August 13, 2018 5:19 PM Grusendorf: Education Reform? Well ahead of the next legislative session, former Texas House Public Education Chairman Kent Grusendorf lays out some history of what previous governors have sought to do about the issue and whether they really accomplished anything If you talk
to moms around Texas, you’ll quickly learn that a major issue for them is
education. Education reform has been a top priority for Texas parents, business
leaders, and politicians for decades. So, what have our state leaders said and
done in recent decades? With
the 85th
Legislature due to start in a few months, a review what governors have
said over the past 40 years regarding their education agendas in their State
of the State addresses to the legislature might be enlightening. Each of
the last six governors, who have led Texas over the past four decades, has proposed
reforms designed to fix the problems of public education. By Kent Grusendorf The rest of the story, subscribers only |
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August 6, 2018 2:45 PM Grusendorf: Death of a Nation, The MovieFrom the Right: Former Texas House Chairman Kent Grusendorf offers a review of the controversial new film by Dinesh D’Souza, which is playing at conservative events around he state and nation The Travis
County Republican Party recently sponsored an advance screening of Dinesh D’Souza’s new film “Death
of a Nation.” D’Souza
is an Indian immigrant who came to the US as an exchange student and is now a
naturalized American citizen. He has an interesting view of American history
unfettered by the natural biases of those of us who have grown up in America. The
film starts by noting how many once powerful nations have failed due to abuse
of power, corruption of ideas, and faulty philosophy. D’Souza
is clearly a partisan Republican, but he raises many issues in the film which
merit serious discussion. By Kent Grusendorf The rest of the story, subscribers only |
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August 3, 2018 4:10 PM Smith: A Warning Involving Jesus, Moses and the Karma of Voting RightsQR’s Liberal Columnist Glenn W. Smith writes that assaults on voting rights and democracy will come back to haunt those responsible. Here are a few modest observations on voting
rights in America, with a warning that the karmic penalty will fall heaviest on
those who misuse political and legal processes to keep their fellow citizens
from the polls. You can’t have a democracy, or, for you voter
suppression apologists, a representative republic, without unfettered access to
the voting booth for all citizens. Such exclusion is like the New
Testament without Jesus or
the Old
Testament without Moses. You
still have some stories to tell, but they’ll be missing their heroes. In a democracy, the hero is never you or me.
The hero is the right to vote. By Glenn W. Smith The rest of the story, subscribers only |
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July 25, 2018 4:27 PM Villalba: Red flag laws would save Texas lives After Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick poured cold water on the notion that “red flag” laws will ever pass the Senate, outgoing Rep. Jason Villalba says the founders “never intended to provide unfettered access to firearms to those in our society who had exhibited proclivities to maliciously harm others” On
a hot summer day in July of 2013, just a few miles up the highway from the
burgeoning, Texas metropolis of Dallas, little Alannah Gallagher, a precocious 6-year old from Saginaw, decided to
escape the hot confines of her stifling, middle-class home and take a ride on
her big wheel on the desolate country road in front of her house. Alannah,
like the generations of Texas children before her, reveled in the freedom and
abandon of a sultry and humid Texas afternoon.
Carefree, reckless, free. She
could feel the wind through her hair and she could let the fading sunshine kiss
her face as she pedaled ever faster to her heart’s content. But,
Alannah’s freedom was not without cost. Because lurking in her own neighborhood
- in fact, right next door - lived 18-year old Tyler Holder. By Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas The rest of the story, subscribers only |
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July 23, 2018 3:49 PM Grusendorf: The Next Texas SpeakerFrom the Right: Former Texas House Public Ed Chairman Kent Grusendorf lays out a case that Republicans, in caucus, could select a speaker who can garner bipartisan support on the floor Selection
of the next Texas Speaker will be unlike any in the past 170 years. The
selection will differ in several respects. First,
it will be the first time since Reconstruction that Republicans will actually have freely selected a leader from among their
membership. Additionally, it will be the first time that a political caucus
will have played a major role in the selection of a Speaker. Further, it will
be the first time in the last half century that a sitting speaker has
voluntarily vacated that office. Given
these new dynamics, will House members (Democrats and Republicans) prefer a
presiding officer or a commanding officer as their new leader in the 86th
Legislative Session? What role will
tradition and tenure play in the upcoming speaker race? By Kent Grusendorf The rest of the story, subscribers only |
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July 20, 2018 3:28 PM Smith: We will repudiate the darkness in 2018QR’s Liberal Columnist Glenn W. Smith notes that some conservatives are fine Putin’s subversion of our democracy as long as it serves their own power, but most Texans and Americans will repudiate the darkness in 2018. The
Atlantic
reports that some Donald Trump
supporters and conservative pundits are saying out loud that they are fine with
the intervention of Russian President Vladimir
Putin in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton “is a greater threat to our
Republic” than Putin, the magazine quoted one Trump supporter saying. It also
cited is Jacob Wohl, a Trumpist with a large Twitter following: “If Russia assists
MAGA candidates on the internet in this year’s midterms, that’s not the end of
the world,” Wohl said. By Glenn W. Smith The rest of the story, subscribers only |
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June 16, 2018 1:58 PM Smith: Silence of the WolvesQR’s Liberal Columnist Glenn W. Smith argues Texas GOP leadership is ignoring Trump’s kidnapping of children in Texas and they should be condemned for it “But whoso shall offend
one of these little ones which believe in me, it were
better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depth of the sea.” Jesus said that. Gov. Greg Abbott and his fellow Republicans should listen to the advice. As the world knows – and
as religious leaders of all faiths have rightly condemned – Donald Trump has begun a policy of
kidnapping immigrant children from their mothers and fathers and placing them
in internment camps. In Texas. You read that right.
Concentration camps for children. In our state. There’s one in Brownsville, in
an abandoned Walmart. They are also building a camp of tents in the desert
sun outside El Paso. By Glenn W. Smith The rest of the story, subscribers only |
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Copyright August 13, 2018, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved 