Free Press Houston: Podcast 08.08.11

Released Aug 08, 2024

In this podcast, FPH discusses drug abuse in the artist community, recaps Texas Governor Rick Perry’s bid for the White House, and interviews Catastrophic Theater’s Jason Nodler.

RSS

FPH Podcast 2: August 8, 2024

By Alex Wukman

On the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, a few hours after a downgrade of the US credit rating, a train filled with pastors and protestors went one stop past a station decorated with images of dragon curves and embryogenesis to a prayer rally organized by a governor who appoints creationists to head the State Board of Education. Upon arriving at the monolithic football stadium, the passengers were greeted with a plane towing a banner, paid for by the Freedom From Religion Foundation,  asking The Governor to keep church and state separate. As one passenger, a Middle-aged Man from Kingwood who said he occasionally attends the most mega of Mega Churches, left the station and walked toward the stadium he commented that the governor wasn’t there as The Governor but “as a private citizen.” He conveniently ignored how The Governor used “his office’s prestige, letterhead, Web site and other resources to promote” the event. Another passenger, an attractive woman in her late 30s or early 40s wearing a yellow shirt emblazoned with the City’s seal on the front and the word Chaplain on the back, prostelytized about the “Gospel of Grace,” the idea that everyone who believes in Jesus goes to heaven, to those trekking in the triple digit temperatures.

When asked about the Prosperity Gospel, the idea that Jesus wants his followers to be rich, the Chaplain laughed.

“Nowhere in the Bible does it say to take a vow of poverty,” said the Chaplain. She went on to say how she counseled someone who had taken a vow of poverty. “I told him that was stupid. I said ‘Jesus wants us to help people and the poor can’t help anyone and the middle class can’t help a lot of people.”

“Jesus was probably rich. He had all those disciples.”said the Middle-aged Man.

“The one who betrayed him, what was his name?” asked the Chaplain

“Judas,” said the Middle-aged Man.

“Yea, Judas. He was their treasurer,” said the Chaplain. “The vow of poverty isn’t Biblical it’s religious.”

“It was created by the Catholics,” said the Middle-aged Man.

Neither the Chaplain or the Middle-aged Man seemed to be familiar with the Book of Matthew, where Jesus discusses being homeless, describes wealth as “thorns that choke the word of God,” tells a rich young man to sell all of his possessions and follow the Lord, and famously says “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the gates of heaven.” But the Chaplain and the Middle-aged Man weren’t the only ones who seemed not to have read parts of the book.

Across from the stadium a man holding a sign commanding everyone to “Trust Jesus” condemns a man wearing a sandwich board proclaiming Jesus a fictional character to burn in eternal hellfire while inside a man who called a TV show host the anti-christ takes up the gauntlet of Corporate Repentance, one of the four main prayer segments of the rally, and begs God to “judge the economy, judge the marketplace [and] judge the media.” A male TV reporter applies his make-up while hundreds of fasting rally goers queue up in front of the concession stand. The soft-rock praise band comes in creating a spoken word/jazz fusion. Ministers and singers come in and out like rappers dropping guest verses; the audio is modulated and manipulated by the stadium’s cavernous interior. Only bits and pieces can be deciphered. The phrase “if the church has fallen it’s the pulpit’s fault,” bounces off a column. Moments later a young woman prays that Jesus “help us end abortion and create a culture of life in this country.” The band follows her up with a Jacuzzi jazz joint about abortion.

Outside two men patched with Hardcore Bikers for Christ colors stand on the third story ramp smoking cigarettes and smirking at the 45 or 50 protestors. “We’ve got more people taking a break than they do in their entire mission,” says one before flicking his cigarette. His reverie is interrupted by punctuated shouts coming up from the protests. “I’m Joshua and I’m an addict,” says the curly haired guy in his mid 20s with the microphone.  He goes on to say”We’re better than the people inside because we let the Christians speak even if they’re wrong.” Joshua then begins an extemporaneous harangue of all those inside the stadium.

