Lmst

1993 - the battle of The Future started June 29, 2007

#Texan Rick Roderick in 1993, #DukeUniversity

::: Year 1993
::: Duke University #DukeUniversity #DukeU
::: Year 1993

#SelfUnderSiege /\ #Texan #RickRoderick #ProfessorRickRoderick

Texan Rick Roderick, Professor Duke University

Osez un #barbecue #texan à votre domicile

Holy Smoke, premier fumoir de Bruxelles, fait vivre l'esprit du barbecue texan avec passion et précision. En plus du restaurant, l'équipe propose un kit à offrir à tous les rois du gril : sauces maison, sel fumé et tout le nécessaire pour faire fumer les papilles à la maison. Un coffret de caractère, à l'image de leurs poitrines fondantes. À glisser sur la table du jardin pour un été qui sent bon le bois brûlé et les bons…

https://bruxelles-city-news.be/osez-un-barbecue-texan-a-votre-domicile/

#FWakeARGclip
#FWakeRickRoderick /\
#FWakeUnreal /\

1993: "The Struggle In the Future may be to Maintain the Real" - 1993, #Texan

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxiKBzTShbVNjG94DcNQQU0_1E18iLTY16

#ChuckleHeadNation #SuperHyperNormal
#AmericansCanNotResistSurkovian
#FWakeRandy #FWakeRandyWeber #RandyForViolence
#LaughterTheBestMindFuck #JokesAreInformationWarfare in #RealityKremlin
#FWakeMentalExploitsTrump /\ #RandyWeber #FWakeCongress #FWakeTexas
#Texan /\

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/rep-randy-weber-jokes-about-dropping-undocumented-immigrants-out-airplanes

The Texan Who Built an Empire of Ecstasy

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/ecstasy-starck-club-drugs-eighties-dallas/

#HackerNews #Texan #Empire #Ecstasy #Club #Drugs #80s #Dallas

@Tubsta @arstechnica

As a #Texan, I'm gonna need you to put a CW whenever linking to an article featuring a photo of Ted Cruz /j

🤣

https://www.texasobserver.org/whos-paying-for-public-school-vouchers-1998/

Calling all #texans #texan #texas to read this 1998 article from @TexasObserver #TexasObserver about school #vouchers. If we have any hope of stopping this monstrosity, we've gotta understand its roots. Consider this 1998 article a prophetic post-mortem of how school vouchers finally got through the Lege #txlege. Then subscribe to The Texas Observer and start organizing outside of the two-party right-wing duopoly. (#txpol)

================================

>Bullock wouldn’t discuss his recent resignation from the voucher PAC Putting Children First. But his aide, Tony Proffitt—who has worked for Bullock since long before he moved from the comptroller’s to the lieutenant governor’s office—said the Lieutenant Governor still supports a “very limited voucher program,” and that he left Putting Children First because, as was first reported by the Dallas Morning News, “it was engaging in partisan activity.” The specific partisan activity was a January 19 letter from Putting Children First Chairman Jimmy Mansour to Betsy DeVoss, the founder of the Amway company [2025 Editor’s Note: Betsy DeVos married the son of the founder of Amway]. The letter refers to last session’s “tremendous momentum for our forces, as evidenced by Lt. Governor Bob Bullock joining our effort.” And it mentions plans “to gain two additional seats in the senate, where we currently hold a slim majority.”

Lolwut? "I left the PAC because it was doing PAC things." Were PACs, in the 1990s, genuinely considered to be "non-partisan" entities engaged in "non-partisan" activities? Or is that just Bullock grasping for straws?

(Reading ahead: grasping for straws)

Also, I guess Betsy DeVoss has been entangled in Christian Right politics for a while.

>“They assured him it wouldn’t be partisan,” Proffitt said. “Bullock still believes that a child who has been refused admission to another public school, after leaving a low-performing public school, should be allowed to attend a private school—as long as it doesn’t have a religious program.”

Why do I get the feeling that reading this 1998 article is gonna have me pining for the right-wing of the 1990s? (Yes, I know Bullock was a Democrat; No, Democrats are not, and never have been, left-wing).

>And in all likelihood, he has known and knows about Putting Children First, which until last year operated as a thoroughly partisan political action committee called “The A+ PAC for Parental School Choice.”

