Evidently the Board of Regents accepted Bill Powers counteroffer, as he will stay on as UT President through June 2, 2015. (Previously.)
If you’re still unclear on why Powers should go, here are ten reasons he should step down.
Bill Powers to Step Down as UT President in June 2015
July 10th, 2014UT Scandal May Pull Down President Bill Powers
July 9th, 2014Evidently the slow-burning University of Texas admissions scandal will finally cost President Bill Powers his job. “UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa has told Powers, 68, to resign before Thursday’s meeting of the Board of Regents or be fired during it.”
I doubt Powers counteroffer to step down in 2015 will be accepted. (I do wonder what makes Houston Chronicle writer Benjamin Wermund proclaim that Powers is “widely supported by students”? Has he seen polls on Powers popularity on students? (Online petitions don’t count) I would think they would be more concerned with lowering tuition costs than support a President resisting calls to lower them.)
Which is not to say that Powers backers are giving up. Instead, they’re lashing out at the board of regents:
The more angry and indignant among the petition signers seem to think some organized debate about UT and its president is going forth, and that their champion is, unfairly, of course, getting the worst of it. It would be an odd thing to think. There isn’t anything like a public debate about Bill Powers going forward. There’s rancor and division — nearly all of it coming from the side that professes to despise rancor and division, the Powers side.
The admissions scandal has been building for some time on Powers’ watch. (Nor is it the only problem under Powers.) Instead of investigating it and fixing the problem, Powers decided the best move was to have his political friends attempt to impeach regent Wallace Hall in order to quash his investigation while Powers’ supporters launched an Astroturf campaign on his behalf that’s included no end of MSM editorials praising Powers while attacking Hall and Governor Perry for daring to hold him accountable.
The university academic complex evidently believe that they’re a special kind of hothouse flower that should be immune to all political pressure, with a right to public funding but not to public accountability. Powers has constantly resisted calls to make college more affordable, and to be more accountable to the Board of Regents who oversee his work and the state government that pays his bills.
It seems that Powers will be the latest official to learn that pride goeth before a fall.
No, The Illegal Alien Surge Is Not Obama’s Katrina
July 8th, 2014USA Today reporter Susan Page wonders why, despite the surge of illegal aliens across our border, Obama would continue to attend lavish fundraisers rather than visit the border, calling the decision “Obama’s Katrina moment.” (Even Democratic Texas congressman Henry Cuellar expressed the same concern.)
This comparison is deeply unfair.
To George W. Bush.
After all, Bush didn’t:
Katrina was a natural disaster. The illegal alien surge is a crisis of Obama’s own making for refusing to enforce existing border control laws and dangling a Dream Act amnesty to lure illegal alien children to cross the border.
Liberal Rage Continues Over Hobby Lobby Decision
July 7th, 2014Despite musical advice from that big hit from The Princess Factory, liberals just can’t Let It Go. They’re still in a rage over the Hobby Lobby decision, or at least pretending to be in order to gin up their shrinking base in order to keep Democrats from being slaughtered in November.
Jeffrey Tobin: “What we are witnessing is a liberal meltdown in which they have come to believe the First Amendment is a technicality that should brushed aside when it comes into conflict with the ‘right’ to free contraception.”
For the political left, the concept of religious liberty has been re-interpreted as to only mean the right to be allowed to pray and not to live one’s faith in the public square. When faith conflicts with policy initiatives such as the free contraception mandate, they assume that religion must always lose. However, the court majority has rightly reminded us that the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment cannot be trashed simply because a lot of Americans want not only access to contraception but also think their employers ought to be compelled to pay for it.
But to liberals, a decision that reaffirms the primacy of religious freedom is just the latest iteration of a Republican “war on women.” As a political slogan, that meme has been political gold for Democrats who believe its use guarantees their stranglehold on the votes of unmarried women. But as infuriating and wrongheaded the war on women arguments may be, what is really troubling about them is that they reflect a utilitarian approach to the Constitution that regards any of its protections as expendable if they are obstacles to a liberal policy goal.
Clarice Feldman: “No, the sputtering, venomous and hateful hyperbole is attributable to one thing, and one thing only: the Court did not allow the state to bend Hobby Lobby to its will on their behalf. And that is what matters most to them.”
All this rage is especially hypocritical since:
Some 204 outfits favored by Democrats were granted waivers by the president from ObamaCare, which means their employees do not have the right to employer provided birth control. These include upscale restaurant, nightclubs, and hotels in then-Speaker Pelosi’s district; labor union chapters; large corporations, financial firms, and local governments.
