This appointment had been rumored for some time, so it was hardly a surprise. Michael Williams has a slim history in the education area, except for serving in the Department of Education during the George H. W. Bush administration and serving on the board of a Catholic school. He faces a steep learning curve in a Texas Education Agency that is a stripped-down version of what it used to be, going into a session that has a long list of education issues on the table.

One of the most important items on the agenda is whether testing is out of control. Perry is a strong advocate of accountability, which is based upon standardized tests. The Texas Association of Business, under Bill Hammond, is another advocate. Some business groups say that they won’t support more funding for education if the accountability system is weakened. I believe that this issue will come up for a vote this session, and if it does, I think Hammond may lose. Outgoing commissioner Robert Scott turned against standardized testing last session, and many parents have turned against it–the mantra being that there is too much “teaching to the test”–and it’s going to be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. (You can read my August column about Scott’s departure and his view of testing here.) Williams is also going to find himself in the middle of a big fight over school vouchers. He is there to serve the governor, not the schools.

Perry has all but officially announced for governor in 2014.  That race won’t be a cinch given that his negatives are sky high, but it could shut the door on Greg Abbott and the rest of the would-be field. It also means his sights are really set on 2016, when Obama’s second term would expire, and Romney would be but a memory. (I’m not calling the presidential race for Obama, just putting the pieces of the puzzle together for what Perry needs to happen.) Perry is about to become Barack Obama’s biggest fan, for if Romney wins the presidency, all of Perry’s efforts will go for naught. The looming voucher fight is a signal that Perry will turn even harder to the right as he prepares for another race. Next up after vouchers: changing ERS from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan.

One fly in that ointment is that the 2016 Republican field will be much stronger than the current one (Ryan, Rubio, Jeb Bush, Jindal, Daniels, Christie), and Perry still has plenty of scars and YouTube moments that voters are going to remember. I don’t expect Michael Williams to set the world on fire as education commissioner, but he is very popular and very well known in Republican circles and would be an asset to Perry as a surrogate in a presidential campaign.

Tagged: michael williams

The outcome of this case was predestined. For months, the D.C. court warned that Texas’s failure to provide Hispanic opportunity districts when there were huge Hispanic population gains could be construed as evidence of intentional discrimination. There was no way a fair court could ignore the facts in the case: that Texas qualified for four new congressional seats due almost entirely to Hispanic growth, and yet the Legislature provided no new Hispanic congressional seats. The same could be said for state House districts.

The failure must be laid entirely at Greg Abbott’s door. It was Abbott who tried to make an end run around the Department of Justice by choosing to take his case to the D.C. district court. It was Abbott who kept insisting that the Texas maps were legal. The D.C. court also sniffed out the shenanigans the state was employing to weaken districts where minorities were concentrated by moving out the most active voters and replacing them with less active voting populations–with the connivance of the Speaker of the House, in CD-23. I am sorry to report that I never had a moment’s doubt that Abbott, and Texas, would lose the case.

This is a permanent black mark on Abbott’s record: guilty of intentional discrimination. That won’t soon be forgotten. It is possible, of course, that the Supreme Court could rule in his favor on appeal, but to do so they would have to ignore the finding of intentional discrimination by the D.C. Court of Appeals, one of the most respected courts in the federal system.

It is going to be interesting to see what Abbott and Perry do next. Will they seek to redistrict in the 2013 session, as there were rumblings they might do? The problem for the Republicans is that they cannot draw maps that don’t betray discriminatory intent. They can redistrict, but they can’t get a court to bless their work.

UPDATE: Several readers have raised the issue that it was unfair of me to claim that Abbott is himself guilty of intentional discrimination and to place the blame for the maps solely at his feet. They are right, which I acknowledge below in the comments. I certainly understand what the attorney general’s role and duties are in moving the maps through the preclearance process and defending them under Section V of the Voting Rights Act. But overall, the ruling from the D.C. court does claim that the maps, as drawn by the state’s leaders and subsequently defended in the D.C. court, discriminated against minority voters, which was my main point.

