Forrest for the Trees

They call him “mucus.” And not just, or primarily, because of his initials—MQS. In Texas politics, conservative kneecapper Michael Quinn Sullivan inspires more fear and loathing than a special session—not least from Republican lawmakers who’ve been insufficiently radical for his tastes and thus find themselves with a primary opponent to the right of Barry Goldwater.

Sullivan’s bête noire is the Establishment in all its manifestations, the “Libs” who want to allow gays in the Scouts, the #dinosaurmedia, speaker of the House Joe Straus (RINO!!!), certain GOP political consultants and pretty much anyone else who doesn’t follow his ultra-conservative, anti-government agenda to the letter. He is Texas’ answer to Grover Norquist. (Important side-note: Peek behind the curtain of Sullivan’s group, Empower Texans, and you find one Tim Dunn, a Midland oilman with beaucoup dollars.)

Liberals and Democrats don’t care for MQS because he’s helped turn the state budget into a bloodbath. Many GOP-ers can’t stand him because he’s holding them hostage to the fringe of their party. But one thing everyone should be able to agree on is that he’s horrible at math. Twice in the past month, Sullivan’s been thoroughly busted on the widely disseminated, but bogus, numbers that he uses to convince credulous tea partiers and lawmakers that Texas is a profligate spender.

First, former Observer editor and current Texas Monthly Senior Editor Nate Blakeslee profiled Sullivan in the Monthly‘s January issue. The key question Blakeslee ponders, “Can you really build a grassroots movement around a premise that is fundamentally untrue? Perhaps the better question is, Why would you want to?”

Blakeslee looked at figures that Sullivan uses in his anti-government lectures around the state. It is a thorough fisking. (Feel free to skip ahead if you’re not into numbers.)

There were some problems with the math. Adding the growth in inflation between 1990 and 2012 (77 percent) to the population growth (55 percent) gives you 132, which, as Sullivan likes to point out, is a much smaller number than 300, the percentage growth in state spending over that period. Sullivan’s numbers, though he misquoted them a bit in Missouri City, come from a February 2012 report from the [Texas Public Policy Foundation.] The problem is that simply adding the percentage growth in population and inflation does not allow for the compounding effect one figure has on the other. (To accommodate a population increase of 55 percent and an inflation increase of 77 percent, a budget would have to grow by 174 percent, not 132 percent.)

Think about what Sullivan and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, have done here. Instead of multiplying growth rates, they’ve added them, which is the kind of C-student error that’d earn you a wet willy from my high school math teacher. And even after getting called out, they’ve yet to admit or repair the error.

Blakeslee continues his public service of wading into Sullivan and TPFF’s fun with numbers. There are no other apparent math errors, just plenty of sins of omission and commission.

And it doesn’t tell you how much public spending grew during that 22-year period, after adjusting for inflation and population growth. The answer is 63 percent. That may seem like a lot, but there is some cherry-picking going on here. In the early nineties, the Legislature was forced by court order to significantly increase spending on both prison construction and public education. There has not been a significant tax increase since that time. If, instead of a 22-year span, you just look at the past 20 years–as the Legislative Budget Board, which includes the leadership from the House and Senate, did in its most recent report–you see a much more modest increase of roughly 15 percent from the 1992-1993 biennium to the current 2012-2013 biennium. Of course, the recession-ravaged 2012-2013 budget is something of an anomaly. But comparing the baseline with the 2010-2011 budget reveals an increase of only 35 percent.

