“‘To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin is ludicrous,’[Peter Marshall] said in his assessment.’Chávez is hardly the kind of role model that ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation.’”

The problem is that most Texans don’t think when they’re in the voting booth. All they care about is if there’s an (R) by the name, and it doesn’t matter if the person is a sane (R), like Kay Bailey Hutchinson, or an insane power-hungry avaricious dominionist moron…like…oh…99% of TXGOP pols.

Its funny that the conservative Long Knives complained about leaving songs out, and the current crop complains of too much of that stuff. But since when do harpy critics need consistency?

I’m also still interested in the membership of the curriculum writing teams. The carpetbagger argument usually isn’t a big one, but I’ll wager the group had better chops than McLeroy’s experts. The original team included at least one professor of economics from a Texas university, I hear, and it would be likely several of the members had advanced degrees, in history, economics, and education.

In short, they rejected Texas experts in return for amateur, biased non-Texans. That’s bad policy, and contrary to state law, I’ll wager.

Does Texas have a state equivalent of the federal Administrative Procedures Act? You know, federal agencies can’t be stupid like this, under the law. They gotta follow certain rules, especially those rules that require listening to real experts.

I think what the conservatives are worried about are “Das Kapital” and the use of the word capitalism throughout Grouch Marx’s “Communist Manifesto.” They see “capital” as a nasty word that Groucho, Harpo, and Fred Engels invented to label and criticize the nice economic system that we all enjoy today. However, I doubt that the word “capital” would ever come close to teeing up a kid to “go commie.” It’s all I can do to get my kids to read a book like “Holes,” so I know they will not go anywhere near the 19th century works of the Marx Brothers—which are—like most treatises on economics—boring. I nearly went to sleep reading the Communist Manifesto back in my college days, knowing full well that something that boring could never work.

By the way, in the small town where I grew up back in the 1960s, one of the local loan businesses was called Associates Capital, and I never saw in red hammer and sickle arm bands coming out of there. Therefore, I figure the right wing social studies experts are…well…just plain nuts?

Why are Texas experts ignored in this process, especially those Texans who specialize in getting our kids educated and into colleges or jobs once they graduate?

But especially, I’d like to see the comparison. On good authority, I hear that McLeroy rejected the report prepared by Texans because they named the economic system of the U.S. “capitalism.” Can you imagine? The teachers (and college professors) proposed that we teach our kids the name of the economic system we use, using the same terminology as real economists — and the SBOE found that objectionable.

I want to compare that report with the drivel and non-drivel in this current round.

And, Rick Perry? You listining? I want to know why your guys have it in for capitalism. The alternatives are not pretty.