Women did not march through the streets to complain on behalf of their downtrodden sisters at Boboquivari in San Francisco which sells porterhouse steaks at $59 a pop and such. Apparently they are up with laws written on Etch-a-Sketch boards which the president can rewrite at whim. And their moral outrage is dependent on whether or not the employer is a Democrat crony.
The whole “War on Women” is “shameless, baseless propaganda:
In other Hobby Lobby-related news, Jonathan Adler debunks the idea that the Hobby lobby ruling was “anti-science.”
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Happy Independence Day!
July 4th, 2014In celebration of America’s birthday, here are some compilations of fireworks gone wrong (some repetition):
There’s a special place in my heart for the 2012 San Diego display where they accidentally fired everything up at once:
And finally: Fireworks factory explosions:
Let’s be careful out there. At least wear some eye protection…
Texas vs. California Update for July 3, 2014
July 3rd, 2014Enjoy Independence Day tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s another Texas vs. California roundup:
“San Bernardino, California, said that to exit bankruptcy it must terminate a union contract that pays an average annual salary of $190,000 to each of its top 40 firefighters,” according to an article in Bloomberg. That’s just salary. Firefighters receive the generous “3 percent at 50″ retirement package that allows them to retire with 90 percent of their final years’ pay at age 50. And there are lots of pension-spiking gimmicks and other benefits on top of that.
“These cities are run for the benefit of those who work there. Public services are a side matter at best.”
Toyota’s move to Texas is a high-profile relocation, but Texas has been used to adding — and filling — new jobs at a superlative pace. The state added more than 1.9 million new jobs over the period from December 1999 to April 2014, more than 35 percent of the entire nation’s total for that 15-year period, noted Michael Cox, an economics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. And Texas had an unemployment rate of just 5.1 percent in May, 16th-lowest in the United States.
Meanwhile, Cox noted, Texas’s median wages are 28th-highest in the nation; and they rank 8th-highest after adjusting for taxes and prices. Texas schools rank 3rd, he said, after adjusting for variations in student demographics, a raw statistic which places Texas 28th in the nation.
“We’re able to accomplish all this and more because the business environment in our state is largely competitive, and free markets solve problems,” Cox told me. “Texas is a meritocracy, where incentives still work to produce good results.”
Drive almost anywhere in the vast Lone Star State and you will see evidence of the “Texas miracle” economy that policymakers like Gov. Rick Perry can’t quit talking about….
This hot economy, politicians say, is the direct result of their zealous opposition to over-regulation, greedy trial lawyers and profligate government spending. Perry now regularly recruits companies from other states, telling them the grass is greener here. And his likely successor, Attorney General Greg Abbott, has made keeping it that way his campaign mantra.
It’s hard to argue with the job creation numbers they tout. Since 2003, a third of the net new jobs created in the United States were in Texas. And there are real people in those jobs, people with families to feed.
But the piece also notes that Texas has led the nation in worker fatalities for seven of the last ten years. I’m not going to get into the details of worker compensation that make up the bulk of the piece, and it is quite possible there is some room for improvement in worker safety. But I do want to note that, as the second largest state in the union, and the one with the biggest oil and gas industry, it’s not terribly surprising that Texas would have the largest number of fatalities, since oil and gas has a fairly high fatality rate (though not injury rate) compared to other industries (see page 14 here).
Ferdinand Frank Fischer III Condemns All Non-White Non-Democrats
July 2nd, 2014So Democratic state representative Trey Martinez-Fischer used his speech at the Texas Democratic convention to say that GOP stands for “gringos y ostros pendejos” (or, roughly, “gringos and other assholes”). In other words, he just insulted every black, Hispanic and Asian Republican in Texas.
I knew that name sounded familiar, mainly because he was born Ferdinand Frank Fischer III and formerly known as Tracey Fisher, then started going by Trey Martinez-Fischer.
I’m sure the fact he was running for office as a Democrat in a Hispanic majority district had nothing to do with that decision.
More and more it seems that racist condescension is the default liberal attitude to those who wander off the Democratic plantation…
Plano Bomber Anson Chi Pleads Guilty (Again)
July 2nd, 2014Remember Anson Chi, the Ron Paul/Occupy follower accused of trying to blow up a gas pipeline in Plano?
Now he’s apparently plead guilty to charges he already plead guilty to before:
Anson Chi, 35, pleaded guilty to two of the four counts he was facing at trial – the same two counts he pleaded guilty to during a hearing last year. The difference with this plea agreement is that the prison sentence is essentially open-ended. Chi will be able to argue issues related to sentencing and will have the opportunity to appeal in some cases. The sentence will be imposed by U.S. District Judge Richard Schell. No date has been set for sentencing.
