AI
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 2:07:01 PM
Perry Downplayed Allegations at Centers for Disabled
by Emily Ramshaw
10/24/2011
Part two of two.
Yesterday [ http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/abuse-neglect-texas-disabled-institutions/ ]: Two years after Texas leaders signed a federal agreement to improve care at the state’s institutions, not even a quarter of its terms have been met, and mistreatment is still commonplace.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s [ http://www.texastribune.org/perrypedia/ ] presidential campaign hinges on one overarching message: that states perform best when left to their own devices and federal regulators should butt out. Yet during his decade-long tenure in the governor’s office, Perry and his staff repeatedly downplayed the severity of abuse and neglect allegations at Texas’ state-run institutions for the disabled — until conditions became so dire that the U.S. attorney general was forced to intervene.
“They haven’t taken it seriously,” said Joe Tate, a policy specialist with Community Now! [ http://communitynowfreedom.org/ ], an organization that supports the closure of Texas’ institutions for the disabled. “We hear all the time from lawmakers that there’s not the political will to make changes. That political will — the knowledge that we have deadly, dangerous institutions — could come from the governor’s office.”
Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said the governor’s office has taken reports of abuse and neglect in Texas' state-supported living centers seriously from the very beginning. Early in his first term, he signed legislation and issued an executive order designed to improve conditions and give disabled residents more options to move out of the institutions.
In 2005, when he learned problems in the state-supported living centers had not abated, his office said he made sure the Department of Aging and Disability Services, which oversees Texas’ 13 institutions, had the resources to fund reform.
“Gov. Perry is committed to ensuring the safety of the residents in these facilities, and we take each of these claims very seriously,” Nashed said. “We continue to monitor the progress they are making toward meeting the terms of the agreement.”
But a look back at the timeline of abuse reports — and the response of the governor’s office to them — paints a far more nuanced picture.
After the U.S. Department of Justice released a report critical of conditions at the Lubbock State School in 2006 — saying there had been more than 17 deaths there in 18 months — the governor’s office suggested the problems had already been solved.
“Some would like to ramp up another emotional issue,” Perry spokesman Robert Black said at the time, referring to a recent abuse and neglect scandal in Texas’ juvenile justice system, the Texas Youth Commission [ http://www.tyc.state.tx.us/ ] (TYC).
When a 2007 Dallas Morning News investigation found hundreds of mentally and physically disabled residents of the state-supported living centers had suffered serious abuse at the hands of those paid to watch over them, Perry’s office cautioned against any assumptions that the system was flawed and said despite reports of physical and sexual assault, the centers shouldn’t be compared to the abuse-ridden TYC.
“It’s important not to sensationalize these incidents,” then-spokeswoman Krista Moody said. “They should not be portrayed as though they happened yesterday and no action has been taken.”
And in August 2008, when the Justice Department announced it was going to investigate conditions inside all of Texas’ institutions for the disabled — not just in Lubbock — Perry’s office was unfazed.
“We expected that [the Department of Justice] would expand their investigation to all state schools as they have done in other states,” spokeswoman Allison Castle said. She added that the governor is “always interested in ways to improve state government.”
Four months later — and two years after the original Justice Department report — the U.S. attorney general’s office sent Perry a 60-page letter threatening legal action if Texas didn’t resolve the problems, including residents dying of preventable conditions and hundreds of employees being fired for abuse and neglect.
Only when faced with legal action and monetary damages did Perry’s tone shift: In February 2009 he declared protecting the residents of Texas’ institutions for the disabled a legislative emergency. In May 2009, the state reached an agreement with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to spend $112 million over five years to improve care and enhance staffing at the institutions.
Asked at the time why it had taken so long to pass needed legislation, Perry said that health and human services agencies have “always been difficult to address” and that Texas was a big state with lots of needs. “My focus has always been, when an issue bubbles up to the top, to bring in the best people you can find,” he said.
Halfway through the five-year settlement agreement, Texas’ federally appointed watchdog group says the state has met just 20 percent of the standards required to comply [ http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/abuse-neglect-texas-disabled-institutions/ ]. To this, too, the governor’s office is taking a glass-half-full approach.
“The governor expects DADS to continue to work toward full compliance of the settlement agreement,” Nashed said. “While there is still work to be done, each facility and their staff continue to make significant progress toward substantial compliance, including better reporting, investigation, prosecution and firing of individuals who commit these crimes.
