Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Monday, November 5, 2012
Texas' voter purge made repeated errors
Lise Olsen | November 1, 2012
November 2, 2012
http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Texas-voter-purge-made-repeated-errors-4001767.php
State election officials repeatedly and mistakenly matched active longtime Texas voters to deceased strangers across the country - some of whom perished more than a decade ago - in an error-ridden effort to purge dead voters just weeks before the presidential election, according to a Houston Chronicle review of records.
Voters in legislative districts across Texas with heavy concentrations of Hispanics or African-Americans were more often targeted in that flawed purge effort, according the Chronicle's analysis of more than 68,000 voters identified as possibly dead.
It's unclear why so many more matches were generated in some minority legislative districts. One factor may be the popularity of certain surnames in Hispanic and historically black neighborhoods.
One mismatch threatened the voter registration of James Harris Jr., a U.S. Air Force veteran who has voted in every presidential election since the Richard M. Nixon era.
Harris, who is African-American and shares a name with a dead Arkansas man, last voted in Harris County in July. Yet, inexplicably, he weeks later received a letter asking if he had died - apparently because of the 1996 death of another James Harris, according to the newspaper's review.
Harris voted early in the national elections without further incident - though he took along his voter card, passport and birth certificate just in case anyone wanted more proof he was alive. Harris told the Chronicle he hasn't been able to shake the feeling that "someone has gone to a concerted effort and gone to a lot of time and research coming up with this matrix in a way of being able to knock people off of the voting rolls."
His daughter got a dead voter letter, too. She shares her name and birthday with a Louisiana woman who died in 2010.
Rich Parsons, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office, confirmed that officials compared information about all Texas voters - including many who had voted since 2010 - to long-dead people in the Social Security Administration's death database, which dates back to 1973. So far, 6,491 voters identified have been purged, he said.
Not limited to race
State officials did not use addresses, middle names or voting history to weed out false matches. Nor was race or ethnicity a factor, Parsons said.
"Neither the Official List of Registered Voters nor the Social Security Death Master File contain any racial or ethnic data, making it impossible for race or ethnicity to play any role or impact in this process," he said.
Indeed, voters of all races received letters, including Republican state legislator Wayne Smith of Baytown, who is white. He apparently was matched with another Smith who died 1,500 miles away in Pennsylvania last year.
He also was one of more than 4,000 Smiths who made the state list.
Parsons noted that no geographical information or addresses were used in the dead voter matchups.
"I would also remind you the Social Security Administration does not guarantee the accuracy of its own list," he said.
An Austin lawyer, who successfully sued to slow the flawed purge, was apparently mixed up with a Wisconsin resident dead since 2003, according to the Chronicle review of Social Security Administration death data.
In an agreement reached in response to the Travis County lawsuit, targeted voters were told they will not be purged unless their deaths are confirmed. But so far, state officials have made no promises to improve the matching process.
"The settlement did not change or impact the process in any way," said Parsons.
More 'dead' minorities
Texas legislators passed a law in 2011 requiring election officials to use Social Security Administration death data to clean voter rolls.
Last summer, election officials prepared two lists. One contained 8,238 so-called "strong matches" - where voters' names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth matched the dead. It generated little controversy.
A much larger list with more than 68,000 "weak matches" - many based on names and birth dates alone - wrought complaints, protests from Dallas and Harris County registrars and the civil suit in Travis County.
The matching effort was overseen by state Director of Elections Keith Ingram, an attorney who has admitted he knew nothing about election law before taking his current job, according to statements he's made under oath. He previously oversaw appointments for Gov. Rick Perry.
Texas voter data includes no ethnicity information. However, the Chronicle found voters living in legislative districts with high percentages of Hispanics or African-Americans were more likely to be listed as "dead" than others statewide. In fact, voters in eight heavily minority districts in Dallas, Houston, El Paso and Brownsville were twice as likely to be targeted as voters statewide.
Within Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, voters living in African-American or Hispanic legislative districts created to improve minority representation also were generally more likely to be listed than those in surrounding counties, the newspaper's analysis found.
Lawmakers alarmed
State lawmakers, including Elections Committee Vice Chair Rep. Ana Hernandez Luna, a Houston Democrat, already have pledged to review the process to determine why so many voters were wrongly targeted. Her own district, which is heavily Hispanic, had a high match rate.
State Rep. Barbara Mallory Caraway, a Dallas Democrat, says she too wants to know why the analysis appeared to have a disproportionate impact on districts like hers, which has a high concentration of African-American voters.
"I'm obviously very alarmed and concerned about the possible disenfranchisement of someone's opportunity to vote …?," she told the Chronicle. "I'm concerned about the accuracy of the list … and I'd like more of an investigation."
One of the four Texans who sued the state after being wrongly targeted was Austin attorney Andrew Dylan Wood, a longtime Travis County voter whose father, "Buck" Wood, formerly served as a Texas director of elections. Andrew Wood's name was linked to a Wisconsin man who died in 2003. Wood has voted at least eight times since then.
His hope, he said, "is that after the lawsuit that the secretary of state doesn't do this any more, that they've had their experiment and it did not work, and they will figure another way to clear up the rolls."
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Niggerhead: Rick Perry's Family Hunting Camp
The mainstream media has been burying the lead, so The Konformist will put it in the headline: the "racially charged name" of Rick Perry's hunting camp is Niggerhead. From The Washington Post:
In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family’s secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance.
“Niggerhead,” it read.
Ranchers who once grazed cattle on the 1,070-acre parcel on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River called it by that name well before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. There is no definitive account of when the rock first appeared on the property. In an earlier time, the name on the rock was often given to mountains and creeks and rock outcroppings across the country. Over the years, civil rights groups and government agencies have had some success changing those and other racially offensive names that dotted the nation’s maps.
But the name of this particular parcel did not change for years after it became associated with Rick Perry, first as a private citizen, then as a state official and finally as Texas governor. Some locals still call it that. As recently as this summer, the slablike rock — lying flat, the name still faintly visible beneath a coat of white paint — remained by the gated entrance to the camp.
When asked last week, Perry said the word on the rock is an “offensive name that has no place in the modern world.”
But how, when or whether he dealt with it when he was using the property is less clear and adds a dimension to the emerging biography of Perry, who quickly moved into the top tier of Republican presidential candidates when he entered the race in August.
He grew up in a segregated era whose history has defined and complicated the careers of many Southern politicians. Perry has spoken often about how his upbringing in this sparsely populated farming community influenced his conservatism. He has rarely, if ever, discussed what it was like growing up amid segregation in an area where blacks were a tiny fraction of the population.
In his responses to two rounds of detailed, written questions, Perry said his father first leased the property in 1983. Rick Perry said he added his own name to the lease from 1997 to 1998, when he was state agriculture commissioner, and again from 2004 to 2007, when he was governor.
He offered a simple version of how he dealt with the rock, followed by a more elaborate one.
“When my Dad joined the lease in 1983, he took the first opportunity he had to paint over the offensive word on the rock during the 4th of July holiday,” Perry said in his initial response. “It is my understanding that the rock was eventually turned over to further obscure what was originally written on it.”
Perry said that he was not with his father when he painted over the name but that he “agreed with” the decision.
In response to follow-up questions, Perry gave a more detailed account.
“My mother and father went to the lease and painted the rock in either 1983 or 1984,” Perry wrote. “This occurred after I paid a visit to the property with a friend and saw the rock with the offensive word. After my visit I called my folks and mentioned it to them, and they painted it over during their next visit.”
“Ever since, any time I ever saw the rock it was painted over,” Perry said.
Perry’s version of events differs in many respects from the recollections of seven people, interviewed by The Washington Post, who spoke in detail of their memories of seeing the rock with the name at various points during the years that Perry was associated with the property through his father, partners or his signature on a lease.
Some who had watched Perry’s political ascent recalled their reaction to the name on the rock and their worry that it could become a political liability for Perry.
“I remember the first time I went through that pasture and saw that,” said Ronnie Brooks, a retired game warden who began working in the region in 1981 and who said he guided three or four turkey shoots for Rick Perry when Perry was a state legislator between 1985 and 1990. “...It kind of offended me, truthfully.”
Brooks, who said he holds Perry “in the highest esteem,” said that at some point after Perry began bringing lawmakers to the camp, the rock was turned over. Brooks could not recall exactly when. He said he did not know who turned the rock over.
Another local who visited the property with Perry and the legislators in those years recalled seeing the rock with the name clearly visible.
“I thought, ‘This is going to embarrass Rick some day,’?” said this person, who did not want to be named, fearing negative consequences from speaking on the subject.
The hunting camp was simple in the 1980s, just a cabin with a long table for cleaning fish and deer, a few bunks and a porch set along a riverbank in Throckmorton County. There was a sprawling pecan tree and a water tank for showers, an arrangement that got more elaborate as the years went on.
The camp is secluded, situated on a vast, 42,000-acre ranch that reaches into three counties and is owned and managed by the Hendrick Home for Children Trust. Various parcels of the Hendrick ranch, as it is known, have been leased out over the years for grazing cattle, oil drilling and, since the mid-1970s or so, hunting. All sorts of people have been on the winding, rocky ranch roads over the years — cowboys, ranchers, hunters, fishermen, oil workers, power company workers, wildlife biologists, real estate agents, tax assessors, surveyors, locals and outsiders who have visited the hunting camps that dot the property.
This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen people, including residents, hunters, ranchers, government officials and others who live in Haskell County, where Perry’s boyhood home of Paint Creek is found; in neighboring Throckmorton County, where the hunting camp is located; and elsewhere in Texas. Ray Perry did not respond to numerous attempts to reach him for comment. The campaign declined a request to make him available.
Most of those interviewed requested anonymity because they fear being ostracized or other repercussions in their small community. Some are supporters of Perry, whose parents still live in Paint Creek. Others, both Democrats and Republicans, are not. Several spoke matter-of-factly about the hunting camp and its name and wondered why it held any outside interest.
Of those interviewed, the seven who said they saw the rock said the block-lettered name was clearly visible at different points in the 1980s and 1990s. One, a former worker on the ranch, believes he saw it as recently as 2008...
Throckmorton County, where the hunting camp is located, was for years considered a virtual no-go zone for blacks because of old stories about the lynching of a black man there, locals said. The 1950 Census listed one black resident in Throckmorton County out of a population of about 3,600. In 1960, there were four; in 1970, two; in 1980, none. The 2010 Census shows 11 black residents.
Mae Lou Yeldell, who is black and has lived in Haskell County for 70 years, recalled a gas station refusing to sell her father fuel when he drove the family through Throckmorton in the 1950s. She said it was not uncommon in the 1950s and ’60s for whites to greet blacks with, “Morning, nigger!”
“I heard that so much it’s like a broken record,” said Yeldell, who had never heard of the hunting spot by the river.
Racial attitudes here have shifted slowly. Haskell County began observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day two years ago, according to a county commissioner. And many older white residents understand the civil rights movement as a struggle that addressed problems elsewhere.
“It wasn’t the same issues here you were dealing with,” said Don Ballard, the superintendent of the Paint Creek school district. “Certainly were no picketing signs. Blacks were perfectly satisfied with what was happening.”
It is within that context that many people explained the name of the hunting camp.
“It’s just a name,” said Haskell County Judge David Davis, sitting in his courtroom and looking at a window. “Like those are vertical blinds. It’s just what it was called. There was no significance other than as a hunting deal.”
The name “Niggerhead” has a long and wide history. It was once applied to products such as soap and chewing tobacco, but most often to geographic features such as hills and rocks.
In 1962, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names changed more than a hundred such names, substituting “Negro.”
“Typically these were in areas where African Americans were not all that common,” said Mark Monmonier, a geography professor at Syracuse University who wrote a book on the subject of racially offensive place names.
The federal action still left many local names unchanged. In Texas, Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady, lobbied to change the name of a mountain in Burnet, Tex., that had the same name as Perry’s hunting spot. In 1968, it became “Colored Mountain.” In 1989, the Texas NAACP began lobbying the state legislature to change many more names, such as “Nigger Creek” and “Niggerhead Hill,” although there has been resistance from private landowners, according to news accounts.
In his responses, Perry said the managers of the Hendrick ranch appealed in recent years to federal officials to rename Niggerhead, although the name does not appear on U.S. topographic maps. Monmonier could not find it in a database maintained by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. That suggests renaming the property would be a simple matter for its owners or possibly state officials, Monmonier said.
Chuck Wilson, the manager of the Hendrick ranch, said that particular parcel is now called “North Camp Pasture.”
“It was given the name several years ago,” Wilson said in an interview last week. “Probably, I’m thinking, about five years ago.”
To read the full story:
At Rick Perry’s Texas hunting spot, camp’s old racially charged name lingered
Stephanie McCrummen
October 1, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rick-perry-familys-hunting-camp-still-known-to-many-by-old-racially-charged-name/2011/10/01/gIQAOhY5DL_print.html
In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family’s secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance.
“Niggerhead,” it read.
