Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

Amarillo Globe-News. Feb. 28, 2017.

Despite knee-jerk reactions by some segments of the media, President Donald Trump’s recent reversal of former President Barack Obama’s mandate that public schools must allow students to use the bathroom of their choice - ignoring science and biology - is not an attack.

And as of right now, Trump’s revocation changes nothing - a fact that seems to missed by many.

While Obama somehow interpreted federal law (Title IX) to mean that public school students can choose for themselves what sex they are (disregarding science and biology) and use restroom facilities accordingly, it should be noted that Obama’s mandate was on hold - more or less.

As many as 13 states had a problem with the federal government deciding how public school students use the restroom, and the legal battle was in the early stages. Trump’s revocation of Obama’s order means - for now - that nothing has changed.

Here’s the problem with what the Obama administration was attempting:

Where is the exact authority under the U.S. Constitution granting the federal government power over how public school students use restroom facilities? Granted, the Founding Fathers would have had to possess clairvoyance of astounding magnitude to predict a social agenda that includes American children determining for themselves whether they are male or female. Still, this degree of federal authority over the states does not exist in the U.S. Constitution.

How the Obama order fits in with Title IX law is murky, at best. This law does not pertain to the term “gender identity,” or which sex a people considers themselves to be.

It should not be overlooked that the Obama administration also determined that public school students could choose to participate in athletic events based on their so-called gender identity - or whether they determined themselves to be male or female. To say that this stipulation opens a legal and social can of worms is an understatement. If this nation has reached the point where boys and girls cannot be separated to compete in athletic events (for reasons that are scientifically obvious), then political correctness has run amok.

The point is the federal government has no say in dictating to states, much less individual school districts, how public school students use the rest room. It is time the federal government governed according to the U.S. Constitution and not according to the social agenda of a political party.

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Houston Chronicle. Feb. 28, 2017.

At long last, the Texas Legislature finally found a bullet it didn’t like.

Plans for a Houston-to-Dallas bullet train face political obstruction in Austin. More than 20 bills have been filed that would slow the steady progress on this privately funded project that could transform 3-5 hours of start-and-stop traffic into a 90-minute ride.

Put a cowcatcher on the front of that locomotive, because it is about to run into a whole lot of bull.

Rural legislators are throwing everything they can find to stop this investment in our state’s two largest economic centers, not to mention the halfway stop near College Station. Opposition groups say they’re worried the rail project will eventually require public financial support. Or that the owner, Texas Central Partners, will exploit eminent domain, which can force the sale of private property. Or that the whole thing will simply disrupt a rural landscape.

Particularly confusing are bills like SB 979 and HB 2179, filed last week, that specifically prohibit a private, high-speed rail project from utilizing eminent domain - as if a slower, louder, taxpayer-funded train would be fine.

Legitimate criticism exists over Texas’ eminent domain laws, but the need for across-the-board reform is no excuse to stop a single project.

At its core, this opposition to high-speed rail is just another case of NIMBYism - Not In My Backyard. It is a philosophy that blinds people to the world beyond their own home and prevents lawmakers from imagining a future beyond the next election cycle.

If only our state could boast a class of political leaders like those that Houston had a century ago. When Houston was founded, we were nothing more than a muddy town on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. By the turn of the 20th century, we were the city where 17 railroads met the sea.

Investment in transportation infrastructure put Houston at a nexus of industry, commerce and travel. Through work and planning, Houston set itself up to become an indispensable core of growth and success, the connection between a vast inland empire of oil and agriculture and the Port of Houston’s access to the greater globe. And, yes, plenty of that rail and port construction required the use of eminent domain.

But if today’s politicians had been in charge back then, we’d be the city where nothing met nada. Now they’re setting us up for a future where our economic growth will be restricted by lagging infrastructure.

Houston is burdened by a statewide political system beholden to imaginary fears that one day, maybe, taxpayers might end up spending money to support a privately funded rail project. That’s in contrast to, say, the money taxpayers absolutely will have to spend expanding and maintaining the roads, freeways and airports that connect the nation’s fourth and fifth largest economic centers.

