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Lottery Scams in Mass. and Texas: How to Beat the System, Win Millions, and (Maybe) Get Away with It

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2024 //
4

Every once in a while, you read a story about a person winning the lottery twice or three times, and it seems amazing that anyone could be so lucky. But when the same person wins the lottery thousands of times, something is wrong. The two biggest lottery scams in recent years happened in Massachusetts and Texas. The trick was different in each case but very effective. The perpetrators of the winning plan were jailed in Massachusetts, but not in Texas, where almost anything is legal except abortion.

In Massachusetts, the story appeared in the Boston Globe magazine about a family—a father and two sons—who collected $20 million from the lottery in less than a decade, with more than 14,000 winning tickets.

Dan O’Neil, the director of compliance and security for the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission, doesn’t typically get alerted when someone shows up to claim a $1,000 prize from a scratch-off ticket. Such transactions are usually quiet, pleasant, unremarkable. The lucky winner produces the ticket and the agent, sitting at a counter behind a pane of glass in Dorchester, doles out the money.

The call came from a customer service agent in the lobby at lottery headquarters and the message was short. The Jaafars are here again, the agent said. Yousef Jaafar, this time….

An information technology expert at the lottery had run the math to show just how unlikely it was. An instant-win game called “$10,000,000 Big Money” had a 1 in 1,106.72 chance of producing a jackpot of $1,000 or more, he reported. Yet somehow, over a recent span of six months, the Jaafars had managed to claim nearly $2 million in winnings, the bulk of it from instant tickets like “$10,000,000 Big Money.” To win at that rate, the Jaafars would’ve had to purchase 22,859 such tickets every day, 952 tickets every hour, 16 tickets every minute. “Every minute of every day,” the official said. “Twenty-four hours a day.”

In lottery terminology, there was a name for this. The Jaafars were “high-frequency winners.” They were also breaking the law and the rules of the lottery itself by working with dozens of convenience store operators in an underground network where everyone was trying to avoid paying taxes on lottery prizes. In this network, everyone got cash under the table while the Jaafars got the winning tickets to claim as their own. A lot of them. In 2019 alone, the Jaafars claimed more than $3.2 million in winnings. Yousef was the sixth-highest ticket casher in the entire state that year, Mohamed was third, and their father topped the list…

The Jaafars’ scheme was built on a premise that’s been known to gamblers for decades: Some people prefer not to publicly claim their winnings, particularly if they want to hide money from the Internal Revenue Service.

At American racetracks since at least the 1960s, these reluctant winners have turned to “ten percenters” for help. In the shadows beneath the grandstands, ten percenters would pay cash for someone’s winning ticket, minus a 10 percent cut off the top and often even more — 15 or 25 percent. The real winner would walk away with cash in hand, off the books, tax-free, while the ten percenter would claim the full prize at the racetrack window and often avoid taxes by claiming large gambling losses at the end of the year or by submitting fake identification at the track.

It usually amounted to tax evasion and could have devastating ramifications: the government sometimes lost as much as $1 million a week in tax revenue at a single track. It was only a matter of time before a similar practice of ten percenting infected state-run lotteries. For any jackpot over $600, winners have to produce a valid ID and Social Security number, and pay taxes. Those who owe back taxes or child support have one more obstacle to clear: Massachusetts authorities will take that money before paying out any winnings.

In this world, someone holding a scratch-off ticket worth $1,000 can sell their prize to a convenience store operator for $750 or $850. The winner leaves with cash under the table. The convenience store clerk picks up the phone and calls a runner. This person shows up and buys the ticket for the discount price, minus a cut for the clerk — maybe $50. The runner then pretends to be the real winner and claims the ticket at a lottery office for its full value, scoring a profit of $100 or $200.

Quite a racket. But they didn’t get away with it. The father was sentenced to five years in prison, the older son got 50 months, and the younger son got a plea deal.

In Texas, a slick operation based in New Jersey managed to score a $95 million jackpot by buying every numerical combination.

By April 22, seven months had passed without a winner of the jackpot, and the top prize had grown to $95 million.

That night’s draw — 3, 5, 18, 29, 30, 52 — matched a single ticket purchased in a small store in Colleyville, outside of Fort Worth. 

Winners have six months to claim their prize, either in payments over 30 years or a lump-sum, typically worth about half. On June 27, the state of Texas issued a check for $57.8 million to a New Jersey-based limited partnership apparently formed to collect the jackpot, called Rook TX.

The Texas Lottery Commission, whose proceeds mainly fund public education, celebrated the big win — “generating much needed revenue for Texas Schools,” then-Executive Director Gary Grief wrote. “What the Texas lottery is all about.”

But a statistical analysis of the April 22 Lotto Texas drawing strongly suggests that night’s draw wasn’t what a lottery is about at all. Rather, the numbers indicate Rook TX beat the system.

Unbeknownst to the millions of players who’d invested their hopes and dreams into the game and its life-changing jackpot, the winner had already been decided.

Rook TX appears to have engineered a nearly risk-free — and completely legal — multimillion-dollar payday.

And the state of Texas helped.

Warning: Numbers ahead

While lottery players have occasionally exploited a hidden mathematical advantage to guarantee a lottery profit, there is one sure way to win a jackpot. Stefan Mandel did it 14 times, and it had little to do with luck. He simply bought up every numeric combination.

Yet Mandel, a Romanian economist and mathematician, had to master both probability and logistics. The jackpots needed to be both big enough to cover his costs, as well as favor his chances of being the only winner; splitting a payout could be ruinous. Because buying so many lottery tickets required going to dozens, if not hundreds of separate stores, he required a team of accomplices. 