As Joshua is in the middle of accusing a 67-year-old grandmother who drove down from Killeen with her 10 and 12-year-old granddaughters of destroying the planet by fracking for natural gas, increasing offshore oil drilling, executing innocent people and supporting hate by stopping the spread of GLBT rights; the Hardcore Bikers for Christ saunter off down the ramp. A boyish looking blonde haired kid prancing around the protest in a Santa costume attracts the attention of a mid-40s buxom blonde woman standing on the ramp. She blows him a kiss, he rubs his nipples. She turns away blushing. Joshua thinks this is the greatest thing ever. “I love you all. Jesus loves you. I love Santa rubbing his nipples,” he says.

Joshua passes off the microphone to a mousy looking woman in her early to mid 20s who describes how her parents, both retired veterans, have to work at Wal-Mart because they lost their pensions. She tries to describe the difficulty she faces trying to get financial aid to go to college, but her story of hardship and the disappearing middle class dream is drowned out by the throaty rumble of a heavily modified Harley Davidson as the Hardocre Bikers for Christ roll up to the intersection. They rev their engines, waiting for the light to change; the protestors stand dumbfounded, those on the ramp snicker, while inside a man who leads a group that thinks gay people “want to recognize pedophiles as the prophets of a new sexual order” says that we must turn everything over to God because “there is no human remedy to the problems we face as a nation.”

President Good hair?

By Alex Wukman

It looks like the Free Press was a little too early to the Rick Perry for President party. In the few months since we last blogged about it Rick Perry’s presidential ambitions have become the obsession of Texas’ political press. Despite the, easily predicted, last minute resolution of the debt ceiling ‘crisis‘,which will soon be replaced with another manufactured controversy that will inevitably be blown out of proportion, writers throughout the country have been devoting an awful lot of time to Perry. There’s so much being written about Rick Perry that the Texas Tribune’s aggregator has become the Rick Perry Wire and the Austin American Statesman has created a special Rick Perry section on their website. Sadly none of this is surprising. For months Perry has been engaged in an endless game of “will he or won’t he” that has been kept going by people who are paid to leak information to the press.

I’d like to be the first to say Enough is Enough. Perry just needs to declare, which he probably won’t do until after Labor Day, so Rick Casey can get back to reporting on criminal justice instead creating  his own modestly crafted modest proposal. I don’t want to read about how Rick Perry “hasn’t been vetted” on the campaign trail or how Perry supporting Super PACs are buying ads in Iowa. And I really don’t want to have to slog through armchair commentary on how Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are “frenemies.” Especially since it’s all meaningless.  Even if Rick Perry announced tomorrow it won’t do any good. He’s been too hands-off in the hands-on states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Perry’s team says they want to compete everywhere, but they have to know that their man won’t be able to trot out his Evangelical credentials in secular New Hampshire and swooping in like a conservative rock star doesn’t work in retail politics driven Iowa. Perry will probably be able to ride his white, Southern extremist ties to a good showing in South Carolina and five or six of the Super Tuesday states; but beyond that it’s a gamble. It’s highly doubtful that an establishment candidate like Perry will be able to carry Libertarian friendly Western states like Nevada. It’s worth remembering that establishment figures in the Nevada Republican party suspended their 2024 state convention because it had been taken over by the Ron Paul campaign.

Another of Perry’s main problems is that he’s trying to win the nomination of a fractured party that seems to be actively trying to destroy itself. Perry’s team is faced with the difficulty of building a winning coalition between social conservatives, anti-immigration activists, Libertarians, TEA Partiers, corporate interests and self-proclaimed deficit hawks–who do an abrupt about face as soon as there’s a war. Next year will be the first truly national campaign after the Republican civil war of 2024-2010; an election cycle that saw anyone with any actual experience labeled a RINO. As the ongoing legislative fights have shown Republicans are more than willing to destroy the village to save the village, and vote anyone who disagrees with them out of office. Perhaps Perry’s biggest problem isn’t that he’s late to the poker game of presidential politics, and may have given all the best cards to Romney; nor is it that he’s TEA Party. Perry’s problem may be that he isn’t TEA Party enough.