Ranchers who once grazed cattle on the 1,070-acre parcel on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River called it by that name well before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. There is no definitive account of when the rock first appeared on the property. In an earlier time, the name on the rock was often given to mountains and creeks and rock outcroppings across the country. Over the years, civil rights groups and government agencies have had some success changing those and other racially offensive names that dotted the nation’s maps.
But the name of this particular parcel did not change for years after it became associated with Rick Perry, first as a private citizen, then as a state official and finally as Texas governor. Some locals still call it that. As recently as this summer, the slablike rock — lying flat, the name still faintly visible beneath a coat of white paint — remained by the gated entrance to the camp.
When asked last week, Perry said the word on the rock is an “offensive name that has no place in the modern world.”
But how, when or whether he dealt with it when he was using the property is less clear and adds a dimension to the emerging biography of Perry, who quickly moved into the top tier of Republican presidential candidates when he entered the race in August.
He grew up in a segregated era whose history has defined and complicated the careers of many Southern politicians. Perry has spoken often about how his upbringing in this sparsely populated farming community influenced his conservatism. He has rarely, if ever, discussed what it was like growing up amid segregation in an area where blacks were a tiny fraction of the population.
In his responses to two rounds of detailed, written questions, Perry said his father first leased the property in 1983. Rick Perry said he added his own name to the lease from 1997 to 1998, when he was state agriculture commissioner, and again from 2004 to 2007, when he was governor.
He offered a simple version of how he dealt with the rock, followed by a more elaborate one.
“When my Dad joined the lease in 1983, he took the first opportunity he had to paint over the offensive word on the rock during the 4th of July holiday,” Perry said in his initial response. “It is my understanding that the rock was eventually turned over to further obscure what was originally written on it.”
Perry said that he was not with his father when he painted over the name but that he “agreed with” the decision.
In response to follow-up questions, Perry gave a more detailed account.
“My mother and father went to the lease and painted the rock in either 1983 or 1984,” Perry wrote. “This occurred after I paid a visit to the property with a friend and saw the rock with the offensive word. After my visit I called my folks and mentioned it to them, and they painted it over during their next visit.”
“Ever since, any time I ever saw the rock it was painted over,” Perry said.
Perry’s version of events differs in many respects from the recollections of seven people, interviewed by The Washington Post, who spoke in detail of their memories of seeing the rock with the name at various points during the years that Perry was associated with the property through his father, partners or his signature on a lease.
Some who had watched Perry’s political ascent recalled their reaction to the name on the rock and their worry that it could become a political liability for Perry.
“I remember the first time I went through that pasture and saw that,” said Ronnie Brooks, a retired game warden who began working in the region in 1981 and who said he guided three or four turkey shoots for Rick Perry when Perry was a state legislator between 1985 and 1990. “...It kind of offended me, truthfully.”
Brooks, who said he holds Perry “in the highest esteem,” said that at some point after Perry began bringing lawmakers to the camp, the rock was turned over. Brooks could not recall exactly when. He said he did not know who turned the rock over.
Another local who visited the property with Perry and the legislators in those years recalled seeing the rock with the name clearly visible.
“I thought, ‘This is going to embarrass Rick some day,’?” said this person, who did not want to be named, fearing negative consequences from speaking on the subject.
The hunting camp was simple in the 1980s, just a cabin with a long table for cleaning fish and deer, a few bunks and a porch set along a riverbank in Throckmorton County. There was a sprawling pecan tree and a water tank for showers, an arrangement that got more elaborate as the years went on.
The camp is secluded, situated on a vast, 42,000-acre ranch that reaches into three counties and is owned and managed by the Hendrick Home for Children Trust. Various parcels of the Hendrick ranch, as it is known, have been leased out over the years for grazing cattle, oil drilling and, since the mid-1970s or so, hunting. All sorts of people have been on the winding, rocky ranch roads over the years — cowboys, ranchers, hunters, fishermen, oil workers, power company workers, wildlife biologists, real estate agents, tax assessors, surveyors, locals and outsiders who have visited the hunting camps that dot the property.
This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen people, including residents, hunters, ranchers, government officials and others who live in Haskell County, where Perry’s boyhood home of Paint Creek is found; in neighboring Throckmorton County, where the hunting camp is located; and elsewhere in Texas. Ray Perry did not respond to numerous attempts to reach him for comment. The campaign declined a request to make him available.
Most of those interviewed requested anonymity because they fear being ostracized or other repercussions in their small community. Some are supporters of Perry, whose parents still live in Paint Creek. Others, both Democrats and Republicans, are not. Several spoke matter-of-factly about the hunting camp and its name and wondered why it held any outside interest.
Of those interviewed, the seven who said they saw the rock said the block-lettered name was clearly visible at different points in the 1980s and 1990s. One, a former worker on the ranch, believes he saw it as recently as 2008...
Throckmorton County, where the hunting camp is located, was for years considered a virtual no-go zone for blacks because of old stories about the lynching of a black man there, locals said. The 1950 Census listed one black resident in Throckmorton County out of a population of about 3,600. In 1960, there were four; in 1970, two; in 1980, none. The 2010 Census shows 11 black residents.
Mae Lou Yeldell, who is black and has lived in Haskell County for 70 years, recalled a gas station refusing to sell her father fuel when he drove the family through Throckmorton in the 1950s. She said it was not uncommon in the 1950s and ’60s for whites to greet blacks with, “Morning, nigger!”
“I heard that so much it’s like a broken record,” said Yeldell, who had never heard of the hunting spot by the river.
Racial attitudes here have shifted slowly. Haskell County began observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day two years ago, according to a county commissioner. And many older white residents understand the civil rights movement as a struggle that addressed problems elsewhere.
“It wasn’t the same issues here you were dealing with,” said Don Ballard, the superintendent of the Paint Creek school district. “Certainly were no picketing signs. Blacks were perfectly satisfied with what was happening.”
It is within that context that many people explained the name of the hunting camp.
“It’s just a name,” said Haskell County Judge David Davis, sitting in his courtroom and looking at a window. “Like those are vertical blinds. It’s just what it was called. There was no significance other than as a hunting deal.”
The name “Niggerhead” has a long and wide history. It was once applied to products such as soap and chewing tobacco, but most often to geographic features such as hills and rocks.
In 1962, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names changed more than a hundred such names, substituting “Negro.”
“Typically these were in areas where African Americans were not all that common,” said Mark Monmonier, a geography professor at Syracuse University who wrote a book on the subject of racially offensive place names.
The federal action still left many local names unchanged. In Texas, Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady, lobbied to change the name of a mountain in Burnet, Tex., that had the same name as Perry’s hunting spot. In 1968, it became “Colored Mountain.” In 1989, the Texas NAACP began lobbying the state legislature to change many more names, such as “Nigger Creek” and “Niggerhead Hill,” although there has been resistance from private landowners, according to news accounts.
In his responses, Perry said the managers of the Hendrick ranch appealed in recent years to federal officials to rename Niggerhead, although the name does not appear on U.S. topographic maps. Monmonier could not find it in a database maintained by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. That suggests renaming the property would be a simple matter for its owners or possibly state officials, Monmonier said.
Chuck Wilson, the manager of the Hendrick ranch, said that particular parcel is now called “North Camp Pasture.”
“It was given the name several years ago,” Wilson said in an interview last week. “Probably, I’m thinking, about five years ago.”
To read the full story:
At Rick Perry’s Texas hunting spot, camp’s old racially charged name lingered
Stephanie McCrummen
October 1, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rick-perry-familys-hunting-camp-still-known-to-many-by-old-racially-charged-name/2011/10/01/gIQAOhY5DL_print.html
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Poverty grows in Rick Perry's Texas
Tami Luhby
September 18, 2011
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/18/news/economy/poverty_perry_texas
Texas Governor Rick Perry likes to brag that his state is an economic powerhouse.
But don't tell that to the nearly one in five Texans who are living below the poverty line.
While it's true that Texas is responsible for 40% of the jobs added in the U.S. over the past two years, its poverty rate also grew faster than the national average in 2010.
Texas ranks 6th in terms of people living in poverty. Some 18.4% of Texans were impoverished in 2010, up from 17.3% a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data released this week. The national average is 15.1%.
And being poor in Texas isn't easy. The state has one of the lowest rates of spending on its citizens per capita and the highest share of those lacking health insurance. It doesn't provide a lot of support services to those in need: Relatively few collect food stamps and qualifying for cash assistance is particularly tough.
"There are two tiers in Texas," said Miguel Ferguson, associate professor of social work at University of Texas at Austin. "There are parts of Texas that are doing well. And there is a tremendous number of Texans, more than Perry has ever wanted to acknowledge, that are doing very, very poorly."
Perry, for his part, believes that creating jobs is the best way to help every Texan. The state is doing "everything we can to ensure that every Texan who wants a job has one," a spokeswoman for the governor said.
Poor in the Lone Star State
A combination of demographic and economic factors contribute to the high poverty rate in Texas, where many families, particularly in the southern swath, live in ramshackle housing with no utilities or indoor plumbing.
More than half the state are minorities, many of them Hispanic. This population often has lower levels of education, making it harder for them to escape poverty, said Steve Murdock, sociology professor at Rice University. And the state's population is younger and the families there larger, on average, which also puts them at greater risk of being poor.
Meanwhile, the Great Recession has driven a new crop of Texans into poverty's grip: the formerly middle class.
Texas Neighborhood Services started seeing a crush of new people seeking help last year, said Bradley Manning, executive director of the Weatherford-based agency. Many of them were unemployed and couldn't find new positions, even after going through job training.
"The middle class are losing their jobs and are not able to replace them fast enough," Manning said. "That's driving them straight into poverty."
Even those lucky enough to get one of the new jobs created in Texas may still find themselves struggling to make ends meet. Many of the positions that have been created are on the lower end of the pay scale.
Some 550,000 workers last year were paid at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25, more than double the number making those wages in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For someone working full-time, that's just over $15,000 a year before taxes, which is under the poverty line for a single parent with two children.
Some 9.5% of Texas' hourly workforce are minimum-wage workers, the highest percentage in the nation -- a dubious title it shares with Mississippi.
Little help for Texans in need
For residents living in poverty, the state doesn't offer many services or even make federally-funded benefits easily accessible.
For instance, it has one of the tightest income limits -- less than 12% of the poverty level -- to qualify for federal cash assistance payments and one of the most meager benefits, a maximum of about $260 a month for a family of three, said Celia Cole, senior research analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income residents. The program serves less than 6% of poor children in the state.
Texas' Medicaid program covers virtually no non-disabled adults. And only an estimated 55% of those eligible for food stamps had signed up for the program in 2008, among the lowest participation rates in the country.
Enrollment has since improved after the state legislature allocated more money for administering the system after coming under pressure from the federal government and being hit with a class action lawsuit. However, Cole says, need has greatly increased as well.
Experts chalk up the minimal services and take-up rates to Texas' anti-welfare attitude. In the Lone Star State, you are expected to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
"The Texas mentality is you don't ask for help," Ferguson said.
Raising a family on less than $600 a month
Perry, a Republican candidate for president, echoes this view. Asked about the high poverty rate, a governor's spokeswoman said Perry is focusing on creating jobs so Texans can sustain themselves and their families. She pointed out that 95% of the state's jobs are above the minimum wage.
"We're trying to create a culture of independence rather than dependence," said Lucy Nashed, noting the state provides an adequate safety net for children, seniors, the disabled and pregnant mothers.
But advocates say more needs to be done to help people rise or return to self-sufficiency. The state should invest more in public education, job training, health programs and work assistance, such as child care subsidies. Also, it should focus on creating jobs with higher wages and decent benefits.
"We don't have the support system in place to provide economic support or economic opportunity to help families lift themselves out of poverty," said Frances Deviney, senior research associate at the center
September 18, 2011
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/18/news/economy/poverty_perry_texas
Texas Governor Rick Perry likes to brag that his state is an economic powerhouse.
But don't tell that to the nearly one in five Texans who are living below the poverty line.
While it's true that Texas is responsible for 40% of the jobs added in the U.S. over the past two years, its poverty rate also grew faster than the national average in 2010.
Texas ranks 6th in terms of people living in poverty. Some 18.4% of Texans were impoverished in 2010, up from 17.3% a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data released this week. The national average is 15.1%.
And being poor in Texas isn't easy. The state has one of the lowest rates of spending on its citizens per capita and the highest share of those lacking health insurance. It doesn't provide a lot of support services to those in need: Relatively few collect food stamps and qualifying for cash assistance is particularly tough.
"There are two tiers in Texas," said Miguel Ferguson, associate professor of social work at University of Texas at Austin. "There are parts of Texas that are doing well. And there is a tremendous number of Texans, more than Perry has ever wanted to acknowledge, that are doing very, very poorly."
Perry, for his part, believes that creating jobs is the best way to help every Texan. The state is doing "everything we can to ensure that every Texan who wants a job has one," a spokeswoman for the governor said.
Poor in the Lone Star State
A combination of demographic and economic factors contribute to the high poverty rate in Texas, where many families, particularly in the southern swath, live in ramshackle housing with no utilities or indoor plumbing.
More than half the state are minorities, many of them Hispanic. This population often has lower levels of education, making it harder for them to escape poverty, said Steve Murdock, sociology professor at Rice University. And the state's population is younger and the families there larger, on average, which also puts them at greater risk of being poor.