Texas Central Partners wants to spend $12 billion of investors’ dollars in a high-speed rail system. It is hard to imagine another time when Texans didn’t want a business to spend billions of dollars in our state.

It is time to put imaginary fears to rest and focus on the reality of a state in need of new transportation infrastructure. Our state legislators must brush aside the rail opponents, stare the future of our state head-on and bite the bullet. Support high-speed rail for Texas.

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Star-Telegram. Feb. 28, 2017.

Kent Scribner was hired as superintendent of the 86,000-student Fort Worth school district 18 months ago with one overarching goal: improving student performance, especially at the nearly two dozen schools that failed to meet state educational measures.

It’s clear Scribner is doggedly determined to succeed.

He quickly picked student literacy as the place to start. Only 30 percent of Fort Worth third-graders read at grade level, a key to future academic success.

Last fall, the school district and other city leaders and philanthropic organizations launched the Fort Worth Literacy Partnership, aiming for 100 percent of third-graders reading at grade level by 2025.

Scribner recently laid out his next initiative.

He wants to turn five of the district’s chronically under-performing schools into leadership academies, recruiting teams of the district’s top teachers and principals and devoting extra resources, including more money, to turn those schools around.

The effort will be backed by a $1 million grant from the Richard Rainwater Charitable Foundation.

The targets: Mitchell Boulevard Elementary and Forest Oak Middle School in southeast Fort Worth, John T. White Elementary on the east side, Como Elementary on the west and Logan Elementary in Stop Six.

Students at each of those schools are at least 90 percent minority, at least 80 percent economically disadvantaged and have high mobility rates, meaning 20 percent to 40 percent change schools before the end of the academic year.

District administrators are building a list of about 200 teachers and principals with the district’s best track records for improving student performance. About 150 of them will be offered jobs at the new leadership academies - with a $10,000 pay raise for teachers and $15,000 for principals.

Enrichment activities and tutoring will extend the academy day until 5:30 p.m. Students will wear uniforms. Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be available.

Scribner will help get parents involved. School buildings will receive face-lifts.

This sort of thing has worked elsewhere. In fact, an elementary school initiative worked in Fort Worth in the late 1990s.

Bet on Scribner to make it work this time, too.

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San Antonio Express-News. Feb. 28, 2017.

The future is bright for clean energy in Texas. That’s the message from a recent Environmental Defense Fund report, which once again highlights Texas’ clean energy strengths.

We are the nation’s leading producer in wind energy. Back in 2005, state officials, including former Gov. Rick Perry, now head of the U.S. Department of Energy, saw how building transmission infrastructure would open the market for affordable wind energy. It made for good environmental and economic policy.

In some instances, wind energy is producing electricity cheaper than other options in parts of Texas and many Midwestern states, and without subsidies, according to a recent study from the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute.

We are also blessed with an abundance of sunshine for solar power, a technology that will almost certainly become less expensive over time, experts have said. This portends strong growth as reflected in shifting solar power projections from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. In 2014, ERCOT projected solar would account for 6 percent of Texas’ power mix in 2030. But in 2016, that estimate jumped to 16 percent. At present, it’s less than 1 percent.

And, of course, Texas is home to one-third of the country’s natural gas reserves, a far cleaner and cheaper alternative to coal. A 2016 Brattle Group report for the Texas Clean Energy Coalition found that by 2035, 85 percent of our energy mix will come from renewable and natural gas sources. The Brattle Group also found that by letting market forces play out, carbon dioxide emissions in Texas in 2035 will be 28 percent below 2005 levels.

Mix in improved energy efficiency - Texas is arguably the state with the most room for improvement - and the path forward is clear even without federal guidance.

While Texas has not set aggressive regulatory clean energy standards, it does have an opportunity to model the power of market forces to achieve the same goal. For those opposed to burdensome regulations, Texas could be a model for another way to promote clean energy.

