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Beaumont school system off the tracks

It pains me terribly to watch what is happening to the Southeast Texas public school district that educated my sons.

The Beaumont Independent School District is hurtling toward a serious train wreck.

http://www.texasobserver.org/students-troubled-beaumont-isd-campaign-save-teachers-jobs/

My sons came of age in Beaumont after we moved there in 1984. My wife and I uprooted ourselves from our hometown of Portland, Ore., and came to Texas so I could continue my journalism career.

It’s been a great ride for three decades.

But watching the Beaumont ISD implode is painful for me. I feel as though I have an emotional stake in the future of the school system that’s been wracked by controversy for decades.

The community was slow to desegregate its schools, doing so finally in the 1980s after the federal courts ordered it to happen. The very week I took my post at the newspaper that hired me a landmark election occurred in which the school district elected a majority African-American school board.

The racial composition of the new school board by itself was enough to cause serious apoplexy among many Beaumont residents, which testifies graphically to the racial tensions that have existed in that community.

It’s been a rough ride. BISD has been rocked by all kinds of incompetence, feather-bedding, lack of due diligence, mismanagement, alleged malfeasance. From my perch way up yonder, it appears that the district is on its last legs.

The state has all but ordered the school board to disband. The superintendent has been asked to step aside. The Texas Education Agency is poised to take over management of the district; BISD officials plan to appeal … good luck with that.

And then I see this story in the Texas Observer about BISD students working to save teachers’ jobs.

Educators always say they care about the kids. In Beaumont, that declaration is sounding more hollow all the time. The students in this case, are taking up the role of grownups in a dispute that is rapidly spiraling out of control.

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Come to Israel and see for yourself, PCUSA

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a classic response this morning to a question about a mainline Protestant denomination’s decision to divest itself of economic ties to Israel.

The decision by Presbyterian Church USA involves its divestment in companies that do business in the Middle East’s lone democratic state.

Netanyahu, appearing this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press” news talk show, was asked by host David Gregory what he thought of that decision, which PCUSA based on Israel’s building of settlements in the West Bank region and Israel’s continued contentious relationships with its Arab neighbors.

Presbyterian Church Approves Israel Divestment, But Does its Boycott Even Matter?

For the life of me, this one is baffling.

Well, Netanyahu took the question from Gregory.

He responded magnificently. He noted that Israel grants full freedom in its country for Christians to worship their faith. He noted that many Arab nations persecute Christians, even kill them.

Netanyahu invited any Protestant denomination to tour the Middle East, encouraging them to look first-hand at the Arab nations — he mentioned Libya, Syria and Iraq by name — and then visit Israel. They will see up close the difference in the way they are treated in the Arab world as opposed to how they are received in Israel.

He offered two words of advice to anyone who takes him up on his invitation. “Be sure to travel in an armored vehicle” while touring any of those Arab nations, Netanyahu said. “And don’t tell anyone in any of those countries that you are a Christian.”

Amen, Mr. Prime Minister.

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IRS controversy lives on … and on

The Internal Revenue Service controversy hasn’t yet blown up into a full-scale scandal, no matter how hard the right wing tries to make it so.

Now the talking heads and pols on the right are clamoring for a special counsel to investigate the matter. Recall, now, that it began with revelations that the IRS was vetting conservative political action groups’ requests for tax-exempt status. It does the same thing for liberal groups, too, but the conservative chattering class got all wound up over it and have raised a stink ever since.

Now there’s been further revelations about two years worth of emails that went missing from IRS honcho Lois Lerner’s computer. What the heck happened to them?

Republicans, not surprisingly, are trying to tie the IRS matter to the White House, even though no evidence has been uncovered that the IRS was doing anything under White House orders. They want to implicate the president — naturally! — for all this. So far they’ve come up empty.

A special prosecutor might be a good idea if Congress could limit the scope of his or her probe. The last notable special prosecutor hired was one Kenneth Starr, who was brought in to investigate the Whitewater real estate dealings involving President and Mrs. Clinton. Starr, though, went rogue and discovered the president had engaged in a tawdry relationship with a young White House intern.

The House of Reps impeached him because he lied to a federal grand jury about that relationship; the Senate acquitted the president at trial.

Is a special prosecutor needed in this case? I believe the GOP-led House of Representatives has looked thoroughly into this matter and has found zero evidence of White House complicity in anything involving the IRS.

That, of course, will not end the clamor.

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Now it's Rangel on the hot seat

The U.S. political world has been chattering and clamoring over the tea party’s rise within the Republican Party, and the notable victim it claimed a week ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.

But this Tuesday, it appears quite possible a leading Democrat will fall to one of two challengers.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-charles-rangel-20140621-story.html

New York U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel has represented the Harlem district of New York City since The Flood. He’s a decorated Korean War veteran and a one-time chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Then he got into some serious ethical troubles. The House censured him and stripped him of his chairmanship.

He stayed on.