The recent introduction in Texas of digital lottery apps has lowered the logistical obstacles. The Lotto Texas drawing of April 22, meanwhile, presented a perfect-storm of high reward and low risk that practically guaranteed that an opportunistic player with a sizable bankroll could walk away with tens of millions of dollars.

The evidence is in the numbers.

The first thing someone wanting to buy a lottery drawing would need to know: How many tickets would you need to buy to cover every numeric combination in a game like Lotto Texas? The answer, said Tim Chartier, a Davidson College math professor who studies sports and lottery analytics: 25.8 million.

Lotto Texas draws typically generate 1 million to 2 million ticket sales. Records from the Texas Lottery Commission show that in the days leading up to the Saturday night draw, just over 28 million Lotto Texas tickets were purchased.

That doesn’t prove Rook TX accumulated the nearly 26 million tickets necessary to guarantee a win. But an examination of the second prizes awarded indicates it almost certainly did.

In addition to the jackpot for matching all six numbers, Lotto Texas pays lesser prizes to players who guess five-of-six, four-of-six and three-of-six of the draw. The total possible combinations for each, according to Nicholas Kapoor, a Fairfield University statistics professor who studies lottery probability: 288 five-of-six combos, 16,920 four-of-six combos and 345,920 three-of-six winners.

Lower-value prizes can be cashed in at any retailer that sells tickets, and the state doesn’t track them. But Texas requires any prize over $599 to be redeemed at an official Texas Lottery Commission center, which records the winners. The April 22 drawing paid $2,015 to its five-of-six winners.

Records from the Texas Lottery Commission show Rook TX cashed in 289 winning tickets in the five-of-six game — the same number as all possible combinations plus one for the grand prize ticket. The odds a single entity managed to win the grand prize and every possible five-of-six prize — but somehow didn’t buy up every combination — are vanishingly small, said Chartier…

There is compelling evidence that Lotto Texas’ ballooning jackpot was being probed by sophisticated players in the weeks leading up to Rook TX’s big win.

With the jackpot climbing to $60 million, the April 1, 2023, draw saw a sudden sales spike. Three million tickets were purchased, more than double the previous game.

No one matched all six numbers, but the draw produced a large number of five-of-six winners. More unusual: 17 of the 40 winning five-of-six tickets were held by the same person — a rate that is extremely unlikely to have occurred randomly.

Records show the claimant, Thomas Ashcroft, purchased all his winners through two stores — the Colleyville outlet and Luck Zone, an app-affiliated store in Round Rock. Although Ashcroft gave a Connecticut address, the Chronicle could not locate anyone with that name in the region.

Another burst of sales preceded the April 15 drawing — 7.4 million tickets. While no one claimed the jackpot, the number of five-of-six winners was again high. This time, more than three-quarters of the 71 winners were claimed by a single entity — Rook TX. State records show it purchased all 55 winning tickets from the same two stores. 

For one entity to randomly win that many of the five-of-six prizes, Chartier calculated a person would have to play a lottery game every day for 327 years. 

The Texas Lottery Commission said there was nothing suspicious about the games, which it said were attracting more players because of the big prize and relatively good odds of winning: “This is not indicative of unusual activity in the lottery industry, but rather a strategic decision made by players or groups that are in pursuit of high jackpots.” 

A week later Rook TX won the $95 million jackpot and 289 five-of-six winners. The April 15 and 22 draws are the only times its name appears in the state’s registry of lottery winners.

The Texas Lottery Commission allows winners of $1 million and more to remain personally anonymous, so identifying Rook TX’s members is practically impossible. Delaware corporation records show it was formed two weeks before claiming the top prize. The limited partnership’s registered agent, Glenn Gelband, a lawyer in Scotch Plains, N.J., did not respond to a request for comment.

Texas lottery officials said there was nothing illegal about buying up all the numbers.

Massachusetts put the guys who played the system into prison. Texas can’t find them and apparently doesn’t care. The only way to beat the guys who beat the system is to hope that two or three other combines copy their tactics; they would all lose money by splitting the prize.

Categories Cheating, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud, Massachusetts, Texas

Texas: The Fight Against Vouchers Continues

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2024 //
10

Texas Governor Greg Abbot said last year that voucher legislation was his top priority. Was it because Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass gave him $6 million to vouchers through the legislature? A score of Republicans from rural districts voted against vouchers. They knew that their district schools would be crippled by vouchers. Although Governor Abbot called multiple special sessions, although he offered bribes and threats, the rural Republicans defied him and said no to vouchers. The people who taught in their local public schools were their sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, children and friends.

So Governor Abbot took Jeff Yass’s $6 million and used it to fund extremist Republicans who would vote for vouchers, putting their local public schools at risk.

Many of the Yass extremists won, paving the way for Abbot to win his vouchers.

Democrats are challenging Abbot’s puppets in November, the ones that Jeff Yass paid for.

The Pastors for Texas Children have not given up the fight.

Their leader Charles Foster Johnson post the following on Twitter:

As we write this, we are in the hearing room with our pastors. We are told the committee will hear testimony tomorrow, too.

 This written testimony by PTC Trustee Bill Jones is superb! It is a sterling example of what effective written testimony is. It is not too late for you to submit written testimony. You may do so here.   