Meanwhile, the Great Recession has driven a new crop of Texans into poverty's grip: the formerly middle class.
Texas Neighborhood Services started seeing a crush of new people seeking help last year, said Bradley Manning, executive director of the Weatherford-based agency. Many of them were unemployed and couldn't find new positions, even after going through job training.
"The middle class are losing their jobs and are not able to replace them fast enough," Manning said. "That's driving them straight into poverty."
Even those lucky enough to get one of the new jobs created in Texas may still find themselves struggling to make ends meet. Many of the positions that have been created are on the lower end of the pay scale.
Some 550,000 workers last year were paid at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25, more than double the number making those wages in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For someone working full-time, that's just over $15,000 a year before taxes, which is under the poverty line for a single parent with two children.
Some 9.5% of Texas' hourly workforce are minimum-wage workers, the highest percentage in the nation -- a dubious title it shares with Mississippi.
Little help for Texans in need
For residents living in poverty, the state doesn't offer many services or even make federally-funded benefits easily accessible.
For instance, it has one of the tightest income limits -- less than 12% of the poverty level -- to qualify for federal cash assistance payments and one of the most meager benefits, a maximum of about $260 a month for a family of three, said Celia Cole, senior research analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income residents. The program serves less than 6% of poor children in the state.
Texas' Medicaid program covers virtually no non-disabled adults. And only an estimated 55% of those eligible for food stamps had signed up for the program in 2008, among the lowest participation rates in the country.
Enrollment has since improved after the state legislature allocated more money for administering the system after coming under pressure from the federal government and being hit with a class action lawsuit. However, Cole says, need has greatly increased as well.
Experts chalk up the minimal services and take-up rates to Texas' anti-welfare attitude. In the Lone Star State, you are expected to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
"The Texas mentality is you don't ask for help," Ferguson said.
Raising a family on less than $600 a month
Perry, a Republican candidate for president, echoes this view. Asked about the high poverty rate, a governor's spokeswoman said Perry is focusing on creating jobs so Texans can sustain themselves and their families. She pointed out that 95% of the state's jobs are above the minimum wage.
"We're trying to create a culture of independence rather than dependence," said Lucy Nashed, noting the state provides an adequate safety net for children, seniors, the disabled and pregnant mothers.
But advocates say more needs to be done to help people rise or return to self-sufficiency. The state should invest more in public education, job training, health programs and work assistance, such as child care subsidies. Also, it should focus on creating jobs with higher wages and decent benefits.
"We don't have the support system in place to provide economic support or economic opportunity to help families lift themselves out of poverty," said Frances Deviney, senior research associate at the center
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Deep-fried bubble gum pops up at Texas State Fair
Liz Kelly Nelson
September 6, 2011
http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2011/09/deep-fried-bubble-gum-pops-up-at-texas-state-fair.html
Leave it to Texas to take the whole fried food thing way over the top. At the state's annual fair, the Big Tex Choice Awards had amateur fry chefs dropping everything from bubble gum to salsa into vats of boiling oil.
About that bubble gum first, though: There isn't actually any gum in the treat. It's actually, according to "Today," a bubblegum-flavored marshmallow ball dipped in batter, fried, then topped with icing. It topped some other serious contenders -- including deep-fried salsa, deep-fried pineapple upside-down cake and fried tacos -- to take honors as the most creative entry.
The contest's big winner, though, was deep-fried buffalo chicken in a flapjack which took home honors as the tastiest entry. It is, as one would imagine, a "buffalo chicken strip coated in pancake batter, rolled in jalapeno breadcrumbs, deep fried and served with a side of syrup."
And we thought deep-fried Kool-Aid was bad. What will it be next?
Perry Tales: Rick Is Not Who He Says He Is
Jim Hightower, Truthout
Wednesday 7 September 2011
http://truth-out.org/perry-tales-rick-not-who-he-says-he/1315400975
Presidential wannabe Rick Perry is flitting all around the country -- hither, thither and yon -- spreading little "Perry Tales" about himself and the many wonders he has worked as governor of Texas.
His top Perry Tale is a creationist story about what he has modestly branded "The Texas Miracle." While the rest of the country is mired in joblessness, says the miracle worker, his state has added 1.2 million jobs during his 10-year tenure.
I've built "a job-creating machine," the governor gushed during one of his recent flits across Iowa, and a Perry PR aide smugly added, "The governor's job creation record speaks for itself."
Actually, it doesn't. Far from having the best unemployment rate in the nation, the Lone Star State ranks a middling 26th, behind New York, Massachusetts and other states whose "liberal" governments he routinely mocks.
Even more damning, Perry's Texas is not creating nearly enough jobs to keep up with its fast-growing population. Those 1.2 million new positions are 629,000 short of the jobs needed just to bring the state's employment level back up to where it was in 2007. Some miracle.
Worse, probe even a millimeter into the million-jobs number that he is sprinkling around like fairy dust, and you'll learn that Perry's jobs are mostly "jobettes" that can't sustain a family. They come with very low pay, no health care or pension, and no employment security, labor rights or upward mobility -- many are only part-time and/or temporary positions.
Here's a particularly revealing stat that the Perry pixies don't want us to see: On his watch as governor, Texas added more minimum wage jobs than all the other 49 states combined. More than half a million Texans now work for $7.25 an hour or less. He can brag that he's brought Texans down into a tie with Mississippi for the highest percentage of workers reduced to poverty pay.
Spreading even more fairy dust, Perry claims that his Texas Miracle is the result of him keeping the government out of the private sector's way. But peek behind that ideological curtain, and you'll find this startling fact: During Perry's decade, the greatest job growth by far has come from the public sector, which has more than doubled the number of new jobs created by the private sector.
One out of six employed Texans are now teachers, police officers, highway engineers, military personnel or other government workers -- and many of these jobs were created with the federal money that Perry-the-candidate now loudly denounces. Indeed, he's running around ranting about President Obama's stimulus program, but he gladly accepted the third highest amount of stimulus funds taken by the 50 states. There's his miracle.
Interestingly, even his tea-partyish hatred -- nay, loathing! -- of big government's intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens turns out to be just another Perry Tale. In fact, there would be no Rick Perry without the steady "intrusion" of government into his life.
Local taxpayers in Haskell County put him through their public school system -- for free. He and his family were dry-land cotton farmers, and federal taxpayers helped support them with thousands of dollars in crop subsidies -- Perry personally took $80,000 in farm payments.
State and federal taxpayers financed his college education at Texas A&M, even giving him the extracurricular opportunity to be a cheerleader. Upon graduation, he spent four years on the federal payroll as an Air Force transport pilot who never did any combat duty.
Then, in 1984, Perry hit the mother lode of government pay by moving into elected office -- squatting there for 27 years and counting. In addition to getting regular paychecks from taxpayers for nearly three decades as a state representative, agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor and governor, he also receives platinum-level health care coverage and a generous pension from the state, plus $10,000 a month for renting a luxury suburban home, a covey of political and personal aides and even a publicly paid subscription to Food & Wine magazine.
So when this taxpayer-supported lifer flits into your town to declare that he will slash public benefits and make government "as inconsequential as possible," he means in your life, not his.
Perry literally puts the "hype" in hypocrisy. Forget his tall tales and political B.S. -- look at what he actually does.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Wednesday 7 September 2011
http://truth-out.org/perry-tales-rick-not-who-he-says-he/1315400975
Presidential wannabe Rick Perry is flitting all around the country -- hither, thither and yon -- spreading little "Perry Tales" about himself and the many wonders he has worked as governor of Texas.
His top Perry Tale is a creationist story about what he has modestly branded "The Texas Miracle." While the rest of the country is mired in joblessness, says the miracle worker, his state has added 1.2 million jobs during his 10-year tenure.
I've built "a job-creating machine," the governor gushed during one of his recent flits across Iowa, and a Perry PR aide smugly added, "The governor's job creation record speaks for itself."
Actually, it doesn't. Far from having the best unemployment rate in the nation, the Lone Star State ranks a middling 26th, behind New York, Massachusetts and other states whose "liberal" governments he routinely mocks.
Even more damning, Perry's Texas is not creating nearly enough jobs to keep up with its fast-growing population. Those 1.2 million new positions are 629,000 short of the jobs needed just to bring the state's employment level back up to where it was in 2007. Some miracle.
Worse, probe even a millimeter into the million-jobs number that he is sprinkling around like fairy dust, and you'll learn that Perry's jobs are mostly "jobettes" that can't sustain a family. They come with very low pay, no health care or pension, and no employment security, labor rights or upward mobility -- many are only part-time and/or temporary positions.
Here's a particularly revealing stat that the Perry pixies don't want us to see: On his watch as governor, Texas added more minimum wage jobs than all the other 49 states combined. More than half a million Texans now work for $7.25 an hour or less. He can brag that he's brought Texans down into a tie with Mississippi for the highest percentage of workers reduced to poverty pay.
Spreading even more fairy dust, Perry claims that his Texas Miracle is the result of him keeping the government out of the private sector's way. But peek behind that ideological curtain, and you'll find this startling fact: During Perry's decade, the greatest job growth by far has come from the public sector, which has more than doubled the number of new jobs created by the private sector.
One out of six employed Texans are now teachers, police officers, highway engineers, military personnel or other government workers -- and many of these jobs were created with the federal money that Perry-the-candidate now loudly denounces. Indeed, he's running around ranting about President Obama's stimulus program, but he gladly accepted the third highest amount of stimulus funds taken by the 50 states. There's his miracle.
Interestingly, even his tea-partyish hatred -- nay, loathing! -- of big government's intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens turns out to be just another Perry Tale. In fact, there would be no Rick Perry without the steady "intrusion" of government into his life.
Local taxpayers in Haskell County put him through their public school system -- for free. He and his family were dry-land cotton farmers, and federal taxpayers helped support them with thousands of dollars in crop subsidies -- Perry personally took $80,000 in farm payments.
State and federal taxpayers financed his college education at Texas A&M, even giving him the extracurricular opportunity to be a cheerleader. Upon graduation, he spent four years on the federal payroll as an Air Force transport pilot who never did any combat duty.
Then, in 1984, Perry hit the mother lode of government pay by moving into elected office -- squatting there for 27 years and counting. In addition to getting regular paychecks from taxpayers for nearly three decades as a state representative, agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor and governor, he also receives platinum-level health care coverage and a generous pension from the state, plus $10,000 a month for renting a luxury suburban home, a covey of political and personal aides and even a publicly paid subscription to Food & Wine magazine.
So when this taxpayer-supported lifer flits into your town to declare that he will slash public benefits and make government "as inconsequential as possible," he means in your life, not his.
Perry literally puts the "hype" in hypocrisy. Forget his tall tales and political B.S. -- look at what he actually does.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Texas cut fire department funding by 75 percent this year
09.6.11
David Edwards
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/texas-cut-fire-department-funding-by-75-percent-this-year
Under Gov. Rick Perry (R) this year, Texas slashed state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires like the ones that have recently destroyed more than 700 homes.
Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain were slated to have their funding cut from $30 million to $7 million, according to KVUE.
The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid.
For that reason, aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could be more important than ever to the state where wildfires have recently been raging.
At a press conference Monday, Perry promised to seek federal disaster relief and said that FEMA would be in the state by Wednesday.
While the Texas governor has been highly critical of FEMA in the past, he told CBS’ Erica Hill Tuesday that now was not the time to worry about reforming the agency.
“The issue is taking care of these people right now,” Perry insisted. “We can work our way through any conversations about how to make agencies more efficient, how to make Department of Defense equipment, for instance, more available. There are a lot of issues we can talk about, but the fact of the matter is now is not the time to be trying to work out the details of how to make these agencies more efficient. Let’s get people out of harm’s way.”
David Edwards
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/texas-cut-fire-department-funding-by-75-percent-this-year
Under Gov. Rick Perry (R) this year, Texas slashed state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires like the ones that have recently destroyed more than 700 homes.
Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain were slated to have their funding cut from $30 million to $7 million, according to KVUE.
The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid.
For that reason, aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could be more important than ever to the state where wildfires have recently been raging.
At a press conference Monday, Perry promised to seek federal disaster relief and said that FEMA would be in the state by Wednesday.
While the Texas governor has been highly critical of FEMA in the past, he told CBS’ Erica Hill Tuesday that now was not the time to worry about reforming the agency.
“The issue is taking care of these people right now,” Perry insisted. “We can work our way through any conversations about how to make agencies more efficient, how to make Department of Defense equipment, for instance, more available. There are a lot of issues we can talk about, but the fact of the matter is now is not the time to be trying to work out the details of how to make these agencies more efficient. Let’s get people out of harm’s way.”
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Rick Perry’s warped tax ‘injustice’
Ruth Marcus ruthmarcus@washpost.com
August 15, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rick-perrys-warped-tax-injustice/2011/08/15/gIQAvzwPHJ_story.html
“We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry, presidential candidacy announcement speech, Aug. 13
Really? Of all the ills in the world, of all the problems with the economy, all the difficulties with the tax code, this is the one that Rick Perry chooses to lament?
