After reading the commentary on the article, Texas Psychologist Punished in Death Penalty Cases, I agree with Ashley and find it all to be a little on the fishy side.  “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that states cannot execute mentally handicapped people.” This seems like a good idea, but one that has many loop holes. They never set guidelines on determining whether someone is “mentally handicapped” which in return left the details in the hands of the states.  Texas uses a basic three part test, which includes a below average intellectual function, also a lack of adaptive behavior skills, and finally a check to see how long they have had this problems.  Hmm well that seems only like two categories to pass or fail in, and one piece of criteria that determines the legitimacy of the handicapped.  I’m not arguing for or against it, but I’m glad to see they check the background.  I’m sure even when facing the death penalty most people would try to back out in any way possible. With that stated, I’m sure many of inmates have pleaded crazy, incapable, handicapped or any other problem just to get off death row. That’s why they have to go thru a process to determine if their handicapped. But when the tests are flawed, and criticized by many “psychologists and defense lawyers complained to the board of psychologist examiners that Denkowski used unscientific methods that artificially inflated intelligence scores to make defendants eligible for the death penalty.” You have to question the legitimacy when many people speak up about a mal-practice.  I think its wrong that Denkowski veered from the standardized tests, and of course he would have an argument proposing why he didn’t use them. “Denkowski explained why he deviated from the standard use of a test that evaluates adaptive behavior, or life skills. The test is typically administered to family and friends who know the person to ask about how the person functions.” But instead he did the test himself, hmmm possibility for a bias ? I’d say so… and his argument was that the family members would plead crazy just so they wont lose the convicted. Ok so why shouldn’t you screen them through another Dr. ? These ideas shouldn’t seem so hard, and if he would’ve taken the time to check the validity of his tests he wouldn’t be in this situation.  It doesn’t seem fair to an individual, no matter what the condition is, to get mistreated and stripped of basic freedoms.  Dr Denkowski got away with a slap on the wrist fine, meanwhile two of his fourteen inmates have lost their life.  Hopefully the others, now on death row, will get a second shot at evaluation, and that would truly see if his findings were accurate.  Matters that deal with someone’s life should not be taken shortly, or in this case with one Psychologist, no one person should have the power to take someone’s life, its not something to be played with.

Texas Speed Limits Speeding Up

I've read many articles about Texas raising the speed limits on certain highways. There are also bills being passed to remove the “night time” speed limit.  So far the night time bill has passed in the House, which will allow drivers to stay the same speed day or night.  I personally think we should pass this bill; we are the only state left with this law still in effect.  Modern vehicles have bright lights, and the highways have lights for the most part.  Just because the speed limit increases, doesn’t mean that everyone has to go that fast, so I don’t see anything wrong with this bill. By removing the night time speed drop, little towns will lose some money due to "night time" tickets, some smaller cities and towns will pull drivers over without headlights and give them a ticket claiming its too dark, eliminating possible tickets always seems like a good idea to me. Now there still are bills working on upping the speed limit from 70 to 75mph, alongside those bills there are bills trying to set the speed limit on future highways to 85mph.  These speeds are for new highways, and new highways built for the speed only. As of now legislation is just working for the 75mph mark. In my opinion I think the 75mph would be nice to see and it seems realistic, because it will allow you to speed if you want to, but not get completely ran over. The speed increase will make the speeders happy, even if it costs more per mile the faster you go, for some people its worth the price though. Like I said before I don’t see anything wrong with the speed limit increase, if you don’t want to speed, then stay out of the left lane.

Texas On Top

I was reading this piece and the commentary of it on Blogging Out Loud, and I totally agree with you and the article. Im glad to see Texas doing ok and is one of only 15 states adding jobs.  But this should not focus on just adding simpler labor.  We need to protect our educators, and the funding of K-12 education. Its sickening how many educators lost their jobs. How can we expect to push the limits and create new technologies, (Perry’s funding of the Emerging Technology Fund) if we don’t push kids to thrive in school and go beyond the standard education.  By cutting educational funding, all we are doing is telling the school kids to do one thing (continuing education) and doing the complete opposite (creating more simple jobs) and cutting the funding of their educations.  If we cut the education short, then we are going to cut our own throats sooner or later. “Combs applauded the Governor’s call for new initiatives to encourage young Texans to graduate from high school or obtain GEDs and to obtain the skills needed for in-demand jobs.”