#######

 I am Bill Jones, a resident of Collin County for the past 37 years. My state representative is Jeff Leach. I have three grandchildren in Frisco ISD and one in Allen ISD. My daughter is a schoolteacher in Frisco ISD and formerly taught for many years in Plano ISD. Both of my children grew up in Plano ISD schools. I am a trustee of Pastors for Texas Children, where I have served since 2013, and a member – since 2004 – of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, where I serve on the Christian Advocacy Committee.

 With respect to your August 12 hearing on “educational opportunity” proposals, I testify to oppose any bill that would transfer public taxpayer funds to private entities. Public taxpayer funds should go ONLY to public schools that benefit all, not to private schools that benefit only a privileged few. Any bill that would give public funds for the support of private schools would drain funds from our children’s and grandchildren’s neighborhood public schools, which are already gravely underfunded.

 Any claim by voucher proponents that vouchers benefit the underprivileged is an outright lie. The vast majority of parents who would take advantage of vouchers – as has been the case in other states – are those whose children are already in private schools. They go to parents who are able to afford the private school tuition, and the voucher is merely a supplement to reduce their expense. Voucher amounts are never even close to sufficient for those who cannot afford private schools in the first place. They benefit the well-to-do.

 Above all, I do not want my tax money to go to support someone else’s religious indoctrination any more than I want the tax money of those of other faiths to support mine.

 In addition, private schools are not accountable to the state – their teachers do not have to be certified; their curriculum is not subject to oversight; and they are free to refuse applications from, for example, special needs children, which they almost always do. Public schools, on the other hand, are required to meet state standards, and they must take ALL children, including those with special needs. We should not be further draining them of the resources needed to serve children of every type of need, every faith, every color, every ethnic background.

Voucher plans, no matter what name or euphemism is attached to them, are bad policy, hurting our children and grandchildren, and the dedicated public servants – schoolteachers, principals, superintendents, and other staff – who serve them.

Please vote against any bills that provide public taxpayer funds for the support of private schools.

Donate to PTC

PO Box 471155, Fort Worth, Texas, 76147

Categories Billionaires, Education Industry, Elections, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: New Vending Machine Sells Bullets

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2024 //
27

Texas Monthly reports that a new vending machine, not far from a middle school, sells bullets.

What’s next? A vending machine that sells handguns? Or a vending machine that makes 3-D printed guns?

This time of year, shoppers who set foot inside Lowe’s Market in downtown Canyon Lake, are usually looking for two things: swimming gear and beer. The cramped and busy grocery store, which is located about an hour north of San Antonio and whose wide selection of disparate items gives it the feel of a mini-Walmart, is often the last stop for supplies before locals and tourists float down the nearby Guadalupe River, a Texas summer tradition. 

But for the last two weeks, something else has lured an endless stream of outdoor enthusiasts, ranchers, gun lovers, and tourists into the store, often with looks of excitement and curiosity splashed across their faces. It’s not the fresh produce, the sunscreen, or even the generous selection of wine and beer. They want to glimpse an audacious intersection of consumer technology and weaponry—an interactive, two-thousand-pound ammunition dispenser. Sandwiched between a small ATM and a row of ice machines near the store’s front entrance, the double-walled, triple-locked steel vault wrapped in an American flag decal beckons customers to swipe their credit card with a simple tagline: “Need to reload?” Online, the company’s motto advertises “Ammo Sales Like You’ve Never Seen Before.”

For some locals, the patriotic kiosk, which has already been restocked once after selling out, is a source of convenience, a clever idea that saves a trip to the nearest sporting goods store, which is 32 miles away in San Marcos. For others, it’s a transgressive delight, an almost comical reminder of the rights that many Texans hold dear. And for a few others, the machine is a disturbing eyesore, particularly because the first ammo vending machine in Texas is located next to a local middle school at a time when the mass shootings of children in Uvalde and Santa Fe High remain a fresh memory in many minds. During the school year, that Lowe’s Market location is frequented by teenage customers, especially after classes let out. Last week, a USA Today columnist wrote that the machines, juxtaposed with bananas and diapers, felt like “something out of a dystopian novel.” So far, at least, the curiosity—and controversy—have been great for business. “That machine has been the talk of the town,” the store’s general manager, who asked not to be named, told me as customers stopped to gawk at the kiosk on a recent Saturday. 

Categories Elections, Extremism, Guns, Texas

The Private Corporation that Owns the Hospital Where I Was Born Goes Bankrupt

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2024 //
11

The Steward Corporation, which owns 31 hospitals, declared bankruptcy a few weeks ago. In addition to the hospitals it owns in Texas, it also has eight hospitals in Massachusetts.

I have a personal interest in these events because one of the Steward holdings is St. Joseph’s, where I was born. It is the oldest hospital in Houston. At the time of my birth, St. Joseph’s was a Catholic hospital, staffed in large part by nuns wearing habits.

In recent years, the hospital has been owned by a series of private equity firms, who envisioned ways of making a profit while delivering high-quality healthcare.

In Massachusetts, state leaders were outraged by Steward’s bankruptcy and lambasted the private equity firms:

Steward’s troubles in Massachusetts have drawn the ire of political figures including U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, who have said the company’s previous private equity owners “sold (Steward) for parts” and “walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars.” 

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said Monday that the state had been preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing. Despite the filing, she said, Steward hospitals will remain open and patients should keep their appointments.

“This situation stems from and is rooted in greed, mismanagement and lack of transparency on the part of Steward leadership in Dallas, Texas,” Healey said Monday. “It’s a situation that should never have happened and we’ll be working together to take steps to make sure this never happens again.”