Perry’s statement conjures visions of America as Slacker Nation, where the overburdened wagon-pullers drag an increasingly heavy burden of freeloaders. His number is correct but, like other conservatives who have seized on the statistic, Perry draws from it a dangerously misleading lesson.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that 46.4 percent of households will pay no federal income tax in 2011. This is, for the most part, not because people have chosen to loaf. It’s because they are working but simply don’t earn enough to owe income taxes, based on the progressive structure of the tax code and provisions designed to help the working poor and lower-income seniors.
As the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams has explained, “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.”
Does Perry truly see this as an “injustice”? Does he believe his “dismay” should be alleviated by raising the tax burden on these households?
Consider: Of those households that do not owe income taxes, about a third earn $10,000 a year and a slightly smaller share earn between $10,000 and $20,000. More than three-fourths earn $30,000 or less.
In addition, the notion that these households pay no taxes is flat-out wrong. They pay — leaving aside state and local sales, income and property taxes — federal gasoline and other excise taxes and, most significantly, payroll taxes on every dollar they earn. These taxes are regressive. Everyone pays the same share, regardless of income, so they hit the poor hardest, and they counterbalance the progressivity of the income tax code.
Indeed, factoring in payroll taxes alone, the Slacker Nation picture looks very different. Two-thirds of the households that pay no federal income tax still ante up for payroll taxes. Fewer than one in five — 18 percent of all households — pay neither income nor payroll taxes. Nearly all of these are elderly (10 percent) or have incomes below $20,000 (7 percent.)
Assuming that Perry isn’t worked up about Slacker Grandmas, the relevant “slacker share” — people who are supposedly comfortably ensconced on that wagon the rest of us are pulling — is in single digits rather than “nearly half.”
And, of course, they pay other taxes. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, taking into account all federal taxes, found that in 2007 even the poorest one-fifth of households, with average income (including government benefits) of $18,400, paid 4 percent of their income in federal taxes. By contrast, the middle fifth (average income $64,500) paid 14 percent of income and the top fifth (average income $264,700) 25 percent.
In short, the wealthy pay a greater share of their income in taxes — but the poor don’t, as Perry implies, pay nothing.
About those rich people: Perry seems to believe it is wrong to ask more of them. “‘Spreading the wealth’ punishes success while setting America on course for greater dependency on government,” he said.
Perry needn’t worry. In the past several decades the wealth hasn’t been spread so much as concentrated — at the top. The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of income earners more than doubled from 9 percent in 1970 to 23.5 percent in 2007. (The Great Recession has since narrowed the gap.)
And while, as noted above, the rich pay a greater proportion of their income in taxes, the share of total taxes paid by the richest Americans is commensurate with their share of national wealth.
Examining the total tax burden — state, federal and local — Citizens for Tax Justice calculated that the top 1 percent of households (average income, $1.3 million) earned 20.3 percent of income and paid 21.5 percent of taxes in 2010.
The tax code is studded with a costly bevy of deductions and preferences — mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, retirement savings — that benefit wealthier taxpayers over those with modest incomes. If Perry wants to go after injustice in the tax code, he’ll find ample targets. Failing to tax poor people enough isn’t among them.
August 15, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rick-perrys-warped-tax-injustice/2011/08/15/gIQAvzwPHJ_story.html
“We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.”
— Texas Gov. Rick Perry, presidential candidacy announcement speech, Aug. 13
Really? Of all the ills in the world, of all the problems with the economy, all the difficulties with the tax code, this is the one that Rick Perry chooses to lament?
Perry’s statement conjures visions of America as Slacker Nation, where the overburdened wagon-pullers drag an increasingly heavy burden of freeloaders. His number is correct but, like other conservatives who have seized on the statistic, Perry draws from it a dangerously misleading lesson.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that 46.4 percent of households will pay no federal income tax in 2011. This is, for the most part, not because people have chosen to loaf. It’s because they are working but simply don’t earn enough to owe income taxes, based on the progressive structure of the tax code and provisions designed to help the working poor and lower-income seniors.
As the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams has explained, “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.”
Does Perry truly see this as an “injustice”? Does he believe his “dismay” should be alleviated by raising the tax burden on these households?
Consider: Of those households that do not owe income taxes, about a third earn $10,000 a year and a slightly smaller share earn between $10,000 and $20,000. More than three-fourths earn $30,000 or less.
In addition, the notion that these households pay no taxes is flat-out wrong. They pay — leaving aside state and local sales, income and property taxes — federal gasoline and other excise taxes and, most significantly, payroll taxes on every dollar they earn. These taxes are regressive. Everyone pays the same share, regardless of income, so they hit the poor hardest, and they counterbalance the progressivity of the income tax code.
Indeed, factoring in payroll taxes alone, the Slacker Nation picture looks very different. Two-thirds of the households that pay no federal income tax still ante up for payroll taxes. Fewer than one in five — 18 percent of all households — pay neither income nor payroll taxes. Nearly all of these are elderly (10 percent) or have incomes below $20,000 (7 percent.)
Assuming that Perry isn’t worked up about Slacker Grandmas, the relevant “slacker share” — people who are supposedly comfortably ensconced on that wagon the rest of us are pulling — is in single digits rather than “nearly half.”
And, of course, they pay other taxes. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, taking into account all federal taxes, found that in 2007 even the poorest one-fifth of households, with average income (including government benefits) of $18,400, paid 4 percent of their income in federal taxes. By contrast, the middle fifth (average income $64,500) paid 14 percent of income and the top fifth (average income $264,700) 25 percent.
In short, the wealthy pay a greater share of their income in taxes — but the poor don’t, as Perry implies, pay nothing.
About those rich people: Perry seems to believe it is wrong to ask more of them. “‘Spreading the wealth’ punishes success while setting America on course for greater dependency on government,” he said.
Perry needn’t worry. In the past several decades the wealth hasn’t been spread so much as concentrated — at the top. The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of income earners more than doubled from 9 percent in 1970 to 23.5 percent in 2007. (The Great Recession has since narrowed the gap.)
And while, as noted above, the rich pay a greater proportion of their income in taxes, the share of total taxes paid by the richest Americans is commensurate with their share of national wealth.
Examining the total tax burden — state, federal and local — Citizens for Tax Justice calculated that the top 1 percent of households (average income, $1.3 million) earned 20.3 percent of income and paid 21.5 percent of taxes in 2010.
The tax code is studded with a costly bevy of deductions and preferences — mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, retirement savings — that benefit wealthier taxpayers over those with modest incomes. If Perry wants to go after injustice in the tax code, he’ll find ample targets. Failing to tax poor people enough isn’t among them.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
$4 Million Log Cabin In Texas
Property Porn Of The Week
Morgan Brennan
Apr. 12 2011
http://blogs.forbes.com/morganbrennan/2011/04/12/property-porn-of-the-week-east-texas-4-million-log-cabin/
Kirkland Kastle isn’t just another east Texas log cabin. It’s a huge, hard wood “work of art,” asserts Evan Matteson of the Matteson Group of Coldwell Banker Apex, Realtors. The Canton, Texas area mansion is constructed of a staggering 6,000 oak and cedar logs custom-milled by hand over the course of five years. It’s currently on the market for $4 million.
“You ever walk into a cedar closet and get that aroma? The home has a little bit of that even though the logs are sealed,” says Matteson, who is the property’s listing agent.
The three story wooden abode is comprised of 4,800 square feet of living space and another 9,800 square feet of covered porches. The master bedroom loft touts two master baths. The decadent kitchen boasts Viking commercial grade appliances, granite countertops and cabinets made of that sweet-smelling cedar wood. And there’s a sportsbar-inspired entertainment area with wet bar bedecked in retro neon beer signs.
Sitting on a private 12 acre lake, the 40 acre estate includes two bridges and a swimming pier with wooden diving board. The lake is so expansive, current owners Gerald and Kelly Kirkland have been known to take a jet ski or two out now and again. In true Texas shindig fashion, there’s a bandstand on the lake’s shore for live music concerts and the home itself is rigged with a state-of-the art sound system, ensuring everyone gets to hear the band. The grounds also tout a gazebo and a three bay barn.
Gerald Kirkland built his namesake “Kastle” himself, enlisting the seasonal help of four employees from the speaker box construction business that he owns as a day job. Where did Kirkland get all of these logs? He literally knocked on the doors of his neighbors within a 10 mile radius and asked if they had trees in need of disposal on their properties. He then chopped said trees down and hauled them back to 4377 Vz County Road 2602, where he handcut and treated them one at a time.
Then there’s the foundation. Kirkland spared no means in making sure this residential labor of love would be here to stay. The house has 50 belled piers. In other words 50 2×4 foot boxes were pushed down upwards of eight feet into bedrock and then filled with concrete. Between the concrete foundation and the 6,000 hard wood pieces, Kirkland Kastle will need no structural renovations for at least 200 years, explains Matteson. Thanks to the sheer size of the logs and the way they were treated, even a fire would struggle to catch ablaze let alone cause any real structural damage.
The luxe log cabin sits just outside of the town of Canton, about 50 minutes east of Dallas and 50 minutes southwest of Tyler. Matteson says the outrageous $4 million home, which has been on the market about a month, is already drumming up interest. He thinks it will ultimately sell to one of two types of buyers: either a buyer who see it as a business investment for hosting events or acting as a bed and breakfast, or the high-end home buyer who wants a remote getaway property that’s completely unique.
“I’ve seen many log homes before, they’re a dime a dozen out here, but this is more like your style of wood lodge in Alaska or Colorado that’s been there 100 years and will be another 100,” says Matteson. “There’s a permanence to this house that you don’t normally see with newer construction these days.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Texas Beauty Queen Wins Crown Back
Another item in the subject of "Why women are psychologically screwed up about their bodies." Take a look at these pictures, because according to group of Texas beauty pageant officials, this 17-year-old girl was too fat to be a beauty queen. One official even told her to "get off the tacos." This, despite the fact Domonique Ramirez, who is size two and 129 pounds at a height of 5'8", won the swimsuit competition.
Officials stripped her of the title, but then claimed it wasn't because of their obsession with her imaginary obesity, but because of other violation of duties. A jury heard their claims and sided with Ramirez, who was awarded her crown back. Good for her, though she deserves even better than being a beauty queen for such an undeserving group. We got your back, Domonique!!!
Jury: Pageant breached Texas beauty queen contract
March 24, 2011
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7490043.html
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
First Annual Central Texas Paranormal Convention in Austin
First Annual Central Texas Paranormal Convention in Austin – October 8th/9th, 2011
March 15th, 2011
SMiles Lewis
http://forteanswest.com/wordpress-mu/texaslowfi/2011/03/15/first-annual-central-texas-paranormal-convention-in-austin-october-8th9th-2011
Coming up later this year here in Austin, Texas:
October 8th and 9th, 2011.
The First Annual Central Tx Paranormal Convention will host guest speakers Fiona Broome, Dustin Pari, Brad and Barry Klinge, Andy Coppock, Jeff Belanger and ohters.
The event website is ctparacon.com.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Gone With the Myths
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19Ball.html
Op-Ed Contributor
Gone With the Myths
EDWARD BALL
December 18, 2010
ON Dec. 20, 1860, 169 men — politicians and people of property — met in the ballroom of St. Andrew’s Hall in Charleston, S.C. After hours of debate, they issued the 158-word “Ordinance of Secession,” which repealed the consent of South Carolina to the Constitution and declared the state to be an independent country. Four days later, the same group drafted a seven-page “Declaration of the Immediate Causes,” explaining why they had decided to split the Union.
The authors of these papers flattered themselves that they’d conjured up a second American Revolution. Instead, the Secession Convention was the beginning of the Civil War, which killed some 620,000 Americans; an equivalent war today would send home more than six million body bags.
The next five years will include an all-you-can-eat special of national remembrance. Yet even after 150 years full of grief and pride and anger, we greet the sesquicentennial wondering, why did the South secede?
I can testify about the South under oath. I was born and raised there, and 12 men in my family fought for the Confederacy; two of them were killed. And since I was a boy, the answer I’ve heard to this question, from Virginia to Louisiana (from whites, never from blacks), is this: “The War Between the States was about states’ rights. It was not about slavery.”
I’ve heard it from women and from men, from sober people and from people liquored up on anti-Washington talk. The North wouldn’t let us govern ourselves, they say, and Congress laid on tariffs that hurt the South. So we rebelled. Secession and the Civil War, in other words, were about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.
But a look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union — which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy — reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery.
South Carolina: “The non-slaveholding states ... have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery” and “have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.”
Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. ... There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.”
Georgia: “A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.”
Several states single out a special culprit, Abraham Lincoln, “an obscure and illiterate man” whose “opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” Lincoln’s election to the White House meant, for South Carolina, that “the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
In other words, the only state right the Confederate founders were interested in was the rich man’s “right” to own slaves.
It’s peculiar, because “states’ rights” has become a popular refrain in Republican circles lately. Last year Gov. Rick Perry of Texas wondered aloud whether secession was his state’s right in the aftermath of laws out of Congress that he disliked.
