Has the GOP Inspired Prejudice about Texas?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

For some reason, millions of people who have never been to Texas persist in spreading lies, and misconceptions about the state, "dissing it" though they have never bothered to confirm their prejudices by actually visiting the state. Nevertheless --they are convinced or have convinced themselves that Texas is a horrible and backward place. How much blame must be directed at Bush for having destroyed the reputation of a state that had been Democratic or progressive for over one hundred years?

Texas is not a 'backwater'. Second only to California with a population of 26.1 million residents, it is, perhaps, the nation's most cosmopolitan state. In Houston, officially the nation's fourth largest city, you will find a population as least as diverse (perhaps even more so) than those of New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Having often visited all three of those cities, I suspect that that is the case.

The Houston Grand Opera is typical of the trend. Last time I checked, it was the nation's most honored Opera Company having introduced 43 world premieres and six American premieres since 1973. For its efforts, HGO has received a Tony Award, two Grammy Awards, and two Emmy Awards—the ONLY opera company in the world to have won all three honors.

Houston may very well be the nation's greenest large city. Large parks include the very large Memorial Park known for a network of hike and bike trails through virgin wooded forests. Hermann Park, between downtown and the Texas Medical Center, is somewhat smaller but equally green and equally popular with joggers, bikers and nature lovers.

Hermann Park enjoys a choice location in the Museum District half-way between downtown and the Texas Medical Center, famous for having pioneered the science and art of heart transplant.

The famous/legendary Howard Hughes was hurrying "home" to the Medical Center but died enroute. I covered that story and was among the press when Dr. Michael DeBakey revealed to us that Hughes had died enroute.

Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

My title asked the question: has the GOP inspired prejudice about Texas? YES! Dallas suffered as a result of the JFK murder though the city had nothing to do with it.  Houston has fared somewhat better though Bush Sr lived in a high rise just outside Loop 610 north of the famous Galleria. I can only say this about Bush Sr whom I knew: he was NO Texan. Nor his idiot son!

Here's the kind of information that you might find in a guide book. I offer it for what it is worth:

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, while San Antonio is the second largest in the state and seventh largest in the United States.

Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest United States metropolitan areas, respectively. Other major cities include El Paso and Austin—the state capital. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify Texas as a former independent republic and as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico. The "Lone Star" can be found on the Texas state flag and on the Texas state seal today.[9] The origin of the state name, Texas, is from the word, "Tejas", which means 'friends' in the Caddo language.[10]

Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, Texas contains diverse landscapes that resemble both the American South and Southwest.[11] Although Texas is popularly associated with the Southwestern deserts, less than 10 percent of the land area is desert.

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Pioneering Ancestors

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Some of my long time FB friends may recall that my Great Uncle Lawson "Loss" Hart was the federal marshall who tracked down, outdrew, shot and killed the outlaw --Bill Dalton of the infamous 'Dalton Gang'. (depicted right)I just found some more interesting stories and information about my Great Grandfather --Timothy James Hart.

He fought on the side of the confederacy in the Civil War and later emigrated to Texas. It was in Cooke, County where he was put on trial for killing a man. He was acquitted "...by reason of self-defense." Timothy James Hart was buried in Antelope, Jack County, Texas.

Timothy James Hart is known to have spent some time in California (L.A. area). Given the fact that several "Hart" relations of mine continued westward to Los Angeles, I am now inclined to believe that I may be related to the movie star William S. Hart whose hand prints may be seen in concrete at Graumann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. So far, it would appear that the "Harts" were rancher/pioneers, law enforcers, veterans of the Civil War, and movie stars/producers.

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note: depicted is Lawson "Loss" Hart, Federal Marshal

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How the GOP Hijacked Texas

By Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Millions of good people in Texas are just as appalled by the rise of the GOP in that once great state as are Democrats/progressives/liberals in any other part of the country. Epithets targeting Texas are misplaced.

Texas is NOT your enemy.

 We have seen the 'enemy' and it's the GOP! The GOP knows full-well what happened in Texas and the role played by George H.W. Bush in bringing it all about.

The demonization of Texas plays into GOP hands. It's bunkum.

For some 100 years --from Gov Richard Coke, January 15, 1874 to Dolph Briscoe, January 16, 1973 --Texas was a Democratic/Progressive state.

The conversion to 'red' began with the arrival of the Bush crime and kooky cult clan of crooked, lying Republicans. The way was paved by Tom DeLay who gerrymandered the state creating for the GOP a party machine, a dependable, solid 'base' from which it could spread its crack pot, evil lies and bile.

Republicans say the plan did not dilute minority votes. But a 73-page memo, dated Dec. 12, 2003, was provided to The Washington Post by a person who claims otherwise.

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

--Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal. Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer"

Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Texas and other states with a history of discriminatory elections are required to submit changes in their voting systems or election maps for approval by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

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Why the GOP Occupied Texas II

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Though Texas is now thought of as a 'red' state, it was not always so. From January 15, 1874 to January 16, 1979 every Texas governor was Democratic. Moreover, most of them could be described as 'progressive Democrats'.

This topic has come up as Texas is now thought of as GOP occupied territory, i.e, a 'red' state. If this is, indeed, the case, the GOP had best be kind to Texas. A cursory survey of the red-blue map of the U.S. indicates that Texas is the only state among GOP/red states to have electoral votes in two digits. As a result, Texas may be essential to the GOP which seems hell-bent on self-destruction, courting irrelevance, skirting eventual oblivion.

Under the Constitution, the office of President is supposed to represent the 'people'. If that is the case, then WHY are Presidents elected by states and appointed 'electors'? The final 'vote count' is watered down to the extent it may be irrelevant.
There are several remedies but one is most urgent: the abolition of a relic called the Electoral College! What IS it good for? Absolutely NOTHING! (apologies to Edwin Starr)

There are, in fact, various methods by which a popular vote could and would allow the people to elect their representatives directly, thus cutting out the middle man. The office of President is, under the Constitution, responsible directly to the people --not the states. It is, therefore, absurd that the holder of that office be elected by any method other than a direct election of the people to whom the President is ultimately responsible.

That, of course, is why the GOP will oppose this proposal!

The question is: how responsive is the government to the will of the people? It is self-evident that public officials should achieve public office by way of elections that most accurately reflect the will of the people. Otherwise --why have elections? The most egregious outrages against this principle include election thefts as, in fact, happened in Florida. That is, in itself, an outrage. It might have been predicted that the only beneficiary of this outrage --George W. Bush --turned out to have been among the very worst Presidents in U.S. history. That alone is outrageous and even more so as it followed Bush v Gore, the very worst SCOTUS decision in U.S. history.

Questions remain; solutions are scarce. Nevertheless, there must be a better way. The good news is: there is a better way: the President could be elected directly by the people. Party machines capable of 'stealing' elections may be bypassed, made irrelevant. An election can be made scientific, the tabulation of votes made accurate and the casting of votes themselves made more representative of the 'will of the people'.

I have in mind a direct election of the office of President by all of the people. This has the advantage of getting powerful 'state machines' out of the 'national election' business save for the primaries. The office of President --responsible directly to the people --should, therefore, be elected by the people, not the States. The 'electoral college; should, therefore, be abolished and good riddance!

Why was Texas targeted for occupation by the GOP?

That's easy, covered in 'Election Grabbing 101', first semester! With 38 electoral votes, Texas is, by far the plum in the GOP bag o' dirty tricks. If Texas should turn blue, the GOP is FINISHED. Look at the other 'red' states with electoral votes ranging from 3 to 16. I will put it this way --the GOP needs Texas a hell of a lot more than Texas needs the fucking carpetbaggers of the GOP.

Under the current system, some votes are worth more than others. For example, a single vote in a state having very few electoral votes (Rhode Island with 3 electoral votes) is not worth nor should be worth as much as a single vote in a large state like Texas with some 38 electoral votes or California with 55. At last, 'Southern Strategy' EXPLOITS the present system and is in fact, a huge argument in favor of the kind of reforms I propose.

ALL the people!