No such outrage in Texas, where state leaders worship at the shrine of the market.

Julian Gill of The Houston Chronicle wrote about the failure of Steward.

St. Joseph Medical Center is poised to be sold after its Dallas-based owner, Steward Health Care, this week filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to court documents. 

On Tuesday, the day after filing for Chapter 11 protections, Steward said in court documents that it plans to sell all of its hospital properties, which include St. Joseph and 30 other hospitals throughout the U.S. According to court documents, the company is “exploring a reorganization around a smaller footprint of hospitals.” 

Representatives for St. Joseph and Steward could not immediately be reached for comment.

Upon announcing the bankruptcy Monday, Steward said day-to-day operations are expected to continue without interruption during the bankruptcy proceedings…

St. Joseph is Houston’s only downtown hospital and the oldest general hospital in the city. The hospital has more than 700 beds, officials previously told the Chronicle, and many of its patients are covered by Medicaid and Medicare. In addition to St. Joseph, the bankruptcy affects hospitals in Odessa, Big Spring, Port Arthur, and Texarkana…

St. Joseph has changed hands multiple times over the last two decades. In 2006, the hospital was sold to North Carolina-based Hospital Partners of America, Inc., after the previous owners, Christus Health, said it couldn’t afford to modernize the hospital’s aging buildings, according to earlier reports in the Chronicle. Hospital Partners initially invested heavily in the hospital but declared bankruptcy about two years later.

In 2011, a Tennessee-based company, Iasis Healthcare, acquired a majority interest in the hospital as part of the bankruptcy process. Iasis merged with Steward in 2017. 

Categories Health, Houston, Personal, Texas

Texas: School District Votes to Delete Textbook Chapters on Climate Change, Cultural Diversity, Vaccines

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2024 //
37

The school board of the Cypress-Fairbanks district (Cy-Fair) in Texas voted to delete chapters they didn’t like from textbooks in science. Science teachers in the district were taken aback.

Cy-Fair is located in the Houston suburbs and is one of the largest districts in the state.

Elizabeth Sander of The Houston Chronicle wrote:

The former science coordinator at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD was “appalled” as she watched the conservative stronghold on the school board vote to remove 13 chapters from science, health and education textbooks last month, scrapping in just minutes countless hours of work done by both state and local textbook review committees.

“Chapters are not independent entities. They’re put in an order purposefully, and they build off of prior knowledge, and they reference information in prior areas,” said Debra Hill, who has 40 years of experience in science education. “It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to take off the chapter on adding and subtracting, and we’ll just skip ahead to multiplication.’”

The material that was deleted will be covered by state tests.

One Cy Falls High School teacher, who served on the review committee for the earth systems course materials, has filed a grievance with the board that will be discussed at Thursday’s board workshop, according to information shared on social media by Trustee Julie Hinaman, the lone opposing vote on removing the chapters. Critics question whether students will get all the information the state intends — and will test for — in a last-minute effort to replace the materials. 

The earth science textbook had three entire chapters removed, titled, “Earth Systems and Cycles,” “Mineral and Energy Resources” and “Climate and Climate Change.”

Other content removed from the textbooks included chapters on cultural diversity, vaccines, COVID-19 and climate change. Courses impacted include education, health science, biology and environmental science.

Cy-Fair ISD’s Chief Academic Officer Linda Macias assured board members when they made the vote in May that it would be possible for their curriculum staff to make these changes, even as the staff has been slashed in budget cuts for the 2024-2025 school year. 

But Hill isn’t so sure it will actually be possible for Cy-Fair teachers to teach the required Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills next year, she said. 

Creating a new curriculum is hard enough, and the district must also provide students with materials that pertain to every single science TEK, she said. Cy-Fair’s curriculum staff and other educators may be responsible for creating their own textbook pages to replace the ones that were deleted, a process that could take countless hours outside of instruction that could drive teachers from the profession altogether, she said.

Plus, Hill hasn’t seen any clarity on who would approve the new instructional materials. The board could theoretically reject new chapters created by the district if it included too much of the type of climate change material that the deleted textbook chapters covered, Hill worried.

“If you want to drive teachers out of education, this is what you should do to them,” she said. “I am just very afraid that students are not going to get access to accurate, TEKS-aligned content.”

Last month, the school board voted to eliminate discussions of vaccines and other topics, while cutting the budget and eliminating 600 positions.

More than a dozen chapters including content on vaccines, cultural diversity, climate change, depopulation and other topics deemed controversial by conservative Cypress-Fairbanks ISD trustees will be removed from textbooks in the state’s third largest school system for the 2024-2025 school year.

Trustees voted 6-1 late Monday to omit the material, after an hourslong discussion about a $138 million budget deficit that is forcing the district to eliminate 600 positions, including 42 curriculum coaches, dozens of librarians and 278 teaching positions.

What were the school board members thinking? Did they think if you don’t teach about climate change, it doesn’t exist?

Who will remove the chapters? Will the publisher? Will teachers cut them out of the textbooks? Will they paste the pages together?

A big thank-you to Trustee Julie Hinaman, who believes in education, not censorship or indoctrination.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Environment, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, History, Ignorance, Stupid, Texas

Texas: Yes, There Are Huge Differences Between Democrats and the GOP!

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2024 //
28

Michelle Davis writes a blog called Lone Star Left, where she opines on the struggle to reverse the hold of fascists on the state of Texas. She previously reported on the state convention of the Texas GOP, which cherishes the “right to life” for fetuses but wants to impose the death penalty on women who seek or obtain an abortion. Women who want an abortion apparently have NO right to life.