In part because of this renewed rhetoric, in the coming remembrances we will likely hear more from folks who cling to the whitewash explanation for secession and the Civil War. But you have only to look at the honest words of the secessionists to see why all those men put on uniforms.
Edward Ball, the author of “Slaves in the Family,” is writing a biography of the photographer Eadweard Muybridge.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 19, 2010, on page WK8 of the New York edition.
Op-Ed Contributor
Gone With the Myths
EDWARD BALL
December 18, 2010
ON Dec. 20, 1860, 169 men — politicians and people of property — met in the ballroom of St. Andrew’s Hall in Charleston, S.C. After hours of debate, they issued the 158-word “Ordinance of Secession,” which repealed the consent of South Carolina to the Constitution and declared the state to be an independent country. Four days later, the same group drafted a seven-page “Declaration of the Immediate Causes,” explaining why they had decided to split the Union.
The authors of these papers flattered themselves that they’d conjured up a second American Revolution. Instead, the Secession Convention was the beginning of the Civil War, which killed some 620,000 Americans; an equivalent war today would send home more than six million body bags.
The next five years will include an all-you-can-eat special of national remembrance. Yet even after 150 years full of grief and pride and anger, we greet the sesquicentennial wondering, why did the South secede?
I can testify about the South under oath. I was born and raised there, and 12 men in my family fought for the Confederacy; two of them were killed. And since I was a boy, the answer I’ve heard to this question, from Virginia to Louisiana (from whites, never from blacks), is this: “The War Between the States was about states’ rights. It was not about slavery.”
I’ve heard it from women and from men, from sober people and from people liquored up on anti-Washington talk. The North wouldn’t let us govern ourselves, they say, and Congress laid on tariffs that hurt the South. So we rebelled. Secession and the Civil War, in other words, were about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.
But a look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union — which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy — reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery.
South Carolina: “The non-slaveholding states ... have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery” and “have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.”
Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. ... There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.”
Georgia: “A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.”
Several states single out a special culprit, Abraham Lincoln, “an obscure and illiterate man” whose “opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” Lincoln’s election to the White House meant, for South Carolina, that “the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
In other words, the only state right the Confederate founders were interested in was the rich man’s “right” to own slaves.
It’s peculiar, because “states’ rights” has become a popular refrain in Republican circles lately. Last year Gov. Rick Perry of Texas wondered aloud whether secession was his state’s right in the aftermath of laws out of Congress that he disliked.
In part because of this renewed rhetoric, in the coming remembrances we will likely hear more from folks who cling to the whitewash explanation for secession and the Civil War. But you have only to look at the honest words of the secessionists to see why all those men put on uniforms.
Edward Ball, the author of “Slaves in the Family,” is writing a biography of the photographer Eadweard Muybridge.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 19, 2010, on page WK8 of the New York edition.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Willie Nelson Wants A National Pot Party
http://www.celebstoner.com/201011285311/news/celebstoner-news/willie-nelson-wants-national-pot-party.html
Willie Nelson Wants A National Pot Party
Sunday, 28 November 2010
In an exclusive to CelebStoner, Willie Nelson responded to his latest marijuana arrest in Texas by calling for a new political party: "There's the Tea Party. How about the Teapot Party? Our motto: We lean a little to the left."
When Nelson's tour bus was stopped at a border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca Friday morning, authorities smelled marijuana, searched the vehicle with K-9 dogs and found six ounces of marijuana. Nelson posted a $2,500 bond and was released four hours later.
"Tax it, regulate it and legalize it," Nelson continued in his email to CelebStoner. "And stop the border wars over drugs. Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved."
Nelson has been arrested three times for marijuana - once before in Texas in 2005 and in Louisiana in 2006. The total number of Americans arrested for marijuana in 2009 was 858,408.
Willie Nelson Wants A National Pot Party
Sunday, 28 November 2010
In an exclusive to CelebStoner, Willie Nelson responded to his latest marijuana arrest in Texas by calling for a new political party: "There's the Tea Party. How about the Teapot Party? Our motto: We lean a little to the left."
When Nelson's tour bus was stopped at a border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca Friday morning, authorities smelled marijuana, searched the vehicle with K-9 dogs and found six ounces of marijuana. Nelson posted a $2,500 bond and was released four hours later.
"Tax it, regulate it and legalize it," Nelson continued in his email to CelebStoner. "And stop the border wars over drugs. Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved."
Nelson has been arrested three times for marijuana - once before in Texas in 2005 and in Louisiana in 2006. The total number of Americans arrested for marijuana in 2009 was 858,408.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Bush Sr. on 11-22-63
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/mc081310.html
(Melchizedek Communique, MC081310) George H.W. Bush, alias "Poppy" Bush, does not remember where he was on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. But Russ Baker, author of the book "Family Of Secrets", has established where he was.
In the Autumn of 1963, Poppy Bush was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, from Texas. He traveled all over Texas and opened a campaign headquarters in Dallas. It is now scarcely beyond doubt that Poppy was there on the morning of November 22, 1963.
But especially worrisome is how Poppy has disguised his whereabouts.
In 1988, The Nation magazine published an article: "George Bush of the CIA". A memo had surfaced. "The F.B.I. memorandum, dated November 29, 1963, is from Director J. Edgar Hoover to the State Department and is subject-headed 'Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963.' In it, Hoover reports that the Bureau had briefed 'Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency' shortly after the assassination on the reaction of Cuban exiles in Miami." [1]
"It was some different George Bush," claimed the Poppy Gang. No it wasn't. It was Poppy Bush, a CIA boy since at least 1963.
About 6 weeks after The Nation report, on August 25, 1988, the San Francisco Examiner published a tiny article, "Documents: Bush Blew Whistle on Rival in JFK Slaying." A few hours after JFK was murdered, Poppy Bush phoned the FBI to offer his suspicions about one James Milton Parrott. Mr. Parrott, stated Poppy, had "been talking of killing the president." And Poppy added, seemingly incidentally, that he was phoning from Tyler, Texas. This established an official file placing him in Tyler, Texas on the fateful day. [2]
Barbara "Babs" Bush, wife of Poppy, in 1994 suddenly recalled where she and Poppy were on November 22, 1963: It was Tyler, Texas and she was getting her hair done. [2]
But a Mr. Joe Zeppa had lent Poppy his plane on November 22, 1963. That plane had flown from Dallas on the morning of JFK's assassination. When Poppy Bush phoned the FBI that afternoon, he indeed was in Tyler. But Poppy almost certainly had been in Dallas on the morning of President Kennedy's murder. [2]
So why couldn't Poppy remember where he was that day? And why did he, almost immediately after JFK had been shot, make certain to establish with the FBI that he was in Tyler -- got that? -- Tyler, Texas.
------- Notes -------
[1] "The Man Who Wasn't There, 'George Bush,' C.I.A. Operative", by Joseph McBride. The Nation, July 16/23, 1988
[2] Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009
(Melchizedek Communique, MC081310) George H.W. Bush, alias "Poppy" Bush, does not remember where he was on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. But Russ Baker, author of the book "Family Of Secrets", has established where he was.
In the Autumn of 1963, Poppy Bush was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, from Texas. He traveled all over Texas and opened a campaign headquarters in Dallas. It is now scarcely beyond doubt that Poppy was there on the morning of November 22, 1963.
But especially worrisome is how Poppy has disguised his whereabouts.
In 1988, The Nation magazine published an article: "George Bush of the CIA". A memo had surfaced. "The F.B.I. memorandum, dated November 29, 1963, is from Director J. Edgar Hoover to the State Department and is subject-headed 'Assassination of President John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963.' In it, Hoover reports that the Bureau had briefed 'Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency' shortly after the assassination on the reaction of Cuban exiles in Miami." [1]
"It was some different George Bush," claimed the Poppy Gang. No it wasn't. It was Poppy Bush, a CIA boy since at least 1963.
About 6 weeks after The Nation report, on August 25, 1988, the San Francisco Examiner published a tiny article, "Documents: Bush Blew Whistle on Rival in JFK Slaying." A few hours after JFK was murdered, Poppy Bush phoned the FBI to offer his suspicions about one James Milton Parrott. Mr. Parrott, stated Poppy, had "been talking of killing the president." And Poppy added, seemingly incidentally, that he was phoning from Tyler, Texas. This established an official file placing him in Tyler, Texas on the fateful day. [2]
Barbara "Babs" Bush, wife of Poppy, in 1994 suddenly recalled where she and Poppy were on November 22, 1963: It was Tyler, Texas and she was getting her hair done. [2]
But a Mr. Joe Zeppa had lent Poppy his plane on November 22, 1963. That plane had flown from Dallas on the morning of JFK's assassination. When Poppy Bush phoned the FBI that afternoon, he indeed was in Tyler. But Poppy almost certainly had been in Dallas on the morning of President Kennedy's murder. [2]
So why couldn't Poppy remember where he was that day? And why did he, almost immediately after JFK had been shot, make certain to establish with the FBI that he was in Tyler -- got that? -- Tyler, Texas.
------- Notes -------
[1] "The Man Who Wasn't There, 'George Bush,' C.I.A. Operative", by Joseph McBride. The Nation, July 16/23, 1988
[2] Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009
Monday, September 6, 2010
Deep-fried beer invented in Texas
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/7973944/Deep-fried-beer-invented-in-Texas.html
Deep-fried beer invented in Texas
A chef in Texas has created what he claims is the world's first recipe for deep-fried beer.
Nick Allen in Los Angeles
31 Aug 2010
Ravioli like pieces of pretzel dough are deep fried for about 20 seconds
The beer is placed inside a pocket of salty, pretzel-like dough and then dunked in oil at 375 degrees for about 20 seconds, a short enough time for the confection to remain alcoholic.
When diners take a bite the hot beer mixes with the dough in what is claimed to be a delicious taste sensation.
A recession for the many, not the fewInventor Mark Zable said it had taken him three years to come up with the cooking method and a patent for the process is pending. He declined to say whether any special ingredients were involved.
His deep-fried beer will be officially unveiled in a fried food competition at the Texas state fair later this month.
Five ravioli-like pieces will sell for $5 (£3) and the Texas Alcoholic Commission has already ruled that people must be aged over 21 to try it.
Mr Zable has so far been deep frying Guinness but said he may switch to a pale ale in future.
He said: "Nobody has been able to fry a liquid before. It tastes like you took a bite of hot pretzel dough and then took a drink of beer." Mr Zable previously invented dishes including chocolate-covered strawberry waffle balls and jalapeño corndog shrimps.
Last year's winner of the Texas state fair fried food competition was a recipe for deep-fried butter.
Deep-fried beer invented in Texas
A chef in Texas has created what he claims is the world's first recipe for deep-fried beer.
Nick Allen in Los Angeles
31 Aug 2010
Ravioli like pieces of pretzel dough are deep fried for about 20 seconds
The beer is placed inside a pocket of salty, pretzel-like dough and then dunked in oil at 375 degrees for about 20 seconds, a short enough time for the confection to remain alcoholic.
When diners take a bite the hot beer mixes with the dough in what is claimed to be a delicious taste sensation.
A recession for the many, not the fewInventor Mark Zable said it had taken him three years to come up with the cooking method and a patent for the process is pending. He declined to say whether any special ingredients were involved.
His deep-fried beer will be officially unveiled in a fried food competition at the Texas state fair later this month.
Five ravioli-like pieces will sell for $5 (£3) and the Texas Alcoholic Commission has already ruled that people must be aged over 21 to try it.
Mr Zable has so far been deep frying Guinness but said he may switch to a pale ale in future.
He said: "Nobody has been able to fry a liquid before. It tastes like you took a bite of hot pretzel dough and then took a drink of beer." Mr Zable previously invented dishes including chocolate-covered strawberry waffle balls and jalapeño corndog shrimps.
Last year's winner of the Texas state fair fried food competition was a recipe for deep-fried butter.
Friday, August 6, 2010
‘KopBuster’ Barry Cooper gets a movie deal, sues Texas authorities
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0802/kopbuster-barry-cooper-movie-deal-sues-texas-authorities/
‘KopBuster’ Barry Cooper gets a movie deal, sues Texas authorities
Stephen C. Webster
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
Director credits reports by RAW STORY for compelling decision on film rights
When former Texas police officer Barry Cooper hatched his scheme to sell "KopBusters," an anti-cop reality show, he had no idea what might come of it.
"I was just determined to make things right for what I had done in all my years as a cop, busting people for pot mostly," he's said. "But, you know, things kinda got complicated."
Two years and several media stunts later, the family's home has been invaded by officers with guns drawn, who would tell the Child Protection Services (CPS) that the Coopers were "unsuitable" parents and endangering their children -- a possible felony offense. Officers claimed a gram of marijuana was found in the home, which was enough for Candi's ex-husband to claim temporary custody of her youngest son, Zach. Then the Texas Rangers came swooping in, arresting Candi in front of her home and leaving Barry with little option but to turn himself in, which he did with a typical showman's flare.
Now both are facing up to a year in jail on two separate charges of Making a False Report to a Peace Officer, a Class B misdemeanor offense, for what they insist was civil disobedience.
