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Today's
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September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Weekend Edition
September 11 / 12, 2004
Grinding Out
the Truth on Guadelupe Street
Soap
Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial
By
GREG MOSES
By the way she wears her colors and
slings her political clichés, you'd be excused if you
took her for Opal Gardner-Cortland. So when I walk into the
courtroom and see her sitting in the witness stand, I think I
might have fallen into the set of All My Children. But the witness
in the wooden box is Texas Commissioner of Education Shirley
Neeley, and--for a little while at least--she is having a fine
time performing her self-proclaimed role as "cheerleader
for Texas education."
When Neeley ascended the political
ladder earlier this year, stepping up to state commissioner from
her post as a well-respected superintendent from Galena Park
(in the Houston area), she took her turn as the third commissioner
in a row, following Jim Nelson and Felipe Alanis, as chief defendant
in the latest school funding lawsuit to hit Texas. So her motivation,
on a recent Tuesday in court, was to project an image of a state
schooling system using every means necessary to provide a constitutionally-guaranteed
education to each of its 4-million-plus, school-age kids. It
was a deeply comic routine, perfectly suited to an Opal-like
persona. (After all, this is the commissioner who once bopped
the Governor over the head with a bag of popcorn!)
At first, when answering questions
posed by the state's attorney, commissioner Neeley was a model
of team spirit. When asked, for instance, what it takes to recruit
and keep good teachers, she replied as if punching out a well
rehearsed cheer: "Teachers want support from the administration,
the principal, the superintendent, and the board; they want to
feel valued and appreciated and acknowledged for a job well done;
they want to feel a part of the community, not like what they
are doing is just a job, but a part of life; and they want to
make a difference in the lives of their students."
"And what about salary?"
asked Jeff Rose, Chief of General Litigation for the Texas Attorney
General and a heavy-hitting lineman for the defense. "Teachers
want to be paid fairly and adequately," sang Neeley in reply,
then resumed her cheerleader stance: "but if you talk to
teachers, they say they want support, being valued and appreciated."
As Rose tried his best to establish for the record, commissioner
Neeley was a poster-perfect, former school superintendent, who
had cheered her district into laudable acts of education. When
"push comes to shove," as she explained, she could
"tighten the belts" while "exercising community
standards," making "the tough choices" that "keep
the main thing the main thing," and so on.
Indeed the Galena Park school
district--one of 56 districts in the Houston area--had done well
during her "cheerleading" years as superintendent,
from 1997-2003. Nor was it an elite district. In the 1999-2000
school year, for instance, the Texas Education Agency reports
that Galena Park had below-average property wealth and that 62
percent of its students were "economically disadvantaged."
So the example of Neeley's personal experience was meant to
prove that if she could do so well as the superintendent of Galena
Park, then other superintendents could follow suit. If others
failed to keep up, it would not be the state's fault. Rather,
the state's attorneys have suggested over and over again, during
the first five weeks of trial, that poor facilities and poor
performances are to be blamed mainly on poor choices in poorly
managed districts.
Although Galena Park falls
roughly into the middle third of Texas school districts when
it comes to the value of its property wealth, there were, according
to the TEA website, at least 506 districts in 1999-2000 that
had even less property wealth to work with. So if the state's
lineman-lawyer Rose was going to get this example within scoring
range of relevance, he had to try to wring from the play a little
more sweat than had already gone into it. So Rose pushed the
question further: "Would you have been able to meet state
standards using less than your allowable tax rate?" asked
Rose. And suddenly his cheerleader said something that wasn't
too cheery. "Only if we wanted to freeze salaries or staff."
Which, of course, she had not done, and would probably never
do, as plaintiff's lawyers would soon point out during cross
examination. Opal Gardner-Cortland is often a funny lady, but
she is not a fool. When it came time for Neeley to win the game
for Galena Park, the cheerleader-in-chief for Texas education
had put actual dollars into actual salary increases for teachers,
year after year.
Turning to the question of
dropouts, Rose tried again to open a path for Neeley to run a
zig-zag pattern around the facts. Only this time, he drew a
whistle from the judge. "You characterized the Texas standards
as fairer and the federal standards as unfairer?" asked
Texas District Judge John Dietz incredulously, interrupting Neeley's
testimony with his own play on words. If the federal standard-which
tends to show more dropouts than the state wants to admit--was
in fact the "unfairer" standard, Dietz queried, then
why was Texas planning to adopt it? Although Neeley attempted
to cheer the Judge back into the game, he apparently lacked the
proper spirit. "My dissonance," he warned more than
once, "is not resolved." (At one point I was sure
that if Dietz had thrown Neeley a rope, she would have climbed
right out of the witness box, so vulnerable had she become.)
The amiable, methodical, and
deadly attorney for the property-rich districts, J. David Thompson
III, on cross examination, pointed out to commissioner Neeley
that her success at Galena Park had included steady tax increases
to cover "high ticket" reforms such as block scheduling,
lower class size, and team teaching at the middle schools. Hint,
hint, said Thompson in a very leading question: "so your
tax increases were tied to specific expenditures?" And
weren't those expenditures, in turn, tied to promises for improved
academic performance?
Neeley's chant under Thompson's
cross-examination sounded quite different from the "more
support, less money" cheer written by the state's attorneys.