Currently, typically minorities are inadequately represented. That's the point behind direct elections. Cut out the middle man; stop 'watering down' the vote. Prior to re-districting by one Tom DeLay, Texas had not been the solid 'red state' that millions now believe it to be. For a period of some 100 years, for example, EVERY TX governor had been Democratic. Some --like the Furgusons --were VERY PROGRESSIVE. It was a better state for it.

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Post Cards from the GOP Wasteland

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

During the catastrophic regimes of Bill Clements, George Bush Jr and Rick Perry --Texas came to be called the gulag state. What the GOP has in mind for the rest of the nation, was very nearly accomplished in Texas. Under criminal and incompetent GOP management, Texas was very nearly reduced to third-world status --an outcome resulting from Bush/Perry neglect and disdain for public education, the only education that those not born to wealth have a chance of acquiring. The 'elites' would deny you even that!

As a result, justice in Texas is applied inequitably. Minorities --primarily black and hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system and under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system where 'justice' is often dispensed inequitably.

For example, blacks represent just 12% of the Texas population but comprise 44% of the total incarcerated population. Whites make up about 58% of Texas' total population, but only 30% of the prison and jail population.
Clearly --the GOP does not care about minorities. Neglect of this type is never 'benign'. At some point, when a vast majority of minorities are determined --statistically --to have been 'targeted' the word 'genocide' may be accurate and appropriate.

A recent Pew study fingers a trend that had been embraced by Bush's Texas --the rapid outsourcing of prison construction and management throughout the US. Over this period, CRIME RATES HAVE RISEN.

It was under the incompetent rule of then Governor George W. Bush that Texas became known as the gulag state of Texas for having turned a social problem into another GOP 'profit center', scam, get rich quick scheme. It became just another way in which GOP blood-suckers would continue to feed at the public trough. As a result, convicts are no longer people but a source of cheap, slave labor. Guilt or innocence is of no concern to robber barons of corporate Texas, corporate AmeriKa. It is an Orwellian nightmare of waste, graft, and fascism in which no one is held to account.

To be expected, the GOP blames its many victims. That is typical, symptomatic of the U.S. right wing. It was predicted by both Carl Jung, psychologist, and Hanah Arendt who founded the New School in New York. Jung said that some 30 percent of every population is certifiably psychotic and utterly without empathy. Hanah Arendt, who covered the war crimes trial of Herr Adoph Eichmann, arrived at some conclusion with respect to 'evil'. She described 'evil' as 'banal'. In both Jung and Dr. Gustav Gilbert 'evil' is always caused and/or accompanied by an 'utter lack of empathy' [see Carl Jung and Gustav Gilbert].

It is interesting that those studied seemed invariably to seek out an external validation, perhaps to assuage their increasing anxieties. For example, Republicans adored Ronald Reagan as Nazis adored Hitler. A Republican attending the GOP National Convention in Houston in the early 90s, swooned of Reagan: "...he made us feel good about ourselves"! During the Third Reich, Hitler had done precisely that for psychopaths and bigots!

The various governments of the United States are exempt or above similar criticisms. The most obvious example is the U.S. genocide against the many native populations that had settled the North American continent several thousands of years before the continent was known by Europeans to exist.

Many of these people had created advanced civilizations. The Mandans, for example, had built large cities from stable populations! The same is true of several western tribes who built permanent CITIES in the American west. Many ruins of these impressive cities still exist. I visited one and explored it. People still live in it though its construction most certainly pre-dates the arrival of the Spanish. It's called ACOMA. Literally a city in the sky, it looks like something from an Edgar Rice Burroghs story. The residents have a school, 'high-rise' adobe homes, an impressive church dating to the Spanish occupation.

And all of this was accomplished with no help whatsoever from 'Europeans'.
Another example of great intellect among the Native Americans is CHIEF JOSEPH BRANT of the Mohawks. He attended Moor's Charity School for Indians in Lebanon, Connecticut, mastered English and translated English works for distribution throughout his community. He read western history and literature and became an interpreter for an Anglican Missionary.

Another famous Native American Chief went to London. On 13 June 1892, the American Sioux Indian Chief, Long Wolf, was buried at Brompton Cemetery. On one of my many soujourns to London, I made it a point to find the cemetery on Brompton road where I paid my respects to the great Native American chief who is buried there.

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The GOP Record in Texas May Predict the Future

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

If Texas is the GOP 'lab' experiment as some have said then one may be justified in drawing several conclusions:

• In TX, the GOP deliberately neglected education; high school graduations dropped to dead last (nationwide) under Bush/Perry;

• As a result, crime rates rose; Dallas became the nation's murder capital;
• Only the CORPORATE OWNED prison system benefited from the resulting rise in crime which the GOP had the NERVE to demagogue!

The GOP is not a political party; it's a crime syndicate with characteristics of a kooky whacked-out cult! Now they want to apologize to the ruling 1 percent that their stupid, incompetent economic policies created by

1. exporting U.S. jobs and industry to China;
2. creating a vast gulf between rich and poor;
3. attacking Detroit, a city that had been the center of a VIABLE U.S. auto industry.

The GOP would make quick work of that! Now we import cars from Japan. And how about Pittsburgh? It was at one time the center of world steel production. Alas ---the GOP POX struck there as well. You will find Japan making and exporting their steel and employing their work force in the process. If you wish to see the result of GOP policy, specifically, the effect of GOP incompetence upon America's stand in the world, you need only visit the CIA's World Fact Book. China is at the very top of the list with the World's Largest Positive Current Account Balance. That ranking is the result of the fact that China manufactures products and, notably, sells them to the U.S. by way of Wal-Mart.

Now --scroll down to the bottom of the list. That's where you will find the United States, dead last with the World's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance, formerly called the Balance of Trade Deficit.

The GOP deserves NO respect and gets none from me. The GOP should run for office in either China or Japan as both nations have benefited greatly from the policies of the GOP! Certainly --the U.S. of A has not benefited but suffered at the hands of a 'party' that is either crooked or incompetent or both!

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Why The GOP Occupied Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It only takes one crook/moron to ruin the reputation of an entire state. Yes --I am referring to George W. Bush though he is but one crook among many GOP crooks who 'stole' Texas back in the early 80s. The GOP plans ahead.

I tire of the 'fashionable' but baseless attacks on an entire state when for some 100 years, Texas had been liberal, often progressive. Now --there are some 'conservatives' among Democrats even today. But Texas Democrats were often liberal, progressive, activist and out-spoken.  A Texas liberal/progressive --J. Frank Dobie --was invited to lecture at Cambridge where he was a big hit.

Some facts: Over a period of more than 100 years (1846 to 1979) EVERY Texas governor had been Democratic. Most were liberal and/or progressive. The term 'progressive' is especially applicable to the Furgusons --'Pa' Furguson and later 'Ma' (Miriam) Furguson who served two terms. 'Ma' Furguson was fondly recalled by the older persons I met and talked with while growing up. She was among the state's best governors.

It was not until January 16, 1979 that Bill Clements --a Republican --occupied the Governor's office. His tenure is recalled for a GOP revolution primarily TOM DELAY'S GERRYMANDER of the state. The GOP were motivated to gerrymander Texas. Its growing population had earned the state some 38 electoral votes (the map pre-dates that, showing only 34)

I won't write any more than this as this topic is worthy of a book advocating the abolition of the electoral college. Under the Constitution, the office of President represents all of the people! Then ---why is the President NOT elected by the people? Why are their votes watered-down? What right have the states to insert themselves in the election of the People's President (not the states' president)?

It is tragic that the GOP has succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that Texas is a conservative backwater. Great schools with great academic credentials (Rice Univ, U of T, Univ of Houston, et al, et al ) suffer when the state is unfairly maligned as a result of misdeeds by George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Tom DeLay (who gerrymandered the state) Bill Clements and other right wing extremists whose ruthless ambition has victimized Texas in particular and the nation overall.

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Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A movie about and set in Texas starred mega-stars Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. It was a huge box office draw in the early 1960s! The state itself may have dictated the wide screen and mega stars --Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.