Tagged: greg abbott, redistricting

I was saddened to hear of the death of astronaut Neil Armstrong, at 82. His passing reminds us of a time when people still believed that government could do great things. Nobody believes that any more. The landing on the moon is one of the great accomplishments of this nation, or any nation, in the history of humankind, and it came at a difficult moment in our history. The Vietnam war was still raging, a war based on the mistaken premise that if Vietnam fell to the communists, all of southeast Asia would follow. America was still struggling with the promise of civil rights as its cities endured summers of rioting. And, of course, we suffered through the terrible assassinations of the era.

I remember reading what Time wrote (though not verbatim) about the moon landing: “When the Viet Nam war is just a footnote to history, the date July 20, 1969, will still be remembered around the world.” That was the right perspective. We earthlings had defeated gravity.

* * * *

I was in Rice Stadium on September 12, 1962–my senior year–when John F. Kennedy came to Houston to give his “Moon Speech,” about his plan to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. The Cuban Missile crisis lay just weeks ahead. The Vietnam conflict was just starting to make the news. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington was a year away. Though few of us suspected it, Texas lay on the cusp of enormous change. NASA would bring to Houston a cachet it had never dreamed of. Unseen thousands of people in the northern tier of states were gathering to descend on Texas. A state that was primarily rural in character was about to discover the suburb, with all the immense political and social changes that would follow.  The political group that dominated state politics–conservative Democrats–would soon find themselves pinched to the point of extinction between Republicans and liberal Democrats. The new Texas that lay just beyond the horizon would bring liquor by the drink, Southwest Airlines, the Dallas Cowboys, women at Texas A&M, the silicon chip, and thousands upon thousands of immigrants from across the Rio Grande. Houston itself would soon be the nation’s fourth largest city.

I’m going to publish JFK’s “Moon Speech” below, as a memorial to Neil Armstrong, because it speaks to the way Americans viewed the future in those days. It is a great speech, one that encapsulates all of recorded history and seeks to set it in the history of our own time. Unlike today’s politicians, Kennedy spoke to our best impulses as a nation, not our worst.

* * * *

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I’m particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation’s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward–and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it–we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man’s history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were “made in the United States of America” and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year’s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year–a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority–even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun–almost as hot as it is here today–and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out–then we must be bold.

I’m the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we’re going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don’t think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”

Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I’m particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward–and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it–we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man’s history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were “made in the United States of America” and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year’s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year–a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority–even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun–almost as hot as it is here today–and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out–then we must be bold.

I’m the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we’re going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don’t think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”

Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Here’s what I think should happen:

(1) If Abbott isn’t going to run against Perry, he should challenge Dewhurst for lieutenant governor. It’s the best job available (other than governor), and Dewhurst is gravely wounded. Abbott would beat him like a drum. If Abbott doesn’t run, Dewhurst still has to contend with three other likely opponents in Staples, Patterson, and Combs. There goes another $20 million of the family fortune. I don’t think Dewhurst can be reelected in 2014. He’s the guy everybody wants to run against, the walking dead.

(2) Perry has not indicated his intentions, but I assume that he will run again. He has nowhere else to go. There is nothing else he is qualified to do except continue to mess up Texas. He is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2016 if Romney loses. There are too many strong contenders out there: Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, to name a few.

(3) I assume that everyone has heard the rumors by now that there is an effort behind the scenes to get George P. Bush to run against Perry in 2014. It is not too far-fetched that Rove could orchestrate a reprise of W.’s 1994 race, when he arranged tutorials for Bush from Republicans who were knowledgeable about state policy. The issue I see is whether there are enough moderate Republicans left in the party to sustain a race against an ideological conservative like Perry. My view is that star power transcends ideology. Perry ceased to be a star when he “oopsed.” Or, to put it another way, has Perry stayed too long, to the point that Republicans are ready for a new face? There will certainly be questions about whether P. is ready to run statewide at such a young age.

One thing the younger Bush would not have to worry about would be fundraising. The Bush apparatus is still there. P. has to decide whether to roll the dice at this early stage in his career or just wait until Perry finally steps off the stage. A lot of wannabes have perished waiting for him to take that step. I wouldn’t wait. Another huge advantage for P. is that he endorsed Ted Cruz. Perry, as we all know, endorsed the Dew. I can envision Cruz and P. traveling together to fire up Republican crowds, representing the future of the party. Perry would pale in comparison. I think Bush wins this race, and I doubt that Perry would even challenge him.