I’m not going to pretend to understand the legal reasoning behind the double guilty pleas to the same charges.
“Chi represented himself at trial after firing his defense attorneys earlier this year.”
That’s pretty much universally a wrong move, but the whole “trying to blow up a pipeline and only injuring yourself” does suggest he’s not the sharpest tine on the rake.
The Rank Dishonesty of Liberal Reactions to the Hobby Lobby Decision
July 1st, 2014The liberal outrage machine was working overtime yesterday to see who could issue the most hysterical denunciation of the Hobby Lobby decision. Without actually, you know, addressing the language of the decision.
First an foremost are the idiots who scream that the Supreme Court is “banning contraception.”
No Birth Control For You, says the Supreme Court. Get your mits out of our lady bits. http://t.co/D9Ap3OM98h #HobbyLobby
— BrightestYoungThings (@BYT) July 1, 2014
In fact, the decision doesn’t “ban” any form of birth control, it merely invalidates the Obama Administration mandate to provide abortifacients against their own religious beliefs. Or, to put it another way:
Number of women denied birth control by Hobby Lobby: 0
Number of Democrat retards butthurt by the verdict: 30,000,000
#HobbyLobby
— AdolfJoeBiden™ (@Bidenshairplugs) June 30, 2014
If I have to explain that #HobbyLobby pays for 16 birth controls, just not abortifacients, to one more stupid feminist I'm gonna snap.
— Chelsea O'Grunwald (@chelseagrunwald) June 30, 2014
Second, it is amazing how few (if any) liberals mention how closely tied the decision is to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby was a statutory decision based on that act, not a First Amendment case.
@BattleSwarmBlog @GodTexasCountry I'm not sure the #RFRA applies in this case since no one is forcing anyone at #HobbyLobby to us bc
— Kiersta (@Kiersta) July 1, 2014
[Facepalm]
Yeah, the Hobby Lobby ruling doesn’t involve the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, except for the tiny detail of basing the entire decision on the language of the act. Which it announces in the very first paragraph of the decision:
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) prohibits the “Government [from] substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability” unless the Government “demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”
Finally, there’s the amazing ignorance of comparing not forcing a company to buy four specific types of birth control for their employees to a legal regime where a woman can be stoned to death for the crime of being raped:
No Birth Control For You, says the Supreme Court. Get your mits out of our lady bits. http://t.co/D9Ap3OM98h #HobbyLobby
— BrightestYoungThings (@BYT) July 1, 2014
@politico #SCOTUS #HobbyLobby What's next, Sharia Law?! Shall all women stay indoors and out of sight for the almighty powerful white man?!!
— wowsers&trousers (@My2Two2Cents) June 30, 2014
"My faith is more important than your laws."
Don't fool yourself: Christian sharia law is HERE. Hobby Lobby is the definition of sharia law
— LiberalBias.com (@LiberalBias) July 1, 2014
The Supreme Court #HobbyLobby ruling proves once again that Scalia Law is a lot like Sharia Law.
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) June 30, 2014
The stupid. It burns.
Watching liberals compare #HobbyLobby to #Sharialaw… I guess not covering 4 types of BC via insurance is worse than genital mutilation?
— KillerBunnyFooFoo (@PolitiBunny) July 1, 2014
If you think #HobbyLobby introduces America to Sharia, I’m sure we can raise the funds to send you to Saudi Arabia.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) June 30, 2014
Supreme Court Strikes ObamaCare Abortifacient Mandate in Hobby Lobby Case
June 30th, 2014The Supreme Court handed the Obama Administration yet another defeat today:
1. For-profit corporations are persons protected under RFRA. (Pp. 16-20.)
2. Closely held for-profit corporations are capable of engaging in an exercise of religion protected by RFRA. (It “seems unlikely” that publicly traded corporations would “often” assert RFRA claims, but no need to decide whether they can.) (Pp. 20-31.)
3. The HHS mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion by the Hahns, the Greens, and their companies
Given the ferocity with which Nancy Pelosi fought for the ObamaCare language that enabled Obama’s HHS to impose the abortion mandate, I think this really is a stinging defeat for the left. No, you can’t have an abortion mandate. Not yours.
Note that the text of the ruling “is based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and not the First Amendment. (In other words, this is a statutory decision, not a constitutional one.)”
And for the Obama Administration: