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Michelle H. Davis: Wealthy Texan Opposes Programs That Aid the Needy

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2024 //
3

Michelle H. Davis writes on her blog Lone Star Left about a rich Texan named Mayes Middleton, who inherited his wealth, as did his father and grandfather. He is now a state senator, and he votes against every program that would lift up those who inherited nothing.

She writes:

Middleton became independently wealthy from his trust fund, just like his grandfather, and his grandfather’s grandfather. After Middleton’s 4x-great-grandfather made a fortune from hundreds of acres of free land from a Spanish Land Grant, where he owned up to 57 enslaved people, he passed his wealth down to his descendants. Middleton’s great-grandfather invested his inherited wealth in Texas’s cattle business and oil industry around 1900. And the rest—as they say—was history….

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being a multi-millionaire or spending money on the causes you believe in. But with great power and influence comes great responsibility. 

Mayes Middleton–Determined to Stay Rich

The ethical question is: 

  • What should leaders like Middleton, who hold significant political power and generational privilege, focus on in their role as public servants?
    • Should they work to advance policies that create opportunities, reduce inequalities, and uplift all their constituents? 
    • Or should they prioritize maintaining systems that benefit the privileged few while marginalizing vulnerable communities?

Unfortunately, Senator Middleton has chosen the latter.

Rather than using his influence and wealth to advance the common good, he has focused on legislation targeting vulnerable populations. 

Instead of working to expand opportunity, his actions have demonstrated a focus on preserving power and wealth for a select few. The moral imperative of public service is to act in the best interest of all constituents—not just the wealthy or privileged.

Open the link and keep reading to learn about the bills and programs that this lucky man opposes. Mayes Middleton is a hypocrite. He was born on third base, or maybe an inch from home plate, and thinks he hit a home run.

Mayes Middleton is shameless. He is supposedly a Christian but he doesn’t follow the teachings of Jesus.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Poverty, Shame, Texas

Chris Tomlinson: Texas Republicans Want to Drive Out Free-Thinkers. They Will Be Sorry.

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2024 //
10

Chris Tomlinson is an opinion writer for The Houston Chronicle and one of the best critics of the state’s loony leadership. In this column, he warns of the perils of pushing out the free-thinkers. As Forrest Gump famously said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

He writes:

Texas lawmakers are targeting colleges and universities in the next culture war battle, putting our most vital economic drivers at risk.

Our public universities are why Texas outperforms, whether it’s petroleum engineering at Texas A&M, electrical engineering at UT-Austin or transportation at Prairie View A&M University. Multi-disciplinary research universities produce diverse workforces and innovative entrepreneurs that benefit state and local economies.

The right-wing thought police, though, are fed up with freethinkers. Recent laws and proposed bills aim to restrict what ideas faculty and students can explore. The brightest minds will not stick around if the GOP limits intellectual freedom.

Republicans spent the 2023 legislative session protecting white supremacy by attacking programs intended to help historically under-represented students succeed. GOP lawmakers worried that fragile white students may feel uncomfortable discussing the nation’s history of slavery and oppression.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Conroe Republican who leads the Senate Education Committee, passed a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities. In a stunning example of Orwellian doublethink, Creighton said his law would boost diversity.

However, when UT Austin complied with Senate Bill 17, a third of the 49 people laid off were Black, even though African-Americans make up only 7% of employees. Roughly three-fourths of the employees let go were women, though they make up just 55% of the total staff.

Across all campuses, the University of Texas System eliminated more than 300 jobs to comply with the law, arguing it was a cost-saving measure.

“Why is it that you must save costs on the backs of Black and brown employees and female employees?” Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe asked.

Not only do Republican leaders want to wipe out programs trying to reverse the lingering effects of white supremacist rule, but they also want to stop research into how racism and bigotry have harmed our society.

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, recently cut 52 academic programs, including global culture and society, LGBTQ studies, global health, Asian studies and a certificate in performing social activism in the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts. Regent Michael J. Plank echoed UT officials, saying the board has a duty to “eliminate waste.”

Across the country, conservatives are using “cost saving” as a fig leaf for suppressing ideas they don’t like. For example, A&M had only offered the LGBTQ studies minor for three semesters before declaring it wasteful.

