Op Ed

It’s been about a month since Joe Stack flew his plane into an Internal Revenue Service office in North Austin. In the media hubbub that followed, bloggers pored over Stack’s anti-tax manifesto, pundits questioned whether his act was terrorism, and The New York Times ran a feature exploring the unfairness of the obscure tax law Stack had criticized. With all the jabbering about Stack’s motives, one could be forgiven for forgetting that his act had flesh-and-blood victims. The explosion killed 68-year-old Vernon Hunter, an IRS worker who did two tours in Vietnam. In Stack’s manifesto, he told the IRS to “take my pound of flesh and sleep well.” Stack also took Hunter’s pound of flesh, the flesh of a man who spent years serving his country and had nothing to do with the tax laws that tormented Stack.

In one of the oddest—and saddest—moments in the days following Stack’s murderous act, Hunter’s son Ken was forced to go on the defensive. He reminded viewers of CBS News that Stack wasn’t the hero. “My dad’s a hero,” he said, responding to one of Stack’s daughters, who had defended her father.

Even those who weren’t defending Stack refused to openly criticize him. Gov. Rick Perry’s only official response was to praise the first responders’ “selfless acts of heroism.” Instead of condemning Stack, the governor said it was “important to refrain from speculation.” Contrast that with his statement after the recent arrests of the East Texas church arsonists, who “terrorized not only the respective church congregations, but entire communities.” As horrible as the church attacks were, no one was injured in the fires. Joe Stack killed someone. Where’s the outrage, governor?

Here’s a clue. On tax day last year, Perry was at Austin City Hall riling up the crowd at an early Tea Party event. “If Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that,” he told the rabidly anti-tax, anti-government crowd.

Perry was certainly not advocating violence, and it’s way too simplistic to blame Tea Party rhetoric for Joe Stack’s actions. But Stack was surely aware of the political trends when he wrote “by not adding my body to the count, I insure [sic] nothing will change.” That’s why leaders whose rhetoric scapegoats the federal government—we’re talking to you, Gov. Perry—need to speak out forcefully when violence is committed against the real human beings who help run our country.

Welcome back to the Texas State Board of Education. Today is the official Board meeting but members can continue to debate and revise social studies standards. Some members want to revisit changes made yesterday that passed while they were absent or changes made with which they vehemently disagree. It is possible for amended standards to be amended back by majority vote the next day and also in May during second reading and before final adoption. In fact, many of us expect the worst and most reactionary amendments to the standards will be made in May, so of course I will be back in Austin for this meeting.

Mavis Knight made a series of motions to add material about voting rights and similar uncontroversial topics in the standards. These all pass.

Mary Helen Berlanga tries to get information returned to the social studies standards about Tejanos who fought and died at the Alamo. Her motion is to insert “and the Tejanos who died there” after “the siege of the Alamo” in the standard that asks students to learn about the Battle of the Alamo in Texas History. David Bradley and Ken Mercer oppose the inclusion of this information, saying that everyone who died there was a hero and we shouldn’t single one group out. Mary Helen responded by saying that the term “Tejanos” needs to be included because most teachers would not know to do this unless it is specified. Barbara Cargill moves to amend Berlanga’s motion to strike “the Tejanos who died at the Alamo” and insert the phrase “the 189 heroes who gave their lives there” after the words “the siege of the Alamo.” This amendment passes 10-5 with the ten Republicans voting against the five Democrats to remove mention of Tejanos and add 189 heroes. The amended motion now passes 11-4. So the “traditionalists” on the SBOE work to keep specific mention of Tejanos out of the history of Texas during the Battle of the Alamo just as has always been traditional in Texas education. The State Board is working hard to keep alive the tradition that Texas history began in 1836.

Rick Agosto moves to strike “the Beat Generation” and return the musical genre “Hip Hop” to the standard that asks students to understand American musical genres and history. After much discussion, an amendment to remove the action to strike the Beat Generation from the motion passes 15-0, Agosto voting to remove one part of his own motion to get Hip Hop back in. After more discussion, the original motion fails 8-7 with the ultra-conservative Republicans voting to keep Hip Hop out of the music genre standard. Hip Hop was removed very late last night by Don McLeroy when half of the State Board members were absent, a despicable ploy. He had tried to remove Hip Hop in January but failed.

Rick Agosto moves again to strike “the Beat Generation” from the standard now without returning Hip Hop. He claims the Beat Generation is more degenerate and anti-social than the Hip Hop generation and provides cited evidence for this! (Note: the Republicans are all members of the Beat generation while Rick Agosto is a member of the Hip Hop generation.) After more debate this motion fails 8-7. Obviously, the majority of State Board members want to keep the Beat Generation in the standards. This issue hilariously illustrates beyond all reasonable doubt why ignorant and biased elected political officials have no business writing public school curriculum standards. AMC could make a black comedy about the Texas SBOE and it would be as funny and heartbreaking as Breaking Bad.

Now finally there is a motion to adopt the amended social studies standards (TEKS) for first reading and filing authorization. This will be a recorded vote because there is so much controversy and division between the Democrats and Republicans on the State Board. The vote is 11-4 to adopt; Democrats Agosto, Allen, Berlanga, and Knight vote no, Nunez yes. All Republicans vote yes.

Immediately following this vote, Chairman Lowe permits the use of personal privilege time to allow some remarkable remarks by Board members. Mavis Knight says that these social studies standards are not the best document and they are not suitable to give students an accurate and true history education. She says, “We have manipulated strands to insert what [certain members] believe to be true about history regardless whether it’s appropriate,” when in fact what they believe is not true. “I cannot go back to my community and tell them that we have perpetuated a fraud on the students of this state,” and that I supported this, so I must vote no.

Mary Helen Berlanga is also opposed to the some of the content in the standards and asks the social studies teachers to speak out about the new standards and specific names added and removed. She told the story about how as a child she learned that the only Hispanic at the Alamo was Santa Anna, the villain of the Alamo, and never learned about the Tejanos who died at the Alamo fighting next to Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie for Texas and personal liberty. She also lamented the fact that there is nothing in the standards about the real history of the Texas Rangers and how they “unjustly killed Mexican-Americans in Texas.” I might add that the Texas Rangers unjustly killed many Native Americans, too.

Mary Helen continues: “We are still not teaching the real history–the true history–about Texas and the United States. Until we are ready to tell the truth about history, we don’t have a good history or a good social studies curriculum for Texas.” She concludes by saying that she could not support the social studies as amended and voted no.