© 2011 The Texas Tribune
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-state-agencies/aging-and-disability-services/perry-downplayed-abuse-institutions-disabled/
===
$1.65 billion safety net saves Texas farmers from ruin
BY YANG WANG, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Updated 03:55 p.m., Sunday, October 23, 2011
More than 41,000 distressed Texas farmers have received $1.65 billion so far from the national crop insurance program to help compensate for disastrous low yields and other damage caused by the state's worst drought in history.
Though experts say the amount covers only about a third of the agricultural losses across the state, it may help some survive.
"The crop insurance is the linchpin and heartbeat of recovering and muscling through the disasters," said Karis Gutter, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's acting deputy undersecretary, who oversees all federal disaster relief efforts and foreign exports. "It will help folks get back to a semblance of normalcy in their lives."
A Houston Chronicle analysis shows Texas leads the nation in the total number of weather-related claims this year - nearly all due to drought.
In the greater Houston region, Fort Bend County was hardest hit.
Alan Stasney, who owns a farm he inherited from his grandfather near Beasley in Fort Bend County, harvested only a fraction of the cotton he expected from his land. His grain sorghum yields were cut in half.
"It was sad that every day you watch it (the crop) go down, basically, a slow death," Stasney said.
Subsidized program
With the increasing costs of high-tech equipment, fertilizers, seeds and chemicals, as well as housing and feeding seven employees and his wife and three children, Stasney said he experienced unprecedented hardship.
His only recourse for relief came from the crop insurance he purchased through a program subsidized by the USDA's Risk Management Agency, which helps farmers pay up to 65 percent of their premiums.
"This is the biggest part of what agricultural producers rely on to prevent the catastrophic loss in the event of natural disaster like this drought," said Travis Miller of the Soil and Crop Sciences Department at Texas A&M University.
In all, 545, or 45 percent of farmers in the Houston region, received almost $19 million for their loss of corn, cotton, grain sorghum, soybeans and other crops.
Another Fort Bend County farmer, Sandra Janczak of Richmond, has grown corn, mallow and cotton her whole life. The drought has cost her and her husband at least $500,000 in reduced yields.
"You don't recover the whole amount of what you've got into it with the crop insurance, but it helps some," Janczak said.
Farmers in West Texas counties clustered around Lubbock have received the most drought-related relief so far: Lynn County received $75 million, while adjacent Lubbock, Dawson and Hockley counties all received more than $55 million from disaster claims.
Those counties normally account for much of the state's crop production. But this year, even wide use of irrigation systems could not keep up with reduced water resources "with the level of the heat and drought we experienced," said Mark Welch, a grain marketing economist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.
The drought has led to $5.2 billion in agricultural losses, according to Texas AgriLife Extension Service economists. Insurance claims don't nearly cover the operating expenses but can at least keep farmers in business, they say.
In addition to the crop insurance - the pillar of the safety net - other taxpayer-funded disaster relief programs provided help for losses in past years. The Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program just paid $177 million to Texas farmers for 2009 losses.
North Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma follow Texas among the most weather-affected states.
In North Dakota, too much spring rain drowned the emerging seeds and prevented more seeds being planted. Oklahoma, southern Kansas and other southern areas all experienced long-lasting drought conditions like Texas.
Ranchers not so lucky
Much less federal relief money is available to ranchers who suffered drought-related losses.
About $1.5 million from the Livestock Forage Program has been paid to ranchers who suffered livestock deaths related to the drought.
But that's unlikely to offset losses in the cattle business, Texas' top agricultural industry.
Because of the lack of enough food for their cattle, 84 percent of surveyed producers reduced their herd size, according to a drought impact survey by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.
Whether ranchers or farmers, everyone has taken a hard hit, experts say.
"My neighbors are pretty much in the same boat," said Stasney, who has lived on the Fort Bend County farm almost his entire life. "Without insurance this year, it would have been a true disaster."
yang.wang@chron.com
© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/1-65-billion-safety-net-saves-Texas-farmers-from-2231852.php [with comments]
===
Judge to decide if convicted killer gets DNA tests
Monday, October 24, 2011
HOUSTON -- Just weeks away from execution, a Texas death row inmate is asking the courts to force prosecutors to turn over knives and clothing that were never tested for DNA, claiming that the evidence could show he didn't kill his girlfriend and her sons nearly two decades ago.
