GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





BVCLU Annual Meeting next Sunday, December 2

Dear BVCLU board members, and friends of civil liberties -

Just a friendly reminder to attend the BVCLU Annual Meeting next Sunday, December 2, at the house of Patrick Burkart & David Riddle, at 3 p.m., at 3204 Wilderness Road, Bryan, 77807.

Our membership is over 325 in the Brazos Valley! On December 2, we will elect a new board, conduct a regular monthly meeting, and hold a social for chapter members. Bryan Chief of Police Ty Morrow plans to attend. This is a unique opportunity to cast your vote for the BVCLU board, and to meet other civil libertarians.

We will serve tapas and drinks after the business meeting.

Please invite another BVCLU member, or bring a new member to join.

Please reply with a YES in the email body if you plan to attend, and indicate the number in your party. Please reply NO in the email body if you cannot attend.

Best wishes,
Patrick Burkart
BVCLU President





Kyle invited you to "For The Bible Tells Me So Screening" on Thursday, January 31 at 6:30pm.

From: Kyle Walker

Kyle says, "Thought this might be something to note in a weekly e-mail now and/or as it gets closer. It features the Dick Gephardt family whose daughter Chrissy is a lesbian.".

Event: For The Bible Tells Me So Screening
What: Workshop
Host: United Campus Ministry In Aggieland
When: Thursday, January 31 at 6:30pm
Where: Friends Congregational Church

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://tamu.facebook.com/p.php?i=8322822&k=43FX6V5R3WTAWFBASKW5

Everyone can join Facebook. To register, go to:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=8322822&k=43FX6V5R3WTAWFBASKW5&r

Thanks,
The Facebook Team





Stand Up for Science Action Alert

Politics at TEA Undermines 21st Century Education for Texas Kids

In an alarming development, political attacks on science may now be undermining the work of professional staff at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). For more than a decade, the Texas Freedom Network has worked to counter attacks on sound science education by a radical faction of State Board of Education members. That far-right faction – now more powerful than ever before – has persistently pushed to undermine the teaching of evolution and promote “creationism” in public school science classes. Now it appears that this anti-science agenda is infecting the TEA itself.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that TEA’s science curriculum director has been forced out after she forwarded an e-mail about an expert on “intelligent design” speaking in Austin. The expert, Dr. Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University, has written extensively about a Pennsylvania school board sued for requiring that students learn about “intelligent design” as an alternative “theory” to evolution. A federal judge ruled in 2005 that “intelligent design” is essentially biblical creationism dressed up in a cynical attempt to look like science. As a result, he wrote, it has no place in a public school science classroom.

But rather than commending the science curriculum director for responsibly monitoring the issue, TEA political appointees demanded that she resign or be fired. Even worse, this action comes as TEA and the State Board of Education begin a major revision of our public school science curriculum standards!

The American-Statesman published excerpts of internal memos showing that the demand to fire the director came from a former Bush administration political appointee who now serves as a deputy director at TEA. Other memos detail reasons for the firing. "Ms. Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral,” reads one TEA memo.

Outrageous! There is nothing “neutral” about remaining silent when anti-evolution pressure groups promote agendas – like teaching “intelligent design”/creationism in public schools – that have nothing to do with sound science. Texas schoolchildren deserve better than a 19th-century education in their 21st-century classrooms!


What Can You Do?

1) Read the full article in the American-Statesman.

2) Write a letter to the editor and explain why you support a 21st century education for our Texas schoolchildren.

3) Join the Texas Freedom Network’s Stand Up for Science campaign! TFN will keep you informed about efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution as well as attacks on responsible sex education in public schools and promising medical research using stem cells. We will give you the tools and information you need to take action against efforts to undermine sound science in Texas.

4) Donate to TFN and help us counter the far right’s relentless assault on sound science in Texas.





Subject: Preparing for Next Legis Session 11/29/07

Texas House Speaker Starts Handing Out Interim Homework

Assignments for Committees

Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick today announced about one-third of his interim study assignments for House committees, with the rest of these so-called committee "charges" due to come out over the next two days. Several of the topics assigned today involve important questions affecting public education and educators.

For instance, the House Pensions and Investments Committee will "evaluate the possibility of requiring the state and employee contribution rate to meet the annually required contribution for the statewide retirement funds each biennium in order to prevent unfunded liabilities." We'll see what this opaque language really means, but it may actually be something like the proposal espoused by Sen. Robert Duncan, Republican of Lubbock, that would make future benefit increases for retired school employees depend entirely on investment earnings rather than increased state contributions.