The University of North Texas made 78 changes to its course schedule, removing words such as race, gender, class and equity from titles and descriptions, the Dallas Morning News reported. Freedom of speech group PEN America accused university leaders of abusing SB17.

“UNT seems to be arguing that the principle of academic freedom only exists when state law allows it,” Jeremy Young, PEN’s Freedom to Learn project director, said. “This ludicrous interpretation effectively nullifies academic freedom as a protection against government censorship, setting a perilous precedent for higher education institutions across Texas and potentially beyond.”

Texas A&M and UNT may have only been obeying in advance of more restrictive laws to come.

“While DEI-related curriculum and course content does not explicitly violate the letter of the law, it indeed contradicts its spirit,” Creighton said during a Texas Senate Higher Education Subcommittee hearing. “The curriculum does not reflect the expectations of Texas taxpayers and students who fund our public universities.”

Newly elected state Rep. Carl Tepper, a Lubbock Republican, has introduced a bill requiring the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to calculate a ratio of student debt to annual salary for every degree or certificate offered. The board would then assign a rating: reward, monitor, sanction or sunset. The goal is to shut down programs in the latter categories.

Learning for learning’s sake would not be tolerated under House Bill 281.

Political leaders have long interfered with colleges and universities. Texas lawmakers started using professors as political scapegoats within three years of establishing UT. Institutions have long offered tenure to protect underpaid professors from political interference.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has repeatedly said he wants to ban tenure and make it easier to remove professors who teach or study ideas the Legislature doesn’t like.

Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of the 950 Texas faculty surveyed by the American Association of University Professors said they would not recommend teaching in Texas to colleagues.

Texas Republicans may feel a mandate to drive free thinkers out of public universities, but Texas employers looking for an educated workforce will pay the price.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Creativity, Extremism, Higher Education, Ignorance, Innovation, Texas

Texas: State Board Likely to Approve Biblical Lessons in Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2024 //
33

Edward McKinley of the Houston Chronicle reports that the Texas State Board of Education is on track to approve Bible-based teaching in public schools. The Christian evangelicals are running the show in Texas, with help from Governor Gregg Abbot. They are knocking down the wall of separation between church and state with a sledgehammer. What about the rights of children whose parents are secular or not Christian?

He writes:

The Texas State Board of Education appeared on track to endorse a controversial set of new state-written lesson plans after narrowly defeating an effort to block it on Tuesday.

The lessons and textbooks, known collectively as Bluebonnet Learning, were drafted by the Texas Education Agency. The reading and language arts lessons integrate Biblical stories and characters and are viewed by many as connected to a national effort to return Christianity and prayer into public schools. 

They would likely face a legal challenge if adopted. The SBOE will vote on the curriculum as one of more than 100 sets of lesson plans and textbooks later this week. 

If approved, schools would have the option to use the plans and would receive extra funding if they do. 

The lesson plans have faced criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. Academics have warned that they include teachings from the Bible without contextualizing them as religious beliefs and downplay the role of racism and slavery in American history, while some on the right have argued they teach material too advanced for younger children.

But proponents say the materials are based on a scientific understanding of the best way to teach reading and they believe it will lead to higher standardized test scores.

“There’s a line between indoctrination or evangelism and education. In my view, these stories are on the education side and are establishing cultural literacy,” said Will Hickman, a Houston-area Republican who supported the Bluebonnet curriculum. Hickman added that districts can still choose whether or not to use the lesson plans….

The Bluebonnet curriculum covers kindergarten through 5th grade mathematics and reading, as well as middle school math and algebra…. 

A report from religious scholar David Brockman and the Texas Freedom Network, which has been critical of the lesson plans, said they could effectively turn public schools to Sunday schools by introducing Christian stories and ideas to young kids without contextualizing them properly as religious beliefs. There’s far more focus on Christianity and Jesus Christ than on other world religions, the report says. 

The lesson plans also faced criticism for their teaching of history and downplaying the role of slavery and racism in American history and to the founding fathers and other important American figures. 