Yet even that figure is not what it seems. The LBB adjusts for inflation using the consumer price index, a measure of the cost of a “market basket” of goods and services bought by the average family. But consumers and governments don’t necessarily buy the same things–governments spend an awful lot on items like health insurance premiums, for example, the cost of which has risen much faster than prices on average over the past twenty years. (Most consumers, on the other hand, have their premiums paid largely by their employers or the government, if they have insurance at all.) Health care is such a huge part of the state budget–roughly 30 percent–that escalating costs in that sector have a disproportionate impact on state spending, one that is not reflected in the LBB’s inflation-adjusted figures. That’s not the only caveat to that 35 percent figure. In 2007 the Legislature took some of the burden of funding schools off local school districts–which is to say, off property-tax payers–and began collecting the new margins tax and a higher cigarette tax to compensate. On paper that looks like an increase in state spending on public education beginning in 2008, but really it was just a shift in spending from one level of government to another. In fact, if you strip out these types of dedicated funds along with federal funds, which are allocated according to formulas over which the Legislature has little control, you get a much clearer picture of just how thrifty the state of Texas really is. General revenue spending fell 4 percent between 2000 and 2011.

In other words, MQS magically turned an actual decline in spending into a 300 percent increase through the power of fuzzy math. A credulous tea party audience, one already inclined to believe that state government spending is out of control, would of course eat this stuff up. The problem, of course, is that it’s deceptive, as even MQS’s sugar daddy comes to realize.

[Tim] Dunn appeared genuinely flummoxed when I presented him with the stark contrast between the picture drawn by Sullivan’s stump speech and the LBB’s numbers. “Can I keep these charts?” he asked. “I want to make sure the information we are putting out is accurate.”

Math is hard and anyone can make mistakes. Dunn, as Blakeslee notes, seems “genuinely flummoxed” and pledges to “make sure the information we are putting out is accurate.” So, how’s that going?

Judge for yourself. Last week, Texas Tribune reporter Morgan Smith looked at the oft-repeated claim, primarily from voucher and charter-school proponents, that spending on public schools has skyrocketed.

“School spending in Texas has grown rapidly over the last decade, with few academic gains to show for it — and we aren’t a step closer to the change that our students, parents and taxpayers need,” said James Golsan, an education analyst with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Empower Texans, said that Texas “has doubled per-pupil spending over the last decade, but average test scores have remained flat.”

But in his remarks from the bench Monday, Dietz said that the state does not adequately fund public schools. He pointed to a chart from the Legislative Budget Board that shows funding for public schools in 2013 is almost the same as in 2003, though enrollment has grown by almost 700,000 students.

The LBB chart, reproduced below, shows that state spending in 2003 was about $31 billion in “constant dollars” adjusted for inflation. In 2013, it was slightly above that. That’s despite the growth in student population in that decade from 4.3 million to nearly 5 million, according to the Texas Education Agency.

So, how in the heck do we reconcile TPPF/Sullivan’s contention that per-student spending has doubled with the LBB numbers that it’s been flat?

All of the data the Texas Public Policy Foundation uses on state education spending come from the comptroller’s office, Golsan said. He said in his statement he was referring to “raw dollars” spent on public education over the past decade, which did not account for inflation.

Sullivan said he also based his statement on raw numbers, though his came from the Texas Education Agency. [emphasis mine]

They didn’t adjust for inflation. Repeat: They didn’t adjust for inflation. That’s it. That’s the basis for their argument about the supposed “inefficiency” of public schools.

You know, when I was a kid, you could buy a Big Mac for $1.60. Now it costs $4. That’s a 150 percent increase and just goes to show We the People can’t trust McDonald’s with our money! 

You’d think there would be more to it. But, nope, that’s it. And, still, they won’t cop to their mistake. TPPF’s Josh Treviño, who enjoyed an extremely short foray into mainstream journalism last year, defended TPPF’s numbers as “technically correct” (the best kind of correct).

Sullivan’s explanation (“raw numbers”) is risible. It calls to mind the disastrous Republican effort to “unskew” the polls. Whatever it is, it’s not math; it’s alchemy that turns ideology into objective reality.

Former legislators don’t die, they come back as lobbyists quicker than you can say cha-ching! Today’s profile in reincarnation is former state Rep. Vicki Truitt, the Republican chair of the House Pensions, Investments & Financial Services Committee. Last session, she led a watered-down (and mostly failed) effort to rein in the excesses of the state’s payday and auto-title lending business.

