The New York Times introduces the public to Mary Lou Bruner, 68, a former kindergarten teacher who is running for the state school board.
I don’t like to insult individuals on this blog, but the views of Ms. Bruner make me embarrassed to be a native Texan.
She believes:
that President Obama had worked as a gay prostitute in his youth, that the United States should ban Islam, that the Democratic Party had John F. Kennedy killed and that the United Nations had hatched a plot to depopulate the world….
Ms. Bruner’s anti-Obama, anti-Islam, anti-evolution and anti-gay Facebook posts have generated national headlines and turned an obscure school board election into a glimpse of the outer limits of Texas politics. In a part of the state dominated by conservative Christians and Tea Party activists, Ms. Bruner’s candidacy has posed a question no one can answer with any certainty — how far to the fringe is too far for Texas Republicans?
Ms. Bruner was a relative political newcomer when she started her campaign to represent a 31-county section of northern East Texas on the 15-member board that sets curriculum standards, reviews and adopts textbooks, and establishes graduation requirements in Texas public schools. Because of the board’s clout in selecting textbooks for all of the state’s schools, it can influence the content of textbooks produced nationwide.
Here in Ms. Bruner’s hometown, Mineola, and elsewhere in intensely conservative East Texas, her views fit a widely accepted anti-Obama and conspiracy friendly antigovernment mind-set. Inside Kitchens Hardware and Deli, the combination hardware store and diner where Mr. Clark was eating, a sign on a shelf read, “Hillary for Prison 2016.” A woman in a nearby store who declined to give her name said she would not hold Ms. Bruner’s Facebook posts against her, and spoke at length about her belief that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was a government-staged hoax.
Tammy Blair, the chairwoman of the Republican Party in nearby Cherokee County, said there were differing definitions of extreme, adding that she was sympathetic to the movement to have Texas secede from the United States.
If Ms. Bruner wins election to the state board, then perhaps Texas should give serious thought to seceding from the U.S. It will get to be an independent nation again. Bring back the great days of the Republic of Texas (1836-1845), when Texas had its own flag and all the trappings of independence. Lord knows it won’t unite with Mexico.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If she wins, I certainly wouldn’t be sad to see Texas go. That kind of thinking is terrifying.
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The Texas School Board does not just approve textbooks. It approves stand-alone digital resources and combinations of print and digital Instructional materials, the latter with licenses for up to eight years for various packages. These combo packages come with online access options e.g., 30 students, 30 classrooms. The state school board serves as gatekeeper determining which materials are approved, and thus eligible for reimbursement by the state.
On March 9, Mary Lou Bruner had over 48% of the votes in her district. She needed 50% to proceed to a May election.
The “adoption” decisions of the Texas School Board are not trivial because they influence major adoptions in other states, especially of print materials. Like some other states, Texas has a rolling schedule of adoptions for various grades and subjects.
Reviewers from the Grabler family once had the power to tank an adoption. Now, the public can influence this process by reporting ”errors,” including oral testimony just before final approvals. This arena for reporting “errors” can help to launch a political career, as Mary Lou Bruner and others have discovered. Recall that Texas wanted to accept a social studies text that called slaves “workers from Africa.”
You can look at the current adoptions and learn more about the process here.
http://tea.texas.gov/IMET/Ordering_Instructional_Materials/
Proclamation 2015 Newly Adopted Materials (PDF)
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If Texas leaves the union and becomes a nation again, it will probably invade and attempt to conquer Mexico and if the rest of the U.S. had a defense treaty with Mexico that means the U.S. would be at war with the Great Nation of Texas.
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good riddance
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Also, “far out”, in Texas, the inclusion of a John Arnold “philanthropic V-P” on the state pension board. Too much lead in their water?
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Putting a John Arnold clone on the state pension board is like inviting the wolf into the henhouse
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Yes.
Thanks, Dr. Ravitch, for the recent NPE webinar. Always impressive.
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Speaking of lead in water, I checked Newark Students Union posts to see their reaction to NPS lead/water crisis. Learned they started a Go Fund Me page to raise money to attend NPE 2016.
Dr Ravitch, would you kindly write a post for all to read? Remember to pack the “selfie stick” they introduced you to at 2015 NPE. Would folks around the nation help some Newark teens attain their goal?
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Maybe we need a new country where the extremists can go. When Trump loses this election, they’ll come out of the woodwork. But one advantage of technology is that the Texas school board has a looser grip on deciding what gets taught to the nation. It seems teachers are less reliant on textbooks.