But prosecutors say the latest request from Henry Watkins Skinner, who came within an hour of lethal injection last year before the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, is an empty tactic to again delay his death.
Both sides will argue their case Monday in Amarillo before federal Magistrate Judge Clinton Averitte. The hearing comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Skinner could ask for the untested evidence, but left unresolved whether those items had to be surrendered by Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer.
The ruling came in a federal lawsuit that Skinner filed against Switzer, claiming the state violated his civil rights by withholding access to the evidence. Prosecutors want the lawsuit tossed, while defense attorneys are asking Averitte to delay ruling on the federal suit until the DNA testing issue is decided at the state-court level.
Skinner, 49, is scheduled for execution Nov. 9.
[...]
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8402987 [with comment]
===
Texas debates Confederate flag license plates
The Sons of Confederate Veterans has proposed this specialty license plate in Texas.
(Texas Department of Motor Vehicles / September 22, 2011)
A state board will decide whether to approve the specialty plates. Supporters see it as a way to honor veterans, but critics call the flag a symbol of bigotry.
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
October 25, 2011
Reporting from Houston— The Sons of Confederate Veterans see their proposal to emblazon special Texas license plates with the Confederate flag as a way to honor veterans and educate the public.
Opponents, including state lawmakers and the NAACP, see the idea as an attempt to glorify a symbol long ago co-opted by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups.
The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles' nine-member board deadlocked on the issue 4-4 this year when one member was absent. After one of the board members who voted in favor of the license plates died in June, a second vote was postponed until Gov. Rick Perry appointed a replacement, a spokeswoman said.
The new board member, El Paso auto dealer Raymond Palacios Jr., could not be reached Monday. The board member absent during the previous vote, Marvin Rush, chairman of a New Braunfels commercial truck dealership, said through a spokeswoman that he had "not yet formed an opinion."
The board is expected to meet Nov. 10, but its agenda had not been released Monday.
The proposed specialty plates would feature a Confederate flag as part of the Sons of Confederate Veterans emblem.
"That battle flag is clearly a symbol of hatred and bigotry," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston on Monday.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, like Ellis a Democrat and African American, said, "What you ask the state to do is, in essence, give credibility to a symbol that has been used as a symbol of brutality and death."
Marshall Davis, a spokesman for the Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a Columbia, Tenn.-based group that claims 30,000 members nationwide, said they aimed to preserve history and to teach people about the "war between the states." Once a certain number of plates are sold, a portion of the proceeds will be returned to the group and used for educational purposes, he said.
"Our intent is not to offend anyone — our intent is to honor our Confederate war dead," he said.
The NAACP has gathered more than 22,000 petition signatures and a letter from at least 19 state legislators opposing the plates that will be presented to the DMV board next month.
Jackson Lee, Ellis and other lawmakers have called on Perry to speak out against the license plate proposal, but the governor — who faced widespread scrutiny this month after he acknowledged his father leased West Texas hunting grounds that were once known by the name "Niggerhead" — has demurred.
"The governor believes this is a decision for the board," spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said Monday.
But some proponents of the license plates think they have Perry's support.
Eleven years ago, when the NAACP pushed to remove the Confederate battle flag from government buildings across the South, Perry wrote a letter of support as lieutenant governor to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Davis kept the letter on his kitchen counter.
"I want you to know that I oppose efforts to remove Confederate monuments, plaques and memorials from public property," said the letter, later obtained by the Associated Press. "I also believe that communities should decide whether statues or other memorials are appropriate for their community. I believe that Texans should remember the past and learn from it."
Davis said the latest fray had drawn national attention because Perry is running for president, just as George W. Bush drew attention during his presidential campaign in 2000 for resisting NAACP efforts to remove Confederate plaques from the state Supreme Court building in the capital. Bush later changed his mind and authorized new plaques honoring equal justice for all Texans "regardless of race, creed or color."
Davis noted that Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia were forced to issue Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates after officials in the states balked and his group sued. They won a Florida court ruling in March, after state lawmakers refused to approve a plate.
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
*
Also
Texas executes man in 1998 dragging death [Updated]
September 21, 2011
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/09/texas-set-to-execute-man-for-1998-dragging-murder-of-james-byrd-jr.html [with comments] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67317942 and preceding and following]
*
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-confederate-plates-20111025,0,4682994.story [with comments]
by Emily Ramshaw
10/24/2011
Part two of two.