In May, Truitt lost a primary challenge to Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, a tea party private equity manager who ran to her right.

And here we’ll let the inestimable Texans for Public Justice pick up the thread:

While there often is continuity between the interests that revolving door lawmakers service in the Capitol and the lobby, Truitt stands out for the sheer seamlessness of this unseemly behavior.

After losing her seat in the 2012 primary, Truitt left office on January 8, 2013. Payday lender ACE Cash Express agreed to pay her up to $50,000 to lobby just 17 days later.

Although Truitt played the part of fair-minded referee last session between the payday industry and its legions of critics, her biggest accomplishment was squashing efforts to close the loophole that allows payday and title shops to avoid Texas’ usury laws. Instead, Truitt ordered the fair lending crowd into a secret arbitration process with the industry’s lawyers. What emerged was a trio of watered-down bills. Only one addressed the cycle of debt problem that so many borrowers get plunged into. Truitt was unable to get the bill passed.

Truitt did play the hero briefly. In a bizarre, unseemly exchange on the House floor Rep. Gary Elkins, a Houston Republican and owner of a chain of payday loan shops, accused Truitt of messing with his bidness.

“Isn’t it true that you stand to add to your personal wealth considerably by killing the bills?” asked Truitt. “Mr. Elkins, do you understand the concept of conflict of interest?”

The difference between Truitt and Elkins is that she waited a little bit longer to collect her payday.

Like the sound of a golden-cheeked warbler (ter-wih-zeee-e-e-e, chy), something rare was heard today at the Capitol: the science of climate change. Or more specifically, the intersection of global warming and drought. The occasion was a joint hearing of the Natural Resources Committees, which convened this morning to kick-off debate over Texas’ water woes. State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon recapped the sobering facts of our present (and future) drought.

• 2011 was the worst one-year drought on record for Texas.
• 2012 was five inches below normal precipitation.
• Rainfall over the last two years combined was 68 percent of normal precipitation.
• Statewide reservoir storage is at the lowest level for this time of year since at least 1990.
• The last two years featured “exceptionally warm temperatures,” and were among the three warmest years on record.
• The drought of the 1950s was the state’s longest drought on record, but tree rings show that droughts in Texas have lasted longer.
• The current drought ranks third worst, behind the ’50s and 1915-1918. But if Texas is still in drought by the end of summer it will move into second place.
• The official long-range forecast says odds are slightly tilted toward dry conditions through remainder of winter and spring. It’s also warmer than normal.
• We are also in a multi-decade period of increased drought susceptibility based on temperature patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Once one or both patterns change, Texas should return to relatively wet conditions.

Bottom line: “The year 2011 was about as bad as it gets for agriculture. But it’s these multi-year droughts that strain water supplies. And there’s still a good chance this could end up being the drought of record for most of the state. Nonetheless this is Texas and a few very wet months might be all it takes to turn the immediate situation around.”

Following Nielsen-Gammon’s presentation, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) asked the climatologist about the correlation between climate change and the current drought.

“At present the climate records in the state indicate an overall increase of total rainfall which may or may not be climate change related. The triggering factor of El Niño and La Niña, we don’t know how that will change because of climate change. The only factor related to the drought that can be clearly related to climate change is the change in temperature. The state temperature has increased on average about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1970s. … That aspect of the drought is being made worse by climate change.”

No other follow-up questions were asked. And, so, climate change was not so much discussed as briefly heard. But that’s still an improvement over the usual cone of silence.

Of late, there’s been a spate of good news for the fledgling solar industry in Texas.

First, the rooftop solar markets in Austin and San Antonio are humming along, thanks to growing consumer demand, rapidly falling costs and the cities’ rebate programs. Bottom-line: More and more homeowners and businesses are installing solar systems on their roofs.