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“Lord knows it won’t unite with Mexico.”
No, and Mexico wouldn’t want that either. It might be a Trump ploy to get Mexico to build (and pay for) that notorious wall he has proposed, but in this case, to keep this element out of Mexico!
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Don’t be embarrassed about her being a Texan – there are crazies everywhere – be embarrassed that she was allowed to be a kindergarten teacher.
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Just when you think you have seen it all.
She must be trying to out-Trump Trump.
Indeed. She was allowed to be a kindergarten teacher?
Her students would have had more sense than that.
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Too much locoweed?
lo·co·weed
noun
a widely distributed plant of the pea family that, if eaten by livestock (or candidates for the Texas State Board of Education), can cause a brain disorder, the symptoms of which include unpredictable behavior and loss of coordination. (not to mention reason!)
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How about Donald Trump as Prez with Sarah Palin asVice Prez and Ms. Bruner as Secretary of Education … Who would Secretary of Defense be Chris Christie??? These are the thoughts that NIGHTMARES ARE MADE OF!
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Chris Christie could be Secretary of Transportation in the Trump cabinet.
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The market for orange cones would grow exponentially, if Christie was Secretary of Transportation.
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Ha ha .. yes Christie would be better placed in the Transportation realm because if any state dared to anger Trump, Christie sure knows how to bully up with a traffic jam extraordinaire to aid a state leader in seeing the “error of his/her ways”!!! 🙂 How about the CEO of Monsanto (a different Hugh Grant ) as Secretary of Agriculture 🙂 🙂
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Isn’t Monsanto already world czar of agriculture? The internet identifies a major player (Jerry Crawford) in Hillary’s campaign, as a Monsanto lobbyist. Then, there’s the Jan. 7, 2016, article in EcoWatch, titled “Monsanto and Gates Pressure Kenya to Lift Ban on GMO’s.” Kenya appears to be a laboratory for Gates ideas (or profits?), like Bridge International Academies.
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One thing the reform movement likes to do….is to get rid of democracy. especially at the local level. It is so much nicer for them to have people with power appoint who is in charge of schools…..you often see a state takeover, in preparation to have appointees install charters as fast as they can……with no danger of the public complaining…..this is probably wrong….but I cannot rule out that a nutcase on the state board might be a wonderful way to discredit democracy……….an excuse to say…..we need to appoint everybody. Trust the people to eventually get things right.
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It is insulting to hear people lie about the president by referring to him as a gay prostitute.
People should not lie. They should stick to the truth. Obama never did any such thing ever in his youth or adulthood.
Barack Obama, instead, has worked for the last eight years as a political prostitute.
Just ask the education reformers . . . . .
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1. “Education reformers”
2. Bankers, with pimping by SEC and Justice Dept.
3. Multinational corporations, with pimping by trade agreements
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The simple answer is that the small bureaucracies are a microcosm of the larger culture were mendacity rules. I just wrote a comment called, Mendacity, which my publisher wants be to write as an article… (I will post it here, next comment.)
1- No accountability for lies… witness Trump & Cruz running on lies.. or the financial debacle where the liars were rewarded.
2- Extremism, was planned and executed by the GOP, and as Liz Warren said to Rachel Maddow, “extremism that the GOP created and nurtured has come back to bite them in the throat.” She also made it clear in the Senate that the mendacity has to stop!
http://on.msnbc.com/224cKs3
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How can this woman run on a platform of lies? Diane asks.
I talk about Charlatans & Lies, at Oped news, because I report all the incredible mendacity that Diane posts here. My comment MENDACITY FOLLOWS AT THIS LINK.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/As-News-Media-Changes-Ber-in-General_News-Bernie-Sanders-2016-Presidential-Candidate_Lies_Media-And-Democracy_Media-Bias-160226-816.html
In this article, ” Bernie Sanders pointed to TV in 1979, for the the PROPAGANDA MACHINE that TV is, and said : and explains that It was not just a profit-making enterprise,, but an opiatelike vehicle to subjugate the masses with “lies and distortions. And that was just the news programs. Commercials employed “Hitlerian” tactics in which the public is “bombarded” with short, simple messages in keeping with the owners’ mission to “create a nation of morons who will faithfully go out and buy this or that product, vote for this or that candidate.”
MY own comment which I copied and pasted (below) follows the article:
Mendacity, a comment at Oped News
by Susan Lee Schwartz
I am asking you, if you are reading this, to begin a campaign of demanding punishment for lies that destroy lives!