The Texas Rangers were formed to be the aggressive Anglo force against the minorities who had long lived in Texas prior to Anglo settlement. The Rangers are usually described in Texas history textbooks as being formed to “protect” Texans from “Indians and Mexicans,” but they performed their job of protection by chasing and killing the indigenous Native and Mexican-Americans who had long lived in the land of the new Republic. Accurate histories record of their brutality and injustice; for example, thousands of Hispanics were killed by the Rangers during 1910-1919. I am glad that Mary Helen spoke out about this. Texas public school students never learn this history. Since reformation by the Legislature in 1919, the Texas Rangers have been a professional law enforcement agency in no way comparable to their first 90 years.

Ken Mercer, David Bradley, Don McLeroy, and Cynthia Dunbar now speak to justify their appalling revision and censoring of the accurately-written standards prepared by professional history and economic experts who presented accurate, balanced, and reliable history and economics. The far-right Republicans say they are proud of their work, etc. Mercer and Dunbar, in particular, point out the importance of the fact that Texas can write and adopt its own standards and not be forced to use the new Common Core State Curriculum Standards that many eastern and northern states helped to write and are now adopting. These Republican State Board of Education members, Commissioner of Education Robert Scott, and Governor Rick Perry claim that Texas curriculum standards are superior to the Common Core standards, but the abundant recent evidence proves the opposite is the case. The new Common Core standards are being reviewed now and I expect them to be far superior to similar ones out of Texas. In particular, since I am a small part of the effort to write new national Earth Science standards, future Common Core science standards will certainly be far superior than those of Texas that have been amended to such unfortunate effect by the SBOE. The same will now unfortunately be the case with Social Studies.

Terri Leo says the newly-amended social studies are “a world-class document.” She says “we have included more minorities in historical events than ever before.” This is only true because the original professional historians and history teachers wrote the proposed standards, not for anything that Leo and her ultra-right colleagues did, although they did leave most names in place. However, their meddling additions and deletions to the standards will certainly mean the new standards will be criticized and condemned by social studies teachers and organizations throughout the country. An unnecessary and unfair right-wing, authoritarian, and traditionalist bias has been included in the standards in several places by the Board’s actions, and this distortion and lack of balance will make the new Texas standards unacceptable to mainstream academic curriculum experts and educators. As these three blog columns document, many standards that dealt with government, history, and economics had repeated radical or reactionary additions and liberal or progressive removals of information. I’m sure social studies experts will soon write about this right-wing political travesty.

Barbara Cargill says she is “very excited by these standards” and she feels she has met the wishes of her constituents. She says “as public officials we have done our job.” I agree. Cargill and her Republican colleagues have really done a job on Texas public education. I wish to point out that in most cases, all ten Republicans, not just the seven radical religious right members, voted for most or all of the damaging motions and amendments. As a long-time observer of the Texas State Board of Education, I must say that I have never seen such a mean-spirited, bigoted, and chauvinistic display of ugly partisanship by this group as they worked to stamp their particular authoritarian, traditionalist, and know-nothingness on the state’s social studies standards. What happened to the social studies standards is far worse than what the science standards suffered last year. Every social studies teacher in Texas and the nation should be appalled and every citizen of Texas should be ashamed by the behavior and character of our elected state public education officials.

This concludes the live blog of the State Board of Education’s March 2010 meeting.

Welcome back to the live blog of the Texas State Board of Education in Austin. The meeting begins on time at 9:00 a.m. At the moment, the SBOE parliamentarian is addressing the Board members about the fine points of making amendments.

Robert Scott thanks the Board for their efforts to revise the social studies standards. He continues to support the adoption of education standards by Texas rather than adopt core curriculum standards written by a consortium organized by most other states. The core curriculum standards are becoming the de facto national education standards although they are not written by national education officials but rather by state governor-appointed education experts. Their creation is only being facilitated by the Federal Department of Education.

Radical Dunbar Removes the E-word

No, not Evolution, as she did for the Earth and Space Science standards in 2009. This time it’s the Enlightenment. It doesn’t take long for the State Board’s radical religious right members to begin attacking good standards that they object to for ideological reasons. SBOE member Cynthia Dunbar goes after the Enlightenment principles upon which the Founding Fathers based their political philosophy and helped  create the Constitution and government of the United States. She successfully moves to strike “John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government” in the World History standard that asks students to learn the impact of political and legal ideas on contemporary political systems. This debilitating motion passes without justification or objection. Locke was certainly the most important Enlightenment political philosopher, and Dunbar obviously wants to remove Enlightenment sources of modern political philosophy.

Then Dunbar proposes an even worse amendment. She moves to replace the phrase “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas” with “explain the impact of the writings” and add the names Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin to the list of Enlightenment legal and political scholars whose writings students must study to understand political revolutions after 1750. I presume it goes without saying that Aquinas and Calvin are not Enlightenment political philosophers; indeed, they are about as opposite as historical figures as could be found, since they based their views and writings on sectarian theology and authoritarian dogma, precisely the opposite of Enlightenment values of evidence, skepticism, and tolerance. The list of Enlightenment figures includes Locke, Hobbes, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Blackstone. Jefferson was once a member of this list, but Dunbar quite unnecessarily and unjustly removed him in January. The list was meant to include the names of major Enlightenment philosophers whose writings influenced the American Revolution and subsequent later revolutions such as the French Revolution. Thomas Jefferson deserves to be on this list as much as Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Blackstone, since his authorship of the Declaration of Independence made him a leading Revolutionary philosopher respected by the French revolutionists.

SBOE member Dunbar wanted Jefferson removed from the list because she didn’t want students to know that Jefferson–a Deist-Unitarian who was opposed to Christianity and who created of phrase “wall of separation of church and state,” a phrase used subsequently by several Founders and in several Supreme Court decisions to explain the intent of the Establishment Clause–was associated with the Enlightenment and responsible for these ideas in the formation of the U.S. Once again, Dunbar wants Texas students to remain ignorant and confused about the political and religious beliefs of one of the most famous Founding Fathers, American intellectuals, and the third president of the United States, so she–a well-known far-right religious and political extremist–deliberately censored Jefferson out of the one place where his religious and political views were most appropriate. How utterly despicable, treacherous . . . and un-American.