In 2012, Austin Energy issued more rebates, 463, than any year since the program started in 2004. That represented a 40 percent increase over last year, even though the rebate, currently pegged at $2 per watt, has been cut dramatically as the cost of panels just keeps falling. CPS Energy, San Antonio’s giant city-owned utility, paid rebates for 333 systems between February 2012 and mid-January, for a total of 3.85 megawatts. Over that same time period last year, CPS Energy customers installed 2.7 megawatts.

“Each year as the price of solar comes down, we see more and more people installing solar,” said Andrew Wood of Solar San Antonio. “With the CPS rebate, the economics make the systems enticing to many homeowners and business owners.”

San Antonio also broke ground this month on what will eventually be, by far, the largest solar power project in Texas. Last year, CPS Energy inked a closely-watched deal with OCI Solar to build 400 MWs of utility-scale solar. OCI agreed to move its U.S. headquarters to San Antonio, build the panels in San Antonio and guarantee 800 local jobs. Currently, there are fewer than 100 megawatts of solar power installed in the state. OCI Solar, the company building the solar farm for San Antonio, will more than quadruple that number.

Still, solar is just a tiny sliver—less than 1 percent—of Texas’  electricity mix, which is dominated by coal (34 percent) and natural gas (45 percent). Wind, with a 9 percent share, is a giant compared to solar.

Yet, the economics are becoming increasingly favorable for solar to take off in a big way. The question is probably when, not if. And a recent analysis by ERCOT—the industry-funded, technocratic grid operator—has some very rosy projections for the future of the solar industry in Texas. (And some very sour news for nuclear, coal and maybe even natural gas.)

The analysis, first flagged by Colin Meehan of Environmental Defense Fund of Texas, looks at potential transmission needs in the next two decades. But, as Meehan wrote, ERCOT “found that if you use updated wind and solar power characteristics like cost and actual output to reflect real world conditions… wind and solar are more competitive than natural gas over the next 20 years.”

By using up-to-date figures on costs and performance, ERCOT projected that an additional 17,000 MWs of wind would be built in Texas by 2032. Perhaps more astounding, ERCOT estimated that 10,000 MW of solar could come online over the next two decades. That’s well over 100 times the amount of solar right now.

The model also found that firing up all that renewable generation would lead to “lower market prices in many hours.”

Next, ERCOT modeled what would happen if natural gas prices rose modestly (from $3.50 to $5/mmbtu) and Congress maintained the wind industry’s main subsidy, the production tax credit. In that scenario, Texas could be looking at an additional 35,000 MWs of wind units by 2032 as well as 3,600 MW of geothermal and 13,000 MW of solar power. That, to use a technical term, is a shit-ton of renewable energy. And it really flies in the face of almost everything you hear at the Legislature and the Texas Public Utility Commission, where renewables, especially solar power, are treated like expensive hippie Tinkertoys. But that’s often because regulators and lawmakers are using outdated cost figures for solar. The drop in panel costs is truly astounding, on a historical par with the microchip, even.

Now, it’s true that these projections are just that—educated guesses about the future that rely on a host of assumptions. Any prediction of the future is inherently fraught with uncertainty and the likelihood of what Donald Rumsfeld would call “unknown unknowns.” Still, Meehan says the analysis is important because it reflects a new empirical reality for renewables.

“The numbers themselves are going to be wrong one way or the other but they do tell us the direction we’re going. ERCOT has never seen anything like this before,” Meehan told me. The message to the Legislature and the PUC? “These are real and highly competitive technologies and will be even more so in the future.”

Finally, as always, context is important here. The risk of blackouts in Texas is rising because investors aren’t building new power plants right now in the deregulated ERCOT market. The Public Utility Commission, loathe to violate its laissez-faire ethos, has responded by jacking a cap on wholesale power prices, even though its own consultants have warned that the move is unlikely to spur enough new generation.

