The Associated Press | Posted: Monday, August 21, 2006 12:00 am
By The Associated Press
A sampling of editorial opinion around Texas:
Aug. 21
The Dallas Morning News on a creative rail solution:
Regional thinking and regional action produced recent progress toward meeting North Texas' breathtaking transportation demands.
Both came in one category: building enough freeways to unsnarl the region's lung-searing, money-wasting, nerve-fraying traffic.
Progress is vital in a second, equally important category: seamless regional rail transit to take pressure off those very freeways.
Each component of the transportation system must be hammered into place if this metro area wants clean air, torture-free local travel and curtailed urban sprawl.
One breakthrough on the freeway front was agreement by the local tollway agency and state transportation department on who builds, runs and plans future tollways. A second achievement was getting the governor's attention on the region's insistence that the state's Trans-Texas Corridor meet local traffic needs.
Each success took negotiation, compromise, focus and foresight the very ingredients the public should expect of local leaders as they move into the next phase of pushing for regional rail.
What's up is this: A broad-based working group of elected and appointed officials is grappling with how to raise money to complete the local rail network. Key is getting the Legislature to lift the sales tax cap so local communities can vote their way into the rail network now run by DART, the Fort Worth T and, soon, by Denton County's transit authority.
To gauge sentiment, task force members commissioned a nine-county, $66,000 public opinion survey on who wants rail and what they'll pay. Results, due in September, will guide state lawmakers on what to press for in Austin.
Regardless of the results, expect the process to rouse competing interests. Fault lines are predictable between urban, suburban, exurban and rural interests. Then there's Dallas and other DART cities vs. those that haven't been paying a transit tax.
Collision courses? Without a doubt. Huge challenges? You bet.
Creative solutions required? Absolutely.
But anyone who sees the problems as insurmountable need only ponder the product of failure: choking on the exhaust from North Texas' 3.7 million cars and light trucks.
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Aug. 20
Houston Chronicle on classifying Texas' students:
The federal education reform bill known as No Child Left Behind was named to emphasize that in America's public education system, every child is expected to make academic progress. To ensure that all children are learning, students must be tracked in various ways, by poverty, migrant status, learning ability and important in assuring equal opportunity race and ethnicity. Unfortunately, Texas lumps all its children into such a small number of racial categories that it is impossible to tease out from the resulting data how well children in all but the broadest racial categories are faring.
For the purpose of determining "adequate yearly progress," Texas crams all students into three racial/ethnic groups: white, black or Hispanic. The state doesn't count Asian, American Indian or mulitracial schoolchildren. Arkansas is the only other state that tracks so few categories.
According to reporting by the Chronicle's Jennifer Radcliffe, school employees say they have been told to choose a single race for those students whose parents check off more than one racial or ethnic category on registration forms. Administrators are said to select a race for those who decline to note one for their child.
That leaves the data open to manipulation by schools that would benefit from having more or fewer students in one racial/ethnic classification or another. That's because standardized test scores do not have to be reported for groups that do not have enough students to be deemed statistically significant. A student with one black and one white parent could be placed in one or the other racial category depending on how well or poorly he tested.
The overly broad categories also prevent schools and parents from noting how well Asian or American Indian children are performing and whether the schools are meeting their needs.
Both notions argue for aligning school data on race and ethnicity more closely with U.S. Census reporting, which asks first for information on whether a person is Hispanic, then asks respondents to select from among categories for white; Asian, native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; American Indian or Alaska Native; and black or African-American.
"No Child Left Behind" implies that every student is important in public education. But that can't be true if Texas lets educators disregard all those students who belong to small minority groups within a school.
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Aug. 21
Fort Worth Star-Telegram on the plight of the Legal Services Corporation:
President Reagan targeted the Legal Services Corp. for extinction.
But he couldn't pull it off.
After he left office, board members whom he appointed tried to implode the agency, even hiring expensive outside lawyers to write a memo declaring LSC unconstitutional.
During much of its 32-year history, the agency, which doles out federal money for civil legal services to poor clients, has had to dodge ideological opponents, ax-grinders and budget-cutters. But the latest threat strikes directly at LSC's credibility.
And it comes from corporation officials who, inadvertently or not, leave the impression that they've lost touch with the real world where their clients live.
After examining agency documents, The Associated Press reported that the corporation has spent from $20,145 to $55,125 on meetings of its 11-member board.
One gathering, held at the Melrose Hotel in the Georgetown area of Washington, included a $59-per-person, three-entree buffet; a $17-per-person Belgian waffle breakfast; and $14-per-person "Death By Chocolate" desserts, according to the AP.
