Wow, what a day. I'm physically beat, but mentally still wired, and having a hard time coming down. My mind is going 1000 miles a minute. I think I'll pause and get some water, some valerian root, and some melatonin and maybe get prepared for some sleep. Be right back...

OK, I'm back. I've been bouncing all over the place this week trying to accomplish everything I need to do. Unfortunately I'm not meeting deadlines in some areas. I've been busy on many fronts - with a new project at work that is taking some time to get up to speed on, and trying to do some consulting on the side. I've been working on a couple of stories related to LISD, and probably biting off more than I can chew there. I've also been trying to stay on top of oil and gas activities.

On the job - Pennies from hell
I've probably spent way too many hundreds of dollars of labor now chasing pennies for my employer. As I've mentioned before, I am a computer programmer, and I work in the property tax industry. One problem we have to deal with is that sometimes one tax bill needs to be allocated to multiple entities as percentages. But when you split dollar amounts by percentages, you end up with extra fractional pennies that have to go somewhere. I know what you're thinking: Steve's gonna pull something like that movie Office Space. But with my luck lately, if I did something like that I would end up PAYING all of those pennies on companies tax bills. At any rate, there's allocation error that happens when your percentages are rounded and don't add up to 100%, and there's rounding error when the individual amounts need to go to the nearest penny, and thus don't add to the total. If you split a bill among lets say 1000 entities, you can end up being dollars off. So the algorithms for making these pennies balance can get way more complicated than you could imagine. Up until the day before yesterday, I thought I had it licked. But I had assumed you would never have allocations of mixed positive and negative numbers. Wow, was I wrong. Give accountants enough rope, and they'll build themselves a nest in it. So that's been my world. Thankfully today, I think I got it fixed with seconds to spare before I had to head off to a meeting.

Postcards apparently hit some Lewisville mailboxes today from an unidentified sender, urging voters to vote against the Lewisville ISD tax rate increase.

We'll have some comments to add, but for now, we want to get this copy out so our readers can see it.

Click to view postcard - PDF format

If you know who sent this please email us.

The warehouse in Houston where all of the voting equipment is stored burned to the ground the other day. One blogger says it looks very suspicious, given Republican efforts to suppress the Houston vote. Texas Monthly also has a pretty good post on the topic.


Why is it that government bends over backwards to accommodate the dirty and dangerous oil industry? Why not support a solar energy bill of rights?


Seriously, the sun is getting angry about this, and NASA is predicting a more intense period of solar storms in the coming years going into the 2012 solar maximum.


Entitlement Syndrome strikes again, and this time, it’s a Democratic Congresswoman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, who was caught apparently defrauding the Congressional Black Caucus’s scholarship fund by awarding up to $20,000 in scholarships to her grandchildren and the children of one of her aides.

Yes, she says she’ll pay it back, but that doesn’t let one off the hook for nepotism and fraud. Dallas Democrats need to find a challenger for her in the 2012 primary.

Here's an article on Terry Heaton's "PoMo" blog talking about the two stages of journalism, which are the news-gathering and story-telling. He has some interesting thoughts on the process of journalism, versus the definition of a journalist. I am mentioned in the article, in relation to my struggle to get access to gather news in LISD. Last year, the district passed a new policy specifically targeting bloggers. We had a few things to say about it at the time.

I guess what I would ask LISD at this point is "How's that working for you?" There are two ways to avoid negative media coverage: 1) Stonewall, lie, obfuscate, hide, block access, bury the story, and spin. 2) Total honesty, open access, and right actions. I think in the long run, only #2 is effective, and it's really so much easier. Any time we encounter #1, it just obligates us to dig deeper.

The Texas Progressive Alliance sure hopes that Harris County has a disaster recovery plan for the loss of its voting machines as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

Off the Kuff had three more interviews this week, with State Reps. Armando Walle, Ellen Cohen, and Kristi Thibaut.

Meet Jeff "The Trucker" Evans, an unemployed 49-year-old whose unemployment benefits were restored by Congressional Democrats after a Republican filibuster caused the payments to temporarily cease. Eye On Williamson explains how misdirected Tea Party anger causes Jeff the Trucker to vote against his economic best interest.