By Alex Wukman

As no one needs to be reminded this spring’s political conversation was dominated by the fight over public education funding, both here in Texas and across the nation. As the story unfolded one question kept buzzing around, the one question no one was asking: “Why?” As in why pick on education funding now after all we’ve been in tight budget spots before? Why are conservatives so intent on making it impossible for schools to do their job? Why has it come to this: teachers and parents taking to the streets to keep schools open?

Admittedly at the time it was hard to see through the rhetoric. So it’s understandable that no one was really trying to figure out if there was more to the case than the”everyone has to make sacrifices” line of reasoning. However, as the year has gone on and the story has moved off the front pages, things seems to be getting worse. Schools across Texas are either trying to put together lesson plans without textbooks or preparing to sue the state, again, to force the legislature to fund education. And the only thing coming out of Austin is a desire to re-fight the decades-old battle about whether we should replace high school biology with Sunday School classes.

It didn’t take a genius to find out that the proposed cuts  to Texas’ budget were not being applied across the board, but it still didn’t answer the question of why cut school funding instead of something else. Then I saw a blog post on Forbes.com from John T. Harvey. He begins by rehashing how the state’s budget crisis was completely predictable, but fails to mention how it’s predicted to happen again; he  also fails to mention that a conservative estimate, one that doesn’t include any outside factors, shows Texas with a deficit of $10 billion in 2024. Harvey’s lack of futurism aside, his post goes on to mention an idea that is almost too disgusting to think about. Harvey writes:

“I hesitate to speculate on why those in control of the State government would so blatantly ignore the warning signs and lead us into this education disaster. Others don’t, however. They believe that it is because the Governor and key Legislators are purposely setting out to destroy public education, hoping to replace our constitutionally-mandated system with one based on private schools.”

I honestly did not believe that anyone, especially an elected official, would be so uncaring as to want to destroy our public education system. Then I remembered who I was dealing with. It seems that for over 15 years conservatives have been engaged in a behind-the-scenes attempt to destroy public education. The goals of this movement were succinctly laid out by Nobel Prize winning Libertarian economist Milton Friedman in a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper simply entitled “Public Schools: Make them Private.” In the executive summary of the paper Friedman writes a line that has become a mantra for anti-public school crusaders everywhere: “Our elementary and secondary educational system needs to be radically restructured. Such a reconstruction can be
achieved only by privatizing a major segment of the educational system…”

Friedman’s thinking didn’t come out of a vacuum; beginning in 1966 Conservatives started putting school vouchers on ballots, and they were defeated 24 out of 25 times. As the decades went on money and influence began to flow to right wing think tanks who, as Alternet pointed out, were interested in promoting “free market fundamentalism. More specifically, their goals include privatizing social security, reducing government regulations, thwarting environmental policy, dismantling unions — and eliminating public schools.”

For much of the last 20 years the call for the elimination of public schools has only come from right wing pundits and ideologues. However, as Think Progress documented, those calls have recently found a receptive audience with a group of well heeled individual and organizational donors. Among the most influential is Amway scion Dick DeVos, who, in 2024, suggested that conservatives start referring to public schools as “government schools.” One of the biggest foundations involved in attempts to implement “systemic reforms to K-12 education” is the Wal-Mart backed Walton Family Foundation, who gave $157 million last year to organizations that promote “parental choice” in schooling.

Thanks to the power of the internet the “Get Rid of Public Schools” sentiment has spread out from a handful of think tanks and intellectuals to rank and file conservatives. Much of the opposition to public education from average conservatives comes from the belief that schools are, as one commenter on Big Government stated, “indoctrination warehouses” filled with “communists.” In the case of the famous Koch brothers, who gave school privatization national exposure with David’s 1980 Vice Presidential campaign, the red scare tactics can be traced back to their father Fred’s paranoiac belief that every level of government had been infiltrated by communists or communist sympathizers.