The movie was GIANT, inspired by The Edna Ferber novel of the same name! Giant, indeed!
The photo (left) is of the famous Monahans Sandhills west of Odessa, Texas, a city with an interesting history as a destination of gunslingers and seekers after the many treasures that were said to have been buried in West Texas by various outlaws, the Spanish, and Mexican Revolutionaries.

Texas is the second most populous, the second most extensive of the 50 states. It can boast (and often does) that it is the largest of the 48 contiguous United States with an area of over 268,000 square miles and a growing population of some 25.7 million residents.

The word 'Texas' is from the Caddo --Tejas which means 'friend' or 'ally'. It was the Spanish which appropriated the Caddo word and applied it to Texas.

Texas shares a long, winding international border with Mexico, specifically the states of Chihuhua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas as well as borders with the US states of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States. San Antonio --home of the famous Alamo --is the second largest city in the state, seventh largest in the U.S. Depicted in the montage are portions of downtown Houston and, below, an interior view of Houston's 'Galleria' --a famous mall just outside loop 610 at Westheimer Rd. The Galleria is famous for its ice skating rink and a 'collection' of designer shops that probably exceed the famous 'Rodeo Drive' in Los Angeles.
In the 70's, a New York columnist (as I recall) dubbed Houston the "Golden Buckle of the Sunbelt". The monicker may have stuck:

Houston, Texas is the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, with a diverse population of nearly six million and thousands of dynamic, growing businesses. Much of that growth is powered by the energy sector: Houston's nearly 4,000 energy-related companies are responsible for almost half of the city's economic output.
New ideas in energy, however, aren't always received with a warm welcome. "Energy companies can be very risk-averse," says Sarah Groen, a business consultant and investor. "That makes the market very tough for new businesses to break into."
Groen and her business partner, Kirk Brand Coburn, are working to change the status quo with the launch of SURGE Accelerator, an incubation and mentorship program for startups in the energy software space. Companies accepted into the program can focus on anything from digital oil field data to consumer energy efficiency--"as long as it's focused around energy, we're interested," says Groen.

In the program, which launched a year and a half ago, SURGE provides each company with $30,000 in seed funding, free office space, and access to dozens of mentors in Houston's vibrant energy sector in exchange for a six percent common equity stake. Over the course of the three-month program, the entrepreneurs focus their business models and learn from their mentors and one another; the program culminates with the opportunity to pitch to investors on SURGE Day.

"Most entrepreneurs are coming not for the money," says Groen. "It's for mentorship and the program, and access to investors they'd have trouble meeting otherwise."

--SURGE Accelerator Sets Out to Revolutionize the Energy Industry in Houston

It's now official: with a population of six million, greater Houston is now the nation's fourth largest city! Only New York, Chicago, Los Angeles are larger. The metropolitan areas of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Other major cities include El Paso, the western most city in Texas and Austin --the state capital. Depicted (below, left) are downtown Houston (at sunset) and, below it, Houston's famous Galleria Mall. Inspired by the 'Galleria' in Milan, it was appropriately a pioneering work by developer Gerald Hines. Indoor malls with several levels of shopping integrated with both residence and office towers were groundbreaking at the time.

Because it was once an independent republic, Texas is sometimes called the Lone Star State. It is also a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico which most Americans associate with the siege at the Alamo. The "Lone Star" can be found on the Texas state flag and on the Texas state seal today. Another reminder of the Texas struggle for independence may be found just east of Houston where the 'Battle of San Jacinto' was fought and won by Gen Sam Houston for whom the present city is named. The following videos are a showcase of some of the most beautiful photography of Texas that can be found. Enjoy the tour.

Of late, Texas has acquired a bad name, a process begun, I believe, with the arrival of the Bush crime family, the assassination of JFK, the FBI atrocities against the Branch Davidians and, of course, the utterly failed and criminal regime of one George W. Bush!

By the way, George W. Bush is NOT a 'Native Texan'; he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. Sadly, thanks to GWB, it will require a small miracle to undo the harms done to education, the prison system and the 'state' of justice in the once and future great state of Texas!

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What the GOP Did to Texas in a Nutshell

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Prior to the arrival of the Bush crime family in Texas, the state had been progressive and liberal; it was still possible to get a good education. That is true in no small part because every Texas Governor had been Democratic since Richard Coke took office on January 15, 1874. It was not until Bill Clements was sworn in on January 16, 1979 that a Republican would live in the Governor's mansion. It was at that moment that the Texas star began to tarnish.

The GOP has accomplished a great deal since 1974:

• Briefly the GOP successfully subverted public education with notable results.
• The label 'murder capital' stuck on Dallas for the resulting 'rise in crime'.
• The corporate-owned prisons were filled-to the brims! Cause and effect?

Under Rick Perry, Texas executed 235 people in a period of just 11 years. That amounts to more than 21 people per year. Under Bush, 152 people were executed in Texas. That's 30 per year. It reads like a competition!

How did the GOP manage to get away with this scam? I submit the following explanation found on the blog: Blue Bloggin

Texas today is enduring losses of a personal and political kind that resemble the struggle against Santa Anna. Texas leadership has it’s hands in everyone’s pockets and takes what it wants, with a Texas sized smile. The concept of “No State Tax is the shiny object politicians dangle in front of our eyes to convince Texans that Texas ‘stays out of your biz’nez’. No they don’t. That is a Texas sized lie. Texas politicians want to divert all Texas funds to special interest at the expense of education and infrastructure. Texas State sponsored scams are the biggest ponzi schemes our politicians have pulled over our eyes.

Texas politicians want to control your personal freedoms, control your body, control your love life, pollute your land or just take your land away, for the pleasure of their campaign donors. Every decision made by the Texas Republican Congress has a big campaign donor behind it and the likes of Governor Rick Perry has his lies exposed on a regular basis. The ballot box is the greatest weapon Texans have, and even that is being manipulated by these crooks to make sure they have another shot at scramming Texans. Don’t fall for their lies. Vote them out!

Texas politicians have sold their soul so many times to so many special interest that Texans have no idea where their rent, grocery and car payment went. Makes you wonder how these crooks keep up with all the deception.

--Blue Bloggin 

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Tell Rick Perry that there was NO 'Texas Miracle'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

As a fourth generation Texan, a descendant of Texas pioneers, I deny a favorite myth among the GOP inclined. There was no 'Texas Miracle' --a term cooked up in a GOP focus group, fly-by-night political consultants (perhaps from Chicago). Fact is --not only has education dropped off the radar, Texas has run out of oil that can be pumped profitably; real jobs are as scarce as hen's teeth.

Frankly, I am surprised to learn that --as economist Paul Krugman points out -- in June 2011 the Texas unemployment rate was ONLY 8.2 percent. I had expected that it would have been higher. About that, economist Paul Krugman asks: "...what does population growth have to do with job growth?" Krugman is right to ask! The point is made as only Krugman can make it! Indeed, if the 'Texas Miracle' had been real, Texas should not be boasting of unemployment rates as high as 8.2 percent.

But I am disappointed that Krugman has not mentioned the BUSH-PERRY scam about which I have screamed bloody murder! I believe that unemployment figures for TX would be much, much higher if those millions left behind by Bush-Perry neglect/subversion of public education were showing up in the stats. But --they are not! They are not showing up because those "left behind" are finding the only long-term employment that is available to them in the corporate-owned prisons, what I call the Bush-Perry Gulag!

This is not the result of GOP incompetence. It is, rather, the result of deliberate GOP crookery at the party-leadership level. This is the result of the GOP's deliberate neglect of education. It is one of several reasons the GOP is not a poltiical party; it is a crime syndicate, a kooky cult!

The only pockets lined by GOP largesse (pork) are the pockets of an increasingly tiny ruling elite now just 1 percent of the total US population. Official stats prove my assertions; those numbers can be found at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Commerce Dept-B.E.A. Be prepared to see proof that the GOP, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry et al are lying, distorting the effects of every GOP tax cut in U.S. history.

