Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Nate Blakeslee and Paul Burka of Texas Monthly, explaining their list of best and worst legislators in the Texas Legislature for 2011.
On the budget, we have tried to recognize the members who made the best of a bad situation. And the worst? As usual, they picked themselves.
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry during a FOX News interview, responding to a question about his popularity in his home state.
I say that a prophet is generally not loved in their hometown. That’s both Biblical and practical.
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Mark Miner, spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, explaining why his boss didn’t want to talk about his surprisingly small church donations despite years of efforts to put his faith on display in events such as a planned August prayer extravaganza he is hosting with the hate-group American Family Association this August in Houston.
He never talks about his faith.
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Rick Scarborough, president of Texas-based religious-right organization Vision America, on Gov. Rick Perry’s appeal as a presidential candidate to far-right Republicans.
There is no perfect candidate. Even Jesus got crucified.
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Eric Bearse, event spokesman for the hate group American Family Association and who is a former speech writer for Gov. Rick Perry, said that although “The Response” is a Christian service, it is open to all faiths and traditions.
A lot of people want to criticize what we’re doing, as if we’re somehow being exclusive of other faiths. But anyone who comes to this solemn assembly regardless of their faith tradition or background, will feel the love, grace, and warmth of Jesus Christ in that assembly hall, in that arena. And that’s what we want to convey, that there’s acceptance and that there’s love and that there’s hope if people will seek out the living Christ. And that’s the message we want to spread on August 6th.
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Pamela Arnold, speaking of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann who this week filed paperwork to seek the presidency in 2012.
What an amazing imagination. Her ideology is so powerful that she can construct a reality just on a moment’s notice.
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Texas state Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, commenting on legislation that would allow school districts to furlough teachers and prevent use of the state’s rainy day fund to cover projected student enrollment growth.
I think the budget crisis has been an excuse to do things to schools that they always wanted to do.
we have the most technology, the “smartest teachers”, the best schools, and whats it gotten us ?,
the least educated and the worst possible students…….NEA, you should be proud, …
Ink-k-k-k-k-k-k-!!! Wrong. We have the most technology, rural school systems that cannot afford it, the dumbest teachers, school buildings in decay, unmotivated kids ashamed of knowledge, and parents who don’t give a flying piece of cow pie about whether their kids learn anything. Pass the crack pipe.
Hey, Chief, I took the time to check out your blog. The first comment I found was as follows:
“If your reading this blog,I know this Chief_Cabioch personally,or I did.See I felt sorry for him and hired him to remodel my home.I am out $6k dollars,the van hes driving,I paid for it.He didnt work and refused to bring my property back.So,you really think anything he says is important?”
Well Ben, if you think you have a Case, why dont you persue it in Court, the alledged Van is in MY name, I pay all the Taxes , Insurance and up keep, and as I recall, you bought a house you didnt bother to inspect for some friends after you fleeced a Trucking Co. for a wreck that didnt really hurt you, or keep you from doing anything , and then Hired me to come see what it would take, then when you found how stupid you were and how bad the house was, you thought you’d make me pay for my own trip to texas to help you out for free……good luck …I have pictures of the House. and if you think I am going to Move at MY Expense to Texas to help someone at MY expense Fix a house she bought site unseen for friends and they couldnt get a loan you are a moron. good luck.
Chief, you misread Ben’s comment. It doesn’t appear he was your client. Regardless, this particular discussion on this thread ends here.
Charles, there are simply Hundreds of cases throwing money at schools and teachers havent worked, it isnt the Teachers it isnt the buildings it’s the curiculum, they are teaching kids anything but what they need to get jobs, go through life and make their way a sucessful people, not teaching kids the US Constitution, and filling them wiuth Sex education is NOT working, ever since the NEA took control of our schools ….they have gone off a cliff……hows that working for you ?….as a Liberal Progreessive I am betting you are ok with it, and more money will make it all better…
Chief:
I would warn you against forming too many stereotypical opinions about the people who post at TFN Insider. You are likely to end up with some measure of disappointment. There is a significant range of viewpoints that gets expressed here by various posters. We all just agree on one basic premise. Pat Robertson and much of what he believes are bad for America, adults, children, squirrels, toilet bowls, and electric toasters.
