Screw Greg Abbott {Texas Governor}

Mexico, NEW Mexico… potato, po-TAH-to.

Abbott says he’ll consider adding teacher pay raises to the special session-- but only if the school voucher bill passes, the bastard.

Teachers were the only state employees that didn’t get a pay raise during the regular session of the legislature.

Is the razor wire to keep immigrants out or women with unwanted pregnancies in?

I think New Mexico should put containers across the road at every state and local highway that crosses into Texas. Don’t let any Texans into NM. “What is your reason for entering New Mexico?” “I’m going to see my doctor.” “You have to fill out a form on line, It takes two weeks to process, Have a nice day. Come back when the paperwork is ready.”

The major idiocy with that installation–well, besides all the other obvious ones–is that if somebody really wanted to cross the Mexico-New Mexico border and then go from New Mexico to Texas is that I-10 is wide open from El Paso to somewhere between Las Cruces and Deming. Maybe somebody has to make it through the New Mexico side up to Anthony before heading south again.

Except for maybe people from El Paso, this would have quite a large base of support in large parts of the state.

Thread title? No thanks.

Once again, Greggy got shot down on his #1 priority with the Legislature – implementing a system of school vouchers to strip funding from public schools and hand it over to homeschoolers and religious schools with little-to-no accountability. The same coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans who have consistently opposed school vouchers managed to strip them out of a larger bill that would increase public school funding and teacher compensation.

Despite threats to support primary opponents for those who oppose him on this, he only flipped four Republicans his way – and one flipped the other way. Ha, ha, fuck you Greg.

Hopefully Republicans in Texas (and elsewhere) are keeping a close eye on what’s happening with school voucher programs in other states:

tl;dr - budgets are being overrun; lots of fraud happening. It’s the Republican grift daily double!

I assume it’s mostly because there are so few options in their districts; how do voucher programs address places like that? Besides shrug?

It’s only shrug because the whole idea is to gut public schools so only the well off are educated. Just ask betsy deVoss.

In Texas, schools are funded by property taxes imposed by the several Independent School Districts (ISDs). It is done this way because the Texas Constitution prohibits the state from levying taxes on property or income. The individual ISDs do have the authority of levying property taxes, and that is how schools are funded.

Unfortunately, this has the effect of districts with high-priced property collecting a lot of tax revenue and those with low-priced property collecting much less. The problem is the Texas Constitution has the State assume the requirement of “support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools” and unequal funding of public schools runs afoul of the 14th Amendment.

Instead of being rational and amending the State Constitution to allow for state-wide funding of public schools, the Texas Ledg opted for a “Robin Hood Plan” where they would take monies from the well-funded districts and reallocate it to the lesser-funded districts. I know, sounds like socialism.

This plan has gone through several modifications and even been codified in the State Constitution, but it remains that the districts with high-value property have some of their property taxes siphoned off to fund those districts with low-value property. Now, low-value property not only includes the inner-city districts of large cities, but also the large, but sparsely populated, rural districts.

Now, taking money from the high-value property districts taxes to apply to school vouchers reduces the amount of excess taxes these districts collect. This reduces the amount of money available for the low-value property districts. This is why the rural Republicans will not vote for it.

Of course, the best solution is to improve the education in all schools. But, since the public schools seem interested in teaching things like equality, liberty, and diversity, you can see why there is a push to reduce funding to public schools.

That’s a part of it. But mostly it’s just good ole’ Republican hypocrisy. The school district is often one of the largest employers in their community and a focus of civic life in these small towns. These same rural Republicans will rail against government and that all taxation is theft, but God help you if you do anything that might potentially mess with the Palucahville High School Fighting Jackrabbits’ chances for a 4A UIL division title, especially now that star quarterback Colt McManly is off academic probation.

Or on preview, what @excavating_for_a_mind said with more useful information.

Teachers are not state employees in Texas. The mechanism for a state-wide payraise is to change the minimum salary for teachers. Local districts are free to pay above state base as much as they like.

Virtual private schools. In many rural areas, economies of scale are already making it difficult to have a functional school system. If 15% of the students decide they don’t want to be on a bus an hour a day each way and opt to send their voucher to some private school, it’s a catastrophe for the ISD.

Hahahaha. Nope. The “low-value properties” do not include the “inner city districts” of large cities–Houston, Austin, and Dallas ISDs pay hundreds of millions into recapture, and it’s not redistributed: it’s just sitting in our $37B surplus.

As much as they can. The state minimum is linked to the amount of state funding.

I can’t remember if I’ve responded to this thread, but I’ll answer the title.

No thank you.

Can I just say that I have been pretty fucking disgusted with Chicagoans reception to Abbott’s immigrant deliveries? These humans have been nothing but hot potatoes here, and it’s soon to get very fucking cold outside.
It’s like when Dr. King came here and was astounded at the segregation he found.
They’re trying to build fucking tents, and even that is not going well. Come to Chicago in the winter, see how you like your tent, if it gets built.

Well, guess what - this fuckhead (Abbott) is now flying people to O’Hare, where they’re just being dumped.

What is wrong with this man? You’d think as a disabled person he’d be a bit more compassionate than many. Guess it doesn’t work that way.

Okay, I know Abbott is brain dead, but does he actually have a disability as you said? Guess I never paid attention to that. And yes, this is an honest question.

Yes. He does have a disability. Because of an accident in adulthood he uses a wheelchair. I don’t remember the when or how of the accident that led to his impaired mobility.

ETA: from his web site:

…. On a summer day in July 1984, Governor Greg Abbott, a 26-year-old recent law school graduate, decided to take a break from studying for the bar exam by going for a jog in a west Houston neighborhood as he’d done many times before. While out running, a large oak tree along his path cracked and fell on Governor Abbott’s back, leaving him forever paralyzed from the waist down.