To an objective observer, this all may sound like a series of unfortunate events -- but for Barry and Candi, finally feeling the heat from legal fees and the continuing costs of operating an online business, a big payday really is just around the corner.
That's because Cooper, under the guidance of Hollywood talent manager David Ballard, has signed an option arrangement with producer/director Brett Ratner, perhaps best known for his films "Rush Hour," "Red Dragon" and "X-Men: The Last Stand". Longtime Ratner friend and production partner Franck Khalfoun has committed to write and direct.
Khalfoun's most recent work, "Wrong Turn at Tahoe," is a mobster movie that stars Harvey Keitel and Cuba Gooding Jr. He also directed the thriller "P2," about a woman stalked through a parking garage by a manipulative killer.
That Ratner and Khalfoun were both on-board with the film has been known to those close to Cooper for some time, but the revelation was officially made in public as an aside in Cooper's recently-filed civil suit, which accuses Texas police and judges, among others, of engaging in an opportunistic conspiracy against Barry and his family.
"I'm really excited to be telling Barry Cooper's story in film," Khalfoun told RAW STORY in an exclusive interview. "He's such a character and his experiences are so incredible. His life is so strange it practically begs to be known."
He specified that coverage by this reporter, published on RAW STORY and other sites, played a significant role in compelling their decision to put Cooper's life to film.
"I want to focus on Barry as a character, his life with a father in the military, becoming a cop, a preacher, a used car salesman and a fight promoter, only to turn out like this," Khalfoun said. "It's fascinating."
The script is still in the earliest phase of production and there is no release timeline just yet, but 2010 is a strange year. Across California, as the state considers legalizing and regulating marijuana, pot is a hot topic. It seems logical that Hollywood would hope to raise an anti-prohibition icon like Cooper.
"I mean, he kind-of is a super hero, if you think about it," Khalfoun said. "Barry so exemplifies the personal change I just see as desperately needed across the whole country."
"Barry and Candi are kind-of like Bonnie and Clyde," Ballard, Barry's manager, told RAW STORY during a recent meeting in Los Angeles. "And Barry himself, he's kind of like the Erin Brockovich of pot. I mean, come on: he's Brad Pitt and [Candi] is Angelina. The time is so right for their story to be told."
Khalfoun agreed: "It's so hard to get producers interested in these things in Hollywood, unless you've got something based on a book or a story that already has a fan base and followers like this one. With everything that's going on with the whole legalization issue, for a story like Barry's, I think the time has come."
A copy of Cooper's option agreement was examined by RAW STORY, but has not yet been made available to the public.
Barry sues the cops
Behind the big news, Barry and Candi seem to be growing desperate. With an ever-tightening financial situation and precarious legal position, Barry decided to follow-through on his threat of civil action against Texas authorities, penning a 27-page lawsuit himself and filing without an attorney.
Cooper names a laundry-list of defendants in the suit, ranging from his ex-wife and his current wife's ex-husband, to judges who signed warrants or are overseeing pending cases against him and, of course, police officers with the State of Texas, Williamson County and Odessa.
As the document was still in the process of being served, none of the defendants contacted by RAW STORY would comment. Cooper is seeking $40,000,000 in damages -- up from a threatened $30,000,000 -- but says he'll drop the monetary claim if every officer and judge he's named is fired from their respective positions.
The suit goes into surprising detail about items some observers would not know to be connected to the family's latest round of legal troubles. It even contains a number of this reporter's words, detailing Barry's and Candi's arrests. It goes on to claim an opportunistic conspiracy by Texas law enforcement, which allegedly sought to silence the couple's activism.
Even if the suit is thrown out, which would seem likely given Barry's lack of expertise in drafting legal documents, it could still accomplish his secondary motivation: getting a new judge in Candi's child custody battle.
"That's how you can do that," Barry has said before, though not in the context of his own civil suit. "If you're in a civil trial and need a new judge, file a cheap lawsuit pro se and [file a motion so that] the judge will be forced to recuse his or herself."
Though he doesn't openly state that to be the goal of his suit, it seems obvious that's one of several things he's hoping for, as the child custody battle in Upshur County, Texas has not yet turned in Candi's favor. (Update: Barry's motion to recuse was denied over the phone shortly after this story's publication. The final hearings in the child custody battle begin later this week.)
The complete civil suit is available online.
"I don't know how this is ultimately gonna end up, but we're just going to keep on doing what we're doing until all the marijuana prisoners are free," Cooper said, summarizing his chances in the criminal cases pending against him. "I keep wondering when our karma will turn around, when I'll be paid up for all those people I hurt as a cop. I hope it's soon, 'cause we've got a lot of work to do."
‘KopBuster’ Barry Cooper gets a movie deal, sues Texas authorities
Stephen C. Webster
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
Director credits reports by RAW STORY for compelling decision on film rights
When former Texas police officer Barry Cooper hatched his scheme to sell "KopBusters," an anti-cop reality show, he had no idea what might come of it.
"I was just determined to make things right for what I had done in all my years as a cop, busting people for pot mostly," he's said. "But, you know, things kinda got complicated."
Two years and several media stunts later, the family's home has been invaded by officers with guns drawn, who would tell the Child Protection Services (CPS) that the Coopers were "unsuitable" parents and endangering their children -- a possible felony offense. Officers claimed a gram of marijuana was found in the home, which was enough for Candi's ex-husband to claim temporary custody of her youngest son, Zach. Then the Texas Rangers came swooping in, arresting Candi in front of her home and leaving Barry with little option but to turn himself in, which he did with a typical showman's flare.
Now both are facing up to a year in jail on two separate charges of Making a False Report to a Peace Officer, a Class B misdemeanor offense, for what they insist was civil disobedience.
To an objective observer, this all may sound like a series of unfortunate events -- but for Barry and Candi, finally feeling the heat from legal fees and the continuing costs of operating an online business, a big payday really is just around the corner.
That's because Cooper, under the guidance of Hollywood talent manager David Ballard, has signed an option arrangement with producer/director Brett Ratner, perhaps best known for his films "Rush Hour," "Red Dragon" and "X-Men: The Last Stand". Longtime Ratner friend and production partner Franck Khalfoun has committed to write and direct.
Khalfoun's most recent work, "Wrong Turn at Tahoe," is a mobster movie that stars Harvey Keitel and Cuba Gooding Jr. He also directed the thriller "P2," about a woman stalked through a parking garage by a manipulative killer.
That Ratner and Khalfoun were both on-board with the film has been known to those close to Cooper for some time, but the revelation was officially made in public as an aside in Cooper's recently-filed civil suit, which accuses Texas police and judges, among others, of engaging in an opportunistic conspiracy against Barry and his family.
"I'm really excited to be telling Barry Cooper's story in film," Khalfoun told RAW STORY in an exclusive interview. "He's such a character and his experiences are so incredible. His life is so strange it practically begs to be known."
He specified that coverage by this reporter, published on RAW STORY and other sites, played a significant role in compelling their decision to put Cooper's life to film.
"I want to focus on Barry as a character, his life with a father in the military, becoming a cop, a preacher, a used car salesman and a fight promoter, only to turn out like this," Khalfoun said. "It's fascinating."
The script is still in the earliest phase of production and there is no release timeline just yet, but 2010 is a strange year. Across California, as the state considers legalizing and regulating marijuana, pot is a hot topic. It seems logical that Hollywood would hope to raise an anti-prohibition icon like Cooper.
"I mean, he kind-of is a super hero, if you think about it," Khalfoun said. "Barry so exemplifies the personal change I just see as desperately needed across the whole country."
"Barry and Candi are kind-of like Bonnie and Clyde," Ballard, Barry's manager, told RAW STORY during a recent meeting in Los Angeles. "And Barry himself, he's kind of like the Erin Brockovich of pot. I mean, come on: he's Brad Pitt and [Candi] is Angelina. The time is so right for their story to be told."
Khalfoun agreed: "It's so hard to get producers interested in these things in Hollywood, unless you've got something based on a book or a story that already has a fan base and followers like this one. With everything that's going on with the whole legalization issue, for a story like Barry's, I think the time has come."
A copy of Cooper's option agreement was examined by RAW STORY, but has not yet been made available to the public.
Barry sues the cops
Behind the big news, Barry and Candi seem to be growing desperate. With an ever-tightening financial situation and precarious legal position, Barry decided to follow-through on his threat of civil action against Texas authorities, penning a 27-page lawsuit himself and filing without an attorney.
Cooper names a laundry-list of defendants in the suit, ranging from his ex-wife and his current wife's ex-husband, to judges who signed warrants or are overseeing pending cases against him and, of course, police officers with the State of Texas, Williamson County and Odessa.
As the document was still in the process of being served, none of the defendants contacted by RAW STORY would comment. Cooper is seeking $40,000,000 in damages -- up from a threatened $30,000,000 -- but says he'll drop the monetary claim if every officer and judge he's named is fired from their respective positions.
The suit goes into surprising detail about items some observers would not know to be connected to the family's latest round of legal troubles. It even contains a number of this reporter's words, detailing Barry's and Candi's arrests. It goes on to claim an opportunistic conspiracy by Texas law enforcement, which allegedly sought to silence the couple's activism.
Even if the suit is thrown out, which would seem likely given Barry's lack of expertise in drafting legal documents, it could still accomplish his secondary motivation: getting a new judge in Candi's child custody battle.
"That's how you can do that," Barry has said before, though not in the context of his own civil suit. "If you're in a civil trial and need a new judge, file a cheap lawsuit pro se and [file a motion so that] the judge will be forced to recuse his or herself."
Though he doesn't openly state that to be the goal of his suit, it seems obvious that's one of several things he's hoping for, as the child custody battle in Upshur County, Texas has not yet turned in Candi's favor. (Update: Barry's motion to recuse was denied over the phone shortly after this story's publication. The final hearings in the child custody battle begin later this week.)
The complete civil suit is available online.
"I don't know how this is ultimately gonna end up, but we're just going to keep on doing what we're doing until all the marijuana prisoners are free," Cooper said, summarizing his chances in the criminal cases pending against him. "I keep wondering when our karma will turn around, when I'll be paid up for all those people I hurt as a cop. I hope it's soon, 'cause we've got a lot of work to do."
Thursday, July 29, 2010
A Duo of Chupacabras in Texas?
http://www.tonic.com/article/a-duo-of-chupacabras-in-texas/
A Duo of Chupacabras in Texas?
David Bois | Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Were they simply dogs too ugly to be believed, or something more dire and fearsome? A pair of animals mere miles apart has folks abuzz about the legendary chupacabra.
Folks in and around Hood County, Texas are scratching their heads and wondering: What in tarnation are these critters that have recently turned up? Are they simply a pair of seriously ugly dogs?
Or has something more sinister and fearful fallen upon their towns?
We learn by way of Yahoo's The Buzz Log that animal control officer Frank Hackett was recently called to an unusual duty. As News Provider reports, a local rancher spotted the ugly creature, and Hackett shot and killed the loose and reportedly menacing and potentially dangerous animal.
A close inspection of the animal's remains has locals wondering if what they have on hand is an honest-to-goodness chupacabra.
The word chupacabra, which translates to "goat sucker," was coined by Puerto Rican comedian-businessman Silverio Perez to describe a 1995 event involving eight sheep that were found dead, all of which were completely drained of blood and bearing similar puncture wounds in their chests.
A fearful creature of legendary status was born, and word of his mythic malevolence rapidly spread beyond Puerto Rico throughout the Americas. Reports of chupacabra sightings have come in from places as distant and different as Maine and Chile. Many have taken an interest in the beast and in gathering reports of strange sightings thought to be of the fearsome beast that is believed to feed on the blood of livestock.
Adding to the tension and heightened attention in Texas is the fact that the current example is just one of two very similar and very strange sightings. Just a few miles away, a second animal was shot and killed. It too is doglike, hairless and homely.
As Buzz Log writes, Hackett is holding off on judging the discovery as proof of the mythic creature, opting to wait until DNA analytical results make their way back from the laboratory. What he will say for now, though, is that whatever that thing is, or was, "it wasn't normal."
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Violent Movie Declares War on Arizona for Immigration Law
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/06/violent-movie-declares-war-arizona-immigration-law/
May 06, 2010
Violent Movie Declares War on Arizona for Immigration Law
A violent new film from cult director Robert Rodriguez is declaring war on Arizona with a "special Cinco de Mayo message" in the wake of the state's controversial illegal immigration law.
That message is: "They just f---ed with the wrong Mexican."
"Machete," which features a knife-wielding Mexican assassin out for revenge against double-crossing gringos, won't be in theaters until September, but it is already sparking a political melee over Wednesday's stab at the Grand Canyon State.
In the trailer for the film, the title character is hired to assassinate an anti-immigration U.S. senator played by Robert De Niro. Protesters are seen waving nationalist signs as the senator speaks to a charged-up rally: "We are at war," he booms. "Every time an illegal dances across our border, it is an act of aggression against this sovereign state — an overt act of terrorism."
But before the trailer even begins, the battle-scarred title character stares out from the screen as he tells viewers that what's about to unfold — an immigration-laced slasher grindhouse flick — is about the current border battle in Arizona.