Categories Curriculum, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas

Texas: Pregnant Teenager Dies After Going to Three Hospitals, Turned Away by First Two

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2024 //
12

ProPublica tells the story of 18-year-old Nevaeh Crain. She was pregnant. She was holding a baby shower to celebrate the imminent birth of the baby. At her party, she collapsed in pain. Her mother took her to three different hospitals. The first two sent her away without treating her. The doctors and nurses in Texas hospitals are aware of the draconian abortion ban in Texas; it threatens to harshly punish any medical personnel who are involved in an abortion with loss of their license and as much as 99 years in prison.

Would anyone risk their own life to save the pregnant girl who was screaming in pain?

Nevaeh Crain died because of Texas’ extreme abortion ban. She was killed by politicians and religious zealots. She was killed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. She should be alive.

ProPublica reported:

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care. 

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing. 

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency. 

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.

Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.

Open the link to continue reading.

Categories Cruelty, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Gender, Health, Texas

Ted Cruz Turns to Anti-Trans Issue to Save His Senate Seat

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
31

The Texas Monthly writes that Texas has all kinds of pressing needs and problems. But in the closing days of the campaign, Ted Cruz has fastened in a single issue in his battle for re-election: Hate transgender people. They threaten our daughters.

It’s not clear exactly how large the Texas trans population is, but it can’t be large enough to threaten the women of Texas or even the girls.

Cruz, with Colin Allred coming close in the home stretch, concluded that care and hate were his best messages to his constituents.

Michael Hardy of The Texas Monthly wrote:

Texans face a multitude of challenges. The border crisis. Incompetent utility regulators. Rising home and rent costs. Rural hospital closures. So naturally, as campaigning for the U.S. Senate enters its final week, incumbent Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, Dallas-area Congressman Colin Allred, are locked in a fierce battle over . . . transgender rights. Earlier this month, Cruz and an allied political action committee launched a barrage of ominous television advertisements accusing Allred of supporting “boys in girls’ sports,” “drag shows on American military bases,” “taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries” for military service members, and the use of “taxpayer funds to sterilize minors.” The ads are part of a nationwide push by Republican candidates, who have spent more than $65 million on antitrans ads since August. 

“I remember reading the polls saying that the race was within two or three points and wondering what Cruz was going to do about it,” said veteran Texan lobbyist Bill Miller, who has worked with Democratic and Republican candidates. “And then I was watching TV and Cruz’s transgender ad came on. As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s the issue they’re going to beat Allred with.’ ”

In 2023, Allred voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a Republican-backed bill that would have barred athletes assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ sports. The bill passed in the House of Representatives on a party line vote but was not taken up in the U.S. Senate. Earlier this year, Allred signed a letter opposing Republican efforts to ban drag shows on military bases and restrict gender-affirming care for transgender service members and their families. In a written statement to Texas Monthly, Allred campaign manager Paige Hutchinson said “Colin believes we must stand united against all forms of prejudice and discrimination.” 

Cruz campaign spokespeople did not respond to an interview request to discuss Cruz’s strategy. The senator’s campaign website boasts that “Ted is proud to stand alongside all female athletes and will continue to fight for their right to play sports on their own terms, without fear of being forced to compete against biological men.” 

At first glance, the senator’s going all in on transphobia for his closing argument might seem puzzling, given that he’s spent most of his campaign stressing immigration and jobs. A recent poll conducted by the University of Texas at Austin asked voters to name their top political issue. A plurality (18 percent) chose the economy, which was followed by immigration, inflation, democracy, and abortion. Pollster Jim Henson told me that hardly anyone cited transgender issues as their foremost concern. A national Gallup polltaken in September asked voters to evaluate the importance of 22 campaign issues. “Transgender rights” came in dead last.  

So why the last-minute pivot to transgender issues? “It’s an easy way for a Republican to paint their opponent as an extremist,” Henson said. “Even if it’s not a particularly salient issue, it’s very effective in signaling to moderates that your opponent is out of the mainstream.” Last year, a UT-Austin poll found that 63 percent of Texans—including 33 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents, and 89 percent of Republicans—agreed that the sex listed on a person’s original birth certificate should be the only way to define gender, with just 25 percent disagreeing. (Twelve percent of respondents said they weren’t sure.) “I suspect the Cruz campaign’s internal polling is showing what the external polling shows,” Henson said, “which is that for a Republican candidate, this is a pretty good issue.” 

