No Fetus can Beat Us

In “Denying Women the Right to Live Their own Life, Their way” Erika de los Santos brings up some of the major salient problems with HB 15 (Sonogram Bill). One of her strongest points is that the bill doesn’t actually do anything. “The only affect this would make on abortion is that it could possibly guilt a woman into having a baby they do not desire,” she says. This is one of the most disgusting things about the bill. Its an attempt to somehow save perceived lives by attempting to manipulated the emotions of women attempting to have abortions. Instead of solving a problem, it almost attempts to create a new one.

Her other point is that the bill is authored by a man about women’s issues. “In the end women carry 99% of the burden and thus should be able to make their own decision without being guilted into having an unwanted child.” This makes sense, and it’s a good attack from traditional feminism. The trouble is that it just doesn’t exactly work out that way. The most bitter anti-abortion individuals I know are women. The people that have been lobbing for the bill, going to various legislative offices, or making phone calls have generally been women. (An anecdotal survey at best.) This is why arguing this is just a women’s issue doesn’t work. Mostly women speak out against it as well.

The reason that many people believe that government has a right to step in and regulate what a woman does with her body is because (according to the Pro-Life movement) that isn’t her body. It’s somebody else’s body.

I’m not saying life begins at conception. That’s silly. But we have to recognize at some point between conception and birth there’s a grey and fuzzy line that, once crossed, would seem to suggest that Abortion has serious moral implications. Personally I think that the ground rules laid down by Roe v. Wade are pretty reasonable. Still, in order to argue against the Pro-Life movement we must try and point out that a fetus isn’t a human life, otherwise the argument “Our bodies” doesn't work.

The strongest argument here is the first. It’s that even if you agree that Abortion is wrong, this will do very little.

Something the Anti-Abortion movement should consider? A program to pay for the Child’s expenses throughout his/her life. Free College Tuition. Something. Forcing Sonograms on women just proves they care about as much about the unborn as they claim their opponents do.

Emerging Technology Fund

My Friend,

You might have heard about the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF or TETF) or you might not have. This is an example of a state government program that attempts to do a good thing, but has deep flaws implicit in its very structure.

From the Texas Wide Open for Business Website:

TETF grants are awarded in the following three areas:

• Research Superiority Acquisition -- funds for Texas higher education institutions to recruit the best research talent in the world.
• Commercialization Awards -- funds to help companies take ideas from concept to development to ready for the marketplace.
• Matching Awards -- funds create public-private partnerships which leverage the unique strengths of universities, federal government grant programs, and industry.

All of these goals are good things. We want higher education to recruit the best talent, we want companies to develop new ideas and we want synthesis of universities, the federal government and industry.

The problem comes down to the Commercialization Awards.

See lets first talk about Venture Capitalism. Venture Capitalism is based on the concept of high risk and high rewards. Should a corporation want to gamble with a new technology or an individual want to bring a product to market, they will need some sort of financing. The trouble with start up technologies and business ideas is that most tend to fail and only a few are actually going to succeed. So the ideas that the Commercialization Award supports are going to risky my their very nature.

The second thing we need to talk about is how the awards are granted to these innovating companies. The requests for awards are passed through a “Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization.” These Regional Centers operate as part of the process to review these ventures. In turn they provide the recommendations to the ETF Advisory Committee which makes the final judgment on the awards.

So individuals are determining how the state should finance venture capitalism. This presents 2 problems.
Either:

1. The individuals who are making these decisions don’t have enough experience or knowledge in this field to be making good judgments about the viability of these ideas.
2. The individuals who are making these decisions do know about the risk and rewards enough to put their own resources/someone else’s into these projects. They would stand to profit off these ventures.

The fear then is that the Commercialization Awards side of the Emerging Technology Fund provides a filter whereby the state finances the projects doomed to fail, and savvy individuals on the Committees snap up the viable projects.

There have been attempts to restructure the ETF.

The Emerging Technology Fund is an important idea. Important enough not to waste with this kind of problematic structure.

And… mind you… I haven’t even mentioned David Nance. You can look him up on your own time.

HB 10

My Friend,

The Texas 82^nd Legislature’s Budget has serious problems. Because the most frightening of the implications of the choices the legislature has made seem to be education, I’d like to focus on that issue. There are plenty of other considerations, however. Many state agencies and state workers are going to see losses and job cuts. Health care in particular will see a huge loss in funding. This will create human misery, but I doubt it is something that will have as many long term consequences to the state as will cuts to education.

Sunday night, the Texas House of Representatives Voted to pass House Bill 1. HB1 is the Budget Bill for the next two years.