Tagged: 2014

I was quite surprised to see the story in the Tribune about the fishing cabins along the Intracoastal canal. I’d forgotten about them since the days when I worked in the Senate for Babe Schwartz as committee counsel. The cabins, which we referred to a squatters’ shacks, were built by folks along the shoreline or on spoil islands. They became an issue because they were situated on state-owned land and many did not have adequate waste disposal facilities. And there were a lot of them. The shacks, some of which, as you can see from the photo in the Tribune, were really quite nice, didn’t have a legitimate chain of title. The land office didn’t like the idea of people squatting on state land, and the cabins made the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers nervous, as they were subject to being destroyed in storms and becoming a navigation hazard. Another concern was that, since no one could legitimately claim ownership of the cabins or the land they were built on, dangerous disputes over possession could occur. We worked with the land office, then headed by Bob Armstrong, and came up with the idea of issuing permits that could be renewed annually for a fee. It was a sensible solution, and I’m gratified to see that it is still working some forty years later. The state got a little money out of it, but if a major storm ever hits the area, there is going to be one hell of a mess.

There seems to be a new organization that’s getting started. It’s called “Texans First.” Here’s what I think is going on. It’s a Rick Perry play all the way. That’s obvious from the signature on the letter, which is that of Bill Jones, formerly Perry’s general counsel and former chairman of the A&M Board of Regents. Perry is doing what he does every session: Ingratiate himself with the freshmen. This is straight from the Perry playbook. He’ll probably try to attend freshman orientation too. They are the only ones left who might be impressed by a governor who is desperately trying to extend his own relevance.

The letter says,

Congratulations on winning your race. You earned it. Now comes the hard part–delivering on the promises you made, so Texas avoids becoming a high-tax, over-regulated, lawsuit riddled disaster like California.

Benjamin Franklin cautioned, “We most all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. That’s why those of us at Texas First, a group of liberty minded entrepreneurs who are dedicated to the same principles you are, want to invite you to an intimate gathering of legislative policy leaders, policy experts, and successful entrepreneurs. If you will come, we promise you a day of deep principled discussion and serious commitments you won’t soon forget.

The location is the Acton School, the private MBA program run by Jeff Sandefer, a longtime Perry ally.

The letter goes on to say that the goal will be to draft a serious plan for advancing the freedoms of all Texans, “before the destructive forces of lobbyists, special interests, and petty politics begin to tear at us all.”

As for avoiding the destructive forces of lobbyists, special interests, and petty politics, I wouldn’t count on it. The event (scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 19), is being hosted by Texans for Lawsuit Reform.

UPDATE:

This is an explanation of who and what Texans First is, from Amanda Venable:

1.    The Bill Jones cited in the blog post and the Bill Jones that is president of Texans First are two different people. The Bill Jones that is president of Texans First is an entrepreneur from Odessa that now works and lives in Austin. He is also a teacher at the Acton School of Business, thus, our access to the Acton campus. No relation to Bill Jones, Perry’s former counsel.

2.    Texans First is not that new of an organization. We’ve been around for two years. We were formed by a small group of entrepreneurs and community leaders. No politicians have been involved in the formation of our group or are active in the day-to-day operations.

Texans First is a collection of entrepreneurs, business leaders, teachers and community leaders that have come together to help advance entrepreneurial civic causes and initiatives. We provide a space for entrepreneurs to take the same skills that created successful ventures and apply them to the world of policy — be that in the realm of education and mentorship or economic vitality or government accountability.

Actually, this group sounds pretty interesting. The Bill Jones mentioned here is involved in Jeff Sandefer’s Acton School of Business. Thanks to Ms. Venable for the explanation.

I was very interested to see the story that former Harris County judge Robert Eckels is leading a group that wants to bring a bullet train to Texas, backed by Japanese interests. There was a previous effort to bring a bullet train to Texas in 1993. It didn’t come to fruition. The major obstacle to a bullet train is the cost of grade separation. Every time a road crosses the tracks, an overpass is required. The train travels so fast (205 miles per hour) that motorists who attempt to cross the tracks at grade level would be in mortal danger. The train is there and gone in three seconds. So grade separation along the entire route is imperative.