The reasons given for meeting at that hotel instead of at the nearby LSC headquarters: Board members preferred being near their rooms. They didn't want to be confined to HQ for two days. The agency's conference room, which holds 80 people, wasn't big enough for board members, staff, the press and public.
The AP report didn't explain how lavish breakfasts and desserts improved poor people's access to essential legal assistance when they need protective orders, struggle with dubious eviction notices, have been scammed or seek Social Security benefits they've wrongly been denied.
Nor did it look good that board Chairman Frank Strickland and President Helaine Barnett spent $423.99 on a car and driver for rides to Capitol Hill, Arlington National Cemetery and another location, even to keep a tight schedule.
Officials have disputed reports by AP and CBS. The Fulton County Daily Report quoted Strickland as calling the expenditures "legitimate costs" and saying that the Melrose per-head meal charges were typical for hotel catering in D.C. That may be, but it doesn't make them more palatable.
The Legal Services Corp. has done much good for low-income Americans, even during the many years when it was caught in a struggle over whether its grantees should focus on individual clients' day-to-day problems or be allowed to undertake systemic social change to assist the poor.
For decades, members of Congress from both sides of the political aisle have fought recurring battles to keep the agency functioning and federally funded for its vital mission.
Just last fall, the agency reported that for every client served, another applicant gets turned away. A separate study concluded that about 25 percent of the legal needs of poor Texans are being met.
Because federal money simply doesn't stretch to cover all those who qualify for services from legal aid offices, states increasingly have developed supplemental funding and extended networks of pro bono lawyers. But the LSC remains the single largest revenue source for many programs.
For instance, the Texas Access to Justice Commission oversees the distribution of some $60 million annually to civil legal services for the poor. Almost 44 percent of that, about $26 million, comes from LSC.
Congress appropriated almost $326.6 million for the corporation for the current fiscal year, with more than $308 million of it to be distributed to 138 basic field programs. LSC has requested $411.8 million for fiscal 2007. The House has approved $313.9 million, while a Senate committee recommended $358.5 million. Both proposals allocate slightly less than $13 million for management and administration, short of the $14.5 million in the agency's request.
Let's concede that LSC's management expenses are low in relation to its overall budget. And that operating in Washington doesn't come cheap. And that internal government watchdogs have uncovered far more extensive abuses at other agencies.
Even so, when officials at an anti-poverty agency appear to be less conscious about costs than about accommodating their own comfort and convenience, they disserve every legal aid lawyer, client and advocate. They give their agency a black eye. They undermine supporters and give ammunition to critics.
It would be a travesty for LSC to absorb a damaging body blow so its board members could indulge in chocolate decadence.
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Aug. 21
Austin American-Statesman on the effects of the Texas drought:
Unless your private well has run dry or your boat dock is aground, the numbers being generated by the drought are as removed from you as the path of that thick, medium rare steak on your dinner table.
The lack of rainfall during the past 16 months here and in many parts of Texas has cost our economy $4.1 billion, a modern record, and is of a severity that is being compared to the last most awful drought of the early 1950s. The overall economic effect on the Texas farm economy, when you add in business lost to farm implement, feed, veterinary and other related companies, could reach $8 billion, according to the Texas Cooperative Extension.
Crop losses alone are $2.5 billion, $1 billion of it in cotton, the state's most important cash crop. The cattle business has taken a $1.6 billion hit. Ranchers in the nation's leading cattle-producing state have sold 200,000 more head this year than last because they can't afford to feed them. Drought has killed 77 percent of the hay crop that was supposed to feed cattle this season, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The winter wildfires that burned 1 million acres and killed 11 Texans, prompting Gov. Perry to declare all of Texas a drought disaster area, are reappearing this summer in the state's driest places, particularly the counties north of Dallas along the Oklahoma border.
And as if the surface water news weren't bad enough, the drought is accelerating the dropping water table of the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides 40 percent of the water Texas uses.
But what do all those numbers mean here, where we water our lawns at will, and the store shelves are full of meat, dairy products and produce at prices that are not perceptibly higher than usual? Some residents in Hays County say their wells have run dry and more will follow as the area develops. But the water levels of Lakes Buchanan and Travis aren't close to being as low as the years-long 1950s drought or the more recent droughts of the mid-1990s or 2000-01.
And if things are so bad in North Texas, word has not gotten to the Crow family of Highland Park. The father and son development and real estate dynasty pays more the $10,000 each month to pour a combined 3 million gallons of water on the lawns of their respective estates. By comparison, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who lives not far from the Crows, is a strict conservationist, using just a sprinkle more than 510,000 gallons a month. Most of us get by on 8,000 to 9,000 gallons a month, bathing included.
