Saturday, August 26, 2017

Rockport, Texas High School Partial Collapse From Hurricane Harvey

Friday, August 25, 2017

To all of our friends in Texas be safe! #PrayForTexas pic.twitter.com/OqH5iS2puq
— Disney World Facts (@wdwfacts) August 25, 2017

Monday, August 14, 2017

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Day 4 and Closing Ceremony: The Mystical Arts of Tibet 2017

Friday, August 11, 2017

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/08/11/fight-tonight-explaining-trumps-retweet-that-says-u-s-bombers-are-ready-to-strike-north-korea/?utm_term=.8030e062bfc5

Thursday, August 10, 2017

North Korea READY to STRIKE with 4 missiles U.S. Guam they also MOCK Tr...

The UN should act on this but the US has to gain permission to defend its borders, Trump should converse WITH the UN AND only act if we needs to defend. Trump will become a war criminal if he shoots.

Opening ceremony: The Mystical Arts of Tibet 2017

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Monday, August 7, 2017

Pray the Our Father, Hail Mary & Glory Be

Former Texas Gov. Mark White dead at 77

by Kirby Wilson and Ross Ramsey, The Texas Tribune
Aug. 5, 2017

_{Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.}

Mark White, a Democrat who served as the governor of Texas from 1983 to 1987, has died at the age of 77.

During his time in office, White's most notable achievements came in education reform. In 1984, he signed landmark legislation that included the famous "no-pass, no play" law that said students must pass their classes to be eligible to participate in extracurricular activities.

In a statement Saturday afternoon, Gov. Greg Abbott said that White devoted his life to making Texas better. Abbott also noted that his relationship with White dated back to when he was a young lawyer in Houston.

"Mark’s impact on Texas will not soon be forgotten, and his legacy will live on through all that he achieved as Governor," Abbott said.

Bill Hobby, who served as Texas' lieutenant governor from 1973 to 1991, called White "one of Texas' greatest governors."

Former Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush also offered statements of condolences and praise for White's service.

"His tenure as governor came during the stormy economic times of the early to mid-1980s, which led Mark to do two things that are an everlasting credit to his rich legacy – he laid the groundwork for diversification of the Texas economy, and he made significant investments in improving education in our great state," the elder Bush said.

George W. Bush also praised White's focus on public education and said he "served the Lone Star State with enthusiasm and dedication."

Mark Wells White Jr. was born in Henderson, Texas, on March 17, 1940. He attended Baylor University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration, and Baylor Law School, where he earned a law degree. In 1973, after a seven years of practicing law as an assistant attorney general and in the private sector, he was appointed secretary of state by Gov. Dolph Briscoe. Four years later, White became the youngest secretary of state to be elected president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.

White was elected attorney general in 1978, the same year Bill Clements was elected the first Republican governor of the state since Reconstruction. White’s opponent in that AG race was James Baker III, who later became White House chief of staff and U.S. secretary of state.

White and Clements tussled constantly, and White successfully challenged the Republican in 1982 — the last election in which Democratic candidates swept the statewide ticket from top to bottom. In a rematch four years later, Clements won back the Governor’s Mansion.

Five Texas governors, photographed together in 2003 (left to right): Preston Smith, Mark White, Dolph Briscoe, Rick Perry and Bill Clements. Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

White tried again in 1990, when Clements was leaving office, and came in third in a rough-and-tumble Democratic primary against state Treasurer Ann Richards and Attorney General Jim Mattox — both of whom had been elected in the same 1982 sweep that made White the state’s 43rd governor. The former governor received less than 20 percent of the primary vote in that race — his last for public office.

As governor, White put together a blue-ribbon panel — chaired by Dallas businessman Ross Perot Sr. — to overhaul the state’s public education system. The education reform legislation that resulted from the panel's recommendations included a controversial effort to rate teachers and the “no-pass, no-play” rule.

According to the Chicago Tribune, White aired a television advertisement in 1985 to garner support for the controversial initiative.

“The other day a mother told me that her son couldn't play on the local high school football team because he had failed his English courses,” White narrated in the ad. “I asked her if she agreed with me that her son needed to pass before he could play. She kind of looked down and then she looked me straight in the eye.”

“His father and I didn't send him to school to play,” White recalled the woman saying. “We sent him to learn. Even if he makes the team, he won’t be a professional ballplayer. But if he doesn't pass his classes, he'll never be a professional anything.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/05/report-former-gov-mark-white-has-died-77/.

