The Texas Observer

I was looking for something else in the Observer archive and I stumbled on a Molly Ivin’s column called Use It or Lose It from February 2006. Molly wrote that she wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton for president. She found her too inauthentic for the historical moment.

“It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership,” Molly wrote. “There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.”

It makes an interesting counterpoint to today’s Wall Street Journal cover story of Hillary. “Sen. Clinton actually is running two campaigns at once — courting left-leaning Democrats to get the nomination, but mindful even now of maintaining a sufficiently centrist course to withstand Republican attacks and win election next November.”

We caught up with Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin) back home for Thanksgiving. On Tuesday he did an event at Escuelita del Alma Learning Center in Downtown Austin. Good to be among friends to reiterate a warning to parents about the recent avalanche of recalled products from China — including toys painted with (and sometimes made out of) lead. TexPIRG backed him up. You can get most every recall sent to you by signing up with the Consumer Products Safety Commission mailing list here.

Doggett occupies a powerful perch these days as a senior member of Ways and Means in the majority party. It’s a long way from his days as one of the targets of Tom DeLay’s redistricting axe. In 1994 he was first elected to represent the historic 10th District, which sent both Lyndon Johnson and Jake Pickle to Congress. DeLay redistricted him to the Valley thinking a Hispanic would pick him off in the primary. They didn’t count on his work ethic and intense desire to serve constituents. Doggett was first sworn in the year the GOP took over the reins of the lower house, just as Newt Gingrich became the first GOP speaker in nearly a half century. Yet he has consistently blown his opponents out of the water on election day.

We asked Doggett about something Karl Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently: Congress has not done its work. And these failures will have consequences. Democrats had a moment… They’ve squandered it. They have demonstrated both the inability and unwillingness to govern… their true colors are coming out and the public doesn’t like what it sees.

Doggett, not unreasonably, blamed the Senate. “I think on the House side, it’s been really productive,” he said. The lack of a 60-vote, filibuster-proof number of Democrats in the U.S. Senate has been the ultimate problem. No matter what the House manages to pass, the old guard of Senate Republicans have the last laugh. “Senate Republicans tend to block it,” Doggett said. Add to that the sudden regular use of George W. Bush’s veto pen, and the gridlock is a little more comprehensible.

“They have decided that President Bush will remain a divider and not a uniter,” he said. “He has no real interest in any bipartisan accomplishments. They’re not willing to work toward middle ground… There’s been no willingness to do that.”

Doggett noted the peculiarity of the first override of a Bush veto, which involved super-majorities of both houses overriding the veto for an appropriations bill funding water resources and water resource development. Doggett noted that he did not support all of the elements of the bill, but, he said, it did provide critical infrastructure dollars for places like Onion Creek in South Austin that flood like hell during storms.”Strange one for him to pick to veto,” Doggett said. “I call him ‘Rip Van Bush.’ He really has been inactive for almost six and a half years.”

Why settle for Rick Perry’s tokenism on sealing the border when there are Republican officials out there like soon-to-be ex-Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, a GOP Presidential candidate. At least Tancredo is honest about what he hopes to do to the border. Rick always has you wondering whether he is just catering to the base. Tancredo really means it.

Of Perry’s cameras, Tancredo said, “They are only of course as good as the people you put behind them… What good is it? It is silly. I don’t know that your governor has the guts to do what’s necessary…”

So what’s necessary according to Tancredo? In a phone conversation with the congressman who was in New Hampshire yesterday I asked him about his vision for the border.

“I absolutely believe that a fence is necessary to protect [us] from the invasion that’s occurring,” Tancredo said. “It’s really three layers of defense,” he added, describing a 15-feet-high metal fence, curved at its top, with wire, then a patrol road, and then another fence (similar to what is described in the EIS). Tancredo said the fence would have to be “sensored” — to detect ruptures, ladders, and even whether someone is trying to dig under it.

“I’d go the length of the (U.S.-Mexico) border, and then I’d start on the northern border and go as far as possible,” he said.

Tancredo says the terrain and duty involved in border enforcement is perfect for training troops that will eventually head to Iraq or Afghanistan. He talked about a time he observed a training exercise featuring 100 Marines patrolling a section of the border, while utilizing unmanned aerial drones. Tancredo said the Marines’ leader praised the experience as the “best exercise” he could imagine for his troops.

The exercise led to the kind of greeting for the undocumented of which Tancredo approves.

“They said, ‘Hi! Welcome to America,’” he said. “‘Now spread ‘em…’”

It sure seems to be working in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tom.

As for the environmental impact, Tancredo said Congress has already given President Bush the power, in the REAL ID Act, to waive those issues. “The expense is worth it,” Tancredo said, “Because you have a real, physical barrier.”

Tancredo said the mayors in the Valley that don’t want a border fence are just a little too loyal to Mexico.

“They’ve got a constituency they’re trying to placate — and a loyalty to Mexico,” Tancredo said. “There is this loyalty question.” He said he told the mayors that if they disliked the idea so much, he’d build the wall around the northern limits of their cities.

Fortunately, Tancredo barely registers in the polls. He won’t be building any border walls on his own anytime soon.

While the border fence was hogging headlines, another item slipped over the wire. It turns out Gov. Rick Perry “has found $3 million dollars in federal grants to install about 200 mobile cameras along the Texas-Mexico border.” We are still tracking down where the money comes from and if it can be spent in more useful ways.