John Cornyn, known as a rapist enabler, decides to waffle on 14th amendment to the constitution. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is certain that Cornyn doesn't care about civil rights - just his fat a**.

Over at TexasKaos, lightseeker summaries the latest scandals at TYC. The more things change over there, the more they remain the same, sadly.... Check it out : Texas Youth Commission Abuses Make the News Again.

Neil at Texas Liberal attended press conferences held by both Houston Votes and by a local so-called Tea Party group, as a possible pattern of harassment and intimidation against likely Democratic voters in Harris County may be at work. Also, Neil announced that he will now also be blogging at The Daily Hurricane as well as at Texas Liberal. Neil is also a featured politics reader-blogger at the Houston Chronicle.

The warehouse where election machines are stored erupted in flames last Friday morning, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had the early line on what it means for Houston and the surrounding area, which represent 15% of the statewide vote tally. Coupled with the histrionics of Leo Vasquez vis-a-vis Houston Votes, it's going to be a real lively election season (and that's before a single race gets mentioned).

From submitted reports - email ses@whosplayin.com with your items

General Announcements

Calendar of Events

Just a few various links I've collected over the past couple of days:


Forget his kooky theories, poor spelling, faulty grasp on reality, and general disregard for the truth, the real question is: "Is Glenn Beck a good novelist?" This reviewer thinks not.

Is civility dead?

What is the future of the United States Marine Corps? I hate to see the Navy create its own new force to fill the role that Marines have traditionally filled.

A ban on minimum grades was allowed to stand without appeal.

Denton Police arrested a crazy guy who seems to have delusions about being some sort of double-secret agent:

Here’s a radio interview with LISD Superintendent Dr. Jerry Roy last December, discussing the state of school finance.

LISD re-posted the tax rate election brochure with some changes.

Um, fried beer?

America, the ignorant?

Ladies, do you want a raise on your job? Women’s Day magazine says wash your vagina. (We couldn’t make this stuff up.)

But speaking of made-up stuff, here’s a funny one from the Onion: Texas Vows to Reclaim Title of Most Regressive State from Arizona. Sorta feels just wrong, laughing at that.

Wow, this is certainly interesting. More than a month ago, WhosPlayin made an open records request for copies of expense reports submitted to the district by the Superintendent, Deputy Superintendent, and all board members. Today, we received a certified letter from the district's attorney, Robert Luna, that the district had requested exemption from disclosure for certain items.

I would like to note that WhosPlayin expressly stated on the original request: "Naturally, we understand the need to redact account numbers from receipts, if the submitters have not done that already."

In his letter to the AG, Luna reminds them that "Information must be withheld under Section 552.101 when (1) it is highly intimate and embarrassing, such that its release would be highly objectionable to a person of ordinary sensibilities, and (2) there is no legitimate public interest in its disclosure."

The letter goes on to reveal that the information contains personal financial decisions of District employees and officials: "This includes situations where an expense was charged on a District credit card issued to a District employee but the employee reimbursed the District in full for the expense." (emphasis ours)

We certainly have a big problem with district employees or board members using a district credit card for personal expenses, whether or not they are reimbursed. LISD is not a lending institution. Any personal charges on a district credit card certainly should be disclosed, and let the chips fall where they may.

The letter goes on to explain that the information includes home utility bills, drivers license information, and credit card numbers. Certainly we are interested in what the district is reimbursing, and how much, but we have no interest in personal information or account numbers, as we attempted to make clear in our original request.

We hope the district has not spent a lot of money in attorney fees on this.

This week, we received an open letter to the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council's director, Ed Ireland, regarding the recent Ambient Air Quality Report. Our own examination of the report was focused on benzene, but writer Andy Mechling raises concerns about the study's findings on reduced sulfur compounds like carbon disulfide, carbon dioxide, and carbonyl sulfide:

Ed, I know that you and your organization are well aware of the daunting nature of these long-term AMCV values for the sulfur compounds; (and I know you’d rather talk about benzene). TCEQ should also be well aware of the potential problem here, as the standards that are at risk of being exceeded are their own, and not federal EPA guidelines, in this case.