In each case, the cuts --enriching only the upper, upper classes and the corporate owners of prisons --are followed by recessions, depressions. ERGO: GOP tax cuts do not and have never stimulated the economy, have never created a single job! In fact, job growth has either declined or gone negative (net job loss) after every GOP tax cut. In fact, every recession/depression since 1900 has been the result of either GOP incompetence or crookedness or both.

It is for this reason primarily that BUSH-PERRY neglected education. A state that will not educate new generations deserves to pay for the privilege of neglect with much higher crime rates. But even that is not the point ---the point is that the GOP and the CORPORATE OWNED PRISONS benefit from the whole package: 1) LOWER HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATIONS 2) HIGHER CRIME RATES 3) HIGHER PROFITS FOR CORPORATE-OWNED PRISONS. It's the GOP formula.

Given what we know about the GOP record in Texas, we should not be surprised to learn that a failed governor from a 'gulag' state, a failed governor with more hair than brains, an inarticulate governor challenged to spell 'ed-joo-ka-shun' should wish to occupy the White House, a 'perch' from which he might prey upon the future of an entire nation and the futures of all the people who live in it.

So when Mr. Perry presents himself as the candidate who knows how to create jobs, don’t believe him. His prescriptions for job creation would work about as well in practice as his prayer-based attempt to end Texas’s crippling drought.

--Paul Krugman, The Texas Unmiracle

There was NO 'Texas Miracle'!

Unless you consider the rise of the prison system to be a 'miracle'! I don't! Nor am I impressed with pimples on the much larger curve. I grew up with the boom and bust 'oil industry' and consider it an utterly failed strategy akin to playing Blackjack or Roulette in the expection of, one day, hitting a jackpot! I cannot count the number of 'busts' that I witnessed growing up. And from each 'bust' only the very, very rich benefited. In any case, when it is deemed more profitable to attack and invade another Middle Eastern country, temporary 'bubbles' will always burst. But crime --as a result of the GOP/right wing sabotage of education --will ensure that the corporate run prisons are full. What a racket!!

GOP policy is anti-education! It was the evil axis of Bush-Perry that made of Texas the GULAG STATE!

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An American Gulag

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A famous Texas scandal spawned a legend and a movie: "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton. Many, not familiar with Texas scandals, probably thought it referred to the state legislature where various "favors" and "special considerations" are sold to special interests and various lobbys. But --it's not a whorehouse; it's just a circle jerk.

Of late, Texas has taken political prostitution to levels not seen since A. Hitler pimped his "Third Reich" to corporate 'johns' --I.G. Farben, Thyssen, Krupp! All would get big, juicy, sexy government contracts if they but joined his crazy, evil scheme to enslave the world and exterminate jews, gypsies and anyone else not liked by Hitler, his cult of Nazis, his hand-picked perverts, whack-jobs, and a panoply of marginal and otherwise ineffective types, in fact, those who would be failures in a normal world. And those are the Nazis!! The GOP may be worse.

The scam is often repeated in various ways by the American GOP but the Texas model, cooked up by Herrs Bush and Perry, may have outdone Hitler's blunt approach but, in the end, it's all Nazism. Hitler met 'industrialists' Thyssen, Krupp and several representatives of I.G. Farben --the makers of Zyklon 'B'. The meeting is described in some detail by William Shirer in 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'.

Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2)

The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved.

Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality . . . All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen ...We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). "Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years."

All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3)

----William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Nazification of Germany: 1933–34

There are other, corroborating sources for this meeting.

Hitler did not intend to share his power with coalition partners. After the dissolution of the Reichstag, he hoped to win an absolute majority for the NSDAP with a massive election campaign. To finance the electoral battle, he sought support from Germany’s leading industrialists. In a meeting held on February 20, 1933, Hitler and Hermann Göring (1893-1946) explained the benefits that industry leaders would derive from an NSDAP victory: political stability, the complete elimination of the Communist threat and, not least, a lucrative rearmament policy.

Among those present at the meeting was George von Schnitzler, a board member of I.G. Farben, then the world’s largest chemical conglomerate. (I.G. Farben would eventually go on to produce the Zyklon B gas used in Nazi death camps). In the following affidavit, given in English on November 10, 1945, Schnitzler describes the purpose of the meeting and provides the names of others in attendance that day.

The TX gulag system differs very little from concentration camps. To be expected, they look modern from the outside. But, like Hitler's string of concentration and death camps, they are the work of 'private enterprise' contracted by 'government'; it is private enterprise which benefits from the Faustian deals that created them. Reduced to its essence, Hitler's 'Nazi' scheme systematically murdered millions and just as systematically reduced as many to slavery amid unimaginably horrible conditions.

--German History in Documents and Images, Volume 7. Nazi Germany, 1933-1945, Georg von Schnitzler on Hitler’s Appeal to Leading German Industrialists on February 20, 1933 (Affidavit, November 10, 1945)

A 'party' is what it does! If the basics of this 'privatization scheme' are repeated by Texas Republicans with similar/same results, then in what way does it differ from 'fascism' or 'corporatism' or "Nazism'? In Texas, politicians have been known to say: "if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it's a duck!" Indeed! One is what what does! A political party is what it does! The GOP has repeated the Hitler model in Texas with respect to its gulag of prisons! Am I to call the Texas GOP 'boy scouts' because they are not in Germany? Of course not! I will call them what they are and what they are, in fact and deed, are fascists!

The Texas GOP Learned From Hitler's Mistakes

The Bush family has worked to establish the same or similar model in Texas. The fruition is seen in the Texas gulag of corporate-owned prisons. The roots of this horrific outcome may be traced to Nixon-Bush overtures to China. Bush Sr's efforts to set it all up are too often forgotten by writers focused upon Nixon's largely ceremonial trip to the Forbidden City. Recall that Bush SR was ambassador to China under Nixon, that it was Nixon that took the U.S. off the gold standard; but it was most certainly Bush Sr who cut the deals in advance of Nixon's largely ceremonial trip.

It was, therefore, Bush Sr who sold us out to China. Like a bad penny, a Bush always seems to turn up when one researches China, oil, the U.S. imbalance of trade with China, oil wars, and other 'rotten' things.

“There is something rotten in Houston”

That Texas would eventually play a role in the grand scheme of things was inevitable. It was an oil producing state; later, an oil refining state. And Texas has a history of often rampant lawlessness. Now –my great uncle, Lawson 'Loss' Hart, was on the right side of the law. As a federal marshal, he tracked down, outdrew, shot and killed the infamous outlaw --Bill Dalton of the notorious Dalton gang. We could use a few more 'Harts' who might, likewise, track down the lawless Bushes, the crooked gang called GOP!

Bush SR's choice of Houston as his permanent residence was unfortunate for Houston. I recall speaking with Houston Mayor Fred Hofheinz (middle 70s)! The occasion of that specific conversation was a 'smear job' that was making the rounds, a 'smear job' that might as well have had 'G O P' stamped on it with a copyright date. Hofheinz said to me: "There is something rotten in Houston!" It was as much his tone and demeanor as the sentence itself that sent chills down one's spine.

The mayor's comments came during an organized but shadowy campaign of rumor and villification against him. The rumor surfaced immediately following an infamous 'reception' for the Sr Bush at the venerable old Rice Hotel in downtown Houston. I believe that it was already envisioned, decided, that the Senior Bush would --one day --become President, and that Jr (Shrub) would, likewise, occupy the White House one day. Thus --in two generations the GOP would effect what Sr himself referred to as a 'new world order'.

The resulting fascist prison model that is now in place and operating in Texas is proof that they have not yet failed in their mission. As Hitler made promises to Thyssen, Krupp, Farben et al, one wonders: did Bush and Perry promise to subvert Texas education, in fact, reducing the state to dead last in high school graduations? Is this the crux of the deal? Essentially --we trash education and thus ensure the prisons a full house!

Texas became a different state after the election of Ronald Reagan

I thought it ironic that the man most responsible for the GOP infestations in Texas --Tom DeLay --was, himself, a roach exterminator by trade. GOP strong-holds with which I am most familiar were/are GOP infestations in Brazoria county and Fort Bend County. It was in Fort Bend County that Tom DeLay built up a base that would eventually allow him to gerrymander the state, making Texas safe for fascism.

