Houston Chronicle. Sept. 16, 2014.
Textbooks, again: Until November, when the state Board of Education takes its final vote, weigh in
Here’s a familiar headline: “Fight brews over social studies textbooks.” It’s that time again, when our fractious State Board of Education reviews and adopts textbooks for our 4.7 million public schoolchildren. It’s a high-stakes undertaking, since Texas, with the second-largest public-school population in the country, wields considerable influence over other states’ textbook selections.
The last time the board adopted new social studies materials was in 2002, and it was messy, with conservative members demanding multiple changes, resisting the portrayal of slavery as the major cause of the Civil War and demanding that creationism be taught along with evolution.
And it got worse: By May 2009, with the conservative wing of the 15-member board firmly in the driver’s seat, the Chronicle reported that a livid Leticia Van de Putte, Democratic state senator from San Antonio, told the U.S. Senate that the board, whose chair, a dentist, believed the Earth to be about 6,000 years old, had become “the laughing stock of the nation.”
In March, 2010, after raucous debate, the board approved (in a strictly partisan vote, 10 Republicans over five Democrats) a social studies curriculum that led the New York Times to comment, “. rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.”
In an essay on the Chronicle op-ed page, Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Foundation, a nonpartisan education and religious freedoms watchdog organization, wrote that those 2010 standards presented a “fundamental problem this time around” because the new textbooks to be adopted this year must be based on those same “deeply flawed” standards.
We agree with Miller that this is indeed a fundamental problem: But the greater problem is that we elect these board members with no guarantees of knowledge or experience in the education field. Consequently, many see it as a stepping-stone to a higher office, or a platform for their ideological or political preferences.
But, as Miller pointed out, there are a few bright spots: Some of the most radical board members have been replaced in the past few years; more educators are on the review panels, and new rules were adopted in January to improve transparency and boost the input of scholars and educators. And an independent review by respected scholars is in the works.
You, too, can be part of this vitally important process: Until November, when the final vote will be taken, the public is invited to offer its comments by e-mail at review.adoption@tea.state.tx.us.
These are all modest gestures, but they’re the best we can do until we finally decide that our children, our investment in the future, should not be left in the hands of elected officials with their own agendas.
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San Antonio Express-News. Sept. 12, 2014.
On voter ID, same tired arguments
Texas, in federal court, says it enacted voter ID to instill public confidence in the integrity of the ballot.
Texas actually has a quite different - and more damaging - problem. The state can have no genuine confidence that many Texans will turn out to vote at all.
So, you might think that making it easier to vote would be viewed as having value. Voter ID is the opposite of this and just more proof that the legislative majority is not really interested in solutions, only in obstacles.
In addition to voter ID, the state Legislature has made it more difficult for groups to do voter registration drives.
And this is on top of redistricting that dampens chances for minorities to elect representatives of their choosing even when they do vote. Texas redistricting is also being challenged in federal court.
One expert in the current legal challenge to the state’s voter ID law says there are 787,000 Texans registered to vote who lack the identification required by the law to now actually do so.
The state disputes the figure, but the federal court now hearing the case should find the state’s arguments generally no more compelling than a previous federal court did in 2012 when it blocked Texas from putting voter ID into effect.
“It imposes strict, unforgiving burdens on the poor and racial minorities in Texas,” Circuit Court Judge David Tatel wrote in the opinion.
This case is back because the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the portion of the Voting Rights Act that set the formula for which states were required to seek preclearance of changes to voting laws. Texas, with a sordid history of voter discrimination, was among these.
The state says, on the one hand, that it need not provide evidence of voter fraud for the court to uphold voter ID. On the other, it alleges “multiple” instances of in-person voter fraud.
But the specific figure it does provide - 11 cases in 2011 - is so minute as to be laughable. And other studies nationwide say instances of in-person voter fraud are rare. Eleven registers as a fraction of 1 percent of the 690,000 votes cast in 2011.
It’s clear why the state wants it both ways - not having to prove voter fraud but insisting it exists.
