Recent editorials from Texas newspapers

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Texas newspapers:

Houston Chronicle. July 15, 2019.

Even for someone with the track record of Donald Trump, who began his 2016 election campaign by generalizing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and has referred to African nations as “shithole countries,” his string of Twitter posts over the weekend targeting four American congresswomen was vile.

Let’s not mince words. They were the racist rantings of a bigot - not an American patriot who truly believes in the Constitution he swore to defend as president.

That sacred document upon which this country was founded guarantees Americans’ rights to free speech, including criticism of the government. It respects the rights of immigrants and citizens alike - and doesn’t meet their expressions of dissent with suggestions of exile. It does not regard anyone born on U.S. soil as somehow second class merely because they count their American lineage by decades rather than centuries.

Trump’s comments violate basic tenets of our inclusive, democratic society.

“So interesting to see ’Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world,” Trump wrote on Twitter, “now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.”

“Why don’t they go back,” he added, in a barrage of insults that carried over into Monday morning, “and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

The duly elected officials he targeted are all U.S. citizens and all women of color. Rashida Tlaib was born in Detroit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Bronx. Ilhan Omar, born in Somalia, came to the U.S. as a 10-year-old refugee.

The fourth, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, is a black American with no recent immigrants in her family. If she goes back to where she came from, she’s going back to Ohio.

Bigots and xenophobes have long wielded the same foul language to degrade and oppress people of color, no matter their roots. It has been spit at black Americans who have been told to go back to Africa and at immigrants who dare to speak another language in public.

Trump’s slurs against Americans he perceives as foreign or “other” are rarely aimed at white people. Apparently, some Americans are more equal than others to the 45th president who, it should be noted, is the son of a Scottish-born mother, grandson of a man who came from Germany as an unaccompanied minor and has twice been married to immigrants.

He seems to imply that anyone who is not white can have their Americanness questioned, that they are somehow less invested in the American story, less vital to America’s success. Tell that to the enslaved people and their descendants whose labor helped build the economic foundation of this nation or the Chinese immigrants whose backbreaking toil brought us the transcontinental railroads or the thousands of noncitizens who enlist in the U.S. military every year.

Two and a half years into the Trump presidency, it is easy to become numbed by his despicable rhetoric. This is a man who began his political career by promoting the racist birther conspiracy about President Barack Obama and who once placed a full-page ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, five teens of color wrongfully convicted of rape. His real-estate company was sued for discriminating against blacks in the 1970s. He has said immigrants from Haiti all “have AIDS” and derided an Indiana-born judge because of his Mexican heritage.

Democrats were quick to respond, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling for support on a resolution condemning the tweets: “his plan to ’Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” she tweeted Sunday.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo also denounced the president’s tweets: “This is the most un-American statement a POTUS has made in modern times,” he tweeted.

U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of Helotes was one of the few Republicans to offer a strong rebuke of Trump, telling CNN the tweets were “racist and xenophobic.”

Other Republicans were conspicuously quiet. Where were U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who was born in Scotland, or U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, born in Canada? More than 24 hours after Trump’s tirade began, Cruz took a swipe at Beto O’Rourke’s disclosure of slave-owner ancestors. (Ironically, Cruz noted that his father was a “penniless Cuban immigrant.”) No mention of the president’s repugnant words.

We can’t allow ourselves to start viewing this behavior as normal, as “Trump being Trump.” Whether motivated by racism, politics, mental instability or all of the above, the impact of Trump’s comments don’t expire with the next news cycle.

They gnaw at the fabric of this country. Trump uses Twitter for “official purposes.” We should be horrified that one such purpose is for demeaning the office of the president. We should condemn elected officials whose silence equals complicity.

It is their duty - and ours - to speak out against Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric, which is corrosive to America’s fragile unity and treasonous to the ideals upon which it stands.

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The Dallas Morning News. July 15, 2019.

It’s true that not every kid has to go to college to be successful in this society. We also know that a college degree vastly improves the chances of bettering lives, but thousands of students simply can’t afford to go without racking up crippling debt.

So when the flagship campus of the University of Texas at Austin joined other universities in extending free tuition to middle-income families over the past week, there was cause for celebration. We saw it as an important further acknowledgement that the soaring cost of college is a problem not just for the poor.

And if this state is going to keep its economic engine ignited, it must produce more well-educated workers. Studies show college graduates earn twice as much as workers with only a high school diploma. But in Dallas County, less than a third of public school graduates will complete college within six years.

Universities have to do more to help.

UT has promised to do its part. Starting in fall 2020, it will cover full tuition for any in-state (including transfers) undergraduate student whose family income totals $65,000 or less. The old marker had been $30,000.