Brazoria County got a new Republican High Sheriff who set out on a course of absolutely zero tolerance. So many were arrested he had to build his own little mini prison in the county. I am surprised that he was not awarded a title: 'Duke'.

The GOP/right wing inclined would rather build a prison than prevent the crimes that fill it. Why? That's easy! There is less easy money to be made locking folk up when crime rates are in decline! For the same reason, the right wing would rather not "waste tax payer money" to educate a child. Better to let him take to the streets, rob a convenience store, perhaps shoot someone, get arrested, sentenced and locked up in a corporate prison where the GOP's corporate/wealthy base and support could make an easy buck by warehousing him.

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus." population."

--Scrooge

But the Texas GOP has done Scrooge one better: they are making a profit off both their deaths and incarceration.

WHERE is the will to win? When the right wing has succeeded in destroying civilized society if not the world, the left will have failed to save it!

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Howard Zinn: Why the U.S. May be Doomed

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Howard Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States' is must reading! It should be required in American secondary and high schools but most certainly won't be! It will remain anathema in states like Texas! Why is that the case? Simply --Zinn told the truth about our nation, it's history of genocide, aggressive war, income and wealth disparity, elitism, slavery, bigotry, growing distrust of one another, the need to 'feel good about ourselves' when maybe we ought NEVER to feel good about ourselves.

Back to Zinn who wrote:

There is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the guards. We have known for some time that the poor and ignored were the nonvoters, alienated from a political system they felt didn't care about them, and about which they could do little. Now alienation has spread upward into families above the poverty line. These are white workers, neither rich nor poor, but angry over economic insecurity, unhappy with their work, worried about their neighborhoods, hostile to government-combining elements of racism with elements of class consciousness, contempt for the lower classes along with distrust for the elite, and thus open to solutions from any direction, right or left.

--Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

Texas may be 'the' case in point. It seems to have been the GOP 'lab' in which were tested 1) its radical, extremist, elitist, right wing ideology and 2) the means by which this ideology would be sold if not blatantly foisted upon an unsuspecting, often soporific public content to be easily distracted by the increasingly radical right wing, extremist media.

Texas had been Democratic for some 100 years! And then it was taken over by GOP cultists, a process begun in the middle 80s when at least one extremely conservative consultant --Paul Caprio of Chicago --engineered wins for the GOP even as Tom DeLay gerrymandered the state. Caprio's prominent client was State Sen Mike Richards representing the extremely conservative, elitist Houston suburb --Sugarland.

It was in Sugarland that reps from the Taliban met with Unocal and other pooh bahs of big oil just prior to 911, just prior to the U.S. attack and invasion of Afghanistan. Who has followed up on this? What payoffs were made to the Taliban? What has become of those representatives of the Taliban who journeyed to the suburbs of Houston to met with big oil and other right wing extremists? Recall --this is Bush/Perry country. This is the cancer from which sprang Dick Cheney's efforts to carve up the oil fields of Iraq.

The GOP takeover of Texas is even older. You may recall this date: November 22, 1963. Just prior to the tragic, cold-blooded murder of JFK, a slim, often slouching figure was photographed 'hanging around' beside the front entrance to the Texas School Book Depository Buiding on Elm St. This slouching figure is that of a man I came to know in Houston. His name is George H. W. Bush

The fact of that discontent is clear. The surveys since the early seventies show 70 to 80 percent of Americans distrustful of government, business, the military. This means the distrust goes beyond blacks, the poor, the radicals. It has spread among skilled workers, white-collar workers, professionals; for the first time in the nation's history, perhaps, both the lower classes and the middle classes, the prisoners and the guards, were disillusioned
with the system.

--Howard Zinn, A Peole's History of the United States

It's only gotten worse! People are desperate! There is no check on right wing mendacity, psychopathy, elitism, imperialism, greed! Anyone daring to oppose them --Dem or indie --are crushed. The right wing, the moneyed elites, make the rules and finance their stooges. The electoral systems favor the status quo because it takes BIG MONEY to even get into the race; ergo --everyone who runs --regardless of party affiliation --are but pawns of the vast right wing money and power machines.

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How GOP Fascism Screwed Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When a state or nation fails to live up to its basic obligations to the people, it is in breach of contract. It is the right of the people to rise up and replace --by any means --the illegitimate regime. If that sounds radical, I refer you to the words of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire! You might also consider the Magna Carta!

What the GOP has in mind for the rest of the nation, it has very nearly accomplished in Texas. Under the criminal and incompetent management of George W. Bush and, later, Rick 'Good Hair' Perry, Texas is reduced to third-world status --an outcome resulting from Bush/Perry neglect and overt contempt for public education.

Our schools are in crises: We [Texas] rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma. We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.'

--Barbara Bush, The Critical Mind

But you can rest assured that the private schools in Texas are doing fine. But it is in the public schools that those not born to wealth have any hope of acquiring an education. But the elites would deny you even that!

A detention camp in Taylor Texas that currently holds hundreds of rebuffed asylum seekers who legally entered the country, half of which are children swept up in midnight raids, is a potential prime location for the enforced transfer of American citizens during a time of national emergency.

The privatized Hutto jail, which is also administered by Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), currently interns political asylum seekers who came to the U.S. on legal visas. Most of them are families including pregnant women and children who have never been accused of any wrongdoing but are forced to endure squalid conditions inside literal concentration camps.

In 2004 the facility was on the verge of being shutdown due to lack of occupancy but new immigration policies, allied to the burgeoning growth of the prison industry and future plans to detain American citizens en masse, have revived the potential scope of the camp, and a new contract to intern 600 individuals was finalized with immigration authorities in December 2005.

The facility is euphemistically called a "Residential Center," yet charges of overcrowding and poor conditions are rife, with an estimated 645 people filling a facility that has only 512 beds.

--Paul Joselph Watson & Alex Jones, Texas Prison Camp Future American Gulag?

This is a fascist outcome and as a result, the corporate prison population has exploded. If trends continue, one day, there will most surely be more folk in prison than out. This is a GOP payoff, a 'laundered' pay0ff, to the corporations for their support of the Texas GOP.

The newly instituted leveling system on death row in Texas under which prisoners are classified in one of three categories—supposedly based on their disciplinary record—is nothing but heightened repression.

It masquerades as a means to provide uniform rules and regulations in managing male prisoners sentenced to death. But in truth it is a reactionary response to prisoners’ efforts over the years to organize themselves against cruel and inhuman treatment.

The Endeavor Project, the Lamp of Hope Project, and now Panthers United for Revolutionary Education are just three examples of prisoners’ efforts to protect themselves and resist.

Any time prisoners, and even people on the outside—unions, women, people of color, gays—begin to organize themselves across color lines, the system devises counter-schemes to bring it to a fast and abrupt halt.

The Texas death row leveling system is another of these, out of a huge bag of trickery designed to dominate, subjugate and divide prisoners. It’s no different from when businesses divide workers, colleges divide students, and the ruling class divides the poor masses by establishing lines of antagonism.

Before the leveling system, all death-row prisoners in Texas—except for those classified as work-capable—were already confined to "administrative segregation" status. In other words: lock-down.

--Commentary from death row: Texas leveling system shows rise in repression, Harvey Earvin

As high school graduations per capita declined, crime in Texas, most notably murder, increased. Not surprisingly, the prison population swelled to overflowing. The GOP in Texas has, thus, enriched, the corporate, fascist owners and operators of prisons.

'Are there no prisons?' --Scrooge

These outcomes are not coincidence, not the result of incompetence, not the result of mere GOP idiocy, though many, like the Bush crime family, are idiotic to be sure! No --this is, rather, fascist policy; it is a laundered pay-off to the GOP's corporate 'base'. The corporate-GOP axis makes out like Nazi brass or the likes of I. G. Farben, the makers of Zyklon B. The made a killing. It is only the citizenry which suffers, a citizenry that is increasingly deprived of educational or vocational opportunity so GOP fat cats can continue to feed off the misery of its victims.