In the 2012 legal challenge, the state also argued the law was needed to protect the integrity of the ballot. But of more than 13 million ballots cast in Texas in the 2008 and 2010 general elections, there were just four allegations of illegal voting and only one indictment.
The real problem is lack of voting.
Those 690,000 votes cast in 2011 amounted to 5.37 percent of the state’s 12.8 million registered voters. The primary election this year saw 5.53 percent of the state’s 13.6 million registered voters cast a ballot. And there were 5.3 million more Texans of voting age who didn’t register.
The path to voting in Texas should be smoothed, not blocked.
Texas’ arguments didn’t hold water the last time voter ID was in federal court. The facts haven’t changed, but the landscape has.
Because of that U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the plaintiffs must prove discriminatory intent - an allegedly higher hurdle.
But U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, who is hearing the current case, should see right through that. When effect is so utterly predictable, intent is not difficult to discern at all.
Speaking of intent: Student IDs are not accepted under the state’s voter ID law. The youth vote went overwhelmingly for President Barack Obama in 2012.
An ID accepted for voting purposes now in Texas? A concealed handgun license.
A 2011 Gallup poll revealed that gun owners are more likely to be Republican or Republican leaning than Democrat.
Go figure.
The state also argues that providing Election Identification Certificates for free - and discounting the price of birth certificates to get this ID - means it has removed obstacles. It also says the elections occurring since voter ID took effect have been problem free.
Not really. Fewer than 300 EICs have been issued.
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The Brownsville Herald. Sept. 14, 2014.
Tough talk
Tongues are wagging a-plenty on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The latest volley came our way courtesy of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. In a newspaper interview published Friday, Pena said Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s deployment of National Guard troops to the border is “unpleasant” and “reprehensible,” and could damage U.S.-Mexico relations.
Some cynics might ask: What relations? Perry, whose early terms were marked by a pragmatic approach to border affairs and even opposition to the costly but ineffective border fence, has used our southern neighbors as whipping posts since his disastrous 2012 run for the Republican presidential nomination. President Obama, despite pre-election pledges to do right by Hispanics including those with Mexican roots, has paid little attention to the country other than to raise deportations to unprecedented levels, even as the recession had slowed the immigration rate.
And judging from Attorney General Greg Abbott’s righter-than-thou approach to the governor’s race, we don’t expect much improvement in the near future.
It’s been two decades since our state nurtured its relationship with Mexico as a diplomatic and trading partner during the regime of George W. Bush and his secretary of state, Brownsville native Tony Garza, and it seems even longer.
Even then points of contention tempered our international relationship. Just as now, the threat of spillover drug violence concerned U.S. residents. Just as now, conflicting interpretations of the Rio Grande water-sharing treaty were a sore spot. But amid those debates, officials on both sides of the border were quick to call each other friend.
To be sure, statements like those Peña made this week often are intended more to draw support from their own constituents than to fire warning shots across the river. And certainly the president recognizes that Perry’s troop deployment, which is costing state taxpayers $12 a month, is designed primarily to draw political support for his next White House run.
We can only hope that the bluster is harmless. Wars of words must not interfere with the basic relationship that neighboring countries must have. Secure and open legal movement across our bridges is vital to both sides, especially in cases such as recent death of a U.S. citizen in a Matamoros prison riot. Difficulty in gaining information about the incident suggests a possible breakdown between the U.S. consulate in Matamoros, which should keep track of jailed Americans there, and Mexican officials, who should provide information promptly when such things happen.
We trust that officials on both sides of the river know the importance of continued cross-border cooperation, and don’t let the braying of higher-ups interfere with the policies and actions that benefit us both.
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Galveston County Daily News. Sept. 12, 2014.
Six years after Ike, where do we stand?
It’s been six years since Hurricane Ike struck. As time passes, it gets a bit easier to see what ought to be done in response to that storm.
So, what should be on the short list of priorities?
