over the last five years.
• Texas was the only state in the nation to cut average per pupil expenditures in fiscal year 2005, resulting in a ranking of #40 nationally; down from #25 in fiscal year 1999.
• Texas is #6 in the nation in student growth. The general student population in Texas public schools grew by 11.1% between school years 1999 and 2005, with the largest percent of growth seen among low income and minority children.
• Between school years 1999 and 2005, the number of central administrators employed by Texas public schools grew by 32.5%, overall staffing in public schools grew by 15.6%, while the number of teachers grew only 13.3%.

• From fiscal years 2002 to 2006, average tuition and fees at public universities increased 61.4%. Average tuition and fees at community colleges increased 51.3%.
• From fiscal years 2002 to 2007, the Texas state budget was cut in terms of real dollar, per-student funding for universities by 19.92%; for community colleges the per-student cut was 35.29%.
• California has nine nationally recognized research institutions; New York has seven; Pennsylvania has four; while Texas, the second most populous state in the nation, has only three.
• Out of Texas’ 145 public and private higher education institutions, only one private institution, Rice University, ranked among the nation’s top 50.
• The number of students attending Texas colleges and universities increased by 23.6% from Fall 1999 to Fall 2005 with the highest growth in community and technical colleges. 
  

The fact that our comparative state rankings are so low proves that Texas could use federal help in education. If the governor is concerned about parents giving up control of their education he should put that notion to the test of the Texas voters and let them decide whether 700 million dollars of federal grant money--we already paid for out of our income taxes--gets thrown away based on some deluded prideful notion that we should be able to have it our way or no way. Considering how poor Texas's record on education, maybe Perry should give the Harvard guy (Obama) a chance.