Two days ago Austin Democratic Judge John Dietz sided with Democrats in a decision that public schools need even more tax money. To make matters worse for taxpayers, there is still a legislative session at hand in which educrats have been empowered by Joe Straus.
Straus has done his part to ward off reform to the public education system in Texas, a system that is broken in one sense and high-performance in another. It is broken for the purposes of education, but it is lean, mean, and high performance as a political special interest juggernaut.
The 2013 Public Education Committee is comprised entirely of Democrats and educrat-sympathizing establishment Republicans. New chairman Jimmie Don Aycock was endorsed by Parent PAC in 2008, and his appointment has made liberal bloggers quite happy. Appointments only go downhill from there.
Democrats on the committee include Vice Chair Alma Allen, who received campaign money from Parent PAC in 2012, Justin Rodriquez, a 2012 Parent PAC endorsee, Joe Deshotel, Harold Dutton and Mike Villarreal. These members are all aligned with the anti-reform efforts of the liberal Parent PAC.
All but one Republican members- John Davis – are also Parent PAC lackeys.
Marsha Farney, most recently a member of the State Board of Education, received money from Parent PAC funder Charles Butt to help her beat a conservative in a 2010 runoff. Her two year SBOE tenure saw her pitted against conservative members of the board.
Rounding out the committee are Dan Huberty, a Parent PAC alum from 2010, and two freshmen – Bennett Ratliff and Ken King.
Ratliff is the son of former moderate Lt. Governor Bill Ratliff and brother of embattled SBOE member Thomas Ratliff. Ken King, was gifted a district redrawn to rid Straus of an adversary, but had a much-harder-than-expected fight on his hands from conservative Jim Landtroop.
Yesterday, phony grassroots group Texas Conservative Roundtable hosted an establishment get-together in Austin. According to the Texas Tribune’s executive editor, this group with Straus ties was formed to undermine conservatives.
At the event Jim Craymer said:
“This is sort of his goodbye wave to the state (for Judge Deitz). Whether he waved with all five fingers rather than just a subset is a matter of debate”
According to the DMN, the crowd laughed.
The ruling is a hat-tip to the room full of grow-government cronies, and a middle finger to taxpayers.