First, we need some system or systems to protect people from storm surge. Galveston County is not alone. The area around Galveston Bay needs protection, and local governments have lined up behind the Ike Dike Concept, a system that includes levees along Galveston Island and Bolivar Peninsula, with floodgates across Bolivar Roads.
That concept is the front-runner - but it’s not the only idea in the region. While it would be nice to have everyone on the same page, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will have the say about what kinds of projects would justify the costs.
People here should continue to push for as much protection as they can get.
Second, Galveston County residents - and Texans in general - ought to get engaged in the discussion about how best to manage the coast. Texas was behind other states in developing coastal zone management plans. It’s been behind others in talking about appropriate regulations for high-risk areas. To take one example, consider the question of requiring higher building standards on the coast. Higher standards drive up the cost of construction and ignite complaints about regulation. But higher standards also reduce the costs of insurance and the public costs of cleaning up after a storm.
This discussion will get more complicated as sea levels rise. Some communities on the Atlantic coast already are talking about billions of dollars of public money to protect infrastructure from increasingly frequent flooding. The discussion about how the coast should be managed is important, and Texans ought to be a part of it.
Third, we need affordable insurance. Hurricane Ike exposed the weaknesses of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association. Six years later, the system is still not what it should be.
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Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Sept. 14, 2014.
Injustice to Tim Cole eventually was followed by truth and honor
What happened to Timothy Cole should never happen to anyone. He was an innocent man sentenced to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and died behind bars.
The unveiling of a 13-foot-tall bronze statue of Cole by the city of Lubbock and the Innocence Project of Texas in an area to be dedicated as Tim Cole Memorial Park is an honor due him, but can never make up for what was lost by him and his family.
Nonetheless, it serves as recognition to all who pass by what Cole’s family knew all along - he was innocent.
In a larger sense, we hope the memorial will be a grim reminder our justice system isn’t perfect.
Cole’s story - told by the Avalanche-Journal in 2008 - led to the first posthumous pardon in Texas history and changes made in the way police use witness identification.
At the 1999 funeral of her son, the late Ruby Cole Session said, “Today the world knows Tim as a convicted rapist. But one day the whole country and the world will know who my son is.”
She suffered a horror other parents can only imagine - to see her child accused, convicted and sentenced to a terrible crime and to know in her heart he wasn’t guilty.
Session also feared for her son’s health. She knew of his asthmatic condition, which eventually took his life. She remembered trips to the emergency room when he was young and had nightmares about his health when he was in prison. Cole was repeatedly transferred among hospital prison units and cells in several parts of Texas.
The painful suffering of Cole himself can only be imagined. He knew he wasn’t guilty of a crime and didn’t deserve the humiliation of incarceration. On top of that, he struggled with his health in a difficult environment for an asthmatic.
A lesser person would have lapsed into bitterness or possibly even hatred over the injustice he suffered. But in his letters to family members and in visits with them, he was upbeat about his circumstances and encouraging to his brothers to pursue education and good jobs.
Cole spent 13 years in prison before he died of asthma complications in 1999. It was to be several more years before the truth about Cole would come to light.
Then-Avalanche-Journal reporter Elliott Blackburn received a letter about eight years after Cole’s death from a convict who admitted committing the rape.
Blackburn pursued the story and wrote an award-winning three-part series, published in 2008 and called “Hope Deferred,” that proved Cole’s innocence. Blackburn and other A-J reporters have written numerous other stories about the case.
The A-J’s coverage not only led to the posthumous pardon, it helped bring about the Timothy Cole Compensation Act and the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions.
We’re pleased we were able to play a role in clearing Cole’s name, but would really be happy if we never did the story because the injustice didn’t happen.
The statue of Cole will be unveiled 28 years after his wrongful conviction. His brother, Cory Session, said the family was appreciative of the City of Lubbock for an apology and the honor that will be paid Cole.
“It’s reconciliation, I think, for this to happen. There are no hard feelings,” Session told A-J Media.
Cole had good reason to be proud of his family, and he would be pleased with them today and how they’ve handled a tragic situation with grace.
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