Top Stories
- $86,000 for Chick-Fil-A – but can the children read? – Blue Dot Blues
On the front page of today’s Dallas Morning News, highly visible despite Mike Rawlings’ mayoral victory thanks to a Tom Thumb coupon ad, was perhaps the most illuminating and damning story about school district waste since the credit card scandal in Dallas ISD. Found in Dallas ISD’s checkbook register for the last four years by intrepid DMN reporters was $57 million in wasteful, absurd spending – an amount that could save over 1000 teacher jobs.
Among the cacophonous cries about the state legislature’s “failure” to “fully fund” Texas schools, you rarely hear so much as a whimper over how school districts spend the money they get, be it taxpayer dollars for M&O, bond packages, or state and federal money. Dallas ISD is one of the largest districts in the state, and plagued by scandal, corruption, and failure year after year. This exposé should be reprinted and redistributed across the state, to teachers, parents, activists, and legislators (it is, sadly, behind the DMN’s subscriber-only firewall online, but I’ll hit some highlights for you).
This sort of waste isn’t confined to Dallas ISD. In Houston, Matt Bramanti regularly highlights (lowlights?) similar examples of food spending in the Houston ISD check register.
- Perry adds anti-groping bill to special session agenda – Postcards
- Amazon.com negotiating deal to stay in Texas – Fort Worth Star-Telegram
- Emerging Technology Fund needs sunshine if it’s going to exist at all – Jordan Brownwood, Texas Budget Source
Texans for President!
- Perry's Perfect Positioning – Jonathan Gurwitz, RealClearPolitics
- Texan Perry Sizes Up Roadblocks to GOP Bid – Neil King and Patrick O'Connor, WSJ.com
- Is it too late for Rick Perry to get into presidential race? – Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor
- Texas delegation presses Perry to run – Michael O'Brien, The hill
- Rick Perry aids prepped for rumor rehash – Maggie Haberman, Politico
- GOP magic trick: Making Bush vanish – Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, Politico
- Does Rick Perry have his own Dukakis problem? – Steve Kornacki, Salon
- Why Ron Paul keeps winning straw polls – Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
Recommended
- Windstorm reform bill stalls in Senate committee – Mark Lisheron, Texas Watchdog
- Video of Burka and Blakeslee talking to Evan Smith about Best/Worst lists – BurkaBlog
- Failure to fix Texas budget leaves problems for later – Peggy Fikac, Houston Chronicle
By “fix” the lockstep Texas political media typically mean raise taxes and increase spending. - Family planning targeted by state – Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, San Antonio Express-News
Why is it so hard to understand that many conservatives don’t see any good reason for the state to subsidize abortion providers, directly or indirectly? - A false argument “reframed” – Cory Crow, Texas Iconoclast
- A Drug-War Plan Goes Awry – Mary Anastasia O'Grady, WSJ.com
- A 'Fast and Furious' border fiasco – Michael A. Walsh, New York Post