Now Rangel is facing a stout challenge from Adriano Espaillat and Michael Walrond in New York’s upcoming Democratic primary on Tuesday. A fourth candidate also is on the ballot, but she’s been invisible.

The odds are looking as though Rangel will go down to defeat. Espaillat appears to be the favorite.

New York doesn’t have a runoff rule that requires the winner to get 50 percent of the vote to declare outright victory. In New York, all the winner needs is more votes than whoever finishes second.

Rangel represents that old-time back-slapping pol who everyone knows in the district. The problem for him appears that everyone now seems to know him too well.

He’s worn out, tired, used up — or so it seems to many observers.

Rangel also has that recent history of ethical misconduct involving whether he took money from special interests.

If Rangel does go down Tuesday, then there might be far more at play here than just one party eating its own. There indeed might be a tidal wave about the sweep through Congress.

Let’s all hold on for a turbulent election year.

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A/C in prison units possible

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I’m still trying to reach a decision on whether Texas prison units should be air conditioned.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is being sued by the Texas Civil Rights Project and others on behalf of elderly and ailing inmates who contend the legendary Texas heat is too much for the inmates.

None of TDCJ’s prison units have air conditioning. They have fans that blow ambient around. TDCJ calls it good. Until now, it had been good enough for state’s prison inmates.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/summer-coming

One issue that makes me lean in favor of providing A/C units in prison is a statement I heard shortly after I came to Amarillo to take up my job as editorial page editor of the newspaper.

I took a guided tour in 1995 of the William P. Clements Unit northeast of the city, a maximum-security lockdown. The then-deputy warden, Rick Hudson, took me on the tour. I saw the entire place, from in-take, to the mess hall, to the recreational areas, the now-defunct saddle shop, the isolation cells, visitation areas. You name it, I saw it.

Hudson told me that day that corrections officers have to break up fights almost daily. The violence inside the walls escalates dramatically during the summer, when the temperature routinely hits 90 and often goes past 100 degrees.

Tempers that already are short to begin and they flare at the slightest provocation and often explode into serious violence. Why? Well, think of how you might react if you were locked up behind concrete, steel, razor wire and were being watched constantly by men armed to the teeth with weaponry. Then add the oppressive heat to that situation and you have a formula for some serious violence.

Do we want to expose our corrections officers to this kind of emotional powder keg? I think not.

Don’t misunderstand. I am not proposing we coddle these guys. I am suggesting that air conditioning might be in the TDCJ future.

The federal court system has taken over the state prison system at least once already in a ruling meant to relieve overcrowding. It well could do so again if the state loses this battle over air conditioning.

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Treason? Come on, Mr. Vice President

Of all the things former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter wrote in their much-discussed essay in the Wall Street Journal, the most outrageous was this:

President Obama is deliberately seeking to take America “down a notch” before leaves office.

The essay is here. Read it for yourself.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522

It amazes me in the first place that the former VP would continue to undermine an administration’s efforts to stem a serious international crisis. Cheney’s carping is outrageous and disgraceful.

To suggest, though, that the president of the United States seeks to deliberately weaken the nation that elected him twice to its highest office is go so far beyond the pale that it defies even my huge reservoir of dislike for the policies that Cheney put forward while he was in office.

The Cheneys — father and daughter — have shown us a shameful exhibition of disloyalty.

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Hoping for a smooth handoff

Political traditions often consist of unwritten rules of decorum and courtesy.

One of them involves the transition from one elected official to another in a particular office. Let’s take, just for kicks, the Potter County judge’s office.

Will courtesy be the rule of the day when Nancy Tanner takes over at the end of the year from her former boss, Arthur Ware?

Tanner — who served as Ware’s administrative assistant during his tenure as judge — won the Republican Party primary in March in the race to succeed Ware, who didn’t seek re-election after serving as county judge for 20-plus years. Tanner’s road to victory got a little bumpy right off the start.

She declared her intention to seek the office before Ware announced this would be his final term. She didn’t officially declare her candidacy, just let it be known she was thinking about it.

Ware then fired Tanner from her job. You’re out! he told her. Pack your stuff up and hit the road. Ware then announced he would retire from public office at the end of the year and endorsed former Amarillo Mayor Debra McCartt in the GOP primary.

Ware never has explained precisely why he fired Tanner.

Tanner won the primary outright. No Democrats are on the ballot, so pending the outcome of November election — which Tanner will win — she’ll become county judge-elect.

One of the more interesting facets of the campaign is that Tanner ran on her experience as Ware’s top hand. During a Panhandle PBS-sponsored candidate forum, Tanner declared that “only two people on Earth” know the details of the job of county judge: Arthur Ware and Nancy Tanner.

So, I cannot help but wonder if Tanner and Ware will be able to set their acrimony aside long enough for Ware to show Tanner all the ropes, the hidden tasks and responsibilities and perhaps share a secret or two with her that even she doesn’t know.

I hope for a smooth transition and seamless handoff. Hey, if presidents of the United States can be beaten senseless by challengers and then leave nice notes in the Oval Office desk drawer for them when they depart …

Surely a county judge in Texas can show some grace as he leaves the public arena.