The trailer was released Wednesday, just 24 hours after an envelope filled with a still-undetermined white powder was sent to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, temporarily closing the State Capitol in Phoenix. The powder spilled out when a staffer opened it Tuesday morning, sending Hazmat teams scrambling through the governor's offices. No one was sickened, but state police and the FBI are investigating the incident.
It was just the latest development in a debate that is growing more rancorous by the minute.
Some outspoken critics of illegal immigration took umbrage at the movie trailer and its swipe at Arizona, which is the entry point for one-third of all illegal immigrants in the U.S.
"It's pretty ugly out there," said former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, a staunch advocate of tougher immigration laws. "Half the time that's the way all of us are depicted: corrupt, no good, racist."
Tancredo, who served in the House from 1999-2009, said he received "tons of death threats" while in office and frequently wore a bulletproof vest during public speeches. Though the language of the film is nothing new to him, he said he still finds it offensive.
"The racists who made that trailer, they are as racist as anything I have ever seen" from either side of the immigration debate, Tancredo said.
But, he added, "these guys are 'politically correct' racists, so you cannot heap indignities upon them."
In "Machete," the protagonist, played by Danny Trejo, is a former Mexican Federale now looking for work as a day laborer in Texas. He charges $70 a day for yard work, but an oily businessman makes him an offer he can't refuse: $150,000 to take out a senator bent on deporting illegal immigrants.
"As you know, illegal Americans are being forced out of our country at an alarming rate," says the contractor. "For the good of both our people, the senator must die."
The film, which is set to be released Sept. 3, is produced by 20th Century Fox, a production company owned by Fox News' parent company, News Corp.
20th Century Fox said that Rodriguez speaks for himself on political issues. The studio was comfortable with the release of the movie trailer on Cinco De Mayo, but says it has no political stake in the immigration debate.
Representatives for Rodriguez did not return requests for comment. But the head of the production studio handling the international release of the film said "Machete" is a classic grindhouse picture typical of the man who made "Desperado" and "Sin City."
"'Machete' is a Robert Rodriguez movie through and through, wild and wonderful, exactly the kind of exciting and irreverent genre movie that his fans dream about," Ashok Amritraj, CEO of Hyde Park Entertainment, said in an interview with Variety Magazine.
De Niro, playing the senator, fits many familiar tropes about the Southwest: he's a gun-toting, Stetson hat-wearing, flag pin-blazing cowboy from Texas.
He and Trejo are joined by a number of stars: Cheech Marin plays a shotgun-shooting warrior priest, Lindsay Lohan plays the senator's Patty Hearst-like daughter and Don Johnson, as a sheriff, growls that "there's nothing I'd like more than to see that Mexican dance the bolero at the end of a rope."
Jessica Alba, a border patrol agent, rallies a group of laborers while crying, "We didn't cross the border — the border crossed us!"
Tancredo, who argued that the film should not be distributed at all, said he wasn't worried the movie would incite any violence, but that its political message was clear.
"I think it is a true reflection of exactly who these people are and what they think about America," he said.
To view the trailer:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=287is6b&s=5
Friday, May 7, 2010
The lowdown from Hightower
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5827.shtml
The lowdown from Hightower
By Michael Winship
Online Journal Guest Writer
May 3, 2010
I first became aware of Jim Hightower more than 20 years ago, during the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. The Democrats were nominating Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis to run for president against Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, and at the time Dukakis looked like he had a pretty good chance at the White House.
This was before a series of events did him in, including the notorious Willie Horton ad that attacked Dukakis for a Massachusetts weekend furlough prison program that allowed a convicted murderer back on the street, where he robbed and raped.
And it was before Dukakis bobbled a harsh debate question about what he would do if his own wife Kitty was raped and murdered. And it was before he was photographed atop an Abrams tank wearing a helmet that made him look like he was starring in “Snoopy III: This Time It’s Personal.”
All of that misery lay ahead. The Democrats were still in giddy spirits during the convention and had a high old time poking fun at Bush, Sr. That was when the late Ann Richards, then the Texas state treasurer, famously lamented, “Poor George! He can’t help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth!”
But it was the convention speech by Hightower that I especially remember. He was the Texas agriculture commissioner in those days -- an important job in the Lone Star State -- and described Bush as a “toothache of a man,” a cruel but remarkable metaphor. And he said that Bush behaved like someone who was “born on third base and thought he hit a triple . . . He is threatening to lead this country from tweedle-dum to tweedle-dumber.”
Maybe Hightower didn’t originate those lines (as Milton Berle used to say, “When you steal from me, you steal twice”), but he delivered them with a gusto akin to genuine authorship and over the years has come up with enough original material of his own to absolve him -- mostly -- from the sin of occasional joke-filching.
Now others steal from him. It was Jim, I believe, who came up with the notion that all elected officials be required to wear brightly colored, NASCAR-like jumpsuits with the corporate logos of their biggest campaign contributors, an idea I’ve heard appropriated by several others without proper attribution. And I think it was Jim who first said of George W. Bush, “If ignorance ever reaches $40 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to his head.” (On hearing that another politician was learning Spanish, Hightower is supposed to have remarked, “Oh good. Now he’ll be bi-ignorant.”)
These days, Jim Hightower broadcasts daily radio commentaries and edits “The Hightower Lowdown,” an invaluable monthly newsletter. With the passing of both Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, he has became the funniest person in Texas politics -- intentionally, that is. But it is his steadfast advocacy of progressive politics, his unyielding embrace of the old time gospel of populism, that made him an especially appropriate guest on the final edition of the PBS series, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL.
“Here’s what populism is not,” he told my colleague Bill Moyers. “It is not just an incoherent outburst of anger. And certainly it is not anger that is funded and organized by corporate front groups, as the initial tea party effort [was], and as most of it is still today -- though there is legitimate anger within it, in terms of the people who are there. But what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government.
“ . . . One big difference between real populism and . . . the tea party thing is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can’t say, ‘Let’s get rid of government.’ You need to be saying, ‘Let’s take over government.’”
As Hightower’s fond of saying, the water won’t clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. “I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power,” he reiterated. “Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they’re the top dogs, and we’re a bunch of fire hydrants, you know?”
Of President Obama he said, “It’s odd to me that we’ve got a president who ran from the outside and won, and now is trying to govern from the inside. You can’t do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force . . . Our heavyweight is the people themselves. They’ve got the fat cats, but we’ve got the alley cats . . .”
This past weekend, Jim was honored at Texas State University-San Marcos with an exhibition celebrating his life’s work as a populist journalist, historian and advocate. They’re calling the event “Swim Against the Current” because, as Moyers says, “That’s what he does.”
In fact, “Swim Against the Current” also is the title of Hightower’s most recent book, subtitled, “Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow.” He comes from a long history of flow resisters, a critical, American political tradition. “I go all the way back to Thomas Paine,” he said. “I mean, that was kind of the ultimate rebellion, when the media tool was a pamphlet.” The men who wrote the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence “didn’t create democracy. [They] made democracy possible.
“What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people . . . Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie . . . Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.
“These are agitators. They extended democracy decade after decade. You know, sometimes we get in the midst of these fights. We think we’re making no progress. But . . . you look back, we’ve made a lot of progress . . . The agitator after all is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out. So, we need a lot more agitation. . . .
“We can battle back against the powers. But it’s not just going to a rally and shouting. It’s organizing and it’s thinking. And reaching out to others. And building a real people’s movement.”
Michael Winship was senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, Bill Moyers Journal, which concluded last Friday night on PBS.
The lowdown from Hightower
By Michael Winship
Online Journal Guest Writer
May 3, 2010
I first became aware of Jim Hightower more than 20 years ago, during the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. The Democrats were nominating Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis to run for president against Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, and at the time Dukakis looked like he had a pretty good chance at the White House.
This was before a series of events did him in, including the notorious Willie Horton ad that attacked Dukakis for a Massachusetts weekend furlough prison program that allowed a convicted murderer back on the street, where he robbed and raped.
And it was before Dukakis bobbled a harsh debate question about what he would do if his own wife Kitty was raped and murdered. And it was before he was photographed atop an Abrams tank wearing a helmet that made him look like he was starring in “Snoopy III: This Time It’s Personal.”
All of that misery lay ahead. The Democrats were still in giddy spirits during the convention and had a high old time poking fun at Bush, Sr. That was when the late Ann Richards, then the Texas state treasurer, famously lamented, “Poor George! He can’t help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth!”
But it was the convention speech by Hightower that I especially remember. He was the Texas agriculture commissioner in those days -- an important job in the Lone Star State -- and described Bush as a “toothache of a man,” a cruel but remarkable metaphor. And he said that Bush behaved like someone who was “born on third base and thought he hit a triple . . . He is threatening to lead this country from tweedle-dum to tweedle-dumber.”
Maybe Hightower didn’t originate those lines (as Milton Berle used to say, “When you steal from me, you steal twice”), but he delivered them with a gusto akin to genuine authorship and over the years has come up with enough original material of his own to absolve him -- mostly -- from the sin of occasional joke-filching.
Now others steal from him. It was Jim, I believe, who came up with the notion that all elected officials be required to wear brightly colored, NASCAR-like jumpsuits with the corporate logos of their biggest campaign contributors, an idea I’ve heard appropriated by several others without proper attribution. And I think it was Jim who first said of George W. Bush, “If ignorance ever reaches $40 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to his head.” (On hearing that another politician was learning Spanish, Hightower is supposed to have remarked, “Oh good. Now he’ll be bi-ignorant.”)
These days, Jim Hightower broadcasts daily radio commentaries and edits “The Hightower Lowdown,” an invaluable monthly newsletter. With the passing of both Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, he has became the funniest person in Texas politics -- intentionally, that is. But it is his steadfast advocacy of progressive politics, his unyielding embrace of the old time gospel of populism, that made him an especially appropriate guest on the final edition of the PBS series, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL.
“Here’s what populism is not,” he told my colleague Bill Moyers. “It is not just an incoherent outburst of anger. And certainly it is not anger that is funded and organized by corporate front groups, as the initial tea party effort [was], and as most of it is still today -- though there is legitimate anger within it, in terms of the people who are there. But what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government.
“ . . . One big difference between real populism and . . . the tea party thing is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can’t say, ‘Let’s get rid of government.’ You need to be saying, ‘Let’s take over government.’”
As Hightower’s fond of saying, the water won’t clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. “I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power,” he reiterated. “Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they’re the top dogs, and we’re a bunch of fire hydrants, you know?”
Of President Obama he said, “It’s odd to me that we’ve got a president who ran from the outside and won, and now is trying to govern from the inside. You can’t do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force . . . Our heavyweight is the people themselves. They’ve got the fat cats, but we’ve got the alley cats . . .”
This past weekend, Jim was honored at Texas State University-San Marcos with an exhibition celebrating his life’s work as a populist journalist, historian and advocate. They’re calling the event “Swim Against the Current” because, as Moyers says, “That’s what he does.”
In fact, “Swim Against the Current” also is the title of Hightower’s most recent book, subtitled, “Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow.” He comes from a long history of flow resisters, a critical, American political tradition. “I go all the way back to Thomas Paine,” he said. “I mean, that was kind of the ultimate rebellion, when the media tool was a pamphlet.” The men who wrote the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence “didn’t create democracy. [They] made democracy possible.
“What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people . . . Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie . . . Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.
“These are agitators. They extended democracy decade after decade. You know, sometimes we get in the midst of these fights. We think we’re making no progress. But . . . you look back, we’ve made a lot of progress . . . The agitator after all is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out. So, we need a lot more agitation. . . .
“We can battle back against the powers. But it’s not just going to a rally and shouting. It’s organizing and it’s thinking. And reaching out to others. And building a real people’s movement.”
Michael Winship was senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, Bill Moyers Journal, which concluded last Friday night on PBS.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Ron Paul: Barack Obama is Not a Socialist
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/04/10/ron-paul-barack-obama-is-not-a-socialist/
April 10, 2010
Ron Paul: Barack Obama is Not a Socialist
Susan Davis
NEW ORLEANS–Republicans and tea party activists are fond of accusing President Barack Obama of being a socialist, but today party gadfly Ron Paul said they had it wrong.
“In the technical sense, in the economic definition, he is not a socialist,” the Texas Republican said to a smattering of applause at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
“He’s a corporatist,” Paul quickly added, meaning the president takes “care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.”
Supporters of the Texas lawmaker appear to represent a significant number of the 3,500 attendees here, fueling speculation that Paul is likely to win the straw poll later today. The Campaign for Liberty, Paul’s political outfit, declined to discuss how many of his supporters were at SRLC.
The Texan’s supporters often descend on political gatherings to vote for him in 2012 straw polls. In February, he won the Conservative Political Action Conference’s straw poll with a hefty 31% of the vote.
April 10, 2010
Ron Paul: Barack Obama is Not a Socialist
Susan Davis
NEW ORLEANS–Republicans and tea party activists are fond of accusing President Barack Obama of being a socialist, but today party gadfly Ron Paul said they had it wrong.