Because of the scope and design of this study, because the 24-hour concentration figures presented for carbon disulfide appear to be unreliable, and because there is no 24-hour data at all for carbonyl sulfide or hydrogen sulfide, this study fails to provide any meaningful comparisons of measured ambient concentrations of these three highly toxic compounds to their - very stringent - long-term Texas standards.

Ignoring a problem seldom makes it go away; and I honestly think this would have been a much stronger report had this elephant in the room at least been introduced.

It appears that the only reliable information we have about levels of the sulfur compounds come from the 21 sulfur gas samples analyzed with the ASTM method. These come in the form of 1-hour composite samples of some type, as has been discussed. The study’s authors make no attempt to extrapolate or calculate estimates of 24-hour ambient concentrations for these chemicals, based on these 1-hr results.

The most troubling aspect of the one-hour sulfur results, at least from my perspective, is that there doesn’t appear to be any information in the report that would give us reason to expect that accurate 24 hour monitoring of these same chemicals (sampled in the same fashion in the same locations) would result in measured concentrations that are any lower than those 1-hr average figures we have in hand.

I have updated my spreadsheet comparison of three years of LISD teacher salary schedules, and am posting it in PDF format for easy viewing. Hopefully this will make more clear how the raises worked this year.

Basically the chart is lined up so that you can see what a given teacher on a given step earned in the previous year on the previous step, just by looking across. Likewise, you can pick a step that a teacher would have been on in 2008/2009 and follow that across to the right to see the raises they would have received.

With regards to steps and years, a teacher is placed on a step when they first join the district, based on their number of years of teaching experience. After that year, each year they teach, they will progress to the next step. (Though teachers are cautioned that there is no guarantee that next year's step will be the same as it is this year.)

To further illustrate how the steps work:

Teacher A has taught for LISD for many years. A is on step #25 this year, will be on step #26 next year, and step #27 the year after.

Teacher B has taught at other districts for a combined 26 years. He would start at LISD on step #25 this year, will be on step #26 next year, and step #27 the year after.

Teacher C is brand new to teaching. She will start at step #0, and progress to step #1 next year, and step #2 the year after.

Wednesday nights are normally my nights off from blogging, but I wanted to get something out here before too much more time goes by.

Back on August 4th, we reported based on a tip from a reader who is employed by LISD, that some LISD teachers may not be getting the advertised raise in salary. This information was confirmed by what we thought to be accurate salary schedules posted by the district on its website.

At the time, we contacted LISD to seek some clarification on the issue, but no matter how many times we asked in different ways, we could only get LISD employees to non-specifically deny the allegations while simultaneously refusing to address the numbers we were showing them in our spreadsheet.

It appeared to us, based on the years of experience shown in the salary schedules that some years were being combined into the same step. This meant that if the steps stayed the same, and the employee moved to the second year in the step, they would get no raise.

Only today, basically 15 days after I last sent them my spreadsheet and spelled out the scenario I thought would result in $0 raise did they finally manage to actually read my question and look at the spreadsheet I sent.

The answer, as it turned out, was that the salary schedules published online, and as part of the budget documents available to the public contain a step number and an "entry" number corresponding to the number of years of experience they have when they first come to the district. After that first year, the employee moves to the next step, regardless of the year numbers listed in the "entry" column. The language on the schedule from 2009/10 was confusing in that the example it gave didn't show that distinction. The example began with the second year of a step, then moved to the next step - consistent with my misunderstanding of the steps continuing to apply based on years of service.

At any rate, there are still some concerns on my part because the differences between the steps, and the resultant raise amounts are wildly different, and not in any discernible pattern. I'm glad to be able to tell you that it does now appear each teacher got a raise. I wish I could tell you those raises were good ones.

As I said, it's my night off, and I have places to be tonight. I'll come back and write more later about what the situation is with the teacher raises. I'll share with you some of what I learned, and the frustrating chain of emails that got me to this point.

But it's important that we get the facts right, and in this case we got some of them wrong. We have to take responsibility and get the information out immediately.