The Crows aren't yet prohibited from using a resource they can pay for. But as our urban culture detaches itself from our agrarian past, we are less aware of how bound we remain to the land we pave over and the water we pump.
In the 1930s, before we possessed the technology to bring water up from deep in the Ogallala, drought and wind caused the soil to rise up and blow away, and hundreds of thousands of Texas farmers left with it. In the 1950s, the drought lasted for so many years that a second generation was forced to find jobs in the city.
Farmers have adapted, irrigating from the aquifers and holding down part-time jobs to ride out failed hay, winter wheat, corn and cotton crops. Our cities and their suburbs continue to grow. We install underground sprinkler systems for our lawns. We blast holes in our back yards for swimming pools. No one we know has said they're thinking of pulling up stakes because of this recent spell of dry weather.
In our air-conditioned homes, we embrace the illusion that we live in somewhere other than a land in perpetual drought interrupted from time to time by flood. The sweltering reality is that this illusion has a staggering cost.
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Aug. 21
San Antonio Express-News on Mel Gibson's recent troubles:
When Mel Gibson launched his anti-Semitic tirade recently, there were two victims.
The group he targeted was one.
Gibson himself was the other, for the actor/director invited as much scorn as he tried to heap upon Jews.
Now, we have learned, there is a third group of victims those who may feel tarnished by their association with Gibson, who was arrested on charges of speeding and driving under the influence as he weaved along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif.
Just look at California state Sen. Tom McClintock, who received an endorsement letter from Gibson a while back a letter he probably wishes had never been written.
The senator, who is running for lieutenant governor, has "made a conscious decision to direct people not to use the letter any further," campaign spokesman Stan Devereaux said, according to Slate.
In politics, it seems, you have to choose your friends wisely and discard them just as wisely.
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Aug. 21
The Victoria Advocate on ending GOP fiscal irresponsibility:
Paraphrasing the late U.S. Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen, R-Ill., "A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there - eventually, it adds up to real money."
Back during the 1950s and '60s, when Dirksen led the fiscally conservative Republicans in the Senate, he actually said "billion." Back then, that was "real money."
Today, under the fiscally irresponsible Republicans in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, a billion is menudo. Trillions are what count now.
As in: The Republican-led Congress and Republican President Bush have added $2.75 trillion dollars to the national debt since Bush took office Jan. 20, 2001.
And according to the Congressional Budget Office, the national debt will grow by "$1.76 trillion over the next decade, and could be double that estimate if President Bush's tax cuts are made permanent," The Associated Press reported.
"When Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget was in the fourth and final year of surplus. The impact of the tax cuts, the 2001 recession and the costs of fighting terrorism wiped out the forecast from 2001, Bush's first year in office, for a budget surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next decade and replaced it with growing deficits," the AP added.
The almost $308 billion the Bush administration has sunk into the Iraqi quagmire is a serious chunk of the record national debt. But it is only one part. The administration's tax cuts count for an even bigger part of the highest national debt in U.S. history.
The administration and its allies in Congress pass along the cost of the Iraq war and other current expenses to the future.
Rather than requiring today's taxpayers to sacrifice to pay for, for example, increased national security to combat the terrorism threat, the Republican leaders in the White House and Congress pass along that cost to future taxpayers who have little or no representation now and have no way to protect themselves from this fiscal irresponsibility.
Republican congressional leaders used to be fiscally responsible, as they were when they teamed up with President Bill Clinton to use "pay as you go" budgeting that resulted in budget surpluses. New spending required offsetting cuts in other spending or tax hikes. Tax cuts had to be matched by offsetting cuts in spending or by new revenue from other sources.
But when they gained control of the White House, too, the Republicans abandoned that fiscal responsibility. Now, the nation is $2.75 trillion deeper in debt. And if Bush gets his way and Congress makes his tax cuts permanent without any offsets, the national debt could grow by another $3.26 trillion in the next decade, the CBO projects.
"The most important point to take from this report is that current fiscal policy remains unsustainable under realistic assumptions," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan budget watchdog group.
In other words, the fiscal policies the Republicans in power in Washington are following ultimately will bankrupt the nation.
Over the past few years, congressional Democrats have insisted on returning to the pay-go budgeting that produced the Clinton-era budget surpluses. They need to make this a major issue in this year's election campaign. But it has to be more than mere words. This has to be a serious commitment that they will follow through on if they retake control of either or both houses of Congress.