“In the technical sense, in the economic definition, he is not a socialist,” the Texas Republican said to a smattering of applause at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
“He’s a corporatist,” Paul quickly added, meaning the president takes “care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.”
Supporters of the Texas lawmaker appear to represent a significant number of the 3,500 attendees here, fueling speculation that Paul is likely to win the straw poll later today. The Campaign for Liberty, Paul’s political outfit, declined to discuss how many of his supporters were at SRLC.
The Texan’s supporters often descend on political gatherings to vote for him in 2012 straw polls. In February, he won the Conservative Political Action Conference’s straw poll with a hefty 31% of the vote.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Joe Stacks are rising up against unresponsive government
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5615.shtml
The Joe Stacks are rising up against unresponsive government
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 24, 2010
Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on “their” government.
The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that “their” government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only 21 percent of the American population agrees that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21 percent is comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap between the American population and the politicians who rule them “may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”
Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him.
Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had gratuitously ruined him. He flew his airplane into an office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS. This deliberate plan and the written explanation he left behind segregate him from deranged people who randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.
The government and its propaganda ministry do not want to call Stack a terrorist. “Terrorist” is a term the government reserves for Muslims who do not like what Israel does to Palestinians and the U.S. government does to Muslim countries.
But Stack experienced the same frustrations and emotions as Muslims who can’t take it any longer and strap on a suicide vest.
“Violence,” Stack wrote, “not only is the answer, it is the only answer.” Stack concluded that nothing short of violence will get the attention of a government that has turned its back on the American people.
Anger is building up. People are beginning to do unusual things. Terry Hoskins bulldozed his house rather than allow a bank to foreclose on it. The local TV station conducted an online survey and found that 79 percent of respondents agreed with Hoskins’ action.
Perhaps the turning point was the federal government’s bailout of the investment banks whose reckless misbehavior diminished Americans’ retirement savings for the second time in eight years. Now a former head of the most culpable bank is campaigning to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in order to pay for the bailout. President Obama has obliged him by creating a “deficit commission.”
The “deficit commission” will be used to gut Social Security, just as the private insurance health plan is paid for by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare.
It could not be more clear that government represents the interest groups that finance the election campaigns.
Conservatives used to say that Washington’s power should be curtailed in behalf of state and local governments that are “closer to the people.” But of course state and local governments are also controlled by interest groups.
Consider Florida, for example. In 2004, the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did considerable damage to the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. At Inlet Beach in Walton County, the surge claimed two beachfront homes and washed away enough of the high ground as to leave other homes vulnerable to the next storm.
People wanted to armor their homes with some form of sea wall. When the county gave the go ahead, two houses on the west end hired engineers who constructed a barrier made of rows of tubes 60 feet long filled with sand, each weighing about 70 tons. The sand-colored tubes were buried under many tons of white sand trucked in, and sea oats were planted. It was a perfect solution, and an expensive one -- $250,000.
Just east of the two homes, Ivan washed away a section of beachfront road and left three houses built on pilings sitting on the beach. Last year, government with FEMA money rebuilt the section of washed away beachfront road and armored it and two adjacent houses. The government used interlocking iron or steel panels that it drove down into the sand, leaving six to seven feet of the rusty metal above ground. Hundreds of truckloads of sand were brought in to cover the unsightly sea wall.
It didn’t require a storm to wash away the loose sand and leave the ugly rusty metal exposed on the beach. The first high tide did the trick. Residents and vacationers are left with an eyesore on a beach ranked as the third most beautiful in the world.
The ugly rusty barrier built by government is still there. But the intelligent approach taken by the private homeowners has been condemned to death. As I write heavy equipment is on the beach slashing open the tubes and piling up the sand to be carried away. The homes will be left standing on the edge and will be undermined by the next hurricane.
Why did this happen? The official reason given by Florida’s Department of Environmental Policy is that the county could only issue a temporary permit. Only DEP can issue a permanent permit, and as the homeowners don’t have DEP’s permanent permit, out goes the expensive, carefully engineered and unobtrusive sea wall.
This is the way government “works” for ordinary citizens. For the vast majority of people, government exists as a persecution mechanism that takes great pleasure in ruining their lives and pocketbooks. The DEP has inflicted heavy stress on the homeowners, now elderly, and could bring on a heart attack or stroke.
The real explanation for DEP’s merciless treatment of citizens is that the agency is powerless against developers. It cannot stop them from destroying the Everglades, from destroying wetlands, from polluting rivers, or from building in front of the coastal setback line. As the state politicians protect developers from the DEP, the only people against whom the DEP can use its authority are unrepresented citizens. Frustrated itself, the DEP lashes out at powerless citizens.
In the small settlement of Inlet Beach, there are numerous examples of developers getting what they want. Over the years hurricanes have eaten away the beach and the dunes. As this occurs the setback line for construction moves inland. Back when the real estate bubble was being created by Alan Greenspan’s irresponsibly low interest rate policy, small beach front lots were going for one million dollars. In the midst of this frenzy, a well-connected developer bought a beachfront lot for $30,000.
The lot was not recognizable as such. It sits on flat land on the beach. Decades ago it was a lot, but as the Gulf ate away the coast, the lot is now positioned in front of the setback line. The developer got the lot for the low price, because no one had been able to get a building permit for years.
But the developer got a permit. According to the head of the neighborhood association at the time, the developer went to a DEP official, whose jurisdiction was another part of the state and who was a former employee of the developer, and was issued a permit. Because of its exposure, during the real estate boom the house sat unsold for years. The community, which had opposed the project, concluded that the developer just wanted to show that he was more powerful than the law.
Currently, on six acres next to a state park on the east end of Inlet Beach another well connected developer has obtained DEP permission to compromise Walton County’s highest and last remaining sand dunes held in place with native vegetation in order to build 20 houses. To protect the houses, DEP has issued a permit for the construction of a 15-foot high man-made sand wall, a marketing device that will offer little protection.
According to information sent to me, nine of the houses will be seaward of the Coastal Construction Control line. Apparently this was a result of the developer being represented by a former county attorney, who convinced the commissioners to allow the developer to plan on the basis of the 1996 FEMA flood plain maps instead of using the current 2007 maps. Since 1996, there have been a number of hurricanes, such as Dennis and Ivan, and the set back line has moved inward.
When state and local governments allow developers to set aside the rules governing flood-plain development, they create insurance losses that drive up the insurance premiums for everyone in the community. The disturbance of the natural dunes could result in a breach through which storm surge can damage nearby properties. Instead of protecting people, government is allowing a developer to impose costs of his project on others.
Joseph Stack, Terry Hoskins, and 79 percent of the American population came to the realization that government does not represent them. Government represents moneyed interests for whom it bends the rules designed to protect the public, thus creating a legally privileged class.
In contrast, as at the west end of Inlet Beach, ordinary citizens are being driven into the ground.
This is what we call “freedom and democracy.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution: An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
The Joe Stacks are rising up against unresponsive government
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 24, 2010
Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on “their” government.
The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that “their” government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found that only 21 percent of the American population agrees that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, and that 21 percent is comprised of the political class itself and liberals. Rasmussen concludes that the gap between the American population and the politicians who rule them “may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”
Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him.
Stack targeted the IRS, the federal agency that had gratuitously ruined him. He flew his airplane into an office building occupied by 200 members of the IRS. This deliberate plan and the written explanation he left behind segregate him from deranged people who randomly shoot up a Post Office or university campus.
The government and its propaganda ministry do not want to call Stack a terrorist. “Terrorist” is a term the government reserves for Muslims who do not like what Israel does to Palestinians and the U.S. government does to Muslim countries.
But Stack experienced the same frustrations and emotions as Muslims who can’t take it any longer and strap on a suicide vest.
“Violence,” Stack wrote, “not only is the answer, it is the only answer.” Stack concluded that nothing short of violence will get the attention of a government that has turned its back on the American people.
Anger is building up. People are beginning to do unusual things. Terry Hoskins bulldozed his house rather than allow a bank to foreclose on it. The local TV station conducted an online survey and found that 79 percent of respondents agreed with Hoskins’ action.
Perhaps the turning point was the federal government’s bailout of the investment banks whose reckless misbehavior diminished Americans’ retirement savings for the second time in eight years. Now a former head of the most culpable bank is campaigning to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in order to pay for the bailout. President Obama has obliged him by creating a “deficit commission.”
The “deficit commission” will be used to gut Social Security, just as the private insurance health plan is paid for by cutting $500 billion out of Medicare.
It could not be more clear that government represents the interest groups that finance the election campaigns.
Conservatives used to say that Washington’s power should be curtailed in behalf of state and local governments that are “closer to the people.” But of course state and local governments are also controlled by interest groups.
Consider Florida, for example. In 2004, the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did considerable damage to the Gulf Coast of the Florida panhandle. At Inlet Beach in Walton County, the surge claimed two beachfront homes and washed away enough of the high ground as to leave other homes vulnerable to the next storm.
People wanted to armor their homes with some form of sea wall. When the county gave the go ahead, two houses on the west end hired engineers who constructed a barrier made of rows of tubes 60 feet long filled with sand, each weighing about 70 tons. The sand-colored tubes were buried under many tons of white sand trucked in, and sea oats were planted. It was a perfect solution, and an expensive one -- $250,000.
Just east of the two homes, Ivan washed away a section of beachfront road and left three houses built on pilings sitting on the beach. Last year, government with FEMA money rebuilt the section of washed away beachfront road and armored it and two adjacent houses. The government used interlocking iron or steel panels that it drove down into the sand, leaving six to seven feet of the rusty metal above ground. Hundreds of truckloads of sand were brought in to cover the unsightly sea wall.
It didn’t require a storm to wash away the loose sand and leave the ugly rusty metal exposed on the beach. The first high tide did the trick. Residents and vacationers are left with an eyesore on a beach ranked as the third most beautiful in the world.
The ugly rusty barrier built by government is still there. But the intelligent approach taken by the private homeowners has been condemned to death. As I write heavy equipment is on the beach slashing open the tubes and piling up the sand to be carried away. The homes will be left standing on the edge and will be undermined by the next hurricane.
Why did this happen? The official reason given by Florida’s Department of Environmental Policy is that the county could only issue a temporary permit. Only DEP can issue a permanent permit, and as the homeowners don’t have DEP’s permanent permit, out goes the expensive, carefully engineered and unobtrusive sea wall.
This is the way government “works” for ordinary citizens. For the vast majority of people, government exists as a persecution mechanism that takes great pleasure in ruining their lives and pocketbooks. The DEP has inflicted heavy stress on the homeowners, now elderly, and could bring on a heart attack or stroke.
The real explanation for DEP’s merciless treatment of citizens is that the agency is powerless against developers. It cannot stop them from destroying the Everglades, from destroying wetlands, from polluting rivers, or from building in front of the coastal setback line. As the state politicians protect developers from the DEP, the only people against whom the DEP can use its authority are unrepresented citizens. Frustrated itself, the DEP lashes out at powerless citizens.
In the small settlement of Inlet Beach, there are numerous examples of developers getting what they want. Over the years hurricanes have eaten away the beach and the dunes. As this occurs the setback line for construction moves inland. Back when the real estate bubble was being created by Alan Greenspan’s irresponsibly low interest rate policy, small beach front lots were going for one million dollars. In the midst of this frenzy, a well-connected developer bought a beachfront lot for $30,000.
The lot was not recognizable as such. It sits on flat land on the beach. Decades ago it was a lot, but as the Gulf ate away the coast, the lot is now positioned in front of the setback line. The developer got the lot for the low price, because no one had been able to get a building permit for years.
But the developer got a permit. According to the head of the neighborhood association at the time, the developer went to a DEP official, whose jurisdiction was another part of the state and who was a former employee of the developer, and was issued a permit. Because of its exposure, during the real estate boom the house sat unsold for years. The community, which had opposed the project, concluded that the developer just wanted to show that he was more powerful than the law.
Currently, on six acres next to a state park on the east end of Inlet Beach another well connected developer has obtained DEP permission to compromise Walton County’s highest and last remaining sand dunes held in place with native vegetation in order to build 20 houses. To protect the houses, DEP has issued a permit for the construction of a 15-foot high man-made sand wall, a marketing device that will offer little protection.
According to information sent to me, nine of the houses will be seaward of the Coastal Construction Control line. Apparently this was a result of the developer being represented by a former county attorney, who convinced the commissioners to allow the developer to plan on the basis of the 1996 FEMA flood plain maps instead of using the current 2007 maps. Since 1996, there have been a number of hurricanes, such as Dennis and Ivan, and the set back line has moved inward.
When state and local governments allow developers to set aside the rules governing flood-plain development, they create insurance losses that drive up the insurance premiums for everyone in the community. The disturbance of the natural dunes could result in a breach through which storm surge can damage nearby properties. Instead of protecting people, government is allowing a developer to impose costs of his project on others.
Joseph Stack, Terry Hoskins, and 79 percent of the American population came to the realization that government does not represent them. Government represents moneyed interests for whom it bends the rules designed to protect the public, thus creating a legally privileged class.
In contrast, as at the west end of Inlet Beach, ordinary citizens are being driven into the ground.
This is what we call “freedom and democracy.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution: An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
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