The rhetoric is the same, even 30+ years ago.

>Although A+ focused on the House and Board of Education, it also worked to ensure that the Senate over which Bullock presided would have a Republican majority, giving at least $20,000 to the unsuccessful candidacy of Bob Reese and at least $5,000 to Senator Steve Ogden, who trounced a woefully underfunded Democratic opponent.

Those numbers are fucking quaint.

>(Besides directly electing Republican candidates in the past two sessions, the PACs’ targeting of vulnerable incumbent Democrats has driven the cost of campaigns so high that the limited funding resources of Texas Democrats are constantly exhausted.)
>
>...
>
>It is in general elections that PACs make a big splash, and in the last election A+ PAC (Mansour, Leininger, Walton, and several big, out-of-state funders) made sure that conservative Republican candidates were awash in money. So Putting Children First has been bi-partisan thus far. But the last time these funders got together as the A+ PAC, the contributions were indeed “imbalanced.” The A+. PAC provided a total of $8,500 to Democratic House candidates. To Republicans, it contributed $587,445. As with the Putting Children First money, almost all the A+ Democratic money went to minority, inner-city Democrats, who now find themselves in the seemingly awkward position of accepting contributions from corporate and Christian right funders whose explicit and much-announced goals include making the Democrats a minority party, and reducing funding for public education. In this battle, “vouchers” are simply a means to an end—and that end is defined by Republican funders.

*Dingalingaling!* (that's a bell) Democrats underfund Texas (even when they ruled it, apparently). Also, water is wet. If you think the Democrats have learned in the intervening 30 years, they haven't.

>I asked Glen Lewis, an African-American Democrat from Fort Worth, if he had any misgivings about such funding, considering that most of the $685,000 Leininger spent on lobbying and campaigns last session was used against Democrats and Democratic Party interests. “I didn’t go to them,” Lewis said, “they came to me because I was interested in the issue.” Lewis, one of three Democrats who remain on Putting Children First’s Legislative Advisory Council, said he favors vouchers because of the extremely poor performance of the inner city public schools that his constituents are forced into. (The other Democrats still with Putting Children First are Ron Wilson, of Houston, and Laredo Representative Henry Cuellar, who sent Mansour a letter complaining about the letter that provoked Bullock’s resignation.) I asked Lewis if he had any objection to accepting campaign contributions from a group whose huge investment in elections is moving the state’s political center farther and farther to the right. “Texas politics?” Lewis said. “How could it get any farther right than it already is?” (For the answer to that question, Representative Lewis will only have to watch the next two election cycles.)

Yowza. I find it fitting that #FortWorth #Dallas #dfw creeps up here. In Fort Worth, *nobody* wants to send their kids to public school. Everybody fights over slots in private schools. One would have thought that democrats would look at the rightward slide they were in and come to the conclusion that, perhaps, veering leftward might have been the harder, but more foundationally sound, choice to make.

Also, not surprised to see that Cuellar was a shithead even back in the 1990s.

>He said he will take advantage of whatever resources are available to pass voucher legislation that will allow students to transfer from low-performing public schools to high-performing public schools. “I have a different agenda. The Republicans are in this for the privatization and the free market aspect. I want to improve the public schools,” Garcia said. “I support increasing teacher salaries and decreasing class size to eighteen.” But until schools, and in particular inner-city schools, are improved, Garcia said, he will work to pass a voucher bill that will require school districts with high academic performance to accept students from schools with low academic performance.

This is the *escape* mindset. It is a corrosive poison that has embodied the body politic of Texas for decades. We will not *escape* these problems. We must *meet* them, head on.

>“I have seven students in my district who want to transfer to suburban schools that refuse to admit them,” Garcia said. “They think if they accept these seven students, they’ll have a whole wave of transfers and their standards will fall.”

The classism and racism of suburbia strikes again. May we all read The Color of Law, please.

>Garcia’s pragmatic argument may seem to make principled liberal opposition to vouchers seem somewhat precious. But in historical perspective, the battle over school vouchers is not finally about vouchers at all; it’s about real racial integration in Texas (and U.S.) public schools.

Yep.

