> • "Texas won't compete for up to $700 million in federal stimulus
> money for education because the program 'smacks of a federal takeover
> of our public schools,' Republican Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday."
This is funny in the extreme. The mechanisms of the alleged takeover--an increase in measuring student achievement by test scores and in tying teacher pay to student performance--are mechanisms that Perry not only supports but that are pretty much the extent of his education policy. He refused the money not because of the way performance would be measured but because he's in a tough primary fight with KBH, and his secessionary maneuver appeals to the people who vote in Republican primaries in Texas, i.e., teabaggers and other varieties of fascists.