In this post, Davis reports on the Texas Democratic Party platform, which is the polar opposite of the GOP. She loves it!

She writes:

Okay, we’re finally to it. The Texas Democratic Party Platform and the proposed changes went through the Platform Committee. The Texas Democratic Party (TDP) platform is a critical document that outlines the party’s values, principles, and policy goals. It serves as a roadmap for Democratic candidates and elected officials, providing a clear vision for the future of Texas. The platform reflects the collective voice of party members and sets the agenda for the party’s legislative priorities.

The platform also plays a significant role in mobilizing voters. It provides a comprehensive guide to what the Democratic Party stands for, making it easier for voters to understand its positions on critical issues. (Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.)

If you missed the previous articles about the TDP’s updated rules and resolutions: 

Personally, I love the Texas Democratic Party Platform and have kept up with its evolution over the years. The previous platform is online, which you can see here: 

Loving a party platform? That’s weird. 

Earlier this week, I was mindlessly scrolling on TikTok, and I came across some dipshit from Los Angeles who has several hundred thousand followers; her video was all about how “both parties are the same,” and she was discouraging people from voting. The privileged position of living in a blue state, right?

People like this piss me off because NO Democrats and Republicans are not the same. 

While the Republican Party of Texas debated giving women who have abortions the death penalty, this week, the Texas Democratic Party added a platform plank that says, “Restore the right of all Texans to make personal and responsible decisions about reproductive health.”

Republicans want unfettered end-stage capitalism with no healthcare, no public education, no Social Security, no Medicaid, and vast wealth inequality. Democrats want universal healthcare, well-funded public education, robust social safety nets, and economic equality.

The Texas Democratic Party platform is a testament to our commitment to creating a fairer, more just society for all Texans. Seeing such misinformation spread online is frustrating, especially when it can lead to voter apathy. However, our platform represents a clear and progressive vision for the future.

It’s a comprehensive document outlining our priorities for a better Texas. We must continue to show these differences between the blue and the red to counteract the cynicism and misinformation that is prevalent today.

What are some of the positive highlights? 

Education:

The platform changes maintained the emphasis on protecting and improving Texas public education. They also retained strong language prohibiting school choice scams, such as using vouchers, including special education vouchers, and opposed these programs. The platform kept the requirement that every class have a teacher certified to teach that subject. It clarified that teachers should not be expected to provide financial support through classroom supplies and other essentials at their own expense.

Some of the planks I thought were good: 

  • Oppose discriminatory policies affecting special education funding. (It’s an ongoing problem in the Republican-led legislature.)
  • Offer dual credit and early college programs that draw at-risk students into vocational, technical, and collegiate careers.
  • Ensure all public school children are provided free school meals.

Higher education:

The TDP platform includes several favorable planks in higher education to make college more accessible and affordable. These include advocating for student loan debt relief, providing free college tuition for low-income qualified students, and offering paid internships and debt-free apprenticeship programs. Additionally, the platform supports eliminating standardized testing requirements like the SAT and ACT for college admissions.

Voting and elections:

The platform supports electronic voting systems that utilize paper backups and an auditable paper trail, ensuring election integrity. This particular plank led to some debate. While some supported it for ensuring election integrity, others were wary of potential vulnerabilities and preferred more traditional voting methods. Ultimately, it passed. 

Another fundamental plank supported the establishment of a limit on campaign donations in Texas elections to ensure fairness and transparency. We badly need campaign finance reform in Texas. Democrats see this need and are taking it seriously. 

They also supported establishing a code of judicial ethics for the Supreme Court of the United States and efforts to recalibrate the court by tying the number of justices to the number of federal circuit courts (13).

The Case For Expanding The Supreme Court

The Case For Expanding The Supreme Court

MICHELLE H. DAVIS

·FEB 14 Read full story

Healthcare:

If you missed my previous article, the Texas Democratic Party Resolution supports universal healthcare. This has also been part of their platform for several years. Unfortunately, we’re still fighting for basic healthcare access in Texas, so it’s a part of the Texas Democratic Party platform that doesn’t get enough attention. 

Here are some (not all) other interesting planks added this year: 

  • Protect doctors and hospitals from politically motivated attacks that hinder them from providing the best care possible.
  • Legalize and expand access to harm reduction supports such as fentanyl testing strips, Narcan, and safe syringe programs.
  • Support policies that reduce pollution and protect clean air and water.
  • Ensure that veterans have access to high-quality mental health services and support for substance use disorders.

Reproductive healthcare:

We all know what the GOP is doing. Besides restoring the right of Texans to make personal and responsible decisions about reproductive health, other new TDP platform planks include: 

  • Protect the right to access in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment.
  • Uphold the right to travel to another state for legal medical services.
  • Offer comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education.
  • Hold medical providers accountable for withholding information about a pregnancy based on their presumption that the pregnancy would be terminated.
  • Safeguard reproductive health and gender-based care patient privacy, including protection from law enforcement.

The environment and climate. 

Sometimes, I wonder if we spend enough time talking about this issue. It’s terrible right now, and the next several months could bring devastating weather.

Issues regarding the environment and climate change are life-threatening, and with Texas being the number one producer of greenhouse emissions in America, it’s an issue that Texans should take very seriously. 

The new planks, which add to the TDP’s previous commitments to clean energy, address many of these concerns. Including supporting policies that develop clean energy resources, promoting alternative fuel vehicles, promoting more energy-efficient buildings and appliances, streamlining the permitting process for building new electric transmission lines, and adding charging stations for electric cars at all state highway rest stops.