Yesterday [ http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/abuse-neglect-texas-disabled-institutions/ ]: Two years after Texas leaders signed a federal agreement to improve care at the state’s institutions, not even a quarter of its terms have been met, and mistreatment is still commonplace.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s [ http://www.texastribune.org/perrypedia/ ] presidential campaign hinges on one overarching message: that states perform best when left to their own devices and federal regulators should butt out. Yet during his decade-long tenure in the governor’s office, Perry and his staff repeatedly downplayed the severity of abuse and neglect allegations at Texas’ state-run institutions for the disabled — until conditions became so dire that the U.S. attorney general was forced to intervene.
“They haven’t taken it seriously,” said Joe Tate, a policy specialist with Community Now! [ http://communitynowfreedom.org/ ], an organization that supports the closure of Texas’ institutions for the disabled. “We hear all the time from lawmakers that there’s not the political will to make changes. That political will — the knowledge that we have deadly, dangerous institutions — could come from the governor’s office.”
Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said the governor’s office has taken reports of abuse and neglect in Texas' state-supported living centers seriously from the very beginning. Early in his first term, he signed legislation and issued an executive order designed to improve conditions and give disabled residents more options to move out of the institutions.
In 2005, when he learned problems in the state-supported living centers had not abated, his office said he made sure the Department of Aging and Disability Services, which oversees Texas’ 13 institutions, had the resources to fund reform.
“Gov. Perry is committed to ensuring the safety of the residents in these facilities, and we take each of these claims very seriously,” Nashed said. “We continue to monitor the progress they are making toward meeting the terms of the agreement.”
But a look back at the timeline of abuse reports — and the response of the governor’s office to them — paints a far more nuanced picture.
After the U.S. Department of Justice released a report critical of conditions at the Lubbock State School in 2006 — saying there had been more than 17 deaths there in 18 months — the governor’s office suggested the problems had already been solved.
“Some would like to ramp up another emotional issue,” Perry spokesman Robert Black said at the time, referring to a recent abuse and neglect scandal in Texas’ juvenile justice system, the Texas Youth Commission [ http://www.tyc.state.tx.us/ ] (TYC).
When a 2007 Dallas Morning News investigation found hundreds of mentally and physically disabled residents of the state-supported living centers had suffered serious abuse at the hands of those paid to watch over them, Perry’s office cautioned against any assumptions that the system was flawed and said despite reports of physical and sexual assault, the centers shouldn’t be compared to the abuse-ridden TYC.
“It’s important not to sensationalize these incidents,” then-spokeswoman Krista Moody said. “They should not be portrayed as though they happened yesterday and no action has been taken.”
And in August 2008, when the Justice Department announced it was going to investigate conditions inside all of Texas’ institutions for the disabled — not just in Lubbock — Perry’s office was unfazed.
“We expected that [the Department of Justice] would expand their investigation to all state schools as they have done in other states,” spokeswoman Allison Castle said. She added that the governor is “always interested in ways to improve state government.”
Four months later — and two years after the original Justice Department report — the U.S. attorney general’s office sent Perry a 60-page letter threatening legal action if Texas didn’t resolve the problems, including residents dying of preventable conditions and hundreds of employees being fired for abuse and neglect.
Only when faced with legal action and monetary damages did Perry’s tone shift: In February 2009 he declared protecting the residents of Texas’ institutions for the disabled a legislative emergency. In May 2009, the state reached an agreement with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to spend $112 million over five years to improve care and enhance staffing at the institutions.
Asked at the time why it had taken so long to pass needed legislation, Perry said that health and human services agencies have “always been difficult to address” and that Texas was a big state with lots of needs. “My focus has always been, when an issue bubbles up to the top, to bring in the best people you can find,” he said.
Halfway through the five-year settlement agreement, Texas’ federally appointed watchdog group says the state has met just 20 percent of the standards required to comply [ http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/abuse-neglect-texas-disabled-institutions/ ]. To this, too, the governor’s office is taking a glass-half-full approach.
“The governor expects DADS to continue to work toward full compliance of the settlement agreement,” Nashed said. “While there is still work to be done, each facility and their staff continue to make significant progress toward substantial compliance, including better reporting, investigation, prosecution and firing of individuals who commit these crimes.