With $7.8 Billion in cuts to education alone, the likelihood of a negative impact to Texas schools is pretty significant. Based on the Texas Tribune pie chart (embedded in the link above), that seems to be roughly 17% (almost 1/5^th) of the public education budget. That figure, however, does not seem to be quite correct. The Sunshine Review says that from 2008-2009 the state of Texas spent $75 billion. This leaves us with a more accurate 10% cut to education. That’s still nothing to sneeze at.

Sounds bad, but this is just the cost of having to endure a recession right? Not really.

First of all, we have to remember, that Texas Constitutionally requires that the State Budget be balanced from biennium to biennium. So there’s no deferring to a later date the way the Federal budget is allowed to grow from year to year. Texas must make sure that its books are balanced. Generally this seems like a pretty good idea, but this year I’m not totally convinced.

Secondly, back in 2006 Texas ran into trouble as it’s method of paying for schools relied on local property taxes. All districts of which had reached a statewide cap, and this effectively amounted to a state wide property tax which is unconstitutional by Texas law. The State Supreme Court mandated that the state had to adjust how it funded the schools.

The Legislature voted to lower property taxes and instituted a new margins tax that would add a 1% tax to certain business revenues. That’s why you’ll hear a lot of discussion about how we are in a “structural deficit.” Many of the proposed taxes, in particular the marginal, did not generate nearly as much revenue as the state leaders expected.

The State Comptroller at the time predicted we’d be in this situation.

There’s been some effort to blame the recession. That’s not beyond the realm of possibility, but assuming our shortfall is $27, and State Comptroller Strayhorn predicted a $23 billion shortfall, we can assume that only $4 billion of the shortfall is due to the recession and the rest is structural.

The state has a number of options to deal with this.

#1. Presumably it could extend it’s deficit into the next biennium. However, because balancing the budget is written into the Texas Constitution (and thus would require a massive political process) it wouldn’t be useful until next session at best.

#2. The state could (and should) tap into its entire “Rainy Day” fund. The trouble is that the $4.3 billion dollars Rainy Day fund wouldn’t even cover the proposed cuts to education.

#3. Raise Taxes. Because of the current anti-government, anti-tax political climate this is neither popular of feasible, but sooner or later it will become necessary for our government to move forward.

I’m sure there are other creative options. Something needs to change, besides spending less. Without looking into any moral considerations for taking care of the poor and the sick, Texans need to at least consider the long term effect of few and poor government programs. How are children going to become properly educated? How is Texas going to be competitive with a poorly educated workforce?

As Texas Impact puts it:

“National data consistently demonstrates that Texas is at or near the bottom of the 50 states in spending when its economy and population are taken into place. Per capita, Texas ranked 50th in state government spending and 49th in state taxes in 2006. State aid per K-12 pupil-- another measure often used to compare state government spending--rose in Texas in the late 1990's, but subsequently declined. In 2005-2006, state revenue per student in average daily attendance (ADA) was only $3,129, putting Texas in 47th place nationally on this measure.”

Thus, Texas taxes the least and spends the least. HB 1, if not changed, drives the state further into a hole of poor services and poorly educated children. This is not a sustainable direction.

The Representatives spoke closing arguments Sunday night on the Bill. I'll include some of the most salient.
This, I think, was the most thoughtful response:

Representative Dutton pointed out, in his own way, that this bill was just general foolish behavior.

Texas Conservatives are Idiots

My friend,

We should really talk about more important things right now. We should talk about Voter ID. We should talk about the budget. We should talk about human trafficking, bullying, and Rick Perry’s hair.

But I don’t want to. I’m feeling partisan.

I chose this article from Empower Texans because it illustrates what is wrong with the modern conservative movement.

I presume the author’s intended audience is strong conservatives. The author, Andrew Kerr, graduated college as recently as 2006 and really has minimal credibility. That, however, stems more from the content of his arguments.

In this article, Kerr is taking the stand that HB 1454 as a gross violation of a mandate not to raise taxes. The author of the bill, State Representative Jim Murphy (R), is targeted in the article as violating his campaign promises. Because this is a Houston issue, it dates back to 2006 when the city tried to sue and recover lost hotel revenue from online travel services. Travel services would buy up hotel rooms at wholesale prices, and then turn around and resell the rooms at a markup. Then Houston Mayor, Bill White lead the charge to close this loophole. The estimate was that it cost the city $2 million a year.