Dawn Buckingham, the Texas Land Commissioner, and oil and gas shill has promised to fight the federal administration from connecting offshore windmills to Texas. However, the TDP platform supports federal legislation to share offshore wind lease and production revenues with Texas and other states, incentivizing state and local governments to facilitate successful siting processes and funding coastal infrastructure and flood resiliency projects.

They also emphasized creating and enforcing stringent state and federal regulations on oil and gas operations, including methane release monitoring and enforcement without exceptions.

All of these planks are fantastic, and maybe by the time the 2026 Convention rolls around, we’ll be ready to add support for legislation that holds fossil fuel companies responsible for climate change. 

Criminal justice reform.

The TDP platform includes significant changes in the criminal justice reform plank, stressing a more humane approach to law enforcement. The platform proposes raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 13 years, ending the prosecution of juveniles in adult courts, and closing the remaining youth prison facilities while investing in community infrastructure to support children. Additionally, it aims to enforce the constitutional mandate against imprisoning individuals for debt, promote alternatives to incarceration for non-threatening offenses, and eliminate mandatory minimum sentences to allow for judicial discretion—notably, the platform advocates for abolishing the death penalty and instituting a moratorium on executions.

There is more. Open the link to finish her post.

What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas. It spreads to other GOP extremists. Stay informed.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Democrats, Education Reform, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Funding, Gender, Health, Justice, Supporting public schools, Texas

Texas: Republican Party Agrees on Plan to Kill Democracy

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2024 //
16

The usual understanding of democracy is “one man [person], one vote.” No matter how rich or powerful you are, your vote counts the same as that of the poorest person in the same district. We know from experience that the very rich win power by making lavish political donations, but at the ballot box each person has only one vote and all votes are counted equally.

At its recent convention, The Texas Republican Party endorsed an outrageous scheme to cancel the foundation of democracy. It’s not enough for them that billionaires are funding pliable politicians. The state Republicans want to cancel the principle of “one person, one vote.”

They adopted a plank that imposes a sort of electoral college on statewide elections. The winner will not be the candidate with the most votes, but the candidates who win a majority of counties. “The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment to add the additional criteria for election to a statewide office to include the majority vote of the counties with each individual county being assigned one vote allocated to the popular majority vote winner of each individual county,” the new plank says.

Democrats are concentrated in big cities; Republicans are the majority in large numbers of small rural counties. If this plank weee to become part of the State Constitution, Democrats would never again be elected Governor, Lieutenant Governor, or U.S. Senator. Democrats might win the popular vote by a large majority, yet still lose the election if they don’t win a majority of the counties in the state.

This proposed Constitutional Amendment is a stake in the heart of democracy. Democrats must organize and elect candidates who want to strength of our society, not destroy it.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fascism, Texas

Michelle H. Davis: Texas GOP Convention Gets More Deranged, Part 2

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2024 //
8

Blogger Michelle H. Davis watched the Texas GOP convention so others wouldn’t have to. What happens there tends to leech into the national GOP, at least its most extreme elements. This is part 2 of her coverage.

She writes:

We’re on day four of the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) 2024 Convention, and it hasn’t gotten any less deranged. Today, the General Session began and featured speeches from Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, Sid Miller, and your regular cast of degenerates. If you’re interested in watching, you can find it here. 

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick chose to spend his time on stage licking Trump’s boots. He told the audience how he went to New York to show his allegiance to Mango Mussolini during his criminal trial and complained about how rundown the courthouse was. He shouted on stage that Trump was innocent, and there were no facts or evidence showing otherwise. 

Baltimore-Dan also spoke heavily about the legislative process and how he changed the Senate rules to ensure Democrats had no voice. Then, he claimed that any bills from the House and a majority of Democrats voting on them would wind up in the trash. Because who cares about what’s doing best for Texans? It’s all partisan politics for them. 

One Republican woman is becoming famous for all the wrong reasons.

I posted this same video on Twitter, and it’s currently going viral. The video shows a Republican woman/precinct chair pushing back against the Republican’s “abolish abortion” plank and comparing the Republican Party of Texas to the Taliban. Near the end of the video, she’s confronted by two wombless men who seem to be disgusted with her position.

The GOP is obsessed with preventing abortion, no exceptions. Here is their language:

The legislative priorities committee gave an explanation for each one of their priorities, which you can see here. It’s important to point out what their reason is for the “abolish abortion” priority. 

The Republicans plan on going after abortion pills and websites like Plan C Pills and Hey Jane. They also want the legislature to make laws to go after abortion clinics in other states legally. It’s important to note that their language in this explanation includes “the moment of fertilization.” That’s going to be their excuse to ban IVF and certain forms of birth control, perhaps all forms of birth control.

No exceptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother, or the ago of the female. A 10-year-old who was by her father must deliver the baby! A woman whose life is endangered must prepare to die!

The Republican Party of Texas’ 2024 platform is going to be bat-shit crazy. 

I’m still watching the platform committee videos. The Texas GOP’s platform is just as nuts as it was in 2022, if not more. It’ll give content creators something to talk about for months. They will vote on the final platform tomorrow or Saturday. A political party’s platform is essential because it tells us what a party believes and works toward. 

For example, the RPT’s platform calls for banning all forms of sex education in Texas, and they call for an end to any mental health counseling in public schools.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Republicans, Texas

Michelle H. Davis Watched the Texas GOP Convention to See What’s Ahead, Part 1

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2024 //
2

Michelle H. Davis writes a gutsy blog called LoneStarLeft. She watched the state GOP conventions we didn’t have to. The party is the extreme edge of the white Christian nationalist movement. Thanks, Michelle.