Back in 1993, the idea for the bullet train was that it would serve as a shuttle for American Airlines. Passengers would board in Houston or San Antonio or Austin to get to DFW. They would check their luggage at the point of origin and pick it up at their destination airport. I called American Airlines to see about the feasibility of this plan and was told by a spokeswoman, “Texas doesn’t need a train. It already has one. It’s called Southwest Airlines.” Indeed, Southwest does operate like a train. Passengers get on, they get off, new passengers get on, and every seat is filled.

The bullet train is a distant cousin of the late, unlamented, Trans-Texas corridor. The 1200-foot right-of-way for the Corridor was originally intended to service power lines, pipelines, and high-speed rail. If you thought the Trans-Texas corridor was an intrusion on property rights and raised the spectre of eminent domain battles along the entire route, imagine the fallout from high-speed rail as the train zips through the bucolic pastures of rural Texas. It makes the Keystone pipeline look like a Tinkertoy project.

The original bullet train idea failed because its backers couldn’t get the financing. They were counting on some assistance from the state, but the Legislature and the Texas High-Speed Rail Authority balked. (No surprise there.) The cost of grade separation along the entire right-of-way required $6 billion in bonds, a number that would be considerably higher today. I calculated at the time that trains would have to run at 96 percent of capacity, running virtually around the clock, to pay off the debt in the number of years allotted.

I went to France in 1993 with the lobby team that was seeking to get the franchise for the bullet train. (SNCF, the French national railway, paid for the trip, not the lobbyists.) Here is the first part of the story I wrote:

The little engine that might

Article from: Texas Monthly | April 1, 1993 | Burka, Paul | Copyright

I am living the dream. The bullet train is streaking southbound through the French countryside at 168 miles per hour. It is a misty January morning, and even though we are north of Montreal by latitude, the pastures between Paris and Lyon are as verdant as the Brazos River bottoms in May. I have no sense of traveling at a high velocity–until a jolt of disturbed air portends the coming of a northbound train. The blur is past us in the blink of an eye. Otherwise, we glide along the welded rails without a single lurch, vibration, or clickety-clack. There is ample time to take in the pastoral landscape as it slips by–the placid brook beyond the tracks, spanned here and there by wooden footbridges; the herd of sheep that takes no notice of our intrusion; the steeples on distant hills that are as prominent in rural France as water towers are in rural Texas; the vineyards at Macon, the fog over the river Saone, the medieval abbey at Cluny.

It is so civilized. In front of me, on a table that separates two rows of facing seats, is a plate stacked high with croissants. Another plate has packages of fromage–Montrachet, Gouda, Beaufort, Camembert, and Brie. A disposable coffee dripper is filling my cup. I lean back and extend my legs with no worry of disturbing the person across from me. Is it too early, I wonder, for some vin blanc?

The dream is that the bullet train can be transplanted to Texas, right down to the croissants. By the year 2000, if everything goes according to plan, we will be riding French TGV trains–the initials stand for train a grande vitesse, or “train of great speed”–between Dallas and Houston, with a Dallas-San Antonio leg soon to follow and perhaps a San Antonio-Houston link in the future. The thought is irresistible. No more cramped middle seats on Boeing 737′s, no more long waits in check-in lines, no more pushing and shoving at the gate to be first in your boarding group, no more seat belts, no more peanuts, no more worrying whether Hobby will be fogged in, no more air turbulence, no more banal messages from pilots that you can’t hear anyway because of the engine noise.

But the bullet train has never gotten on the fast track in Texas. Texas TGV, the company that beat out a German-backed rival for the Texas franchise in 1991, is under constant attack: for overstating its ridership projections, for understating its costs, for seeking public subsidies after promising it would not, for missing a deadline to raise $167 million in equity, and for failing to address the fears of Texans along the proposed routes that the fenced railroad right-of-way would amount to a Berlin Wall through rural Texas. In towns like Seguin, Franklin, and Westphalia, opponents of the bullet train have banded together to form DERAIL (Demanding Ethics, Responsibility, and Accountability in Legislation). They are backing a proposal to dismantle the Texas High-Speed Rail Authority and revoke Texas TGV’s franchise.

[end of excerpt]

* * * *

The biggest obstacle to a bullet train in Texas will be the opposition of rural landowners. (The same was true in France.) Farmers and ranchers will have to drive to a place where they can cross the tracks. They will need assurances that their livestock is safe. They will require access to pastures on the other side of the rails. Who is going to pay for that? To these questions one possible response is that it works in France. But Texas landowners are likely to be more outspoken than French landowners. One factor in the train’s favor is that it does not disturb livestock. The technology of the wheels and rails is such (or, at least it was the case in 1993) that the ride is silent and almost frictionless. We were told that the engineer could cut the power 25 kilometers from the station and coast the rest of the way into the station.