This vile amendment carries 8-6 with vocal objection only by Bob Craig, who says that students should learn about the important Enlightenment philosophical principles as the professional standards writers intended. Now the word “Enlightenment” has been censored from the world history standards and two theologians, whose writings have little or nothing to do with the development of modern political and legal philosophy (except as negative examples), have been added. One of these theologians, John Calvin, was a bigoted and cruel religious leader whose influence created a distopian political system in Geneva that was later abandoned by his original followers due to his anti-democratic and theocratic excesses. Calvin’s bigotry and cruelty during his lifetime is best demonstrated by the burning of early Unitarian Michael Servetus at the stake because Servetus had published an analysis of the Bible that found no scriptural justification of the Christian concept of the Trinity. Calvin wrote a friend that he would not assure Servetus safe conduct: “for if he came [to Geneva], as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive.” Servetus was correct in his analysis about the Trinity, since there is no Biblical justification for trinitarianism; it is a dogma adopted by early Church authorities in a majority vote, much like what is happening in Austin and the SBOE. The lack of scriptural justification for trinitarianism was also the stumbling block for Isaac Newton, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, and many other American Enlightenment figures that led them to become Deists and Unitarians.

Calvin, however, is beloved by authoritarian and aggressive religious extremists such as Ms. Dunbar, so they wanted to get his name in. He and Aquinas were inserted solely to promote the Christian religion in what is supposed to be a secular study of world history. [Note added later: I have learned--from an interview on Hardball on MSNBC--that Dunbar's motivation for adding Aquinas and Calvin is that they discussed the concept of natural law in some of their writings, and natural law was one source of revolutionary America's justifications for separation from Great Britain. However, the two theologian's writings are a tenuous source indeed, since Jefferson used more proximate sources for his concept of natural law, such as Locke and Blackstone, which he certainly accepted and used in the Declaration of Independence, for example. I have subsequently read the passages in Aquinas and Calvin where they discussed natural law; they are heavily theological and have nothing to do with political philosophy.]

This is a clear example of the extreme right-wing religious and political agenda of some SBOE members being expressed in public education standards that will adversely affect student learning and understanding of modern political systems. Instead of receiving a clear understanding of Enlightenment ideas that have tremendous influence in modern politics and countries, especially including the United States, they will instead be forced to learn misguided and confusing information about two historical figures who have nothing to do with the original intent of the standard and may not learn the actual name (Enlightenment) of the historical source of the ideas because the name has been censored from the standard (reliable and accurate textbook authors and publishers will keep the name, of course, since while it is no longer required, it is not forbidden).

The main problem of this example is that most SBOE members probably did not perceive the ulterior motive of Dunbar’s motion, which was to damage student’s education to prevent them from learning progressive ideas and instead confuse them by including the writings of dogmatic theological authoritarians together with the legitimate influential political scholars and philosophers. They also have so little knowledge of history that they did not understand that Dunbar was deliberately damaging a good history standard to promote her extreme religious agenda. The reprehensible motions were passed with little comment when every professional historian in the country would have objected vociferously, as I object to this appalling process of the re-writing of history standards by ignorant and duplicitous public officials. I predict that Dunbar’s stupid and ignorant over-reaching (removing Jefferson and inserting Aquinas and Calvin) will backfire as people realize how completely bigoted, mendacious, and un-American this is.

Amendments to Add Hispanic Minorities Defeated by State Board Republicans

During a discussion of recipients of National Medal of Honor winners, Barbara Cargill revealed her complete ignorance of the continued discrimination and suffering of minorities in the United States. She baldly stated that the country has been very good to minorities and things are much better for them. In the back of the room where I sit, numerous writers were snickering at her incomprehensible lack of knowledge about and appreciation of the fact of continued discrimination that minorities receive in America. She is so out of touch with reality because she is so completely focused on her religious community. Mavis Knight harshly responded to Cargill and told her that she is really out of touch with the reality of the situation. She insisted to Cargill that discrimination continues and things are not “all right in the United States for minorities” as Cargill believes. Tincy Miller then spoke about her personal knowledge of discrimination of Jews, saying that no one should be left out.

Mary Helen Berlanga’s simple motion to add the names of three Hispanic-American Medal of Honor recipients is debated endlessly and ultimately does not pass. The religious right members voted against her. I saw her in the hall later being interviewed by a Spanish-language television network to which she was explaining the continuing discrimination against minorities in Texas. Readers need to remember that the extreme conservatives on the Board have repeatedly added the names of specific social conservatives and radical religious right figures, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Newt Gingrich, to the social studies standards. But now they vote against adding the names of minorities and even voted yesterday to remove the name of Oscar Romero. How shameful and hypocritical and how typical of old Texas. Someday soon this outrageous practice of official and public discrimination against minorities and favoritism toward extreme conservatives will end. It’s no wonder Texas students score so low on national standardized tests since their curriculum content is so censored.

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Rick Agosto, Mary Helen Berlanga, and Rene Nunez make an effort to return the name of Oscar Romero to the standards, but they are prevented by a Rules of Order problem. Barbara Cargill moves to amend a citizenship standard to include the right to keep and bear arms. She wants students to learn that owning guns is good citizenship. Bob Craig, Mavis Knight, and Mary Helen Berlanga argue that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with citizenship, and the standards already require students to identify the freedoms and rights guaranteed by each amendment in the Bill of Rights. Rick Agosto moves to add “Second Amendment” to Cargill’s motion; this carries.

The proper location of inserting Cargill’s new phrase is now debated at length, with several Board members wanting to put it in the standard strand that discusses the Bill of Rights. Finally, it passes, and the new standard reads, “analyze the importance of the First Amendment rights to petition, assembly, speech, and press, and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.” It’s nice to know that our State Board of Education believes the Second Amendment is equal in importance to the First. BTW, this new text about the right to keep and bear arms is inserted into a standard strand that says, “The student understands the importance of the expression of different points of view in a democratic republic.” So now, according to our all-wise SBOE, guns are an example of a different point of view. I don’t like your point of view; here’s mine–Bang!

American Free Enterprise (formerly Capitalism)

In a standard strand that asks students to understand the roles played by governments in the U.S. free enterprise system, Ken Mercer moves to add a new standard: “understand how government taxation and regulations can serve to as restrictions to private enterprise.” Mercer stupidly believes that government regulation and taxation are bad for the economy and wants students to learn this nonsense. Amazingly, this economically absurd amendment passes, so now high school social studies is going to indoctrinate students in more false libertarian and laissez-faire dogma. Thomas Friedman wrote a column two months ago about how the Danes massively increased taxes on electricity generation from coal, forcing the entire Danish society to conserve electricity better, develop alternative forms of energy, and re-think various business systems. The extra tax money was used to help Danish industries re-tool and begin to develop and use alternative green power. This policy of increased government regulation and higher taxes resulted in a massive growth in Danish alternative energy industries, an area in which Denmark leads the world and has been massively profitable for that country.