The Oil Boom is Over

Texas must learn to make an honest living. Texas must face up to its responsibilities now and to future generations or it will perish. Under the disastrous back-to-back Bush/Perry regimes, Texas is well on its way to economic oblivion.

The results are disastrous:

• Texas/Bush style provides the residents of Texas with some of the nation's very worst crime and incarceration rates
  
• Texas subjects the residents of Texas to deteriorating air quality and wanton ecosystem destruction;
• Texas can boast of having the nation's very worst murder, crime and incarceration rates!
• Texas now leads the nation in pollution, crime, and illiteracy --should be studied by any other state wishing to avoid a similar distastrous fate.

As education standards and performance declined with the ascension of George W. Bush to Governor and his equally incompetent successor --Rick Perry --crime rates, primarily murder and armed robbery have increased. Naturally, there is a round up of the usual suspects, i.e, the poor and those caught in the act of being black or brown.

The increase in crime in Texas is the result of GOP policies and the GOP's criminal neglect of education. The crime resulting will prove to be yet another 'growth industry' for the likes of Halliburton/KBR as was the Bushco war against the people of Iraq!

How infuriating has it been, the last five years, watching Halliburton and KBR get away with murder? Murder, poisoning, electrocution, rape, human trafficking, fraud, bribery — their crimes go on and on. But could their decade-long spree may be coming to an end? This year, settlements for old offenses, new exposés and new lawsuits for more recent evil-doings, have resulted in plummeting stock prices, canceled contracts, and a soon-to-be imprisoned former CEO.

The latest blow came last Thursday, in a Texas court, where executives for Halliburton and KBR were described in legal papers as conducting a “reign of terror” and functioning “as criminal enterprises.” Paying bribes, taking kickbacks, concealing gang rapes, and engaging in human trafficking were among the crimes listed on the May 14th complaint brought not by government or human rights lawyers, as you might expect, but by attorneys filing a class action suit for the pension fund of Detroit’s Policemen and Firemen. According to the press release issued by the funds’ attorneys, Grant & Eisenhofer, Halliburton and KBR’s directors enabled “a pervasive environment of misdeed and corruption,” resulting in suits, investigations, fines, penalties, and settlements of over $650 million, which have ravaged the corporations’ reputations, prospects, finances, and in turn the pension fund’s investment.
...

The Texas suit covers the period both before and after KBR became an independent company, and names the majority of the two companies’ recent and current boards, including such corporate heavyweights as past president and chairman of American Airlines, Robert Crandall. The May 14th press release by attorneys originally listed former Halliburton CEO, Dick Cheney as a defendant (not surprising, since most of the Nigerian bribes occurred under Cheney’s tenure; Cheney also appointed and directly supervised Stanley), but a hastily issued correction stated that Cheney had been listed in error. The complaint identified some of Halliburton’s and KBR’s known “misdeeds” in Iraq, including providing troops with untreated, untested water from the Euphrates and delivering ice to troops in a truck that showed signs of its former use as storage for corpses. The complaint concluded, “The myriad crimes and wrongdoings discussed above simply could not have happened if Defendants were doing their jobs. As officers and directors of the Companies, the Defendants were required to ensure that the Companies’ internal controls were in place, functioning properly, and sufficiently strong to prevent it from committing wrongful or illegal acts.”

The Detroit pension fund suit is one of many recent suits against Halliburton and KBR. In November 2008, Joshua Eller, a civilian employee at Balad Air Force base northeast of Baghdad, cited rotten food, contaminated water and ice, and toxic fumes from open burn pits, as contributors to his ongoing depression, nightmares, and gastrointestinal and dermatological conditions. In March 2009, parents of Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth sued KBR for wrongful death from electrocution in the shower at his Green Zone base. In April 2009, troops, private employees, and families filed nine lawsuits against KBR for compensation for illness and deaths from exposure to toxic fumes from Iraq and Afghanistan burn pits. The suits, which lawyers will be pursuing as a class-action, seek damages “in an amount sufficient to strip defendants of all of the revenue and profits” involved in managing waste for military bases.”

But the pension fund suit is the first initiated by shareholders, and the stakes are high. Grant and Eisenhofer is a formidable opponent, ranking first among plaintiff firms in funds recovered for shareholder clients. The firm is currently involved in class action suits against Barclays Bank, Countrywide Financial, UBS, Pfizer,and Merck as well as Tremont Holdings Group Inc, a fund charged with feeding $3 billion of client investments to Bernard Madoff Securities.

--Nora Eisenberg, Is KBR’s Decade-Long Crime Spree Finally Coming to an End?, AlterNet

A Day of Reckoning

With any luck, the whistle may have been blown.

New York - On Monday, Dec. 6, a district court in Texas will be asked – for the first time in that U.S. state's history – to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based on the "disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions" in Texas.

John Edward Green, Jr., the defendant in Texas v. Green, is charged in the fatal shooting of a 34-year-old Houston woman during a 2008 robbery. He has not yet been convicted, but prosecutors say they would seek the death penalty.

Green's attorneys have filed a pretrial motion in Harris County District Court. Judge Kevin Fine will hear arguments that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it creates an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people

Green's attorneys contend that a number of factors in Texas's legal system increase the risk of innocent people being executed.

According to the defence, these include a lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, faulty forensic evidence, incompetent lawyers at the appellate level, failures to guard against false confessions, and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection.

Paul Cates, director of communications for the Innocence Project, told IPS, "The Innocence Project will be participating in the hearing specifically to put on evidence about the cases of Claude Jones and Cameron Todd Willingham. Both Jones and Willingham were executed in Texas."

He said, "In the case of Claude Jones, DNA evidence has proven that critical physical evidence (a hair sample) used to place him at the scene of the crime did not belong to Jones. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed even though a prominent arson scientist notified the Governor and the appeals court prior to his execution that the critical testimony of the arson investigator was based on outdated arson science."

--US Execution Capital Reconsiders the Death Penalty

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment (especially if you happen to be innocent) but, in Texas, its application is clearly discriminatory.

Mississippi and Arkansas have the highest poverty rates in the nation (at 21.9% and 18.8%, respectively), and Florida saw the largest increase in poverty (2.8 percentage points) over the course of the recession, new Census data shows. Poverty was lowest in New Hampshire (8.5%) and Alaska (9.0%), but even in those states at least one in 12 residents lived in poverty.

While the new data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) are similar to the nationwide data on poverty released earlier this month, the ACS provides a more detailed look at poverty in every state. The result is more evidence of the widespread pain resulting from the Great Recession. In the nation overall, there were 42.9 million people in poverty in 2009. For the average family of four, this means that their combined income for the year was less than $21,954 (the exact threshold varies by family size and number of children). From 2007 to 2009, 47 states and the District of Columbia experienced increases in their poverty rates. The first Map shows poverty rates by state and how they changed throughout the Great Recession, which began in late 2007.

--Kai Filion, Economic Policy Institute, Child poverty rises dramatically in most states,

One day, some believe, a ruling elite of just 1 percent of the total U.S. population may decide that a declining profit margin no longer justifies the 'business' of warehousing, torturing or murdering people because just 12 people decided that they did not deserve to live free or live at all!

The 'elites' may be tempted to pull out, to take the money and run, to 'cauterize' the prisons, dump the problem upon an unsuspecting but 'not rich' population. Thus --they will leave behind a dismantled and/or crumbling infrastructure incapable of handling a prison population of some 2.5 million across America. The corporate robber barons will decide that it is no longer worth the bother with either the infrastructure or the accounting of some $190 billion a year --more than the combined costs of wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.

At this point, the corporate psychopaths, having made a living 'killing' and 'warehousing', may decide as did Hitler before them that a 'final solution' is required.

Like in the late 1930’s, the “final solution” will be the mass extermination of prisoners across the U.S.A. And Texas – always at the vanguard of fascism – has already begun. At first by “medical means” with the complicity of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, now charged with all medical care (or lack thereof) across various TDCJ’s. That is how TDCJ/UTMB murdered courageous “jailhouse lawyer” David R. Ruiz: whose Ruiz v. Estelle lawsuit brought TCCJ under the heel of the Ruiz Court for nearly two decades. UTMB denied Ruiz timely lifesaving cancer treatment, much requested, until it was “too late to treat.” But there are many others: among the growing elderly population and the sick.