Aside from landowners, the biggest source of opposition to the train would likely be Southwest Airlines. Southwest lobbied hard against the bullet train back in the nineties. And by the way, Tx-DoT was no fan of the bullet train either. Transportation money spent on rails is money not spent on roads.

From the Washington Post, August 11:

A new nationwide analysis of more than 2,000 cases of alleged election fraud over the past dozen years shows that in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which has prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tougher voter ID laws, was virtually nonexistent.

The analysis of 2,068 reported fraud cases by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative reporting project, found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation since 2000. With 146 million registered voters in the United States, those represent about one for every 15 million prospective voters.

* * * *

This should put an end to the discussion about rampant voter fraud. Impersonation is simply not a viable strategy for fixing an election. There are not enough incidents to make it worthwhile. And yet, Attorney General Abbott continues to make it a priority of his office. Voter fraud, at least in the form of impersonation–which is what Voter I.D. is created to prevent–is statistically rare.

Last fall McClatchy newspapers traced the origin of Voter I.D. legislation to Karl Rove. He alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he discussed voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, highlighting the importance of about a dozen election battleground states.

Fraud by impersonation is a myth, perpetuated by Republicans to justify Voter I.D. laws that suppress turnout. You’ll never convince me otherwise. It’s one of the worst things that has happened to American democracy.

Tagged: voter ID

The Abilene Reporter-News published a remarkable story about a speech by Republican party chairman Steve Munisteri.

“Is Ted Cruz a bright star or what?” Minusteri said in a speech at the Brownwood Country Club.

The article continued, “After the meeting, he hesitated to say that Dewhurst, who was backed by Gov. Rick Perry, would be less effective in the upcoming legislative session, or that the governor lost any political clout by backing a loser–though he didn’t say they would remain political powerhouses.”

“The next legislative session will be critical for Dewhurst and for Perry,” he said.  “You always want the last thing you do to be positive.”

If the 2013 legislative session is a swan song for the state’s longest tenured governor and his No. 2, the next generation of Texas political leaders will be ready to step in, headlined by Cruz.

“The secret to Cruz’s success is to be passionate to his ideals,” Munisteri said. “I don’t expect him to change one bit while in the Senate.  He’ll end up being a new generation of younger Republican leaders in the state.”

Cruz, 41–and two decades younger than Perry, Dewhurst, and a host of other establishment Republican leaders in Texas–will be a speaker at the Republican National Convention in Tampa later this month.

“He could spring onto the national scene and be a big name, a Mike Huckabee type, one of those faces who is always on Fox News,” Munisteri said.

* * * *

This is amazing. Munisteri all but told Perry and Dewhurst it is time for them to go.  (I couldn’t agree more, but then I’m not the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas.) Clearly, Munisteri prefers the next generation of Republican leader to the current one. Amazing indeed.

From the Web site policymic.com:

The Associated Press and several television stations have confirmed that Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan will be Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate.

* * * *

One big question that remains is, how many Republican insiders profited from knowing the pick ahead of time?

Friday’s market action on Intrade, the online trading exchange website that allows members to trade shares in future events, was giving a very strong indication that Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan would be Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick.

The same Web site, policymic.com, writes about how Ryan’s meteoric rise on Intrade:

Intrade saw an incredibly irregular spike in volume in its vice presidential pick market. After a gradual upswing in price action starting on August 4, the market for Ryan went parabolic on Friday. When the day began, one share of Ryan becoming VP was priced at $2.19 out of a maximum of $10, meaning that the sum total of activity in the market indicated that traders collectively felt that Ryan had a 21.9% chance of being chosen as Romney’s VP. By early evening, the shares jumped to $3.16 (31.6%). Just after 11pm, Eastern Time, the Romney campaign sent out an email revealing that the former Massachusetts governor would announce his pick at 9am on Saturday morning in Norfolk, Virginia. And so, by 12:09 a.m. Saturday morning, a share of Ryan’s stock was trading at a whopping and outrageous $9.40 (94%), a 329% spike over Friday’s open.