Texas Tribune mission statement

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Convenes Aug. 8 at 10 a.m. CT

https://apps.texastribune.org/85th-texas-legislature/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_medium=social&utm_source=paige&utm_content=1502123178

Texas effort targeting union dues mirrors initiatives in other states

by Cassandra Pollock, The Texas Tribune
Aug. 4, 2017

Texas Republican leaders are pushing the state to become the latest that bars paycheck deductions for certain public employees to cover membership dues for labor unions or associations.

The measure, proponents say, is needed to kick the government out of the dues-collecting process — but critics say the effort is aimed at weakening the organization of unions and is part of a nationwide trend that has produced mixed results, according to key players in those states.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for months has made clear that ending dues deductions is one of his priorities, first highlighting the issue during his State of the State address in January, and, when the measure failed during this year's regular session, including it among his 20-item agenda for the 30-day special session that began on July 18.

Most recently, North Carolina approved a law last month containing a provision to eliminate the ability for farm workers in the state to have dues deducted from paychecks. The main union group set to be impacted by the new law is already planning legal action.

“We’re challenging it in court as discrimination against farm workers,” said Cat Crowe with the Farmer Labor Organizing Committee, an agriculture union in North Carolina that’s a branch of the AFL-CIO. Crowe added it would be especially challenging to collect dues through other methods — such as bank drafts or credit cards — for a 10,000-member group they contracted with that mainly consisted of workers traveling on a visa between Mexico and the U.S. and who didn't have either of those two things.

North Carolina, like Texas, is one of 28 “right-to-work” states in the nation — which means employees aren’t required to pay dues or join unions — and Jimmy Dixon, the Republican member of the state's General Assembly who carried the provision said if unions wanted to soften any impact the new law may have on membership, they needed to up their marketing strategy and convince people how they’d benefit from joining one.

“Obviously the reason unions want this is we become their accountant, bookkeeper and collector,” he said.

Supporters of the North Carolina law are hoping for a similar outcome as Wisconsin, which drew national attention in 2011 when Gov. Scott Walker passed a set of wide-ranging labor reforms — including one that barred paycheck deductions. Union membership in the state has since declined, but it's unclear how much the deduction provision played a role.

In Michigan, the governor signed a bill that ended payroll deductions for public school employees in 2012 — the year before the state passed a right-to-work law — but it’s unclear how that specific measure impacted union membership since it went into effect amid other labor reforms.

David Heckner, the state chapter’s president of the American Federation of Teachers — a branch of the AFL-CIO — said the measure had little impact on the group’s membership, even though around 98 percent of members were enrolled in paycheck deductions at the time.

“We lost an insignificant number of members in the K-12 world,” said Heckner, adding most members now funneled their dues through bank drafts or credit cards.

A similar storyline played out in Oklahoma, when the governor signed a bill like the one Michigan had passed a few years prior. But the law never really went into effect, teacher groups in the state told the Tribune, because broad language in the measure made it unenforceable.

“It just kinda faded away,” said Doug Folks, a communications specialist for the Oklahoma Education Association, adding that state lawmakers haven’t appeared to make public attempts to revive the measure since.

Joe Slater, a law professor at the University of Toledo Law School, said district courts usually ruled with unions when they challenge paycheck deduction laws — but federal courts of appeal tended to be more deferential to state legislatures, often ruling that the state had unlimited discretion to differentiate among groups, so long as it wasn’t based on gender, race or religion.

Alabama passed a law in 2011 ending payroll dues for school employees, but the measure spent years tied up in court after the Alabama Education Association challenged it. A U.S. district judge ruled with the association — blocking the measure from taking effect — but the state appealed and won in 2014. The law then went into effect, and union membership slightly declined afterward, according to federal data.

“What unions have to argue is that there was no rational reason for this distinction,” Slater said. He added that unions in these circumstances typically filed a combination of First Amendment and Equal Protection claims.

Last week, the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 7 by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, along a 19-12 vote, with all Democrats and one Republican — state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, voting against it. The bill would prohibit certain public employees, such as teachers and corrections officers, from using payroll deductions to pay their union or association dues. It would exempt police officers, firefighters, emergency first responders and charitable organizations — a carve-out that's drawn pushback not only from teacher associations but from law enforcement groups that benefit from the exemption.

The House hasn’t yet acted on the legislation — and with less than two weeks left in the special session, it's in doubt whether the lower chamber will move the bill before the clock runs out. State Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, chairman of the committee that normally handles such bills, had qualms with a similar measure in 2015, and legislation during the regular session that ended in May was never presented in his committee. Cook's office did not respond to the Tribune's request for comment.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/04/union-dues/.