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Texas

Texas: State Agency Clears Mike Miles of Charges

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2024 //
3

Several months ago, Texas journalists reported that millions of dollars were transferred from charter school accounts in Texas to charter school accounts in Colorado. Their stories said that Houston superintendent Mike Miles was bolstering the finances of one of his Colorado charter schools.

Miles was appointed as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District as part of a hostile state takeover of HISD. State Commissioner of Education Mike Morath was installed by Governor Greg Abbott, and Morath imposed Miles on HISD.

When Miles came under fire for financial irregularities, the state investigated. Who is the state? Mike Morath, the same guy who appointed Miles.

Guess what? The state report cleared Mikes.

Are you surprised?

The Texas Tribune reported today:

The Texas Education Agency has cleared acting Houston school district Superintendent Mike Miles of wrongdoing after he was accused of improperly diverting millions of dollars in state funds to his Colorado charter school system.

After reporting from Spectrum News and The Texas Observer prompted calls for an investigation earlier this year, the education agency concluded on Tuesday that neither Miles — who the agency picked to lead the state’s largest school district last year — nor his charter school network, Third Future Schools, “violated any applicable Texas laws,” according to the 29-page investigation report.

The investigation found, in part, that checks directed from a partnering Texas school district to Third Future Schools’ Colorado address went there because the Colorado location handles accounting services for the network’s Texas branch, which is run independently. But, the checks were eventually deposited in the Texas branch’s bank account.

“Based on the evidence obtained and analyzed during the investigation, there is no merit to the allegations contained in the media reports that state funds were being inappropriately diverted from public school students in Texas,” the report notes.

The agency is closing the investigation, and “no further action will be taken” at this time, the report says.

In an email sent to the Houston school district community on Tuesday, Miles called the earlier reporting “a baseless distraction and an attempt to undermine and discredit the good work happening” in the schools.

“Now we can do what we always do and move forward on behalf of our students,” Miles said.

Earlier this year, Spectrum News reported that the Texas branch of Third Future Schools — which receives funding from multiple Texas school districts to run campuses in the state — was potentially using public funds from its school in Odessa to offset financial losses at a sister school in Colorado.

The Texas Observer later reported that it had identified “additional irregularities” related to the disclosure of expenses by the charter network.

Miles denied wrongdoing and accused the previous reporting of mischaracterizing “common place financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them” and welcomed an investigation into the network’s activities.

The state’s investigators agreed with Miles, saying they found no evidence that Texas school districts deposited funds into the bank account of Third Future Schools in Colorado. Third Future Schools-Texas reimburses the Colorado location for administrative services it provides to all of the charter network, the report says.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Houston, State Takeover, Texas

Lone Star Left: JD Vance Was Wrong About Guns

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2024 //
7

Michelle H. Davis writes the blog “Lone Star Left” where she tracks events in Texas. She watched the VP debate and was stunned by JD Vance’s assertion that Mexicans send or smuggle guns into Texas. It’s just the reverse, she says.

She writes:

During this week’s VP debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, Vance lied about many things. He spoke really fast, and he lied a lot. Presumably, that’s just who he is. While there have been plenty of fact-checks this week, there’s one topic we must drill down on and know the facts about because this topic has been one of the biggest drivers of mass migration over the years, and his like wasn’t only stupid. It was done with malice. 

That’s right, we’re talking about the Iron River. Here’s what he said: 

Why is the sound out of sync? I have no idea. Here’s the full video; this part is at the 56-minute mark.

Vance’s exact words: “Thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel. So, that number then, the amount of illegal guns in our country, is higher today than it was three and a half years ago.”

Only a moron from Ohio, which is nowhere near a border, who peddles lies would come up with such a tall tale. JD Vance was referring to the Iron River, and it’s essential in the immigration discussion that we all know that it flows from North to South. 

What is the Iron River? 

The term “Iron River” refers to the large-scale trafficking of firearms from the United States to Mexico, where these weapons fuel cartel violence and crime. The term likely emerged from the constant, unrelenting flow of weapons, like a river, moving across the US-Mexico border. This metaphor emphasizes the steady and overwhelming volume of guns moving southward, often from states with looser gun regulations, into the hands of criminal organizations in Mexico.