There are of course ideas about “getting the government out of education,” giving parents and community more control over how tax dollars are spent as well as the material taught to students. One Republic-Main Street columnist suggested that we should “De-certify the teachers’ unions, abolish the U.S. Department of Education, abolish the state education departments, grant absolute autonomy to local school boards, abolish the requirement for teacher certification, give tax breaks to parents who home-school or send their kids to private school, [and]encourage churches to set up in-house schools and courses.”

The backlash against public education hasn’t just been limited to heartland states like Texas, Wisconsin or Indiana. In June, New Jersey Governor Chis Christie jumped on a TEA Party backed idea when he announced plans to privatize all of New Jersey’s schools. Terri Adams who currently serves as the president of the Independence Hall Tea Party Association, an organization that operates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware and is known for controlling a wealthy mid-Atlantic PAC that contributed $16,000 to endorsed candidates in 2024, told Newark Star-Ledger columnist Bob Braun that her group’s “ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only.” Adams went on to say that she thinks public schools “should go away” because they “are hurting children.”

On the legislative side of things, the football of school privatization has been carried fairly far down field by the American Legislative Exchange Council an organization, heavily funded by the Koch brothers, composed of corporate heads and elected officials that writes and distributes bills to elected officials. Ideas that start out at ALEC meetings, the next one is August 3-6 in New Orleans, have a habit of winding up coming out of the mouths of politicians. Including a seven point proposal, that led to a 17 page rebuttal, to “reform” the University of Texas along a “market model” that would pay professors based on the number of students they teach and only fund research that doesn’t have an immediate financial return.

As John T. Harvey stated privatizing all of Texas’ schools “would mean abandoning the poor, disenfranchised, and otherwise challenged children of our State. That’s not just mean-spirited, it is un-American and undemocratic. Our system of government requires an educated citizen more than any other.”

By Alex Wukman

The intersection of Westheimer and Taft is where Montrose begins. Even though the street named for the flour selling German immigrant Michael Louis Westheimer starts a few blocks to the east, the community that defines the road starts near Numbers, where Shannon Hoon from Blind Melon is said to have scored a hotshot. It’s at this intersection where, for years, an adventuresome soul could find almost anything for sale in just a few blocks. You just needed to know what to look for.

Just a few blocks north of the main thoroughfare for our town’s arts district, mixed into an area lovingly referred to as the Gayberhood, is an unassuming faded and fading bungalow. It doesn’t stand out from the dozens of others in the area; except for the young black woman in front of the house, shifting from foot to foot, scratching her arms through a faded and worn sweatshirt. Though the midnight shadows render her almost invisible to the cars driving by; to those in the know she is as clear as billboard.

A late model luxury sedan pulls up. The passenger window slides down with a whisper. An unseen voice asks “is the store open?” It takes a second for her vacant eyes to register who she’s looking at, but when she recognizes the friendly face she nods. A hand slides out the window to meet hers, an exchange is made. It’s the fourth one in an hour. And it’s upsetting Triana who works the other side of the street wearing little more than heels and fur. Triana had been on the block for months before the crew moved into the old bungalow and put the skinny girl with the dead eyes and itchy arms on the corner. Triana’s customers come here because they don’t want to be seen and the extra traffic that the new girl brings is bad for business.  Triana’s gonna have to talk to her Daddy ‘bout it and see what he can do.

A little ways away from the mini drama being caused by the problems of the free market, near where Westheimer intersects the street that gives the area its name, another type of working girl faces a different type of problem. Betty is just finishing a double shift, one she told her manager she couldn’t work. She told him she couldn’t work no more late nights cause Metro stop running and she can’t get back to Cloverleaf. She told him she got a heart condition and she can’t stand out on the street waiting for her man to come get her. She told him again and again, but he keep scheduling her over night. She wonder why he don’t schedule that pretty white girl for late night?

Over at the curve, where at least a couple of times a month someone fails to read the City’s various warning signs and puts their pretty automobile into an ugly situation, the talk is of a different variety. In between chasing away their cynicism with boilermakers and bourbon the too-cool-for-this crowd chats about the social event of the season—this year’s big music festival. Who has tickets, who needs tickets, who’s playing when and how they weren’t planning on going but dammit now they have to. Sitting, almost ignored, is the morning’s front page filled with news about the end of the shuttle program and possible plans to increase government revenue. Nowhere in the-next-day’s-canary-cage-liner is the music festival mentioned and nowhere do the stories in the paper crop up in the conversation.