CALL OUT THE LIARS, demand THAT they go to jail for crimes. Call out the media, when they disseminate ‘lies’ and call it ‘balancing news.’ Write and call in your outrage.
As I said in the introduction: Anyone who, in the 1960s, read Vance Packard’s ‘The Hidden Persuaders’ are not surprised, http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1004/article_903.shtml
but it is time THE current media propaganda IS RECOGNIZED as creators of fear-mongering and promoter of lies that was prevalent in 1939 Germany.
We need to end this AGE OF MENDACITY where people plea that “everyone was doing it” (business as usual)!
THIS WAS the “reason’ that the guys at Libor and Standard and Poors,’ gave. They figured it was OK to sell junk to our people. Their values. After all — they lied, got away with it, and never went to jail! In fact the CEOs were rewarded for their mendacity, walking away with millions, while their companies settled and paid a pittance for penance.
And the media sold this to the people. Look, Bernie and I graduated HS together. It does not surprise me that he recognizes what I do. We were there when things were different… not perfect… but without tv and thus without the incessant noise and demands on our attention and our values! That ubiquitous screen, which sells ON HUGE SCREENS, THEIR VERSIONS OF THINGS… IN HD was ABSENT!
Many of us, with a decent and free education (Bernie and I graduated in 1959) had some prior knowledge with which to analyze what we heard on the radio. And, we had time to think critically. We heard Nixon and listened to the news. Today, people can barely have time to relax; many hold down 2 jobs and have to meet the needs of kids.
I have written for years about what I KNOW — how studies show that fast images, and sound-bites changed the brain or our citizenry. Images enter the brain on a different neurological path than do words. Sustained attention is difficult for many. Bits of information, and loads of misinformation at blistering speeds compete in a 24/7 static field.
Humans simply tune out the noise, and this is what the oligarchs need to happen — ALL THOSE TALKING HEADS EMITTING LIES… and the studies show how maths and lies become TRUTHS with re-telling.
For a very long time, I have written about the corruption of the media, and in fact, I WROTE A MEDIA UNIT AT EAST SIDE MIDDLE SCHOOL IN THE NINETIES, which introduced 13 year old seventh grade students to THE SUBTLE MESSAGES IN THE COMMERCIAL.
How else, I asked, can you KNOW if the VALUES THAT ARE OFFERED are VALID and productive ones for your own well-being and that of the society which you love. “DO THEIR VALUES contradict what parents or community value?”
In their weekly LETTERS these children wrote about what they saw and heard, and many related that they recognized the importance of KNOWING WHO IS PAYING for the message. They became critical of ads!
(OHMYGOSH! OK, so you know why I had to be removed from talking to our future citizens!
Well, THEY AINT KIDS ANY LONGER! They are ALL in their twenties and thirties now, so I wonder if they remember what they learned WITH SUSAN LEE SCHWARTZ?
I have at THIS blog, many times recommended this NOT TO MISS book,”IN THE ABSENCE OF THE SACRED,” by Jerry Mander;: http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/mander.html
YES, that IS his name!) IT IS NOT ABOUT RELIGION! The warning is implicit, as he describes the way it was before tv. Good values are those that benefit a society. That is, as my former students know, an EQ… AN ESSENTIAL TRUTH.
Elders passed on those things that benefited a society.
Lies hurt tribes because knowing what lurked ‘out there,’ was the secret to success and a survival behavior! Which begs the question: HOW CAN WE SURVIVE if our leaders and legislators and our justices lie with impunity?
I am not saying that it is merely television lies are what is killing democracy.
I am saying that LYING by those when trust to ‘promote the common welfare,’ is INTOLERABLE because it is DESTRUCTIVE.
That is why dictators ultimately destroy their states, and why our founding fathers created the document whiter legislature has made unrecognizable to bernie and I, and anyone who knows what it actually says and what it MEANS for a democracy to EXIST!!
The reason that lies are hurtful is easy to comprehend. In the real world, what you DON’T KNOW MAY KILL YOU, and thus, built into the human genome is the desire for FACTS… well, until the advent of television and that screen… that window onto the world… not the real one, but the one that the puppet-masters of media want you to believe. Like a world where a bully should have THAT PARTICULAR finger –THE ONE that pushes that RED button.
OY!
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She is clearly mentally ill.
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I really get offended when people lump all Texans in with some of the ultra-conservative idiots out there and just suggest getting rid of the whole state. Many of us fight very hard against those constinuencies. As others have said, the system is against us-it is very difficult to go against such strong opinions of brainwashed people.
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