Between 70% and 90% of firearms recovered from crime scenes in Mexico can be traced back to the US. Most of these guns are purchased in border states with more relaxed gun laws, particularly Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Florida. These five states accounted for 79% of the firearms traced back to the US between 2017 and 2021, with Texas alone responsible for more than 14,000 guns smuggled into Mexico. Trafficking networks exploit loose regulations, using “straw purchasers” to buy firearms legally and then transport them across the border.

This lie from Vance distorts the fact that the trafficking flow is mainly in the opposite direction—guns legally bought in the US are fueling violence in Mexico, not the other way around.

This is nothing new. The Iron River has been fueling mass migration for many years.

Please open the link to finish the story.

Categories Elections, Guns, Texas

Chris Tomlinson: Do Politicians Have a First Amendment Right to Ban Books?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2024 //
21

Most people would promptly respond to the question that is the title of this post: NO! the First Amendment was written to protect the people against government over-reach. The very question is absurd on its face. Yet Republican Attorneys General have argued that the First Amendment protects their right to ban books. No, no, no, a million times NO!

Chris Tomlinson, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle, wrote about the case:

Book banners in Llano County and Florida’s attorney general will try to convince a federal appeals court Tuesday that the First Amendment grants elected officials the unlimited right to remove books from public libraries.

Conservatives will turn freedom of speech on its head by arguing that politicians are expressing themselves when they ban books, and therefore, the Constitution protects book bans. In a perverse twist, they will make this argument during Banned Books Week, the time of year when writers defend the right to share ideas.

The Little v. Llano case will undoubtedly go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Seventeen Republican state attorneys general have joined Ken Paxton in defending the Llano County Commissioners Court’s order to remove 17 books from the public library. Not the school library, mind you, but the library system for all residents.

The banned books include the award-winning “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health,” by Robie Harris.

Llano is not alone. Texas has led the nation in book bans, according to PEN America, a nonprofit freedom of speech group of which I am a member.

Historically, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment severely limits the power of government to control speech and other forms of expression. Governments are not allowed to ban books based solely on their viewpoint; there must be a public safety issue.

Llano County residents sued in federal court last year to have the books returned. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found that Llano officials only banned the books because they disagreed with the content and determined the commissioners had no compelling government interest to remove them. He ordered all the books restored to library shelves.

The county appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which split in a preliminary decision. The full 17-judge court will hear arguments Tuesday.

The 18 Republican attorneys general who have joined the case want the judges to accept a new interpretation of the First Amendment, one first pushed in Florida. They argue government officials have free speech rights, and the court must protect them as much as a librarian’s, a writer’s or a reader’s civil liberties.

“The county’s decisions over which books to offer its patrons in its public libraries, at its own expense, are its own speech,” the states argued in a court filing last month. “The government does not violate anyone’s free speech rights merely by speaking — no matter what it chooses to say or not to say.”

If Little v. Llano makes it to the Supreme Court, and the justices agree with this argument, they will hobble the foundation of our democracy: the free exchange of ideas. The flip side of the freedom to write is the freedom to read. One is useless without the other.

Libraries play a crucial role in a free society. They are repositories not only of history and entertainment but of accumulated knowledge and new ideas. Books are expensive, and libraries make them available to the entire community.

Public libraries are, by definition, government entities financed with taxpayer dollars. In a free society, they must be nonpartisan and contain a wide range of content absent political litmus tests. A conservative victory for Llano would turn politicians into thought police.

The conservative activists who complained about the Llano library books relied on a list of 850 titles published by former state Rep. Matt Krause, a Fort Worth Republican, in 2021. Krause focused on books about racism, LGBTQ issues or anything else that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish.”

Krause was among the state lawmakers who limited how teachers can discuss slavery and discrimination against African Americans because it might make descendants of slaveholders uncomfortable. Possessing “The 1619 Project” is now a firing offense at Texas public schools.

Where does it end if politicians have a free speech right to ban books? We know politicians try to outdo each other with ideological purity tests. Activists on the left and right will draft lists of authorized and prohibited books, and libraries will have to restock their shelves after every election.

As for those who argue libraries are full of pornography, I say poppycock. The American Library Association and professional librarians follow well-considered procedures in choosing what titles to carry, and one person’s taste should not determine what a library buys.

If politicians do end up determining what we can find at the library, you’ll have fellow Texans to thank.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Literature, Texas

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
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