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Border crisis expands

Linda Chavez asks in a New York Post column why the Obama administration doesn’t “do more” to stem the flow of children from Central America into southern border states such as Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/20/behind-the-horrible-border-crisis/

I kind of expect that from Chavez, a noted conservative thinker and pundit.

I’ve been wracking my brain the past few days with this question: Why doesn’t Mexico do more to stop the flow of these unaccompanied children all the way through that country and into the United States of America?

Chavez and others have noted that the kids have to travel about 1,300 miles through Mexico to reach the southern border of the United States. How is it that those children are given free passage through a fairly large country to end up in the Land of Opportunity?

If President Obama has a bone to pick, it ought to be with the Mexican government.

Chavez lays out a grim scenario: “According to recent reports, these kids walk right up to border agents as soon as they see them and turn themselves in. They’ve been instructed to do so, sometimes by the criminal ‘coyotes’ who extort hundreds, even thousands, of dollars from the kids’ parents to get them across the border.

“These human traffickers are telling parents their children will be granted a legal right to stay in the U.S. once on our soil. This is absolutely false — but that word is slow in getting to gullible would-be border crossers.”

She wants the U.S. government to blanket Guatemala and Honduras TV airwaves to public service announcements urging parents to stop selling their children to traffickers. That’s fine.

However, geopolitical neighborliness compels one country to do all it can do to protect its orders with another nation.

Critics keep harping on the openness of the U.S. side of our border with Mexico. They forget — or ignore — the fact that we’ve deported record numbers of illegal immigrants in recent years. The problem just has been compounded many times by the flood of these children from beyond Mexico’s southern border.

Whose fault is that? Ours? I don’t think so.

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Pay us a visit, Mme. Secretary

Just thinking out loud here.

Watching the reporting on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book tour brings to mind a 2008 campaign stop her husband, the former president of the United States, made here on her behalf — in Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle, of all places.

Bill Clinton came to campaign for his wife as she fought Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

He packed the Grand Plaza Ballroom at the Amarillo Civic Center. Indeed, it overflowed. A lot of Republicans attended the event just to get a glimpse of the 42nd president and to determine for themselves if he is as charismatic as everyone says he is.

President Clinton didn’t disappoint anyone, Republican or Democrat. Clinton would win the Democratic primary that year, but eventually lose the nomination fight to Obama.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/06/20/hillary-clinton-book-tour-comes-austin/

I’d bet real U.S. money that Hillary Clinton would get a smashing reception here if she chose to come to Amarillo to hype her new book, “Hard Choices.”

She’s a possible, if not probable, candidate for president in 2016. There would be interest in that campaign as well.

The Texas Tribune reported on her book-tour stop in Austin, which everyone knew she’d make. Austin is one of the last Democratic bastions left in Texas. It’s a no-brainer for her go there and visit with friendly audiences.

Why not pay a visit to us here, on the High Plains of Texas, where no one would expect her to go?

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More to come on Animal Shelter?

My gut’s been rumbling a bit the past few days.

I’m wondering if there’s another shoe about to drop at Amarillo City Hall regarding changes in the way it runs the Animal Control Shelter, you know, the one that’s been in the news of late.

The top two hands at Animal Control — Mike McGee and Shannon Barlow — have “retired” from public service. A Randall County grand jury heard evidence of alleged animal abuse at the shelter but then declined to indict anyone for criminal wrongdoing — a decision that caught many of us by surprise.

Is this the end of the story?

Something tells me “no.”

A lengthy newspaper article published this past Sunday told of how the city was a tad slow reacting to reports of abuse involving the euthanizing of animals at the shelter. Shelter staff had failed to weigh the animals prior to administering the lethal drugs, which is required by state law. Thus, they didn’t know how much of the drug to administer and it reportedly produced suffering by the animals as they died.

Still, the grand jury reported no “abuse” of the animals occurred? Someone will have to explain that one to me.

The city has a new interim director. Assistant City Manager Vicki Covey — who was charged with overseeing the animal control operations from her office — has been taken off that task. The city manager, Jarrett Atkinson, has been hit with yet another troubling case of lack of oversight on his watch.

I’ve spoken with a couple of former city council members about this matter. One of them thinks McGee and Barlow should have been canned on the spot when the allegations came to light; he disagreed with their being placed on “administrative leave.” The other ex-council member thinks the story has been overplayed in the media; I disagree quite vehemently with that assessment.

The care of animals means a lot to people, for better or worse. It’s part of many humans’ DNA to carry a soft spot in their hearts for defenseless animals who’ve been tossed aside by their caretakers.

If nothing else, the city ought to embark on a concentrated, proactive and aggressive campaign to educate pet owners about the need to neuter their animals. I know full well the message will be lost on many folks, but given the embarrassment caused by this scandal it’s worth the time, the effort — and the expense.

As for whether any more heads should roll at City Hall, well, I wouldn’t bet against it.

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