Coal production is on the decline. Old and inefficient coal power plants can’t compete with cleaner natural gas plants. Solar is untapped, and technology is driving down costs. Those state leaders who find regulations anathema should focus on market forces to cultivate clean energy. In the absence of regulation, put the argument to good use.

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Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Feb. 28, 2017.

It didn’t take genius or clairvoyance to predict that the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump would relinquish its role in fighting Texas’ discriminatory voter ID law. We warned five weeks ago to expect it. Trump had just thrown a huge tantrum over imagined vote fraud because he couldn’t imagine another plausible explanation for Hillary Clinton’s 3 million popular-vote victory. A legally inclined 4-year-old could have guessed what would come next.

Sure enough, the announcement Feb. 27, the eve of a court date in which U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi would hear arguments whether the Texas law’s discriminatory effect was intentional. Confirmation of our clairvoyant genius was of absolutely no solace. We were not prepared for the shock of actually seeing the so-called Justice Department abdicate its role as a fighter for justice, defender of voting rights and protector of oppressed minorities. Sessions has wasted no time proving that he is what the late Coretta Scott King warned about 31 years ago in that famous letter.

We’ve heard repeatedly that the Justice Department backing out now won’t affect the case going forward. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, stacked with conservatives, upheld Ramos’ finding that the law was discriminatory. The appeals court balked at whether the discrimination was intentional but gave Ramos a second chance to establish it. And the Supreme Court declined to review the appeals court ruling.

But that’s of little consolation. Yes, the lawyers for the plaintiffs are fully capable of taking it from here. The concern is about the easily predictable future under a Trump administration that has no concern or respect for the people whose rights were attacked by the voter ID law.

If our word choices sound hyperbolic, they’re not. We don’t consider the broad concept of requiring photo identification to be inherently discriminatory. That wasn’t the problem with the law passed in 2011.

The problem was its deliberately restrictive options for what constituted valid identification for voting. A student couldn’t use a student ID and an employee of a public entity or private company couldn’t use a workplace ID. An expired driver’s license also wasn’t acceptable. But a voter could use a valid driver’s license, passport, military ID or concealed-handgun license.

All of those accepted forms of ID might seem reasonable, and they are. But they are harder for low-income people to obtain than middle- and high-income people might assume. The law included a provision for a free state-issued ID, but the documentation required to obtain one wasn’t cheap and neither was the trip to the offices where they are issued.

Evidence that has become part of the court record established that more than 600,000 registered voters - not 600,000 undocumented immigrants or longtime residents of a cemetery - lacked the accepted ID. What has not been established, but that both sides probably would concede over drinks in a bar, is that 599,000 or more of them were likely Democratic voters when the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature sent the bill to the Republican governor to sign.

Oh, and lest we forget, the other evidence missing in this case is actual in-person fraudulent voting. Nobody seems able to find cases of people voting in other people’s place, in person - the kind of fraud that a voter ID law could prevent.

The prospects of establishing discriminatory intent are real, with or without the Justice Department’s help. And the finding of discriminatory effect doesn’t appear vulnerable. So, no, the Justice Department’s decision probably won’t affect the court outcome of this case.

But an aggressive Justice Department fighting for justice could affect the remedy. Current pending legislation would codify Ramos’ remedies for the general election - allowing voters who lacked the approved forms of ID to show alternative ID or non-photo documentation such as utility bills or pay stubs if they can’t reasonably obtain proper ID. It’s a step in the right direction except for the needlessly harsh criminal penalties - as long as 10 years in prison - for claiming the exemption when a voter has proper ID. The threat of prison time would cause the kind of chilling effect that gave the law its discriminatory effect. It’s in the same mean, discriminatory spirit.

The path to victory in the Texas case is a consolation. But the easily predictable immediate future in the never-ending fight for voting rights makes us shudder. Shame on the Trump-Sessions Justice Department for calling itself a Justice Department.