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Texas Prisons May be Worse Than Abu Ghraib

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The back to back debacles of Bush-Perry have turned the state prison system into a domestic Abu Ghraib in which 'prisoners' are tortured, attacked by dogs, shocked and, in other ways abused, exploited, humiliated, terrified while guards look on and laugh. Others like Bush himself, we suspect, get there jollies. The state of my birth has, under the utterly evil and/or incompetent GOP/right wing rule and exploitation, become an unimaginable hell-hole where poorer children are consistently, deliberately left behind to become fodder for the Fascist-Nazi corporate prison system.

At the same time, the Bush/Perry prison is ripping off Texas taxpayers as we post, reporting one price for public consumption as a much, much lower price is paid in fact. One wonders: who gets the loose change? Who is literally skimming money, bilking the taxpayers of Texas for millions!

The emerging details confirm my suspicions and my earlier articles about the Bush/Perry perversion of justice in Texas. The back to back Bush-Perry regime have made of Texas the fascist template that will most surely extend to all of the United States should the GOP ever gain control of both houses, the Presidency. It already has a 'high court' in its pocket. The recent decision re: corporate personhood is but an omen of much worse to come. Scrotus has proven itself ready and willing to rubber stamp any Fascist - Nazi scheme that a Bush enamored GOP may embrace and/or puke up.

Or, Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) in its seven (7) or more branches: TDCJCID (Correctional Institutions Division), TDCJSJ (State Jails), TDCJPD (Parole Division), plus “therapeutic facilities,” “transient facilities,” private prisons by Wackenhut and C.C.A. (fully paid by TDCJ), sundry reparole/prerevocation” facilities, “industrial units” – you counting them? – then 14,000 state felons kept for months in county jails at TDCJ expense for lack of beds in the Greater TDCJ. Each a separate state prison system. Holding some 230,000 inmates – the exact number a heavily guarded secret. World’s highest incarceration rate of 1000 per 100,000 population – ten times England’s, 14 times Cuba’s – plus another 700,000 Texans on parole supervision. Half of this mass of humanity “people of color.” For each adult in prison, count at least one underage child being raised on the streets without parental supervision: “the next TDCJ generation.” If you, dear reader, thing that Abu Ghraib or Gitmo – or tens of secret Gitmos in “friendly” eastern European and third world nations – are but “exceptional mistakes by a few bad apples,” then you been brainwashed by the soothing snake oil of fascist propaganda. In the late 1990’s some TDCJ whistleblower leaked the “Brazorial County Training Video,” that soon made coast to coast telenews sensation: prisoners chained on floor, screaming in excruciating pain, while attack dogs held by laughing prisoncrats bit them over and again. This horror film was a training video to teach newly-hired prison guards! Texas governor then was George Walker Bush: current de facto misruler of the U.S.A.

George W. Bush comes from a long line of criminals and traitors. Hist great grandfathers were Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush, who in the 1930’s ran a New York bank and associated string of dummy businesses whose only realy aim was to launder money for the Nazi regime in Germany. And kept doing so until October 1942 – nearly a year after Pearl Harbor and the U.S.A at war with Germany – when the FDR administration expropriated the lot under the Trading with the Enemy Act. A fact of public record1 yet not a word about it in our flamboyant and ohsofree mainstream press. In 1994 the TDCJ employees PAC – “political action committee” to donate campaign funds and for heavy handed strongarm tactics “to get the vote” helped Bush defeat incumbent Ann Richards for governor of Texas. TDCJ then had a total of 72,000 prisoners: deemed “overcrowded” by the federal Ruiz Court. In payment and gratitude, in only 16 months, by June 1996, Bush caused TDCJ population to swell to over 150,000. By appointing or manipulating a Board of Pardons and Paroles – BPP, then wholly separate from TDCJ – to cut parole releases from a historical average of 85% of those eligible, to a mere 16%! Ever since the TDCJ has steadily increased, based on parole release rates fluctuating from 20% to 25% of eligible inmates.

...

In 1994 TDCJ was “pestered” by having to answer citizens’ requests under the Texas Open Records Act (TORA), prisoners among the most zealous watchdogs of TDCJ shenanigans. Such as the “VitaPro scandal” for which TDCJ Director Andy Collins got convicted in Houston federal court; but many other scandals, like the “visitation room pizza scandal” or when some 1000 lavatories for which taxpayers paid $200 apiece, were switched with others costing $10 at KMart. Or when the pickup truck of TDCJ’s overall general auditor was found near Huntsville full of bullet holes and blood all over, but the FBI found, two years later, the “victim” alive, well, and much richer in Pennsylvania. Well then, Bush signed into law Government Code 552.028 by which TDCJ may refuse any disclosure by simply saying it came from a prisoner, or (no proof needed) by a “friend of prisoners.” Tus freed from any and all public scrutiny and free to commit any crime with full impunity – theft, murder, drug traffic, fraud, “pork barrel contracts”: all of which TDCJ prisoncrats do! – the honest public servants in the various TDCJ’s went into an allout spendthrift and grand larceny crime spree. Which just in 2006 totalled $17.5 billion expenditures!

--Ana Lucia Gelabert, Some Facts You Should Know About Texas Prisons

When Bill Clinton was President, 'Judge Dredd' was just a futuristic movie in which a fascist regime presided over a two-tiered society. Miranda protections are non-existent and 'justice' is administered on-the-spot by armed 'judges'. The future is now.

Under Bush/Perry, Texas had become the lab study, the model upon which a fascist state may one day pattern itself should the GOP regain the absolute power it almost had under Bush Jr. The key to the GOP plan in Texas is education on the one hand, the prison system on the other. One hand washes the other in a diabolically simple plan, in fact, a laundered payoff:

1. subvert education thus causing crime to rise as it most surely will as a result;
2. warehouse the 'criminals' in facilities built and operated by exceedingly rich and corporate GOP contributors.

There are precedents in Nazi Germany. I.G. Farben, as I recall, developed Z-klon B, thereby benefiting greatly by the crime of genocide. I.G. Farben was, thus, rewarded for its support when Hitler passed the plate at a meeting attended by Farben, Thyssen, Krupp and, I seem to recall, a representative of the American Ford Motor Company.

Why is education the key? Simply: if you don't get skills, you don't get a job! The corporate prison system is assured an income, a full-house as it were, as long as Texas competes with the likes of Mississippi for dead last in high school graduations.

Naturally, the axis of Bush/Perry denied their dismal record. They tried to cover up Texas’ dropout crisis by falsifying dropout numbers. In fact, at least 3 in 10 Texas high school students do not graduate from high school. Bush-Perry and the GOP did NOT want you to know that and lied about it. As the Houston Chronicle reported in their story,

Poverty, dropout rates bode grim future for state", the dropout crisis will have serious long-term damage to our state’s economy if Rick Perry continues to cover-up the problem.

--Houston Chronicle

It does not matter to Bush/Perry and the Nazis and Fascists who have enriched themselves at the expense of you and I. It does not matter to Bush or Perry that while Texas is 'big' on capital punishment, the industrialized application of the death penalty simply cannot kill off the criminals as fast as they procreate and multiply. Because crime rates seem always higher in death penalty states, the GOP will not get a free lunch. A price must be paid. Ergo: the GOP may be seeking a "final solution".

...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:

• There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
• According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.
• The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail) reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.
• Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).
• If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of our current 2 million prisoners.
• The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92, 669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-year 1999.
• The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000, corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.

  --An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

Texas is called the gulag state for good reason. Justice in Texas is applied inequitably. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

If nothing changes, average TX household incomes will be some $6500 lower in 30 years than in 2000, acc to projections. It could be even worse: the number is NOT adjusted for inflation. The GOP does not want to talk about this. The GOP would rather demagogue this issue. The GOP does not want you to know what miserable, bald-faced liars they are.