The Danes became one of the world’s largest exporters of alternative energy technology and profits increased dramatically. The U.S. buys wind turbines from Denmark, for example. The Danish air is cleaner and their society is wealthier. This is only one example out of thousands of how smart government regulation and taxation policies leads to profitable economic growth and cultural improvement. It is people like Ken Mercer who prevent these kinds of policies from happening in Texas and keep our society poor and polluted (Texas has the weakest environmental laws and is thus the most polluted state in the country). What needs to be limited here is not government regulation and taxation but SBOE power to insert stupid and ignorant standards into state education curricula.

Ken Mercer moves to remove the words and parentheses “(capitalist, free market)” from all social studies standards that mention “free enterprise” together with the parenthetical expression. Pat Hardy says the three terms for the same thing were a compromise used to keep the standards clear for students to understand, since the word “capitalism” is used in college and university courses and the professor on the standards writing committee said it should be included so students won’t be confused. The religious reactionaries on the Board justify their dislike with “capitalism” by claiming it’s use in parentheses is “cumbersome.” However, the true motive of these radical religious right Board members is that they object to the word “capitalism” because they consider it pejorative and derived from Karl Marx! Terri Leo says we should not follow or compromise with liberal professors from academia, so we should remove the word. Hardy asks out loud why the Board members object to the term “capitalism” but nobody cares to explain it to her. Mercer’s motion carries 8-7, so the Board wants to keep students confused and ignorant. That’s business as usual in Texas public education when the SBOE messes with Texas education standards.

Another Failed Amendment for Texas Minorities

Mary Helen Berlanga proposes an amendment to include the inclusion of the historical individuals and tribes asked for by the various minority and indigenous tribal organizations. Predictably, this amendment fails and Ms. Berlanga asks that the record reflect the fact that these groups’ requests for inclusion in the history standards was refused by the Board.

Church-State Separation and Religious Freedom

Mavis Knight moves to insert a new standard in the history strand that asks students to understand how constitutional government in the U.S. has been influenced by ideas, people, and historical documents, including the Cons
itution. Her amendment reads: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” The Founders did this in the Constitution by prohibiting any religious test for public office and by later adopting the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment of which contains the two religion clauses, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. Knight has several reasons for her motion, one of which was that the Founders knew that allowing government to favor a particular religion was a threat to religious freedom for all. She might have added that the Founders were well aware of the history of religious wars and persecution in Europe and wanted to avoid that cruelty and misery in the new United States.

Cynthia Dunbar strongly objects to the motion and starts to reel off several misleading and unsound arguments derived from her misreading of American Constitutional history. She says the issues are “too complex” and “too broad” to consider in this standard strand so we should avoid this topic. In her anger, Dunbar begins to raise her voice and speak faster as she objects to Knight’s motion. She considers herself an expert on this topic, strongly supports Christian religious establishments by public institutions and governments, and must think the amendment is a personal insult. The hearing room is completely silent. The silence continues as Knight responds to Dunbar. Ms. Knight correctly says that the proposed standard is completely fixed in current law and should not be objectionable. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the interpretation that the Founders did protect religious freedom in their new country by writing the Establishment Clause, which bars government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.

Dunbar objects to Knight’s motion because she believes the Establishment Clause says only that a “national religion” is prohibited, a common and mistaken religious right belief. She has obtained her information from individuals such as David Barton and Peter Marshall who are notorious in their ignorance about the history of and disdain for the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. Dunbar’s legal practice deals with her mistaken and bizarre interpretation of the Establishment Clause, and of course her reactionary colleagues agree with this interpretation. In fact, this incorrect interpretation is fixed in the Texas Republican Party platform and is a staple of their propaganda. Republicans vehemently object to the separation of church and state, a metaphor used by several Founders and Supreme Court decisions to explain the meaning of the Establishment Clause.

Because of its terse wording, the Establishment Clause has been interpreted by the far right to prohibit only a national religion. In fact, the Founders wrote extensively about the original meaning of the clause; to them, it prohibited the favoring of any religion over another religion by the national government, not just the creation of a national religion. The historical record of the debate from which the final wording came results in the same conclusion: a broad proscription against any governmental favoritism to any religion. This is the context from which Jefferson coined the phrase “separation of church and state,” a phrase subsequently used by other Founders. Later, when the Establishment Clause was used to prevent government religious favoritism by state, county, and municipal governments, the Supreme Court used the metaphorical phrase to explain its reasoning and interpretation.

Knight’s motion fails 9-5. Mavis Knight requests a recorded vote and it shows the five Democrats voted for the motion and all ten Republicans shamefully voted no. On the recorded vote, Chairman Gail Lowe votes no so the final official vote is 10-5. Now you know which political party wants to protect your religious liberties in Texas, but you probably already knew which.

Natural Law and Nature’s God

Cynthia Dunbar moves to substitute “laws of nature and nature’s God, unalienable rights” where the terms “natural law, natural rights” are used in a standard that helps students understand how constitutional government has been influenced by ideas, people, and historical documents. She claims these are the exact terms used in the Declaration of Independence and should be preferred over the political philosophical terms. The hidden motive for this amendment, of course, is to get the word “God” in the social studies standards. Jefferson believed in Natural Law and in a Deistic God that he termed “Nature’s God” and the “Creator.” He specifically objected to the Christian God since he was a Unitarian. He believed this god was the source of natural law and rights, so he used this justification in the Declaration of Independence. Other of the Founders accepted this concept of Civil Religion so they readily signed the Declaration. Today, only extreme religious conservatives and reactionaries believe in Natural Law (and that it trumps governmental statutory, court, treaty, and regulatory laws). This bizarre and totally unnecessary amendment passes 11-3.