The Pensions and Investments panel also will be responsible for "exploring options for funding other post-employment benefits." Here we're talking mainly about retiree health benefits, which in Texas have always been funded on a pay-as-you-go basis each biennium. A discussion of the need for more than a stopgap retiree health program would be welcome, so long as it does not become the springboard for proposed cuts in benefits and increases in employee costs. (Since the state capped its share of retiree health costs in 2003--another Duncan initiative--retired and active employees are bearing the lion's share of TRS-Care costs already.)

Together with the Committee on Government Reform, the pensions committee also will "assess the feasibility of combining prescription drug programs of state health insurance programs." This charge could address the potential for increased economies of scale. But it also could be an invitation to reduce drug benefits to the lowest common denominator of what's currently offered in the state's various health programs.

Speaker Craddick handed a charge with potentially major implications for education funding to the House Committee on Appropriations, the budget-writing committee. The speaker directs the committee to "examine alternative spending limit methodologies found among the various states as they impact state and local spending and recommend potential changes to the Texas budget process to bring long-term, innovative strategies to control costs of major governmental programs." The speaker's office issued an accompanying press release that notes "several legislators are interested in passing an even stricter spending limit" than under current law. Last session we had to fight off multiple attempts to impose new constitutional and statutory limits on state spending that were not coupled with any assurance of adequate funding of education, health, or other basic needs. This interim charge presages a similar push for new spending limits in the 2009 session.





Texas AFT 11/29/07: Cavalcade of false choices

John Young, Waco Tribune-Herald
Sunday, November 18, 2007

In Texas, where $100-a-barrel oil makes the wealthy wealthier, the Legislature pleads poverty. So, Texas sticks a chromium drill bit into the pockets of college students to balance its budget.

In Washington, at budget time President Bush quibbles over millions. Meanwhile, the cost of invading, pacifying, occupying and reconstructing Iraq ranges between $700 billion and, oh, $2 trillion.

Guess who gets to pay for that? Yes, it’s you students. It won’t be your parents.

If I were a collegian, I’d be marching in the streets. The only problem would be choosing what to protest. Hmm. A $9 trillion national debt gift-wrapped for me? A war of choice sold as a necessity?

My head would be spinning by the debates in Washington as our president, after seven years of government on credit, puts his foot down over water projects, veterans affairs and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Last week he accused Congress of “acting like a teenager.”

Well, Mr. President, however teen-agers are acting with their spending desires, they are emulating you and yours.

And remember that it was you who advised that the American thing to do after Sept. 11 was go shopping.

It is stunning. This president suddenly is all about hard fiscal choices. That’s a little like Britney Spears lecturing Dr. Phil on parenting (with her children strapped unattended in the SUV in the parking lot.) Choices? What we see are false choices. And indefensible.

From Austin comes word that students at the University of Texas could face a 13 percent tuition hike over the next two years. This after dramatic tuition hikes at all state colleges over the last four years.

It’s the result of deregulating state tuition in a sweeping Republican effort in 2003 to deconstruct state government. Oh, yes, and to cut billions of dollars in the face of a short-term shortfall.

Shortfall? Why? Because Texas lacks wealth?

What Texas lacks is backbone to acknowledge that its tax system doesn’t reflect its economy. So, it relies oh-so-heavily on regressive fiscal pranks like one of the nation’s highest sales taxes, a state lottery, and ever-higher cigarette taxes.

A state income tax that would reduce sales taxes and property taxes and spread the burden evenly to fund what we need? Perish that thought. Too smart.

Back in Washington, the notion of actually paying for the wars we wage appears out of the question. Instead, we resort to picking nits in ways that don’t come close to securing our economic future.

Congressman David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, has floated a bill by which Congress would not authorize new war spending without a surtax to pay for it.

White House spokesman Dana Perino responded that Democrats “are willing to raise taxes on just about anything.”

So irresponsible: to seek actual revenues to pay for your war. What do you think, kids?

Lest Perino worry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi poured cold water on the idea. No war surtax.

There, there, folks. Whoever expected this, the credit-card generation, to pay for anything?

John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.





Brazos County Democratic Party
P.O. Box 4568
Bryan Texas 77805
979-779-5600 Fax 979-779-5601

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States of America