Above all, the Texas GOP is obsessed with abortion. They recognize no circumstances where it should be permitted. This is Part 1 of her coverage of the state GOP convention.

Davis writes:

If you aren’t already following me on Twitter (I’ll never call it X), that’s where I’ve been posting all of the bat-shit crazy video clips I’m seeing at the 2024 Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Convention. For some reason, I thought their convention didn’t start until this weekend, but I forgot it’s an entire week long, and their committees are meeting for 15 hours a day. My week is committed. I’ll listen for all the juicy tidbits and report all the crazy back to you. Get ready because some of this stuff is full-blown bananas….

I’ve been mainly watching their Legislative Priorities Committee and their Platform Committee, but their Rules Committee has also been meeting. I have to catch up on it later. 

Some of you may remember the absolutely deranged Republican platform from 2022, which called Joe Biden an illegitimate president, said gay people were “abnormal,” and opposed critical thinking in schools, and that was all before they booed John Cornyn off stage…

The Legislative Committee will make 15 planks the highest priority of the RPT. These are the 15 items they expect the Republicans in the legislature to pass and vote in favor of. If the GOP officials do not pass these “legislative priorities,” they risk being censured by the Republican Party of Texas, which, personally, I love. They bully their own, and it’s pure entertainment for the rest of us. 

The Legislative Priorities Committee lets their delegates argue about which planks stay and which go. These speeches are giving us little gems like this one, where a woman discusses enacting MORE abortion restrictions on Texas women. (More on that later.)…

Why am I watching the RPT Convention?

I likely have spent more time watching Republican conventions, hearings, debates, and town halls than any other Democrat in Texas. I find them extremely entertaining, but I also watch the Legislature and Congress. Maybe I’m just that type of nerd. …😉

Women have a lot of reasons to be concerned in Texas right now. 

The “abolish abortion” issue seems to be a big topic at this convention, even more so than the 2022 convention. You’re thinking, but hasn’t abortion already been abolished in Texas? It sure has, but when Republicans say “abolish abortions,” they don’t just mean abortions. 

Two months ago, Lone Star Left was the first to break the story of the emerging Abolish Abortion movement in Texas, which we learned about through a leaked video at a True Texas Project meeting.

In March, Michelle wrote this about the “Abolish Abortion” issue.

The abolish abortion movement seeks to ban IVF and certain forms of birth control in Texas; they also are seeking legislation to give the death penalty to women who have abortions, even if they are minors, even if they are a rape victim….

There was also discussion about preventing women from traveling out of state to get an abortion. Some women objected by the men shut them down.

Davis believes that Democrats have an opportunity to capitalize on divisions within the Republican Party in Texas. The big issues in their 2024 debates were centered on “God and Jesus, putting more Christian values in our government, and persecuting the LGBTQ community. Every single one of them was a carbon copy of the other. The RPT is in shatters, and there is no one out there who can fix them.”

Categories Bigotry, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Republicans, Texas

Arnie Alpert: A First-Hand Report from the Texas Border

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2024 //
11

InDepthNH.com seems like a funny place to get a first-hand report from Eagle Pass, Texas, the epicenter of the border crisis that we hear about every day. But Arnie Alpert, a veteran journalist from New Hampshire, traveled to Eagle Pass to see for himself. What he discovered was that the locals were not too happy with the focus on their town. Several locals told him there were more military in their town than migrants.

The bottom line is that Governor Abbott and the GOP have manufactured a crisis. No one wants open borders. Our immigration system is broken. When Republicans and Democrats in the Senate agreed on a bill to fix it, Trump sent a message to his allies in the House to reject the bipartisan bill so he could use the issue in his campaign. Governor Abbott will continue to demagogue the issue for his own political benefit.

Alpert begins:

EAGLE PASS, Texas—The border between Eagle Pass, Texas, and Piedras Negras in the Mexican state of Coahuila used to be open, like the one between Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec.  “We used to just go back and forth all the time,” recalls Amerika Garcia Grewal, who grew up in the small city by the Rio Grande. “The same way we drove downtown to get tacos, years ago, we might have driven into Piedras to get tacos and come back.”

Now the border is fortified.  First, there’s the infamous wall, built over several administrations to keep out migrants.  In Eagle Pass, it’s an expanse of fencing with closely spaced vertical metal bars, stretching for miles near the Rio Grande.  But in recent years, the wall has been supplemented with lines of shipping containers and concertina wire along the riverbank.  Armed soldiers are stationed on top of the containers. Fan boats operated by several state and federal agencies speed up and down the river, perhaps looking for or perhaps trying to scare migrants who might wade across the river to ask for asylum in the land of the free.  

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the division of the Department of Homeland Security generally just called the Border Patrol, has responsibility under federal law for enforcing laws controlling travel into the United States.  But in 2021, the state of Texas launched Operation Lone Star, dramatically escalating its own involvement in border enforcement.  Under Lone Star, thousands of Texas National Guard members and state police have been stationed at the border.  Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, Lone Star’s initiator and chief publicist, has labeled the influx of migrants an “invasion.”   

The operation is centered at Shelby Park, a 47-acre expanse lying between the river and the city’s downtown business district, underneath one of the bridges to Piedras Negras.  For years it’s been the place where local residents gathered for picnics, golf, community events, fishing, and watersports. 