Reactionary Dunbar Removes the D-word

SBOE member Cynthia Dunbar nexts moves to replace the word “democratic” with the word “constitutional” whenever the phrase “democratic republic” is used throughout the entire social studies document. The intent is to remove the term “democratic” because it suggests a democracy and this, in turn, suggests the Democratic Party. The Republicans constantly and mistakenly claim that the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy, so this is their chance to put this bizarre belief into state social studies standards so that students will also become confused and perhaps believe the same thing. Of course, the U.S. is both a democracy and a constitutional republic (the U.S. is not a pure democracy; it is a representational democracy). Republic means Representation of the public, so the public or demos is included in the name “republic.” So Dunbar’s motion is just a vile and mean-spirited act to get a crazy Republican belief reflected in state educational standards. The amendment carries 9-3 with two abstentions and one non-vote (Lowe). Now the next Republican president cannot say the U.S. is fighting to spread democracy around the world; he or she will have to say our country is fighting to spread constitutional republicanism (note small r) around the world. I’m sure the other countries in the world where all the U.S. fighting takes place will not see the point of this change in terminology. The publishers can comply with the new standards by using “democratic constitutional republic” in all instances. “Constitutional replaces “democratic” and then “democratic” is added again. Perfect compliance as mandated by mental incompetents.

More Right-Wing Amendments

Debate on social studies standards begins again at 3:15 p.m. Barbara Cargill moves to insert  conservative Robert Nisbet into the list of sociologists that students must know about. This is approved. Her next motion is more worrisome. Cargill moves to remove the standard from sociology that asks students to “explain how institutional racism is evident in American society.” The context is that students need to understand the impact of race and ethnicity on society. Mary Helen Berlanga objects immediately, saying that this Board has been whitewashing the social studies standards during several meetings and they need to leave something in so that the remaining standards retain some integrity. Both Bob Craig and Mavis Knight point out that institutional racism is still present in society. Cargill wants the standards to reflect her belief that America–in her view the greatest Christian society in history–is perfect and all the problems of the past are over. The amendment fails 11-3; only Bradley, Cargill, and Leo vote in favor of this extremely bigoted motion. Finally, a Board majority shows some backbone and integrity.

Next, Cargill objects to a standard that asks students to “differentiate between sex and gender as social constructs and determine how gender and socialization interact.” She moves to strike it. Cargill thinks this topic is inappropriate for high school students and is afraid the standard will increase student interest and acceptance of gay and transgender people. Lawrence Allen asks if Cargill has been in a high school recently. After discussion at length about the appropriateness of this standard, the vote taken to strike it carries. So Texas high school students will continue to be ignorant about very important sexual topics that they should understand for future life in U.S. society. This type of negative education is traditional in Texas and simply breeds xenophobia and conflict. It is shameful that the extreme conservatives on the Board perpetuate this policy.

It’s 4:30 p.m. and I have to leave now for a science conference at Texas A&M in College Station this evening. Famous physicist Francis Everitt and mathematician Roger Penrose are speaking. I promise I will complete this column soon. I should tell readers that both the audio and video are available online on the TEA website and the audio is archived, so I can listen to that to complete today’s changes if necessary.

I am here live blogging the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) meeting in Austin. Several television trucks were parked outside the building as I entered this morning. Later, when the meeting started, fourteen TV cameras were set up around the State Board members, more cameras than I have seen since the biology textbooks were last adopted in 2003 and more than were present during the 2009 adoption of new science standards. This shows the interest in and controversy about the new social studies standards up for revision and adoption now.

As president of Texas Citizens for Science and a science education advocate since 1980, I was heavily involved in the science standards and science textbooks adoptions, but this is the first time I have covered adoption of social studies standards. I see that there are many problems with the standards revision by efforts of several State Board of Education members. Some of the State Board members want to alter, revise, and censor the social studies standards as submitted by the professional standards writing committees composed of social studies professors, teachers, and curriculum experts to make the social studies standards reflect the Board members’ religious, political, and ideological views. The same thing happened in 2009 with the science standards, when every mention of ancient age dates or origins of life or species was censored and corrupted to make the standards more consistent with the Young Earth Creationist views of the members. This historical revision effort was started by the extreme religious conservatives (whom I usually term the radical religious right members) on the SBOE in January, and they want to finish it today.

I expect some of the SBOE members to attempt to debilitate, damage, or corrupt some of the social standards tonight, hence the title of this column. They can insert, remove, or edit any standard they want by majority vote (only eight votes are required and seven are assured), although few of them know anything about history, economics, or other social studies subjects. If the process continues the way I strongly expect it will, this deliberate effort constitutes an attack on the social studies standards. If I am wrong, I will change the title!

The State Board now starts a work session about the Permanent School Fund which I will ignore. Later, the SBOE has two agenda items about English Language Arts that I will also not cover.

Public Testimony on Social Studies Standards

Public testimony begins now and Texas legislators are given priority to speak first. Republican Representatives Wayne Christian and Dan Flynn are present from the Liberty Institute press conference so they begin. In their testimony, they both refer to the United States (they repeatedly say “America” which of course is an untrue presumption, since the United States shares the two American continents with many other countries) as a nation founded on Christian principles and that the history of this should be reflected in public school history books. Rep. Christian read a letter from the Texas Conservative Coalition (TCC) among Texas legislators. Among other things, it requests that “the TEKS continue to include references to the Judeo-Christian heritage from which our nation was founded; to the uniqueness and greatness of our nation; and to an accurate portrayal of history.” I certainly agree with the last two items, but the first one is simply not true. Accurate and reliable historical studies document the facts that European Enlightenment philosophy was the primary source for our national founding documents and the political views of the Founding Fathers. Although the majority of colonialists were Christians and essentially all were religious, their religious views had little influence on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The Constitution explicitly founds the country as a non-religious secular nation. While all the founders were religious believers, the major founders (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Paine, etc.) were not Christians but rather Deists and Unitarians; several did not even like Christianity but all expected the country to respect and tolerate all religions and especially not give preference to one.

The two representatives decried “liberal” efforts (by the professional social studies standards writers composed of university professors and high school social studies teachers) to “revise” national history to make it seem that America is “not the great nation” that it is. This is certainly an excessively partisan and unnecessarily divisive stance for the two representatives to take, but it shows their extremism. For example, the history standards always used to require information about “American expansionism” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the professional history experts changed this to “American imperialism.” The SBOE changed this back to “expansionism” in January and the representatives approved of this. In fact, the term “imperialism” much better describes the U.S. political impetus during that time than “expansionism,” which is better used to describe the occupation of the Western U.S. They also asked for more mention of the Christian history of early and colonial America and to include more of the early Christians who worked to found the country. They were concerned that the “greatness of America” would be downgraded or neglected if the “new revised” standards were adopted without amendment by the State Board. I disagree with the two legislators, since I think we would best preserve the “greatness” of America by dealing honestly with our country’s history and not try to manipulate, distort, and censor it. The United States has a great history in most respects, but several very un-great episodes in its past must be treated and taught accurately and fairly, not deliberately censored and misrepresented, if students are to obtain a fair, balanced, accurate, and reliable education about U.S. history.