The silence from both parties speaks volumes and makes some people wonder why a music festival is more relevant than a proposal to this community than the loss of a community center? But those questions are as short lived and easily forgotten as the next round of shots.

By Alex Wukman

Oh internet, how I love you. With less than two weeks left in this year’s Texas legislative session I was sure I wouldn’t be able to find something to bitch about today. Then I saw that Real Clear Politics has an article up about how our ever-loving Governor’s “Presidential Push” is “quietly” gaining steam. As the three people who regulary read this blog know the Free Press has no love lost for Perry, we’ve commented on him doing a lot of things but never running for President.

It’s not that we believed him when he said that he had no interest in being President; we just found the thought to be almost ludicrous. Perry a man who, despite his much proclaimed love for constitutions, tried to rewrite state immunization law by executive fiat without realizing that the Texas Constitution forbid him from issuing executive orders. Perry a man who, despite his ‘outsider’ persona, has been in government since the 1980s. Perry a man who, despite his much ballyhooed Moral Majority credentials, has been dogged by rumors of homosexuality since he took over as Governor.

The idea that Rick Perry would even consider a presidential run and open himself up to the amount of scrutiny that comes with such a run. And let’s be honest here, there are many things that would come tumbling out not the least of which is how Karl Rove managed Rick Perry’s 1990 campaign for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. From that first race on Perry has been linked to corporate money, his former chief of staff became Merck’s chief lobbyist and helped draft the HPV vaccine order.

Despite all these problems there is apparently a move to get Perry into the field for the Republican nomination. And Perry not said that he doesn’t have any plans to his run; in fact he said something far more  ostentatious. The Associated Press reported that Perry is “waiting to be summoned” into running.

Summoned by whom is another matter

As much as we’d like to deny it, Rick Perry has been putting together a low profile presidential campaign since at least 2024. He’s raised money for the Republican Governor’s Association, he’s gone to almost every Republican National Convention and he’s been in office long enough that people have forgotten his dismal election results. It’s a sad day when we have to write that we hope Perry chooses to remain governor of Texas, if only to prevent him from doing to the rest of the country what he has done to Texas.

Not considered important by the Texas Comptroller's Office

Considered very important to the Texas Comptroller's office

By Alex Wukman

I’m in the process of getting drunk as I write this. Normally I don’t practice, nor do I advocate, Blogging While Intoxicated; but after seeing today’s news out of Austin there was no other logical response except to get so shitfaced that I’m not angry at our elected representatives anymore. For those who didn’t see, excuse me while I pour myself another Taka vodka and red Kool-Aid, Bloomberg.com reported that  the State of Texas has agreed to pay $250 million over 10 years, or $25 million a year for people who suck at math, to bring Formula One auto racing to the Austin area.

As is pointed out in the article, Texas is facing a $15 billion budget shortfall that has resulted in proposed cuts of up to $9 billion in public education spending, which the Free Press documented here. Sadly, the decision to spend state money for auto racing is not the only move that is such a bold faced example of elected leaders toadying up to big money that it’s insulting. In early April one of Governor Perry’s aides went before the State Legislature to lobby for an additional $20 million to subsidize film production in Houston, which we commented on here.

And just this week, in an article with a headline that can only qualify as revolting, the Chronicle reported that the State Legislature wants to essentially give yacht owners a subsidy by capping sales tax on yachts at $18,000. A tax break for yacht owners is just the latest example of how our State Legislature has been bought and paid for by the super-rich. Possibly the most egregious example is the $2.4 billion tax break that the State gives to natural gas producers to drill in Texas. As State Representative Lon Burnam (D-Fort Worth) pointed out in an April op-ed piece in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram cutting public education when the State is broke is one thing, “but making cuts while giving away $2.4 billion in a single tax break is simply unconscionable.”