Regents smartly voted to use $160 million from the state’s Permanent University Fund - a state endowment for UT and Texas A&M from oil and gas revenue - for the assistance program. A&M has provided free tuition to students from families with income of $60,000 or less since 2011.

At UT, it means the number of students getting free tuition will double. The university estimates 8,600 students - about a quarter of its undergraduate students - will get a break on an average of $10,314 a year in tuition and fees.

We like that the allocation will create an endowment in which the money is invested and interest and earnings are used to fund the tuition costs in perpetuity.

UT President Greg Fenves told us recently that one of his major goals is to continue to attract talented and diverse students to his campus. This move is a big step toward accomplishing that.

It’s important, though, to point out that this isn’t a totally free ride. It doesn’t cover housing and other living costs, which average about $17,000 a year for the 80% of the student body that lives off campus.

And we worry that a bigger pool of students for which UT is a possibility has the potential to make it even harder to get into UT.

Still, making UT more accessible and affordable to more Texas kids is good for the entire state.

We’ve argued before that we don’t buy that just offering free stuff is a smart way to run an economy. The costs have to be paid by someone - not to mention that the escalating cost of tuition still needs to be addressed.

And when tuition falls away as an issue, it will be incumbent on the students to put in the hard work required for their own success. That means graduating, becoming financially secure and productive members of their communities. That path will now be clearer for more at UT.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram. July 16, 2019.

For Fort Worth’s Panther Island project, the only way out is through. Taxpayers have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but it’ll take hundreds of millions more for the investment to pay off.

That’s why the independent review delivered to the Trinity River Vision Authority last week is a crucial turning point for the project.

Authority board members finally relented Tuesday and released the draft report to the public. But the Fort Worth Star-Telegram obtained a copy late last week and reported that the project - a hybrid of flood control, bridge construction and recreation development - needs a major shake-up.

The review by the Dallas-based consulting firm Riveron finds no malfeasance or wrongdoing. That’s important and good to hear, but it only goes so far. The report outlines problems that include a muddled mission, poor communication, lack of clarity on finances and failures of risk management.

The report rates the project on 70 different findings. On only 10 of those is the authority’s work deemed “proficient.” On many, it’s rated sufficient, though on 27 findings, the work is declared insufficient.

As the consultants wrote, the project needs nearly $500 million in federal money in less than a decade to complete the river channel that will create the island. Without it, the envisioned economic development can’t proceed. But no federal official in his or her right mind would read this report and drop another dime into Panther Island until it’s clear that big changes to the project’s governance have been made.

Accountability is key going forward. So authority board members should pay particular attention to the report’s critique of the management structure in place for Panther Island.

The charitable description is that it’s complicated by the various government stakeholders involved. A more cynical view is that the “complicated and opaque governance” keeps any person or entity from getting direct blame for problems.

What’s clear from Riveron’s research is that executive director J.D. Granger has too many bosses to please. On paper, at least, he’s accountable to both the authority board and the Tarrant Regional Water District’s board, along with the water district’s general manager, Jim Oliver. Granger has said that, in effect, Oliver, who’s also a member of the authority board, is his boss.

Follow that? As the old saying goes, if everyone’s in charge, no one is. The consultants recommend that Granger report directly to the authority board. That seems sensible, similar to how the city manager reports to the City Council, or a school superintendent is overseen by an elected board of trustees.

One of the report’s major recommendations gives us pause. The consultants call for creation of a nonprofit corporate entity to handle economic development on Panther Island, similar to the entities that have been responsible for redevelopment of downtown and the Near Southside area.

That could be beneficial down the road. But right now, the last thing this project needs is another layer of management and bureaucracy. The authority board needs to focus on simplifying and fixing the problems identified in the report first.

Let’s be clear about who’s responsible for these fixes. The board is essentially a coordinating body for the governments and agencies contributing to the project. So one of the problems with the current structure is that the authority board isn’t directly accountable to voters.

It falls primarily to Oliver and the board’s president, Tarrant County Administrator G.K. Maenius, to ensure the necessary changes.

From the outside, water district board president Jack Stevens of Azle, county commissioners and Mayor Betsy Price should push the authority board - publicly, if necessary - to act on the consultant’s findings.

And perhaps above all, the board needs to be open, direct and clear in its communications about the project. Taxpayers deserve that, and demonstrating improvement is key to securing the funding and buy-in necessary to finish the job.

After all, nearly two decades in, it’s too late to turn back. The only way to finish this is to clean up the current mess and move forward.