Perry has been vocal against an actual fence… when he was in Mexico. “It absolutely would not work,” he said on a recent trade trip to our neighbor to the south. One has to wonder if the governor is saying the same thing to the GOP base in New Hampshire and Iowa as he stumps for Rudy Giuliani. Many of Texas’ politicians have a tendency to talk out of both sides of their mouth on this issue.

Perry’s plan would allegedly allow Internet users to monitor the border in a sort of armchair vigilante system that made even the Texas Legislature balk. Texas lawmakers wisely refused Perry’s request for $5 million for the program. A test run in January cost $200,000 and “led authorities to ten undocumented immigrants, one drug deal, and one human smuggling route.” Full implementation is set to begin in early 2008. One wonders if the results of the new system will be available before the 2008 election.

Details emerged last week about a draft report of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Rio Grande Valley border wall plan. First written about by Steve Taylor and Michele Angél over at the Rio Grande Guardian, the draft detailing the 70-mile border wall describes the possibility of two layers of fencing, 130 feet apart — incorporating 21 sections — from Rio Grande City to Brownsville.

The EIS for the Valley can be found here. The site includes a form for public comment. Click here for a post by Forrest Wilder on the liberties the feds want to take in their rush to build a wall (along with a map that shows where it may go in Texas).

The EIS suggests three alternatives — the first option is doing nothing; the other two would build systems of fencing that follow similar routes along the International Boundary and Water Commission levee system near the river. The report warns:

Under both route alternatives, the tactical infrastructure within several of the 21 sections would also encroach on multiple privately-owned land parcels. Some proposed fence sections could also encroach upon portions of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Texas State Parks in the Valley.

The, ahem, hurdles faced by the fence are multiple. In addition to the possibility of legal entanglements from eminent domain proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security must also leap over environmental laws, and if it wants to use the levees, it probably needs Mexico’s assent as well. Then, of course, there is the widespread opposition from residents and elected officials from the Rio Grande Valley.

Is this the way real Texans — sons and daughters of the land of Tex-Mex — truly see themselves and their future?

Yesterday’s meeting of the State Board of Education, those creationist monkeys, ended not with a bang but a whimper. The most controversial agenda item - hiring an outside consultant to manage the development and writing of new curriculum standards for the state - was tabled after several board members expressed a desire to hold off on a decision until January. Science defenders breathed a collective sigh of relief. They were worried that the consultant could be a back door strategy by anti-evolution board members to short-circuit the input of real science educators.

“The process is critical because if the process is out of whack then the end product may not be as rigorous as we would like,” Kathy Miller, president of Texas Freedom Network, told the 15-member elected board. That’s Miller’s nice way of saying that a rigged process will mean crappy science textbooks. Steven Schafersman, of Midland-based Texas Citizens for Science, said the proposal as written “contains all sorts of red flags,” including ambiguity as to how, and who, would select the consultant and whether he or she would have veto power over the expert’s recommendations.

Texas defenders of science are in heightened vigilance mode because the board will spend 2008 overhauling the state’s curriculum standards. That means we’re likely to have to endure another pique of anti-evolution fervor from the creationists on the board, led by new chairman Don McLeroy, a fundamentalist Christian and Republican who has boldly declared that he does not share “a common ancestor with a tree.” (I’m sure the tree feels the same way.)

The last time the board touched the science standards was in 2003. At that time creationist activists and their board allies tried (unsuccessfully) to strip the science of evolution and the chemical origins of life from biology textbooks. A majority of the board, however, have pledged to keep “intelligent design” out of the classroom this go-around. A more likely approach for the die-hards would be to ramp up their pseudo-scientific attacks on the supposed holes in evolutionary theory. H.L. Mencken once wrote that “democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” We shall see soon enough if the monkeys are still in charge at the Texas board of education.

Earlier this week, the Chronicle of Higher Education issued a report on just how stinking rich the presidents and provosts of America’s universities are becoming thanks to the stupendous six-figure salaries and luxurious extras showered upon them by our institutions of higher learning.

And of course it’s no surprise that the top dogs at Texas’ public universities rank right up there when it comes to carting home the cash.

While students often work for minimum wage — taking 12- and 15-hour course loads — and borrow thousands upon thousands just to pay the skyrocketing tuition, these head honchos rake it in.

According to the report: ” … the life for many college presidents is in some ways like that of members of Congress. Many college leaders enjoy free housing and cars, free travel and — since many meals are work-related — free food, too. So how do they spend their out-sized salaries? Many make large contributions to the institutions that employ them, while others splurge on getaway cabins or private planes.

Private planes?

According to the report, University of Texas System Chancellor Mark G. Yudof’s total compensation is $742,209 (plus a ‘house’). Michael D. McKinney, the head of the Texas A&M University System, receives compensation totalling $638,200. And Bill Powers, the lowly president of the University of Texas at Austin, raked in a total compensation package in 2006-2007 worth $599,780.

On top of these bewildering figures, the AP reported that tuition at the University of Texas may be going up:

The Tuition Policy Advisory Committee has recommended that the school hike tuition by an average of $318 per semester — starting next fall. The figure would rise an additional $303 for the 2009 fall semester.

The hike, which will have to be approved by the plutocrats that have been appointed to the UT Board of Regents by Gov. Rick “My Mansion Away From The Mansion” Perry, will surely be approved, and estimates put the current cost of attending UT at nearly $4,500 a semester.

Now, higher education used to be strictly for the privileged. Are we, or are not, moving backward?