© 2011 The Texas Tribune
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-state-agencies/aging-and-disability-services/perry-downplayed-abuse-institutions-disabled/
===
$1.65 billion safety net saves Texas farmers from ruin
BY YANG WANG, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Updated 03:55 p.m., Sunday, October 23, 2011
More than 41,000 distressed Texas farmers have received $1.65 billion so far from the national crop insurance program to help compensate for disastrous low yields and other damage caused by the state's worst drought in history.
Though experts say the amount covers only about a third of the agricultural losses across the state, it may help some survive.
"The crop insurance is the linchpin and heartbeat of recovering and muscling through the disasters," said Karis Gutter, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's acting deputy undersecretary, who oversees all federal disaster relief efforts and foreign exports. "It will help folks get back to a semblance of normalcy in their lives."
A Houston Chronicle analysis shows Texas leads the nation in the total number of weather-related claims this year - nearly all due to drought.
In the greater Houston region, Fort Bend County was hardest hit.
Alan Stasney, who owns a farm he inherited from his grandfather near Beasley in Fort Bend County, harvested only a fraction of the cotton he expected from his land. His grain sorghum yields were cut in half.
"It was sad that every day you watch it (the crop) go down, basically, a slow death," Stasney said.
Subsidized program
With the increasing costs of high-tech equipment, fertilizers, seeds and chemicals, as well as housing and feeding seven employees and his wife and three children, Stasney said he experienced unprecedented hardship.
His only recourse for relief came from the crop insurance he purchased through a program subsidized by the USDA's Risk Management Agency, which helps farmers pay up to 65 percent of their premiums.
"This is the biggest part of what agricultural producers rely on to prevent the catastrophic loss in the event of natural disaster like this drought," said Travis Miller of the Soil and Crop Sciences Department at Texas A&M University.
In all, 545, or 45 percent of farmers in the Houston region, received almost $19 million for their loss of corn, cotton, grain sorghum, soybeans and other crops.
Another Fort Bend County farmer, Sandra Janczak of Richmond, has grown corn, mallow and cotton her whole life. The drought has cost her and her husband at least $500,000 in reduced yields.
"You don't recover the whole amount of what you've got into it with the crop insurance, but it helps some," Janczak said.
Farmers in West Texas counties clustered around Lubbock have received the most drought-related relief so far: Lynn County received $75 million, while adjacent Lubbock, Dawson and Hockley counties all received more than $55 million from disaster claims.
Those counties normally account for much of the state's crop production. But this year, even wide use of irrigation systems could not keep up with reduced water resources "with the level of the heat and drought we experienced," said Mark Welch, a grain marketing economist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.
The drought has led to $5.2 billion in agricultural losses, according to Texas AgriLife Extension Service economists. Insurance claims don't nearly cover the operating expenses but can at least keep farmers in business, they say.
In addition to the crop insurance - the pillar of the safety net - other taxpayer-funded disaster relief programs provided help for losses in past years. The Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program just paid $177 million to Texas farmers for 2009 losses.
North Dakota, Kansas and Oklahoma follow Texas among the most weather-affected states.
In North Dakota, too much spring rain drowned the emerging seeds and prevented more seeds being planted. Oklahoma, southern Kansas and other southern areas all experienced long-lasting drought conditions like Texas.
Ranchers not so lucky
Much less federal relief money is available to ranchers who suffered drought-related losses.
About $1.5 million from the Livestock Forage Program has been paid to ranchers who suffered livestock deaths related to the drought.
But that's unlikely to offset losses in the cattle business, Texas' top agricultural industry.
Because of the lack of enough food for their cattle, 84 percent of surveyed producers reduced their herd size, according to a drought impact survey by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.
Whether ranchers or farmers, everyone has taken a hard hit, experts say.
"My neighbors are pretty much in the same boat," said Stasney, who has lived on the Fort Bend County farm almost his entire life. "Without insurance this year, it would have been a true disaster."
yang.wang@chron.com
© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/1-65-billion-safety-net-saves-Texas-farmers-from-2231852.php [with comments]
===
Judge to decide if convicted killer gets DNA tests
Monday, October 24, 2011
HOUSTON -- Just weeks away from execution, a Texas death row inmate is asking the courts to force prosecutors to turn over knives and clothing that were never tested for DNA, claiming that the evidence could show he didn't kill his girlfriend and her sons nearly two decades ago.