The TCC letter further claims that the “State Board members have been pressured throughout the TEKS revision process to wash the TEKS clean of any references to Judeo-Christian faiths while promoting references to other religions.” This is also an untrue claim. All religions and faiths present in our country’s history should be presented fairly and accurately, but the board should not give one privileged religion special and unwarranted significance which is precisely what the extreme social and religious conservatives want to do for Christianity. Individuals such as myself have asked the State Board to present references to religions with historical accuracy and not give them more importance in the founding of our country than in fact is the historical case, and this is, in fact, what the original proposed standards accomplished. But SBOE want to keep the traditional biased, unbalanced, and inaccurate description of the influence of Christianity during the founding of the U.S.

American Exceptionalism

Wayne Christian was asked by a SBOE member to describe “American Exceptionalism,” the controversial doctrine that the ultra-conservatives on the Board want to include in the social studies standards and critics do not. Rep. Christian, joined by Rep. Flynn, said the usual things about America, that its founding principles of democracy, represented government, and love of freedom make the country exceptional among other countries in the world. America (i.e., the United States) serves as an example to other countries and an inspiration for them to improve their own political systems. The “greatness of America” with its form of democratic represented government, free market economic system, use of military in the protection of freedom and democracy around the world, and history of tolerance to minorities stand as examples of how a great nation should behave. The problem with “American Exceptionalism” is that it is a false doctrine. There are many countries that have the same enlightened principles and adopted them early, in some cases before the United States. In other cases, the American record of “greatness” on the principles and values which Exceptionalism claims to possess is questionable to say the least.

SBOE member Ken Mercer says Texas is important to our nation as a force to prevent revisionism of national history and asks the representatives to elaborate. Rep. Christian says America stands for traditionalism in maintaining our history, protecting the memory of pioneers who founded this country, and their values should be protected and remembered in history textbooks.

I distinctly remember the biased and misleading material in Texas history textbooks in the 1980s. I was disgusted by what students were reading and learning about history and economics, but I could do nothing about it since I had my hands full protecting the biology textbooks. Time has finally caught up with social studies in Texas. What we are witnessing in Austin is the dying of the extreme conservatism and traditionalism that has governed Texas public education since it began. Rather than continuing the reactionary and false history and economics that has been part of Texas social studies textbooks for decades, the professional social studies standards writers for the first time included accurate, reliable, and inclusive information to bring K-12 history up to modern standards. This is a good revision and one long-needed.

The extreme radical and religious conservatives on the SBOE plus those in the TCC in the Legislature are reacting to the threat to their traditional distorted, biased, and highly-selected American and Texas history that they believe and have long forced on unsuspecting, innocent students. They claim they are responding to the “revisionism” of the “liberals,” but in fact they are reacting to the long-overdue presentation of accurate and reliable history for the first time in Texas public schools. Some members, particularly lame-duck Don McLeroy and his radical religious right colleagues (Mercer, Leo, Dunbar, Cargill, Bradley) will propose many amendments to secondarily revise the good proposed standards in a bad way. The SBOE will have a lot of dirty work to do if they want to preserve the mendacious and reactionary status quo for another decade. We will know if they can do it by the end of the day. Stay tuned.

The Public Speaks

Jose Flores asked that the standards include more mentions of minorities in Texas and United States history. He documents how little mention is made of Hispanic- and African-American historical figures (about 15%) compared to Anglo-Americans in Texas-approved history books and says that this affects the success of minority students who now make up a majority of Texas public school students. Terri Leo mockingly reads Mr. Flores list of minority names–emphasizing the vowels in the Hispanic names–from his list of suggested names to include and asks why they should be included when the textbooks are already quite large and heavy. He replies that these individuals have been grossly underrepresented in textbooks for decades and this problem needs to be corrected. For example, no mention is made in Texas history textbooks and standards of the Hispanic inhabitants of Texas who developed a civilization and lived in the state for two centuries before the Anglos arrived. Mr. Flores said several times that Texas history did not begin in 1836 and this shortcoming should be addressed now in the new standards. A similar neglect exists for Native American inhabitants of North America before Europeans arrived.

Antonio Diaz of the Texas Indigenous Council makes the point that the Native Americans are “the original inhabitants of America” and that “we have been left out of history.” The proposed Texas history standards do not mention Native American history and the same is partly true of U.S. history standards. The next speaker, Mary Jane Martinez, said that Native Americans are tired of being spoken and written about in “the past tense,” when they are here now living and contributing to American society. This neglect must be corrected, she says. Barbara Cargill asks if Ms. Martinez is aware that standards exist in elementary and middle schools that cover Native American history and peoples, but she said she did not. She had only studied the high school standards and found them wanting.

Roman Pena of LULAC and the American G.I. Forum said that minorities need to be included in history standards and textbooks to give students role models. Today, very few of these exist to inspire the minority students who now make up a majority of Texas public schools students.

In an unprecedented move, the Texas Education Agency has issued a press release criticizing the coverage of the social studies debate by Fox News. Texas Observer writer Dave Mann covers this unusual action in his column. I call it unusual because I can’t remember in my experience of 30 years at the SBOE of anything like this happening before. As SBOE members Ken Mercer or David Bradley might say, Fox News got a “very well-deserved spanking.” Mercer said it most succinctly: “If you are mean, lie or cheat, you deserve a spanking.”

My friend Dan Quinn of Texas Freedom Network is also blogging this meeting here and here. He also discusses the Fox News story here.

Public testimony continues at 2:15 p.m. Most of the speakers are in favor of adopting the social studies standards as written and submitted by the professional professors and teachers on the social studies panels. The primary request by speakers who have suggestions for improvement is to add more information about minorities–especially Hispanics–in early Texas history. For some unfathomable reason, most of this history has been omitted from the standards and textbooks for the last 30 years. Even the newly-written standards apparently don’t have enough, although I can tell readers–since I have studied both the old and new standards–that they include much, much more history about these individuals than in the past.

A very few asked for the new standards to reflect the fact that the United States is a “Christian nation” and that our nation was founded on “Judeo-Christian principles.” One speaker–who asked that Milton Friedman be added to the list of economists about whom students are required to learn–claimed that our rights were given to us by “our Creator” and “our documents were written by our founders based on Judeo-Christian values.” Ken Mercer loudly and vehemently agreed, saying that to leave out the history of our country being founded on “Judeo-Christian values” would be “lying to our kids.”

I will discuss several more speakers here later. I also have photos of many speakers that I will post later after I download them from my iPhone and my screen capture program. Now I must prepare some notes for my three minute testimony. I neglected to prepare a written statement since I believed they would never get to me, but Gail Lowe has been especially gracious to speakers and all will get to speak far past the time when the Board should have started amending the social studies TEKS. We will certainly go late into the evening tonight.

My Testimony

I presented my brief testimony to the Board and was pleasantly grilled by Ken Mercer and Terri Leo. I was able to answer both satisfactorily, but as usual I immediately thought of better things to say as soon as I sat down. I didn’t have written testimony to read as I usually do because I thought they would never reach me in two hours, the amount of ti
e reserved for public testimony, but after five hours of public testimony they got to me. I asked that the requests from the Hispanic-, African-, and Native-American testifiers to retain or add certain individuals and events be granted to the extent possible because they are just and legitimate. For too long, these people have been underrepresented in state and national history. I asked the same for the Sikh testifier to add his religion to the list of world religions that students should know about.

Then I got to my main topics. I objected to the emphasis on the false history that the U.S. is a Christian nation or was founded on Judeo-Christian principles for the same reasons I wrote above. I said that the U.S. is a great country to the extent that it can be honest about its past mistakes and shortcomings. Certainly we are a unique, even exceptional, country in the traditional sense, but we are not great if we ignore accurate history and censor or misrepresent it as the Board has already done and intends to do more. We are greatest when we acknowledge the mistakes of the past. The U.S., frankly, has a lot to answer for over the last decade, and students need to learn what really happened in the past so that, at least, we don’t repeat past errors. In conclusion, I asked that the Board accept the standards proposed by the professional social studies standards writers without ignorant, biased, and debilitating amendment (as happened, for example, to the science standards) and also to vote no–which I characterized as a tactic that has worked well in Washington, DC–for all amendments to the standards made by a specific Board member (whom I did not name but everybody knew whom I meant) who made many motions in January, some of which damaged the standards by inserting changes consistent with his extreme political and ideological beliefs.

Ken Mercer questioned me about the religious nature of the American government. He pointed out that the original phrasing of the religious clause of the First Amendment expressed solely an opposition to a national government religion, the chambers of the Congress both have chaplains (he called them “pastors”) who open sessions with prayers, and that our money has “In God We Trust” printed on coins and currencies. He really felt these facts meant that our national government was religious, but I assured him that this wasn’t the case, for these are superficial examples. These are manifestations of a traditional ritualistic civil religion–deistic in nature–and the U.S. is really a secular nation as mandated by its Constitution. He believed that Benjamin Franklin asked for prayers to be said during the Congresses that handled early legislation and the Constitutional Convention. I happened to know that the motion to have prayers during the Constitutional Convention did not carry and they did not pray as Franklin wanted. I forgot to add that Franklin was not a Christian and wanted the prayers to be made to the monotheistic God he believed in, not the triune God of Christianity. Mercer seemed to really believe that these anecdotal historical events and circumstances proved that the U.S. is a Judeo-Christian nation, but I told  him that these were all expressions of Civil Religion, a neutral, undogmatic, and relatively nonsectarian Unitarian-Deist version of religion that was acceptable to the founders, and certainly not Christianity. They are relics of this past accommodation to Civil Religion and do not determine the laws and history of this country.

Next, Terri Leo objected to my request or suggestion that Board members just vote no and don’t perform their “due diligence and carefully consider and vote on motions to amend” by Board members. I corrected her and said I said this for only “one, specific” Board member who had publicly stated that he plans to make dozens of amendments, specifically Don McLeroy, the member everyone knew I was speaking about (it is impolite to mention SBOE members by name in a negative way during public testimony, but I can do it in print now!). She characterized my suggestion as “personal” or based on “someone’s character,” but I objected to that characterization, saying the person in question has a cheerful, pleasant personality that is not objectionable, and I was objecting to the substance of the motions he made in the past and the ones I strongly suspected he was going to make later today. I expect his motions to be objectionable. I claimed that Don McLeroy stopped making his amendments in January because he was losing on the most extreme ones. Leo responded by saying that most of his amendments passed. We will have to see how agenda-driven and ideological McLeroy’s motions are this evening. I will have no objection to non-extreme ones that truly improve the standards for student learning.

SOCIAL STUDIES AMENDMENTS

Debate begins late at 6:00 p.m. on revising social studies TEKS. I am only going to write about the controversial motions that are agenda-driven and do not really improve the TEKS to facilitate student learning, but rather try to insert an standards or revision that promotes a religious or political agenda. The Board members will make dozens to hundreds of amendments, some of which may be improvements, and I will only have time to write about the debilitating amendments.

Hardy moves to replace BCE with BC and replace CE with AD throughout the world history standards document so that the standards would use the traditional but now abandoned and non-scholarly date formats. Hardy’s sole stated rationale: she prefers the traditional way of dating to the new way. She has no scholarly reason to make the substitution and in fact there is none; in fact, the opposite is true: modern scholars prefer to use BCE and CE because they are neutral, not Christian-specific. Knight amends the motion to put BCE and CE in parentheses after BC and AD so students would learn that there are two ways to format calendar dates in years. This excellent amendment unfortunately fails 8-7. The original motion carries 13-2. Few wanted to vote against the “Year of Our Lord” (AD) or “Before Christ” (BC), although these old terms are no longer used by modern scholars, most of whom are either secular or non-Christian. Few use the old-style dating format even for Biblical studies (except ultra-conservative Bible scholars, of course). So students who use Texas history textbooks are going to learn an old and obsolete way of designating calendar years because the SBOE members want to pander to their religious ideology and force students to pander, too. In Texas, keeping students ignorant and indoctrinated is public policy. Nice.

Pat Hardy now has many specific amendments to world history standards that are not agenda-driven. These create some discuss but are not really objectionable and most pass unanimously. I won’t cover these because they are detailed and relatively uncontroversial.

