Good riddance to the most liberal speaker of the Texas House during my lifetime. I think most of Strauss'es GOP support has vanished. Thanks to the folks with the pitchforks and the torches. You did a good thing this time.
This is a pretty big deal It still pisses me off that the only way to get rid of him was when he decided to go all on his own I have a hard time figuring out why/how the House Rs are such wimps
I wish y'all would spell his name right. There is a big difference between Straus and Strauss, for those of us with the latter as their name. A Straus tends to be much more liberal than a Strauss, for one thing.
Straus got elected Speaker when House Democrats agreed to back him with a fairly small handful of moderate Republicans. He hasn't necessarily promoted a liberal agenda, but he has watered down the conservative agenda quite a bit. Some have given him a hard time for not being pro-life enough, but his biggest disruption has been carrying water for the cities and school districts (property taxes).
I get it, but to be fair, though Judaism used to be a fairly reliable predictor of one's politics, I think that is becoming less and less true. Most Jews I know who were liberals 20 years ago lean Right today.
71% voted for HRC according to the WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/exit-polls/
Too bad. I for one don't think it good that all power in Texas belongs to the right wing of the Republican Party. There is some serious weirdness that Straus prevented. The bad for business bathroom bill, and not consenting to hear a bill that would criminalize TSA screeners from doing their jobs are a couple that come to mind.
A Yeah, but look at the historic trend over the last 25 years. Jewish support for Democrats has been falling. They got a 2 point bump in 2016 over 2012, but considering that Trump was associated with the alt-Right (some of which is anti-Semitic), that's actually pretty pathetic. Long term, it's a demographic that is moving in our direction. It's not a fast movement, but it's happening. Is the GOP going to carry New York anytime soon? No, but is the movement enough to make Florida easier to win? Absolutely.
Dem speakers for years were elected by a cabal of republicans and conservative democrats and so Straus getting picked by dems and moderate Republicans is not so different. No left wing legislation got passed during his sessions. Very little of the crazy right wing stuff got passed. This state is a mix of liberal and conservative and the right wing wants the government to be whole hog for the more conservative side. I did not like Abortion Barbie or Abbott. Now it looks like I get the equivalent of Abbott or Patrick. Real thrilled.
.............and prevented the gutting of public school finance at the same time. The proponents of the relief did not explain how schools and municipalities would be financed if their schemes had been enacted. There was no viable explanation.
Yeah, I don't want to give Dan Patrick the ability to make the Lewisville Independent School district have facilities, programs and pay scales like they have in Oklahoma. I like having good schools, good teachers, good administrators and don't mind paying a hefty tax rate to have them.
If your kids were attending "Christian Academies" like God planned then that would not be of any concern to you, Crockett
where would the money to replace those revenues come from? The knuckledraggers behind the reforms never said. Maybe it would grow on trees or just come with a wave of a wand? If there is an answer, please provide a link so I can educate myself. I do respect your opinions and would appreciate one of your usual intelligent posts on the subject.
The impression I had during the session was that this was just another attempt to defund a governmental function. The kids could go to religious schools.
I too want good schools but the rate of increase has gotten out of hand. My area has seen huge increase in the last few years. I'm a couple of years away from hitting a threshold where my property taxes will actually be higher than my mortgage payment. That's ludicrous. They aren't putting in new streets, I'm not getting any more services for my money but they are raising my taxes like crazy. And the people doing it aren't the mayor, city council etc, they are these bureaucrats that are relatively insulated from the voters.
That's the point. They were going to be reined in. Nobody was going to make up the "lost" revenue, and it's in quotes, because we're talking about rollback elections for INCREASES greater than a certain percentage. If we're talking about increases, terms like "gutting" are grossly hyperbolic and deceptive.
We can already do rollback elections. What I don't want is a state decision to reduce local property taxes.
I've found that well funded districts have a lot of assistant principals and assistant superintendents. These extra bureaucrats do little to improve the quality of education in a district. Private schools do much better with much, much less money.
We can do roll back elections like we can amend the federal Constitution to overturn the US Supreme Court. It's way too hard to do to be a meaningful check. As for the state making tax decisions, a few things to keep in mind. First, if the roll back elections fail, the municipality is making the decision, not the state. All the state is doing is forcing the local governments to get the consent of its constituents before enacting a large tax increase. Second, I'd be much more sympathetic to the local control argument when it comes to property taxes if local governments were elected in the same manner as the state government - in partisan elections held in November of even-numbered years and therefore had meaningful turnout. If your turnout is less than ten percent, it's very hard to claim that you represent the will of the people.
Yeah, when you don't have to deal with difficult kids -- except to tell them to get lost -- it's a lot easier to educate.
Public schools are their own problem. One of my daughters teachers said they literally can't do anything to discipline disobedient students these days. They are only allowed to offer rewards for good behavior. They can get onto a student verbally but without any true ways to end bad behavior the bad students control the mood in the class. I know many public schools are good and there are many good teachers. But as a whole the public school system needs to go away. We as a society can do better.
I know of several schools....4A schools and smaller...who have a principal for every grade. What a waste.