In the meantime, they will exploit the inevitable rise in crime. They will contract out the eventual imprisonment of every child that is routinely left behind. They will try to distract you with BS about immigrants when, in fact, the real cause of increasing crime is not due to illegal immigration but, rather, it is the inevitable result of GOP incompetence, greed and their deliberate, fascist exploitation of the prison system for the enrichment of an increasingly tiny elite. That's true in Texas --the GOP fascist lab --and it is true wherever the GOP infestation has managed to plant its crooked root.

Typical Republican Demagogues 'Illegal Aliens' Strawman!

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Nasa Seeks 'Warp Drive', Anti-Gravity Space Craft

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The state of Texas and NASA hope to take an early lead in interstellar space travel with technologies that sound like dialogue from Star Trek or Star Wars peppered with terms like "Warp Drive" and "anti-gravity". Simplistically, a new generation of space-craft may produce "tuned" gravity waves with which it may surf a "grid" of gravity waves. Some writers have referred to this as a cosmic, universal net.

The term breakthrough propulsion refers to concepts like space drives and faster-than-light travel, the kind of breakthroughs that would make interstellar travel practical.

For a general explanation of the challenges and approaches of interstellar flight, please visit the companion web site: Warp Drive: When? The Warp-When site is written for the general public and uses icons of science fiction to help convey such notions. This web site, on the other hand, is intended for scientists and engineers.

This research falls within the realm of physics instead of technology, with the distinction being that physics is about uncovering the laws of nature while technology is about applying that physics to build useful devices. Since existing technology is inadequate for traversing astronomical distances between neighboring stars (even if advanced to the limit of its underlying physics), the only way to circumvent these limits is to discover new propulsion physics. The discovery of new force-production and energy-exchange principles would lead to a whole new class of technologies. This is the motivation of breakthrough propulsion physics research.

--National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA], Breakthrough Propulsion Physics [See also: Prospects for Breakthrough Propulsion From Physics, Marc G. Millis, Founder and Manager, Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project, NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, PDF]

NASA is quick to point out that something like the Space Ship "Enterprise" is not imminently feasible but points out that "new possibilities continue to emerge". NASA confirms that it supported the breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project from 1996 to 2002.

Setting Goals Beyond Existing Limits

Prospects for Breakthrough Propulsion From Physics, Marc G. Millis, Founder and Manager, Breakthrough Propulsion Physics (BPP) Project, NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, PDF]

Should NASA get into "anti-gravity", the way might have been paved by the work of Raymond Chiao

Chiao argues that a superconductor could transform radio waves, light or any other form of electromagnetic radiation into gravitational radiation, and vice versa, with near perfect efficiency. Such a feat sounds as amazing as transmuting lead into gold--and about as plausible." It is fair to say that if Ray observes something with this experiment, he will win the Nobel Prize," says superconductivity expert John M. Goodkind of the University of California at San Diego. "It is probably also fair to say that the chances of his observing something may be close to zero."

--Scientific American, A Philosopher's Stone: Could superconductors transmute electromagnetic radiation into gravitational waves?

The University of Houston has been researching "super-conductivity" for over ten years and just recently received a large grant to continue and expand it's research.

The University of Houston has received a Research Superiority Award from the exas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF), announced today by Gov. Rick Perry on behalf of the ETF board. The University of Houston's Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH) will receive $3.5 million over a five-year period to help establish TcSUH's Applied Research Hub (TcSUH-ARH) and recruit stellar scientists and researchers in superconductivity and related materials.

"The Texas Emerging Technology Fund has helped create an unparalleled research environment in our state by encouraging innovation and providing a path for bringing emerging technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace," Perry said. "The University of Houston is a worldwide leader in superconductivity technology, and this grant will help expand its research capabilities while encouraging the commercialization of this promising technology."

Established by Perry and the Texas Legislature in 2005, the ETF is bringing the best scientists and researchers to Texas, attracting high-paying jobs and helping start-up companies get off the ground faster.

--February 3, 2010, UH Superconductivity Center Receives $3.5M ETF Grant, UH Superconductivity Center Receives $3.5M ETF Grant

Superconductors capable of converting electromagnetic radiation into 'gravitational radiation' (and vice versa) promise to open up an new era in space exploration. The known universe is a veritable 'Moire pattern' of electromagnetic energy. Intersteller travel may become a matter of surfing the 'gravity waves' that permeate the universe.

An estimate of the transducer conversion efficiency on the order of unity comes out of the Ginzburg-Landau theory for an extreme type II, dissipationless superconductor with minimal coupling to weak gravitational and electromagnetic radiation fields, whose frequency is smaller than the BCS gap frequency, thus satisfying the quantum adiabatic theorem. The concept of ``the impedance of free space for gravitational plane waves'' is introduced, and leads to a natural impedance-matching process, in which the two kinds of radiation fields are impedance-matched to each other around a hundred coherence lengths beneath the surface of the superconductor. A simple, Hertz-like experiment has been performed to test these ideas, and preliminary results will be reported. (PACS nos.: 03.65.Ud, 04.30.Db, 04.30.Nk, 04.80.Nn, 74.60-w, 74.72.Bk)

--Conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics and general relativity: Are there experimental consequences, e.g., superconducting transducers between electromagnetic and gravitational radiation?

Superconductivity is defined by little or no electrical resistance. Reducing resistance allows electrons to carry large amounts of electric current with minimal or no "heat loss".

Supporters of "super-conductivity" hope the new research will find obvious applications to the development of new energy sources and applications --transformers, wind generators, cables and magnetic energy storage as well as the more spectacular spin-off: intersteller space travel.

A craft with a sufficient energy source might produce gravity waves relative to a local field wherever it might be in the universe. The degree to which the generated field is either negatively or positively in or out of phase with the surrounding field, it is hoped, will get future astronauts from planet to planet, or as Klaatu ("The Day the Earth Stood Still") told an Earth-bound physicist:

Barnhardt: Have you tested this theory?
Klaatu: I find it works well enough to get me from one planet to another.

Anyone writing or speaking of the exploration of the universe cannot escape the issue of time --the time required to reach a destination, the time required to return. Anyone who has read Einstein is familiar with the "time paradox" in which a space traveler returns to earth as young as the day he/she left home only to discover that everyone else has either aged or died.

[Julian] Barbour's central argument is that a mistaken belief in the reality of time prevents physicists from achieving their ultimate goal: the unification of the submicroscopic atomic world of quantum mechanics with the vast cosmic one of general relativity. The problem arises because each theory provides a radically different conception of time, and physicists simply don't know how to reconcile the two views. Until they do, they will never have one seamless theory of the universe comprising the very smallest objects to the very largest. And certain middling-sized objects— human beings— will never understand the true nature of time and existence.

What makes the two versions of time so different? Time in the quantum realm has no remarkable properties at all. In theories of quantum mechanics, time is essentially taken for granted; it simply regularly ticks away in the background, just as it does in our own lives. Like a clock at a sporting event, it provides an invisible framework in which events unfold. That's not the case in Einstein's general theory of relativity.

To describe the universe on the largest scale, Einstein had to weave time and space together into the very fabric of the universe. As a result, in general relativity, there is no invisible framework, no clock ticking outside the universe against which to measure events. How could there be? Time and space joined together have weird consequences: Space and time curve around stars and other massive bodies and make light bend away from straight-line paths. Near black holes, time seems to slow down or even come to a full stop.

--Discover, From Here to Eternity

Time --on a craft 'surfing' the gravity waves of space-time --will have stopped. I have always liked the description of "gravity waves" --that they are ripples in the fabric of space-time. The above quoted and referenced sources lead to the inevitable conclusion that if a craft is built utilizing the interference patterns generated by dissimilar wave fronts, inter-stellar travel will be akin to surfing the universe.

Just as wave forms on an oscilloscope may be "tuned" to appear to move either forward or backward, a craft generating a "tuned" local field would be capable of moving forward, backward, up or down. If, as Einstein proposed, time is a fourth dimension, such a craft may be capable of moving freely in all four dimensions.

Also see: Truth, Time and 'Absolute Space'

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