The magnitude of this tragedy is something that won’t be known for years, because Texas is only at the start of this backward slide into creating a class of ignorant peons. Perhaps the best illustration of this fucked up situation can be found in the numbers of passionate teachers who are being laid off this year. The Austin-American Statesman reported that nearly 2,000 faculty and staff are being laid off from five Austin area school districts. The Dallas Morning News reported that over 200 Dallas ISD personnel have already been eliminated and another 3,700 could face a similar fate.

Ft. Worth public broadcasting reported that nearly 1,000 Ft. Worth ISD employees could be laid off this year. Ft. Bend ISD is laying off 470 people reported Ft. Bend Now and HISD is expected to cut 1,900 positions. As I said the only logical response to this shit storm of elected representatives engaging in the calculated destruction of public education while pushing an agenda so bathed in the stench of big campaign donors as to be odious is to get blind stinking drunk. See you at the bar.

By Alex Wukman

Taken moments before Perry decided to use the dog for target practice

After word came out in early March that Texas Governor Rick Perry was blocking reporters from his twitter account Free Press decided to see if we could sign up. Not surprisingly we are among the few reporters in Texas that Rick Perry hasn’t gotten around to blocking. What is surprising is how little Rick Perry has to say on twitter.

No one has ever accused Perry of being the most tech savvy guy, we were going to say high tech Texan, but then we realized Michael Garfield registered that shit in, like, 1994, but in the middle of a monumental budget crisis, that has gotten national attention, one would think the Governor of Texas would have something relevant to say to his nearly 40,000 followers.

On the same day that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that one of Perry’s aides requested an additional $20 million incentives for TV and film productions, and the San Angelo Standard-Times reported teachers are rallying to protest cuts in education spending, Rick Perry tweeted a link to a story about a family dog watching over a two-yeard-old boy in Wisconsin with the phrase “Man’s best friend or in this case….boy’s best friend!! Love on your dog.”

We had actually planned on spending more time looking for instances of Rick Perry being out of touch, but we found it in his three most recent tweets. Aside from dog stories from Wisconsin Perry tweeted about a bonfire for Texas A&M’s women’s basketball team and a link to a press release about a bet that he and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnel made that Notre Dame would beat the Lady Aggies. The bet is a case of wine from each state.

Then there is the retweet of a photo showing him hanging out with Dallas area pop “rock” band Forever The Sickest Kids. And those tweets were just from April 1 through April 5.

By Alan Smithee

Last week the National PTA released a statement endorsing the Common Core State Standards, which are standards developed by 48 states and the District of Columbia for teaching math and language to students in grades K-12. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal  the standard is a blueprint for education, it  “doesn’t tell teachers exactly what to teach or how to teach but lays out broad goals for student achievement.”

The Journal articles states that if these documents are adopted they “could trigger wide-scale changes to state tests, textbooks and teacher-education programs nationwide.” Well, not quite nationwide. Care to guess which two states are holding out?

If you guessed the Christian Republic of Texas and the experiment in government subsidized living that is Alaska you are right. It seems that Rick Perry feels that states voluntarily getting together to determine that kindergarteners should learn to count to 100 by tens or eighth graders should be able to recognize an author’s point of view is a violation of state soverignty.  

We have reported before about the asinine shit that the  Texas State Board of Education is doing to education standards. However, we left out the fact that, for decades, Texas has an outsized influence on the textbook market.

This has other states worrying that our ‘triangle trade curriculum’ might infringe upon their sovereignty.  Which is something that Rick Perry, who is all about protecting state sovereignty, has yet to comment on.

It seems odd that a governor who is reportedly working on a book about state sovereignty and who believes in protecting schools from unwarranted intrustion, Perry cites federal intrustion, but I’m pretty sure that intrusion by another state is also on his list of things he does not want, is ok with Texas setting the curriculum for much of the nation.  

Fortunately, the ideologically influenced textbooks that will be ruining Texas children for the foreseeable future may not be damaging young minds throughout the rest of the country.