All posts tagged Texas
I'm not always wearing my full habit...
In 1999 Rick Perry presided over Texas senate as they enacted Death Panels.
Hypocrisy. Alive and well in 1999 and 2012.
If all you know about healthcare “death panels” is what you heard on a talk show, then you must think the feds will pull the plug on patients.
News bulletin: Texas already has death panels.
A Houston man’s life was ended last week.
A leukemia patient identified only as Willie was denied nourishment and died, according to Texas Right to Life.
Since 1999, Texas has given hospital “ethics panels” the authority to end care even if the patient or family wants to continue.
It’s called the Texas Futile Care Law. The Texas Senate bill passed in 1999.
Back then, the Senate’s presiding officer was Lt. Gov. Rick Perry.
Yes, the governor who says, “I always stand by the side of life.”
Willie went to the hospital a few weeks ago with chest pains, according to Texas Right to Life’s Elizabeth Graham.
Doctors found pneumonia and leukemia, Graham wrote. After Willie underwent surgery and chemotherapy, his family asked about another hospital or hospice care.
Though he had plenty of insurance, no other facility would accept him. After the legally required 10 days, the hospital ended nourishment.
He was “dehydrated and starved to death completely against the family’s desire,” Graham wrote.
Governor Perry, Undercover Nun is praying for your immortal soul.
No Country for Innocent Men
Texas has exonerated no fewer than 56 people. All had served years, sometimes decades, in prison; five were on death row. As Perry sees it, these exonerations don’t suggest a problem with the system—they demonstrate that it’s working. “We have a very lengthy and methodical process of appeals,” he said in March 2010. “And that is a great and good mark for Texas.”
Perry made those remarks during an extraordinary ceremony in which he handed down the first posthumous pardon in Texas history. Timothy Cole, imprisoned while a 26-year-old student at Texas Tech University, had been failed by the justice system at every turn. But what makes his story particularly gut-wrenching is that he perished in prison even as the real rapist, Jerry Johnson, tried repeatedly to confess to the crime. By the time Johnson’s story was heard, Cole had been dead nearly a decade.
Jesus weeps.
Rick Perry, and Texas “justice” system: Undercover Nun is praying for your immortal souls.
(via inkdot)
![US Drought Monitor, as of Thursday, December 6, 2011.
This record-breaking drought in Texas and the Southwest has been devastating.
The year that ended in September [2011] was the driest in Texas since at least 1895, when statewide weather records begin, breaking the previous record low set in 1956 by 2.5 inches.
“It’s the most severe single-year drought on record,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “There literally is no point of comparison.”
Pray for those affected by this drought. Undercover Nun is.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw3kn0dBwd1qc9m1oo1_500.gif)
US Drought Monitor, as of Thursday, December 6, 2011.
This record-breaking drought in Texas and the Southwest has been devastating.
The year that ended in September [2011] was the driest in Texas since at least 1895, when statewide weather records begin, breaking the previous record low set in 1956 by 2.5 inches.
“It’s the most severe single-year drought on record,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “There literally is no point of comparison.”
Pray for those affected by this drought. Undercover Nun is.
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
I took this short video when I was trying to get to a relatives apartment on Sunday afternoon to help him evacuate. He lives near the intersection of Highway 21 and 71. At this point the fire was about 12 miles long, 12,000 acres and had burned 100 houses.
It is now over 20 miles long, 30,000 acres and has burned over 500 homes.
Pray. It’s what I’m doing, because it’s about all I can do.
(via amorphousblob)
Has school discipline become too harsh?
I don’t know what I could possibly add to this report. Jesus weeps, and so do I.
Are American schools too harsh when it comes to discipline? A new study by the Council of State Governments Justice Center has some people saying yes to that question. A review of the discipline records from the last 10 years of some 1 million Texas middle and high schoolers showed that about half included a suspension or expulsion. Yet only 3 percent of those punishments were required by state law; the others were based on the behest of school officials.
The reason why the study is problematic is due to the fact that the researchers also found that the suspensions and expulsions were doled out in a haphazard manner when schools, ability and race were considered. …
“One of the most important takeaways from the report is learning that the school a student attends largely influences how, when, or if a student is removed from the classroom for disciplinary reasons,” said State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R), who is also chair of the Texas Senate Education Committee. “The data suggests that individual school campuses often have a pronounced influence over how often students are suspended or expelled.”
The study also found that students with educational disabilities as well as African Americans were “disproportionately disciplined for discretionary actions,” according to a press release. The researchers also found a relationship between suspensions and expulsions and the juvenile justice system. Of the close to 1 million students studied, some 15 percent were suspended 11 times or more, with nearly half of those students being involved in the juvenile justice system.
The Texas (not so) miracle.