But prosecutors say the latest request from Henry Watkins Skinner, who came within an hour of lethal injection last year before the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, is an empty tactic to again delay his death.
Both sides will argue their case Monday in Amarillo before federal Magistrate Judge Clinton Averitte. The hearing comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Skinner could ask for the untested evidence, but left unresolved whether those items had to be surrendered by Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer.
The ruling came in a federal lawsuit that Skinner filed against Switzer, claiming the state violated his civil rights by withholding access to the evidence. Prosecutors want the lawsuit tossed, while defense attorneys are asking Averitte to delay ruling on the federal suit until the DNA testing issue is decided at the state-court level.
Skinner, 49, is scheduled for execution Nov. 9.
[...]
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8402987 [with comment]
===
Texas debates Confederate flag license plates
The Sons of Confederate Veterans has proposed this specialty license plate in Texas.
(Texas Department of Motor Vehicles / September 22, 2011)
A state board will decide whether to approve the specialty plates. Supporters see it as a way to honor veterans, but critics call the flag a symbol of bigotry.
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
October 25, 2011
Reporting from Houston— The Sons of Confederate Veterans see their proposal to emblazon special Texas license plates with the Confederate flag as a way to honor veterans and educate the public.
Opponents, including state lawmakers and the NAACP, see the idea as an attempt to glorify a symbol long ago co-opted by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups.
The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles' nine-member board deadlocked on the issue 4-4 this year when one member was absent. After one of the board members who voted in favor of the license plates died in June, a second vote was postponed until Gov. Rick Perry appointed a replacement, a spokeswoman said.
The new board member, El Paso auto dealer Raymond Palacios Jr., could not be reached Monday. The board member absent during the previous vote, Marvin Rush, chairman of a New Braunfels commercial truck dealership, said through a spokeswoman that he had "not yet formed an opinion."
The board is expected to meet Nov. 10, but its agenda had not been released Monday.
The proposed specialty plates would feature a Confederate flag as part of the Sons of Confederate Veterans emblem.
"That battle flag is clearly a symbol of hatred and bigotry," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston on Monday.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, like Ellis a Democrat and African American, said, "What you ask the state to do is, in essence, give credibility to a symbol that has been used as a symbol of brutality and death."
Marshall Davis, a spokesman for the Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a Columbia, Tenn.-based group that claims 30,000 members nationwide, said they aimed to preserve history and to teach people about the "war between the states." Once a certain number of plates are sold, a portion of the proceeds will be returned to the group and used for educational purposes, he said.
"Our intent is not to offend anyone — our intent is to honor our Confederate war dead," he said.
The NAACP has gathered more than 22,000 petition signatures and a letter from at least 19 state legislators opposing the plates that will be presented to the DMV board next month.
Jackson Lee, Ellis and other lawmakers have called on Perry to speak out against the license plate proposal, but the governor — who faced widespread scrutiny this month after he acknowledged his father leased West Texas hunting grounds that were once known by the name "Niggerhead" — has demurred.
"The governor believes this is a decision for the board," spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said Monday.
But some proponents of the license plates think they have Perry's support.
Eleven years ago, when the NAACP pushed to remove the Confederate battle flag from government buildings across the South, Perry wrote a letter of support as lieutenant governor to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Davis kept the letter on his kitchen counter.
"I want you to know that I oppose efforts to remove Confederate monuments, plaques and memorials from public property," said the letter, later obtained by the Associated Press. "I also believe that communities should decide whether statues or other memorials are appropriate for their community. I believe that Texans should remember the past and learn from it."
Davis said the latest fray had drawn national attention because Perry is running for president, just as George W. Bush drew attention during his presidential campaign in 2000 for resisting NAACP efforts to remove Confederate plaques from the state Supreme Court building in the capital. Bush later changed his mind and authorized new plaques honoring equal justice for all Texans "regardless of race, creed or color."
Davis noted that Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia were forced to issue Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates after officials in the states balked and his group sued. They won a Florida court ruling in March, after state lawmakers refused to approve a plate.
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
*
Also
Texas executes man in 1998 dragging death [Updated]
September 21, 2011
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/09/texas-set-to-execute-man-for-1998-dragging-murder-of-james-byrd-jr.html [with comments] [and see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67317942 and preceding and following]
*
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-confederate-plates-20111025,0,4682994.story [with comments]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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