>Short term, these guys will use inner-city children as a first step, and even spring for a few tickets for poor minority kids to attend rich majority schools. In the long term, as Republican Representative Rick Williamson said after the House came as close as ever to passing a voucher program in the 1997 session, losing only on a tie vote (67-67): “We’re going after the whole system.”

And that is exactly what was done.

Subscribe to the Texas Observer, y'all.

What’s important right now is that people focus on common interests and shared goals. If we don’t have a democracy there’s no opportunity for a vegan to improve the living conditions of chickens. If we don’t have a democracy there’s no opportunity for people concerned about the environment to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Everyone needs to focus on the big picture: returning power to the people and disempowering the 1%. #NoBillionaires #America #democracy #liberty #texan #sanfranciscobayarea #nedluddwasright

#USpol #Resist
#PrivateSchoolVoucherScam in #Texas

#Texan #Democrat #JamesTalerico shows the way how to fight back against the billionaire #TechnoFeudalists like #PeterThiel and #ElonMusk:

"The only minority destroying #America is the Billionaires!"

Via @Keithedwards

https://youtube.com/shorts/4SfcHBc8Phk

@indivisibleteam
@DemocracyMattersALot
@democratsabroad
@democracydocket
@MeidasTouch

DOGE Mismanagement Principles

Musk et al. don't know or care about the damage they are doing
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-mismanagement-principles

"Sam Rayburn, the #Texan who served as House Speaker for 17 years was fond of saying, "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one."...

Trashing #government agencies is easy. Making them work is hard...

failure of government systems has big and sometimes irrevocable costs"

#Musk #Doge #Coup #Trump #GOP #US #USPol #Politics #USA #News

Headline and text from article:

Headline: DOGE Mismanagement Principles
Musk et al. don't know or care about the damage they are doing

by Don Moynihan
Feb 16, 2025

Text:
Sam Rayburn, the Texan who served as House Speaker for 17 years was fond of saying:

"Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one."

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/microsoft-cs-education-program-creates-ripples-impact-k2sec

A friend shared this post on #LinkedIn. It's about how the l Young #Women's #STEAM Research & Preparatory Academy (YWA) in #ElPaso, #Texas has "an introductory-to-advanced sequence of [#computerScience] classes," and how they earned the #CollegeBoard’s #AP #CS Female #Diversity #Award. I shared this on LinkedIn.

As a #Texan, I'm proud that we are preparing Texas #students for careers in #technology.

For years, Texas government has been working to attract tech companies to come to Texas. The idea being to create tech #jobs in our state.

This can only work if Texas has educated workers who can fill those roles. If there aren't enough tech workers in Texas, those jobs will be filled by #immigrants from #SiliconValley, the #PacificNorthwest, or even other nations. Which defeats the purpose of bringing those jobs here.

Many people think that #AI is going to take all the tech jobs. This is not a reasonable expectation because AI cannot innovate. AI cannot be trained on ideas that don't exist, which means that it can only remix existing ideas. AI can only think inside the box.

This is why technology education is so important. Innovation depends on thinking outside the box. And, for the foreseeable future, this requires a human mind.

#LanceLopez, le célèbre #artiste de #blues-rock et de #blues #texan, a été fortement influencé par des #légendes telles que #JimiHendrix, #BB-King et #StevieRayVaughan. Sa virtuosité en tant que #guitariste de blues a été décrite par #JeffBeck comme « très excitante et intense». Il y a à peine 16 ans, Lopez a rencontré #BillyGibbons, qui continue de le guider jusqu'à ce jour. Son #parcours-musical l'a conduit à travers l' #Europe, où il a soutenu des grands noms tels que #SteveVai et #Jeff-Beck.
https://youtu.be/9gkXhdALmJc?si=Aec5xDzup9jjCoBV

Yeah. Pretty sure the MAGAtwats are being quiet. If a #texan isnt being a loudmouth, then that's saying something. Usually Ted Cruz goes dancing in a pink tutu trying to be the consistent center of attention...and when HE'S being quiet? Y'all know ya done fucked up. At least we know he's not in Cancun this time. #trump #maga

Native Texan farmer on relief. Goodliet [sic], Hardeman County, Texas. "Tractored out" in late 1937. Now living in town, and on the verge of relief. Wife and two children

#NativeTexan #HardemanCounty #Texas #nativeTexans #Texan #theGreatDepression #photography #DorotheaLange