Having already declared a State of Emergency due to unauthorized immigration, Abbott booted the Border Patrol out of the park on January 11 and surrounded it with more fencing.  Now, the residents of Eagle Pass have no access to most of their own park, which has become the stage for Abbott’s political performance art.

Recent visitors to Shelby Park have included Speaker of the House Mike Johnson with 64 GOP members of Congress on January 3, and Donald Trump on February 29.  Twelve GOP governors, including Chris Sununu, were there with Abbott on February 4.  “Texas Governor Greg Abbott was clear – they need our help,” Sununu reported afterward. 

Nine days after his Texas trip, Sununu asked the Legislative Fiscal Committee for $850,000 to send fifteen members of the NH National Guard to Texas to join Operation Lone Star, which he said would support “security activities at the southern United States border to protect New Hampshire citizens from harm.” 

“Fentanyl is pouring in, human trafficking is occurring unabated, and individuals on the terrorist watch list are coming in unchecked,” the governor told the legislators, who granted his request on February 16. 

Fifteen New Hampshire soldiers, all volunteers, are in Texas now, winding up a two-month deployment.  According to Lt. Col. Greg Heilshorn, the New Hampshire Guard’s Public Affairs Officer, they are based at Camp Alpha, upriver from Eagle Pass in Del Rio. 

When I told Lt. Col. Heilshorn that I’d be traveling to Eagle Pass and would like to see what our Guard members would be doing, he said I’d need to get permission from Todd Lyman, a Public Affairs Officer at the Texas Military Department.  After a few calls and messages, I received an email saying, “We are not able to accommodate your request at this time.”

I arrived in Eagle Pass on May 19 and approached the guarded gate at Shelby Park the next morning.  There, I asked if I could walk to the boat ramp to take some photos.  A courteous soldier told me I would have to call Sgt. Allen. 

Sgt. Allen said I would have to talk to his superior, Major Perry.  Sgt. Allen also said a request to speak with members of the NH National Guard would be handled by Major Perry’s superior, Todd Lyman.  He suggested I speak to the NH Guard’s public affairs officer.    

Major Perry did not return my phone call. 

The following day I drove with another photojournalist to the site of Camp Eagle, an 80-acre military base under construction on the outskirts of Eagle Pass.  A man from a company that rents construction equipment directed us to a white trailer, where I met Chuck Downie of Team Housing Solutions.  After telling me about his family’s place on Moultonborough Neck, Downie told us we could not be there without permission from the Texas Military Department.  One of his colleagues escorted us from the property.

We were also escorted by a Border Patrol agent from a farm adjacent to the Rio Grande where we were photographing fan boats and the buoys which Gov. Abbott had installed as a river barricade.  For the record, I thought we had permission to be there. 

“If there’s an invasion, it’s from the military,” says Jessie Fuentes, a retired communications professor who runs a canoe and kayak rental business. “There’s more military in our community than there are migrants, thousands and thousands of military from 13 different states.”

“How would you feel if all of a sudden, your community was locked up with soldiers and you couldn’t go into your favorite park? Because it has concertina wire around it or shipping containers or armed guards or you can’t access your own river and your green space?” asked Fuentes, a member of the Eagle Pass Border Coalition, a grassroots organization.  “So yeah, the only invasion we got here is from the military and the Texas governor.”

Texas has already spent more than $11 billion on Lone Star, and that money’s going somewhere.  Camp Eagle is being built by Team Housing, which has a $117 million contract.  Storm Services LLC has its logo on Camp Charlie, located next to Maverick County Airport, where Texas National Guard members are based.  Camp Alpha, where the NH Guard members are staying, is according to tax records owned by Basecamp Solutions LLC.  An article in a Del Rio paper from the time the property was purchased, though, said the owner was Team Housing.  Both LLCs are owned by Mandy Cavanaugh, from New Braunfels, so maybe it doesn’t matter.  

The local immigrant detention prison is owned by the GEO Group, which according to a February 20 Newsweek article “reported one of its most profitable years amid the growing demand for immigration detention facilities.”  GEO operates 11 facilities in Texas.

The $11B doesn’t count the money being spent by other states to send troops to Texas.  Missouri has just approved $2.2 million for a deployment.  Louisiana is sending its third rotation of soldiers. There’s “a lot of money being spent,” said Steve Fischer, who I met while he was walking his dog near the gated and guarded entrance to Shelby Park. 

Fischer, who has served as a county attorney and owns a home 2000 feet from the Mexican border in El Paso, came to Eagle Pass to run a public defender program representing people charged with crimes under Operation Lone Star. 

When I told him about Gov. Sununu getting $850,000 for the two-month New Hampshire deployment, Fischer said, “He’s wasting that money.”

As of two weeks ago, Fischer said, “Lone Star has not gotten one single fentanyl case.”  All Lone Star is doing, he said, is charging people with felonies for driving undocumented immigrants to work sites. 

Amrutha Jindal, who runs the larger Lone Star Defenders office, confirmed that most of the Lone Star felony charges are for people pulled over for driving undocumented migrants.  There are very few drug cases, she said.  Most arrests are for criminal trespass, including many cases where migrants seeking asylum were misdirected by law enforcement officers onto property where they could be arrested.    

Jindal said migrants who post bonds to be released from jail and are then deported forfeit the funds, as much as $3000, when they are unable to appear in court for hearings because they are barred from re-entry into the United States.  The money, presumably, is kept by the counties. 

Please open the link to finish reading the article.

Categories Education Reform, Immigration, Texas
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