The article makes a number of specious claims. Bill White “had the city sue (against the recommendation of then city controller Annise Parker) to collect this tax.” The implication is that a tyrannical Major White wished to viciously tax poor Houstonites, but in actuality Parker had advised the City Council that suit probably wouldn’t win. Also, the tax would not be paid by Houstonites, but rather by businesses that are outside the city. They also say that Bill White “lost in November because Texans didn’t want him anywhere near the tax code.” We might as well say McCain lost to Obama in 2008 because Americans hate old people.

The really offensive thing about the article flows from the claim that somehow closing tax loopholes is anti-Texan, anti-tea party, or a strictly Bill White/Liberal idea. In a time of budget tension, Representative Murphy is trying to seek out reasonable means of revenue. The fact that these conservatives are willing to target him shows their inability to understand even the most basic requirements of governance. It seems to be a particularly foolish tactic because at the end of the session State and Local governments need to be financed somehow, and those in charge will have to make hard tax decisions no matter their political affiliation. If the far right insists on targeting their leadership for such triviality they will not remain (at least I hope) in power long.

The two problems illustrated by this article that seem to reflect the entire conservative movement in Texas are that:
#1. There is an ideological reaction to specific words (in this case “tax”) rather than thoughtful policy decisions.
#2. There is little regard for the decisions of policy makers who have to deal with realities “on the ground”

Conservatives must be thoughtful and willing to make practical decisions. If they continue to be reactionary like Andrew Kerr and Empower Texans they will either destroy the places they govern or they will destroy their position.

The Neo-Keynesian Messes with Texas

My Friend:

Normally when I do these blog blurbs I attempt to find a bad argument that presents a delicious morsel for picking to pieces and then proceed to chew on the intellectually soft meat.  Today I don’t feel inclined to do that.  It’s hard as hell to find decent commentary on Texas, and even harder (at least for me thus far) to find bad commentary.  It’s almost as if conservatives run Texas with public opinion ninjas—they don’t make a sound in your local paper.  (Not that conservatives alone make bad arguments.)

Instead we have “Krugman: Leaving children behind” from the opinion page of the Austin American Statesmen. 

In this article Paul Krugman essentially makes dire predictions about what we can expect on the national level if we use Texas as a predictor for the political direction the country is headed.  He builds his argument around the fact that Texas is a low tax and low spending state.  “While low spending might sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children.”  Krugman says this, coupled with the failure of Bush’s Texas education initiatives, has resulted in the state being 43^rd in high school graduation rates.  (This is the same ranking as from “Texas on the Brink”) Now, with the massive budget shortfall, a dire condition is made worse.

Raise taxes?  That’s already been ruled out.  Krugman states that he’s used to “the cruelty.” Now he’s just shocked by the shortsightedness.

So does Krugman’s argument hold up?  Absolutely.  It’s really not that complicated.  Spending cuts will hurt education.  Period.  There’s the subtext of an argument to raise taxes, but he doesn’t really belabor that point. 

For awhile, I’ve been thinkin’ that the state of Texas is a clear example of what happens when you build a state around fiscal conservative values, and Krugman’s article proves that Nobel Prize winning economists agree with me.  What’s depressing is Krugman is using Texas as a negative role model.  His audience is not Texans, but a national readership. 

Krugman’s warning to the United States should be heeded by our State Legislature.  If the Texas’ economy really is so robust, then it can afford to give a little back to the government.  We need to change the low tax climate.  The consequences of our current path are grim. 

What do you think?

My friend,

You should look at this video. Skip to about minute 24:20. Legislative Comedy Gold.

http://www.house.state.tx.us/fx/av/chamber81/050609b.ram

Texas on the Brink: A Report

My friend:

You should checkout this Texas Tribune post: Texas is on the Brink.  Our great state is at the top of some pretty important lists, and they aren’t good lists to be on top of.  Clearly, if these statistics are correct, there are some serious problems with Texas. 

One major possible reason could be the large immigrant population. Texas is estimated as having the second largest illegal immigration population in the country.  That, at least, would seem to indicate one of the reasons tax revenue is so low, poverty is so high, and benefits are spread so thin.  However, before we all go screaming about building a bigger wall, we need to think about a few things.

Texas also has the second largest population and the second largest economy.  Though focusing on rankings is arbitrary, it would still seem like Texas should be able to offset its immigrant population. Texas, hailed the economist cheerleaders, weathered the recession storm better than any other state. 

Today, this is all guess work.  Hopefully this list will be interesting enough that we’ll see more discussion on it and the reasons for these numbers will be more apparent.

Immigration?  Regressive Policies?  Low Taxes?  What do you think?