Texas Tribune mission statement

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/04/house-approves-school-finance-bills/

Analysis: Hopes of going 20 for 20 in special session circle the drain

by Ross Ramsey, The Texas Tribune
Aug. 7, 2017

_{Editor's note: If you'd like an email notice whenever we publish Ross Ramsey's column, click here.}

Think Gov. Greg Abbott is still glad he called them back?

The Texas Legislature’s special “20 for 20” session has predictably bogged down. Abbott put together a to-do list tailored to please Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s Senate and, conveniently, to erase any argument that he’s not as conservative as Patrick.

By that scorecard, the governor is going to be fine. If, however, you are the person in your office pool who bet that all 20 items on Abbott’s agenda would find their way into the law books, your cookie has crumbled.

Go shake hands with whoever predicted trouble.

The House and Senate ended this year’s regular session at odds. If anyone attempted to make peace, they did it privately and they failed. The Senate started the July-August special session at full speed. The House has slow-played. Patrick expressed his frustration last week, saying he hadn’t had a serious parlay with House Speaker Joe Straus in months.

That explains the progress they’re making, why the lieutenant governor’s pet project is stalled and why a number of the governor’s other requests are languishing.

Abbott’s troops are getting snippy, too, barking at would-be House ethics reformers via both mainstream and social media. Ethics isn’t on the special session agenda, but a group of Republicans and Democrats asked the governor to add it. One of them, state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, got Abbott’s goat earlier this year with a proposed ban on pay-for-play appointments, where a governor rewards big political donors with choice spots on state boards and commissions.

If you are the person in your office pool who bet that all 20 items on Abbott’s agenda would find their way into the law books, your cookie has crumbled. Go shake hands with whoever predicted trouble.

An Abbott spokesman called that “showboating.” Straus weighed in, saying the governor ought to add ethics reform to his list. A House committee opened hearings on Larson legislation that had been vetoed by Abbott earlier in the year. Abbott’s chief campaign adviser, Dave Carney, tweeted that one of the leaders of the ethics effort, Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, was a “hypocrite” for asking for reforms now, after killing a bill this year that would have blocked lawmakers from leaving public service and immediately becoming lobbyists.

It’s not the kind of thing that deserves much attention, except as an illustration of how the Texas legislative machine’s gears are grinding.

Addition is harder than subtraction in legislative arithmetic. That's why Straus is whomping Patrick on the bathroom bill. It's easier to kill legislation than to pass it — especially when the public is divided.

Advocates of the “bathroom bill” seemed to have the upper hand during the regular session. Business leaders were slow to rally against it, though they were implored to get involved by Straus and others. The governor didn’t weigh in until late and then backed a version of the bathroom bill that couldn’t clear the opposition in the House. The version that did was too weak for the Senate’s taste.

In the special session, the outside tide appears to have turned. Businesses and other opponents that were quiet earlier in the year have piped up, offering what one called “cover to the weak” in the Legislature. There’s some evidence of that — and of pressure from House leaders — in the number of members who’ve signed on as sponsors of the bathroom bill. In the regular session, 80 of the House’s 150 members were on board. As of last Friday, with a dozen days left in the special session, there were only 49.

That bill hasn’t passed, but neither have bills that probably will pass before the special session is over. Give limits on future local property tax increases — a controversial issue that failed in the regular session — a reasonable chance of success.

What Patrick calls the privacy bill, others call the bathroom bill. An initial slogan for proponents — “no men in women’s bathrooms” — is largely responsible for that. It stuck, like toilet paper to your shoe. It quickly became apparent that this issue splits Republicans in a way that makes it difficult to guide through the Legislature and also useful as a wedge issue in Republican primary elections where social conservatives face social moderates.

Patrick tried to play bully rather than salesman this time, touting his polls on the subject and trying to force the House to do something it was initially reluctant to do. He pushed hard enough to move them from reluctant to resistant to oppositional.

Also, he’s losing: The Senate sped its bill to the House, where it has remained, waiting to be sent to a committee for consideration, for more than a week.

Come election time, each of the three leaders will have a way to brag about the results and rally voters, but only one of them is getting the policy result he really wants. That’s Straus.

That can’t be the result the governor had in mind when he called lawmakers back to Austin.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/07/analysis-hopes-going-20-20-special-session-circle-drain/.

Texas Tribune mission statement

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.