Environmentalists and the solar industry think solar could dramatically reduce the risk of a grid failure. Solar power performs best during times of peak power, those hot, bluebird-sky days when everyone is cranking their A/C. However, they’ve been unable to convince the Public Utility Commission, run by three Perry appointees, to implement a target (some would call it a mandate) for 500 megawatts of non-wind renewable energy. Advocates I’ve spoken to are not terribly optimistic that the Legislature will force the PUC into action this session. However, key lawmakers are making it clear to the PUC that something must be done. State Sen. John Carona even used the ‘C’ word at a hearing this week.

“I don’t think Texans are prepared to accept California brownouts and that’s where we’re going to be if we don’t address this problem,” Carona told PUC Chairman Donna Nelson. “We have to have the political courage, I’m convinced, to deal with this issue before we find ourselves explaining to the public why we have these rolling brownouts.”

Politicians write books for many reasons—to package their Life Story™, to introduce themselves to a national audience, to signal their seriousness—but the astute ones know that a book will also help cement their legacy. So what does Rick Perry’s first book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, say about his place in history?

The book, quickly forgotten after it was published in 2008, is worth looking at again given the probably inevitable but nonetheless unexpected news today that the Boy Scouts of America may reverse its long-standing ban on gay members. If the organization follows through, it will add to a long list of sweeping gay rights victories in the past few years. Perry has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Scout policy and has made a name for himself, mostly outside of Texas, for some fairly tone-deaf anti-gay remarks.

The first thing to know about On My Honor is that it’s not really just about the Boy Scouts; it’s about the “culture wars” and the “long[ing] for a place to bring us back to a simpler time” when gays existed, but kept it to themselves.

Just four years later, the book seems almost anachronistic. And it cements Perry’s legacy in one respect: as a prominent politician who doubled down on gay bashing as the nation rapidly moved the other way.

Perry tries hard not to come across as a hater, writing that he can “sympathize” with the “inner turmoil” of a man realizing that he’s gay. “I do not believe in condemning homosexuals that I know personally,” Perry writes. As to those he doesn’t know, well, that’s a different story.

Repeatedly in this book, the governor returns to the problem of “open homosexuals” and “active homosexuals,” a nod to the discredited theory advanced by evangelicals that homosexuality is a combination of “lifestyle choice” and disease. Perry writes:

Even if an alcoholic is powerless over alcohol once it enters his body, he still makes a choice to drink. And, even if someone is attracted to a person of the same sex, he or she still makes a choice to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same gender.

The problem with gays, then, is not so much their sexual desires but their choice to act on them.

Over time there have probably been a number of gay adult Scout leaders. If so, their preference has not been known because their sex lives have been a private matter. They have not discussed the subject any more than, say, a divorced father who is a Scout leader would be expected to discuss his dating patterns. Openly active gays, particularly advocates, present a problem. Because gay activism is central to their lives, it would unavoidably be a topic of conversation within a Scout troop. This would distract from the mission of Scouting: character building, not sex education.

Yet at the same time, to be gay is to be defined, totally, by your sexual desires, Perry suggests in the book

I do not believe the teaching of sexual preference fits within the parameters of Scouting’s mission. The defining characteristic of homosexuality and heterosexuality is sex. Scouting is not intended to advance a discussion about sexual activity, whether of the heterosexual form or the homosexual form.

Leaving aside the logical fallacy in this argument—if heterosexuals are defined by the fact that they prefer members of the opposite sex, should straight Scoutmasters not disclose their marriages lest they “advance a discussion about sexual activity”?—the nub of the thing here is that gay people are not whole individuals.

Gay-bashing of this sort isn’t dead—Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst apparently got big cheers at the anti-abortion rally on Saturday when he mentioned Texas’ ban on gay marriage—but it increasingly looks like the kind-of focused homophobia that Perry has engaged in doesn’t exactly earn you a political merit badge.