In fact, the Texas cheerleader for education had led her district
into annual tax increases with unanimous board support and bond
issues that passed at the ballot box. Clearly for the former
superintendent of Galena Park, the name of the game had been
resources, and more of them each year. While no teacher would
want to dispute what commissioner Neeley first said about the
importance of teacher support, her actions as superintendent
proved that salaries are where teacher support begins.
In the end, commissioner Neeley
has little to lose as an educator if her performance as an Opal-Gardner-Cortland-cheerleading-witness
falls flat. If the judge sees through her forced pose, he can
issue an order demanding that the legislature to do for her what
her board and voters used to do when she was superintendent.
That is, Judge Dietz could order the legislature to give her
more money next year. And if that were the end of the issue,
it would also be the end of this story.
But there's more....
For predominantly wealthier
districts who began this lawsuit three commissioners ago, a simple
finding of "inadequate" might be quite pleasing. Such
a finding would surely force more funding out of the state, but
it might also support a constitutional challenge to the so-called
"Robin Hood" laws that now require wealthier districts
to share their property taxes with less fortunate districts.
And this, the wealthier districts wouldn't mind. But poorer
districts, represented in part by the Mexican American Legal
Defense Fund (MALDEF) argue that ultimate justice in this case
depends upon extending, if not strengthening, the equalization
formulas that now treat property wealth as a public good for
all its children.
And this is why Clinton-era
civil-rights prodigy Norma Cantu turned her cross examination
of Neeley to questions of crucial comparison. "You have
never taught in districts where more than 90 percent of students
are classified as economically disadvantaged, such as Brownsville
or Edgewood, have you commissioner?" Neeley dodged the
question by pointing out that her teaching experience had included
districts where majorities of students were "economically
disadvantaged," which is a fair consideration to keep in
mind. As a teacher, she knows something about working with "economically
disadvantaged" populations. But as a state commissioner
on the witness stand, Neeley's reflexive denial of meaningful
differences between her own life story the stories of teachers
at Brownsville or Edgewood was a serious lapse of judgment under
pressure. Having earned a Master's Degree at the historically
segregated campus of Prairie View University and a Doctorate
at the University of Houston, one of the more diverse major universities
in the state, Neeley should have been better prepared to admit
the limits of her own personal experience.
A 2002 "snapshot"
of school districts, provided by the Texas Education Agency,
shows that Galena Park has property values equal to $162,856
per student. For Brownsville, the comparable number is $67,201.
And for Edgewood, it is $38,150. The current state funding
formulas recognize that each child in Texas is entitled to $305,000
in property value as a tax base for education. If that number
suggests that the students of Galena Park are missing nearly
half of what they need to fund their own education, what does
it say about Brownsville or Edgewood? In the face of facts that
have been collected and posted by her own agency, the commissioner
of education continued to testify from the witness stand that
Galena Park had good facilities because, "we took good care
of what we had." Although the inference suggested by her
testimony was consistent with the state's line of defense-blaming
poor school conditions on low community standards-it was also
insulting to property poor districts and a woeful demonstration
of the value of graduate education.
There is a touch of exasperation
in Cantu's voice as she continues the cross. "You are aware,
are you not commissioner, of the gaps that exist in performance
between varieties of subgroups in the state?" Cantu is
speaking of well-documented performance gaps between rich and
poor, Anglo and Hispanic, Anglo and African-America, English
speaking and Spanish speaking students. "Commissioner,"
asks Cantu, "when will those gaps close?" To which
Neeley begins to reply by saying, "I can't tell you the
year...."
As Cantu continues her cross
examination, establishing for the record that the commissioner
has not yet compared crucial education practices in Texas to
model programs in other states--a basic requirement for any "scientific
validation" of the state's curriculum--I imagine how this
testimony would have looked if Texas Governor Rick Perry had
reappointed the state's first Hispanic commissioner of education,
Felipe Alanis. In the Spring of 2002, Perry announced that Alanis
would finish out the remaining eight months of a term left behind
by departing commissioner Jim Nelson. But when the year came
to an end, the Republican Governor did nothing to renew the relationship.
Finally, after the Republican legislature cut the state's school
budgets, Alanis resigned "abruptly" in the summer of
2003. The state's first Hispanic education commissioner had
lasted only fifteen months. According to Scripps-Howard Austin
Bureau Chief Ty Meighan, some of the state's influential politicians
were "irritated" by Alanis when he testified before
the legislature, "that Texas' public schools may not have
enough money to achieve basic standards." Then, apparently
enough, they went and got a commissioner who would testify the
way they wanted.
As this trial moves toward
conclusion, big wheels are grinding here in the limestone courthouse
on Guadalupe Street. As Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of
saying, the wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceedingly
fine. Far enough from the noisy chambers of the Texas legislature,
and one block away from the Governor's mansion, it looks like
the truth of Texas education is coming out here, despite the
best efforts of the state's attorneys. At stake is not only
the need to give Texas students the educations they constitutionally
deserve, today, while they are best able to benefit, but also
the need to preserve and extend principles that treat property
wealth as public goods that should be shared and shared alike.
As I daydream through the courthouse windows, down to Guadalupe
Street, the arrows on the traffic signs send back their clear
reply: there is only one way to go.
Greg Moses writes for the Texas
Civil Rights Review. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept 4 / 5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
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