“Combs is already in the lead on Gov. Perry’s call to control spending by streamlining government, eliminating duplication’’  This is where we need to be cutting funding, take extra money from the government, and make them really work for what the people want.  We do expect a value for our money, and I think the government should take some responsibility for their actions resulting in the budget shortfalls. If the economy is truly in a bad way, then everyone should share the shortfalls evenly, but it always seems that the government can point the finger in any direction except in the mirror. So I think the Government should feel the pain so they'll understand what really needs to happen.

Down Town Parking Meters: Gotta Pay to Play

I was reading an article in Mean Rachael's blog titled  Choose Your Own Adventure: Austin Parking Meter-Style . In this article Rachael describes and provides links about Austins newly passed parking scheme. Rachael Farris has blogged since 2005, she has a background in news media and PR, she has many other attributes that make her opinion and blog creditable. Rachael is personally against this plan and so am I.  The City of Austin just passed a bill to "help with the budget," downtown parking is a pain as is but now they are going to cut the free parking hours.  The old rules say parking is free Monday thru Saturday after 5:30PM and all day Sunday; the new rules state that free parking is only between midnight and 8AM Monday thru Saturday and all day Sunday.  So what does that translate to ? It means you have to pay for an extra six and a half hours of parking every week day, that's $6.50 extra at a rate of a dollar an hour to park. This is just gonna make it more expensive to go out downtown, its an extra fee thats going to come out of the average Jo's pocket.  The new fines also come with addition of eleven new members to the City of Austins Meter Enforcement team.  Austin hopes to raise an estimated $1.5 million a year in additional revenue. Most of this money is going to come from the late night party-ers, So if you like to go downtown for a nice drink or any other special occasion, expect and extra fee just to pay for parking. The new parking meter ordinance is scheduled to take effect in August 2011.

Higher Education

Kenneth Ashworth wrote a commentary piece about how the state would be foolish to abolish higher education board.  Ashworth is the former commissioner of the board, and because of this his argument seems to have some legitimacy to it.  He argues that if this board is abolished, then all the state funded schools, (which are funded according to student population) will open more, lower quality classes, in order to get more funding.  This will lead not only to lower education levels, but Ashworth thinks that many institutions will ‘overlap’ and offer many of the same classes, milking the resources of the undergraduates, to offer better programs for graduate degrees. Ashworth states that tuition rates would increase, which would cause higher learning to become even more inaccessible to the Texas general public.  All this seems like is cutting funding from one place, and expecting it to come out of the pockets of the public.  I would hate to see education in Texas drop any more quality than it already has, especially at the cost of the students who are trying to better themselves through their education.

Rural Schools Doomed ??

There is an article on the Austin American Statesman called “Rural schools, communities suffer in the face of Texas' budget cuts” This story is about how budget shortfalls are really hitting the education side of Texas very hard.  Rural schools face tough times, and some of which may even close down all together due to budget cuts.  This is relevant to a little town named Miles, this small town has a total population of 800 people, and the whole school district only has 425 kids.  Under the proposals floating around the Capitol, the district could be out about 15 percent of its total budget, Robert Gibson is not only afraid of loosing his school district, but is worried about loosing the whole town in the process of closing the school.  It seems as the big cities keep growing, the small towns die off slowly.  Small town schools are the first to get money cut, but yet the small towns still grow little by little without much notice.  If you don’t stand out, or have something to offer, then the state seems to slowly but surely cut funding from you (ie schools, school districts.)  Basically closing one school and consolidating school districts doesn’t do much at all, other than over populating a former school, and possibly wiping the other off the map. "If the school wasn't here," Gibson said, "the community would blow away."