I was just told by a Fox newsman that the Fox Network has four camera crews here, the local one and three national ones. This process is going to get a big play on national Fox News. Maybe Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck will stop by and I can get their autographs (just joking!).

Hardy moves to change the phrase “the contributions of Karl Marx” to “the influences of Karl Marx.” This passes without objection. In Hardy’s anti-Marxist mind, Marx could make no contributions to scholarship, merely influence it. In fact, Karl Marx is still a major figure in philosophy and economics in universities today because his writings have immense contemporary relevance and importance.

Hardy proposes to remove the name of Bishop Oscar Romero from a list of those individuals who led resistance to political oppression. The argument is made by Bob Craig and Rick Agosto to leave the name in because the social studies “experts” put it in for some reason. This is an excellent argument to keep the name, and I wish it was used with all the standards that are inadvisable changed by SBOE members. It appears that the Board members have no knowledge of who Oscar Romero was and why he was so important to American history. The amendment carries, so a very significant Hispanic-American person in the political history of Central America–and who happens to be a progressive leader against right-wing oppression–is now removed from standards that students must learn. How appropriate for Texas. Thanks, Ms. Hardy, for such a clear example of bigotry in action in our state.

The motion is made by Hardy to add Golda Meir to a list of women who were political leaders. This passes and the motion to insert the list into the standards passes 12-2. Explaining his vote, Rick Agosto said that they just voted to remove someone of Hispanic heritage, Oscar Romero, so he was opposed to adding someone else for no good reason. To this, Terri Leo said, “Well, we’re adding a Jewish woman.” It doesn’t get better than this.

Lame Duck Don McLeroy Starts His Engines

McLeroy wants the words “monotheism, Judaism, and Christianity” added to a strand that discusses the contributions and influence of classical civilizations. During the discussion, Terri Leo laments the fact that the Palestinian West Bank land is labeled on a map in a textbook as “Israeli occupied territories” rather than “sovereign land of Israel.” McLeroy’s motion passes.

McLeroy successfully adds a standard that says that “Arab rejection of Israel has created problems and conflict in the Middle East.” Then he successfully moves to remove a phrase in a standard that says “the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis in the second half of the 20th century.” Then he is successful in removing the standard that says students must “explain the origins and impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on global politics.” The upshot of these unnecessary and despicable amendments is to shift the ultimate cause for the current conflict and terrorism in the Middle East from initial Israeli aggression–when they occupied the Palestinian land in 1948 and forced off many of the original occupants–to Arab rejection of Israel subsequent to that occupation, and to remove standards that require students to learn about the true origins of the conflict and its impact on global politics. Thus, students will remain ignorant, misled, and confused about what is perhaps the key conflict in the world today, the primary justification for Arab aggrievement and subsequent aggression against Israel, and the prime motivation for Islamic terrorism in the service of Middle Eastern states, religious sects, and political organizations.

The complicity of Israel policies in partially creating and continuing the Middle Eastern conflict is minimized and distorted by McLeroy’s amendments. Modern students must learn the truth about this major event in world history for several important reasons, and McLeroy has successfully destroyed that opportunity by censoring the standards for reasons driven by his particular ultra-pro-Israel (i.e., pro-Likud) agenda mandated by his Fundamentalist Protestant Christian beliefs (unfortunately shared by many other Board members). This is precisely the travesty I warned about in my testimony when I suggested that Board members should routinely vote no to McLeroy’s amendments. Bigoted meddling by ignorant and religiously-biased SBOE members that negatively affects student learning doesn’t get any clearer than this. McLeroy’s sole purpose for his unfortunately successful amendments is to prevent students from studying the true history of the Israeli-Arab conflict in Palestine and keep them confused and ignorant, thus helping to preserve their fundamentalist Christian religious convictions.

Barbara Cargill successfully adds two two new standards that require students to explain three pro-free market factors contributing to the success of Europe and three benefits of free enterprise in the Industrial Revolution. The first two aren’t too bad, but her third one is: “explain three reasons why socialist central economic planning collapsed in competition with free markets at the end of the 20th century.” This statement is flatly untrue, and it is obvious that Cargill is ignorant of modern European economic history, where many countries are socialist and quite economically successful, much more so than the U.S. “free market” economy in many ways. The European democratic socialist economies didn’t cause, for example, the world financial meltdown and crisis that was almost totally a product of our out-of-control, unregulated capitalist system created by cronyism.

A motion to adjourn for the evening carries. See you tomorrow with more stories of travesty and malice.

If anything good were to come out of the economic destruction wrought upon us, it should be the death of the free-market myth that propelled decades of policymaking. After the crash, even Alan Greenspan had to admit there was a “flaw in the model … that defines how the world works.”

In Texas, that model remains in place. Texas lawmakers have been on a deregulation binge for decades, and Texans pay some of the highest rates in the country for electricity and home insurance. Around 75 percent of Texans live in areas where consumers have the glorious freedom to choose among several electricity providers. They pay about twice as much as the other 25 percent of Texans, who get their power from city-owned utilities, electric co-ops, or regulated investor-owned companies. That’s because the current system allows energy generators to charge expensive natural gas rates even if they are burning cheap coal. This year, the Public Utility Commission will go through its regular “sunset” review. The review gives legislators a chance to fix the wholesale market and force power companies to charge only what it costs to produce electricity, plus a reasonable profit.

Texans pay double the national average for home insurance, more than people in any other state except Florida. It’s no coincidence that the head of the Texas Department of Insurance has much less power than regulators in other states to do anything about it. In Texas, insurers can raise rates or change coverage without prior approval from the commissioner. The commissioner can sue companies over rates it deems unfair, but the state often is outgunned by corporate lawyers who can drag lawsuits on for years. Legislators could offer a simple fix: They could force insurers to get prior approval before raising rates, which would make companies justify raising rates while reaping enormous profits and cutting back coverage.

Regulation is a bread-and-butter issue, and Texas voters are looking for something to chew on. They’re justifiably angry that friends and family have lost jobs while bailed-out bankers are getting bonuses. The solution offered by Republicans and their Tea Party allies—shrinking government even further—almost surely would make the problems worse.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but one that provides an opportunity. The candidates who survived the March 2 primaries (which will have occurred after this issue goes to press) need to cut through the haze of free-market rhetoric, take a risk on some old-school populism, and offer Texans a new deal. This time, let’s make sure it’s not corporations getting the deal.