As you probably know, numerous educational studies have shown that the correlation between pumping money into schools and getting a great education is fairly low. If you apply yourself as a student, you can get a great education in a school with little money. Similarly, if you do not apply yourself as a student in that same poor school or in a filthy rich school, you will be a bad student and not learn anything.
Personally, I believe in what conservatives refer to as “personal responsibility” when it comes to education, but with one other factor thrown into the mix. It takes responsible school teachers/administrators, responsible students, and responsible parents. That other thing is that the kid has to have some brains. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (and the editors that irritated him so much) said that “all men are created equal.” He did not mean that all men really are created equal. He meant that all men are created equal before the law. Peyton Manning will tell you right now that most of the quarterbacks in the NFL were not created equal to him, and he would be right. It’s in the Manning family genes, as well as in their shirt pockets.
This brains thing was brought home to me in the 10th grade when I was helping an old friend of mine study for a biology exam on the bones in the human body. He usually made bad grades. Tired of it, he asked me to come over one night and help him study for the test. This was not your usual study session where you talk about girls for 55 minutes of every hour and spend 5 minutes on their bones. We were serious. We went after it like demons for 5 hours. In those sessions, it was clear to me that my friend was trying very hard, but he was naturally limited in what we were doing. We had the test the next day in class, and he scored 81 on the test. That was a C. It was better than usual, but it was clear that he was never going to make an A or B—no matter how hard he tried. (Someone with an active mind is going to lose their coffee and keyboard over this paragraph.)
To reiterate, it takes all three: responsible teachers, responsible students, and responsible parents + kid brains. Regardless of political party, politicians are going after teachers as if they are 100 percent of the problem for two good reasons:
Number 1
The politicians can reach out and touch the teachers/administrators because they are part of the government school system. They have no “culturally acceptable” way of reaching out and touching the responsibility of students, the responsibility of their parents, or the amount of brains in a kid’s head. I said “culturally acceptable” because other nations have ways of motivating their kids to learn that would never be accepted here.
During the 12th grade, I had an American-born WASP civics teacher who had just come back from several months of teaching and observing in the South Korean school system. He also had horror stories. Students who misbehaved or did not try hard in school were subject to punishment with a 2 X 4. Now, just to be clear, I am not talking about the traditional American paddling. Instead, the teacher or administrator applied bone shattering blows to the back (vertebrae of the back—not the pelvis) of the student with a piece of stud lumber. We are talking blows that had the power to send a person to the hospital and physically disable them for life. If I recall correctly, he had seen it administered at least once. Our teacher was careful to point out that this measure was applied only rarely because the students are almost always well-behaved and try their hardest with the books. Wonder why?
Number 2
Whether it is conscious or subconscious, most Americans despise public school teachers because of a lingering feeling that they were treated meanly and unjustly in the classroom during their K-12 years. “Did you bring enough chewing gum for everyone in class?” The standard answer was, “Uh, no.” This was usually followed by the teacher screaming at you, harsh orders to take the gum to the trash can, and utter humiliation in front of one’s peers. The student always wanted to say: “Shove it up your behind and chew on it there you old bag!!!” Alas, that was impossible.
That was long ago and the old bag is probably dead now, but we sense that new “old bags” are probably climbing the ladders even now in our public schools. What can we do as adult citizens to make their lives as miserable as those dead old bags made ours 40 years ago? Hence, the widespread disdain for public school teachers—and politicians more than willing to make hay out of it.
To be honest with you Chief, I am not sure that public education was ever unbroken in the United States. From what I saw in the 1950s and 1960s, it was broken back then. Most of the adults I knew, people born between 1879 and 1930, were poorly educated and regularly displayed the evidence of it in their daily lives. We act as if we are trying to fix an educational system that was once whole and perfect. I suspect we are really trying to do what the old song says: “Trying to recreate that which is yet to be created.”