(via hairtrending)
Moving to Texas
While there is plenty in this news story about Glenn Beck’s plan to move to the Dallas area that may turn your stomach, only the very last sentence puts real fear in my heart.
Meanwhile, Beck is gearing up for his “Restoring Courage” rally in Israel next month, a sequel to the “Restoring Honor” rally he held in Washington the same time last year.
Glenn Beck? In Israel?!? May God have mercy on us all!
[R]oughly half-million people live in Texas’ colonias. These impoverished communities are found in all border states, but Texas, with an estimated 2,300 colonias, has the most. First established in the 1950s for migrant workers, many of the colonias were created by unscrupulous or predatory developers. Along the 1,248-mile Texas-Mexico border from El Paso to Brownsville, in communities with names like Agua Dulce and Mexico Chiquito, the overwhelmingly Hispanic residents of these colonias tell identical stories: of migrating with dreams of safety and prosperity, of getting swindled or misled into buying worthless land with no modern infrastructure, of sticking it out so their children — most of them American citizens — will get educated. And of getting sick. At last count, nearly 45,000 people lived in the 350 Texas colonias classified by the state as at the “highest health risk,” meaning residents of these often unincorporated subdivisions have no running water, no wastewater treatment, no paved roads or solid waste disposal. Water- and mosquito-borne illnesses are rampant, the result of poor drainage, pooling sewage and water contaminated by leaking septic tanks. Burning garbage, cockroaches, vermin and mold lead to high rates of asthma, rashes and lice infestations. And the poor diet so intrinsically linked to poverty contributes to dental problems, diabetes and other chronic conditions, which residents of the colonias rarely have the health insurance, money or access to regular health care to treat. “If I see 50 kids, at least 30 of them are very sick,” said Dr. Sarojini Bose, a pediatrician and immigrant from India who operates several clinics in the Rio Grande Valley, including a mobile unit. “To see this in the United States, the most powerful country is the world, is heartbreaking.
Conditions, Health Risks Sicken Colonias Residents — Texas-Mexico Border
This is part two in a series; part one is here.
(via thetart)
Jesus weeps. Undercover Nun weeps with him.
Now go sing the “I’m proud to be an American” song. Sing it to these people, these people drinking dirty water, eating whatever can be found, living in squalor. These five hundred thousand people. Tell them how proud you are to give tax breaks to rich people. Tell them how proud you are of your clean running water. Tell them how bored you are after spending all day cruising the internet. And tell them how you’re not doing a damned thing to show them love or justice.
Surely the desert itself cries out against us - the hills, the stones, the dust, the trees. Surely the bones of the earth groan to God and ask, How long, O Lord? How long must these your children bear the sin of America on their backs? Where is their hope? Where is their future? Who will bring these children of God into freedom and justice?
(via bluntlyblue)
To all those cheeky EMPLOYED Republican Senators:
I keep hearing the folks in Government talk about the lazy unemployed people not even trying to find a job. Unfortunately, I never, ever thought I’d be unemployed this long. Otherwise maybe I’d have kept better records. I’m fairly certain that I’ve applied for over 3,000 jobs since being laid-off in October 2008. Even if benefits are reinstated, I’ll only have a few filings left so please approve Tier 5.
I have a verifiable job search; a 112 page document that I downloaded from monster.com. It does not include the hundreds of jobs I’ve applied for after doing hours of research about a particular company. And, I don’t apply for just any job, since I try to take care not to inundate HR folks with bogus applications (since I have an understanding of what that job entails). I had a job interview last week and the interviewer told me that she is suspicious of people who’ve been out of work for so long. She claims that that’s when folks get desperate and do something bad.
Thank you for your compassion! Too many people judge us unemployed folks, think we’re just lazy and just sitting around sucking up the “grand” benefits of unemployment dough! Yeah right. I’m on verge (August 10th ) of losing my house and living out of my vehicle. I’ve applied for the government loan modifications but my mortgage company, Wells Fargo, has denied me 3 times. Its bogus, they really don’t care to help you – just want their money … ASAP!! I’ve written to just about everybody in Texas senate, just get the ‘cookie-cutter’ letter and run-around.
I’ve worked very hard for 30 years and I hope I’m still around to see the recovery in our economy. I just don’t know how to make it anymore. I’m all tapped out both financially and mentally. I’m fairly certain I’ve experienced a total mental breakdown & have no money for doctors or meds. After 30 year, I have absolutely NOTHING to show for it. Nothing. It’s all gone.
Susan, Bedford, Texas – Just need a job, any job will do!
From Buzzflash
Undercover Nun would love to add a postscript: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second commandment is like unto it: love your neighbor as yourself.’ What’s so hard to understand here?
