Texas ranks second nationally in white-collar crime (totaling $1.35 billion since 2024 and climbing), but our state attorney general is focused on the critically important offense of kids not religion-ing hard enough.
“Crooked” Ken Paxton recently announced that his office is investigation dozens of Texas public schools for breaking the important laws of not displaying the Ten Commandments and not setting aside precious schooltime (in a state that ranks 41st out of 50 in education) for Christian prayer. Among the investigation targets is the beleaguered Fort Worth school district.
Last year, Fort Worth ISD was named in a federal lawsuit against displaying Moses’ tablets in public schools, and while an appellate court ruled that requiring the posting of the commandments was not unconstitutional, Fort Worth trustees decided not to devote schooltime to prayer, which seems eminently reasonable in a country constitutionally/allegedly bound to separate church and state. After the hostile takeover of Fort Worth ISD in March, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) neutered the trustees’ power, meaning that forcing Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist children to read The Word and recite the Lord’s Prayer when they should be learning math, English, science, history, football, you name it, is going to happen soon. In Tarrant County, prayer time was only approved in the Aledo and Keller school districts because of course it was. Fort Worth is one of 29 total Texas districts in Paxton’s sights.
“I will always fight for students’ fundamental right to pray in our schools and work to ensure that Texas kids are able to learn from the Ten Commandments daily,” Paxton said in a gag-inducing statement. “Texas schools districts must comply with Texas law by displaying the Ten Commandments and taking a school board vote regarding the implementation of prayer time in schools. I will never stop defending our students’ religious freedom and the moral foundation of our nation.”
Sidenotes: When the state forces one religion on you, that’s not “freedom.” That’s basically the Sharia Law that conservatives love to hate about Muslim locations happening in our own state. And no religion — especially super-bloody, flog-yourself, enslave-your-neighbor Christianity — owns morality.
The most common white-collar crimes in Texas are fraud (healthcare, financial, tax, computer), money laundering, and public corruption like the kind in which Paxton specializes, says the nonpartisan data research center TRACreports.org. Didn’t Jesus say something about focusing on the speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye while ignoring the log in your own?
Still Say No to Black Mountain Data Center
One of my favorite pastimes is reading about the suffering of Trump voters when suffering is what they voted for. Other people, not them. It’s not much, but for someone who voted for jobs, equality, safety, savings, and affordable healthcare, I can’t say I am not utterly in love with seeing Trumpy farmers losing business or sick Trumpies paying more for healthcare. Sorry, but if holding onto your ugly racism wasn’t so important to your small-souled selves, we’d all be living in Utopia now and be much better off, all of us, even you hate mongers.
Truthfully, I blame Rupert Murdoch for their suffering as much as them for falling for his state propaganda. “Crime is up in Chicago” = Fox News: “All Black people are thugs and criminals.” “An illegal immigrant attacked a jogger the other day” = Fox News: “All immigrants are thugs and criminals.” “A trans swimmer won a meet” = Fox News: “Trans people are taking all our trophies!” (What also does the estimable job of cracking me up while making me cry is that Fox News watchers, drooling, knuckles dragging, are afraid trans women are going to do to women in restrooms what cis men would do, so shouldn’t we be addressing why cis men are creeps?) (Sorry, that would require an adult conversation, and cultists gonna cult.)
Anyway, a massive Fort Worth energy consortium is trying to construct a $10 billion data center on the southeast side of the city, and none of us — Trumpies and normal folks alike — are having it. Fort Worth City Council was set to review the site plan and vote on it on Tuesday night but tabled the agenda item until 11am June 23. No real reason was given.
The Black Mountain data center would occupy 187 acres and use 980 megawatts. Located at the corner of Lon Stephenson Road and Forest Hill Drive, the site will be set back from Lon Stephenson only 70 feet and sit only 150 feet from single-family homes. The campus would stand about 68 feet tall.
Data centers not only guzzle ungodly amounts of water but also create terrific noise pollution. And they look like shit. No one wants them — the Trumpies don’t, and neither do us normies — and no one wants the paltry number of jobs they allegedly generate. However. However. However. Trumpies need to realize that a vote for the 34-count felon, adjudicated rapist, and highly probable pedophile and his former chief puppeteer, Elon Musk, was a vote for more AI in our lives, and more stupid AI in our lives demands more data centers in our backyards.
While I’d like to luxuriate in the schadenfreude that this Black Mountain debacle affords my bitter soul, I can’t because the GD Trumpies’ backyard is my backyard, too.
Epic Fail
Epic Waters and the City of Grand Prairie can go pound salt. Both caved to Gov. Greg Abbott, who forced them to cancel a planned Eid event at the waterpark because, as Fox News would say, “Muslims = bad.”
Imagine a Christmas party in any public space. Who cares, right? Watch your drinking, don’t hurt anyone, have fun. Eid is sort of the same thing, but we can’t have nice things in this country because it’s run by bigots (and sexists and racists and overall C-average ass-clowns).
As Democrats can only do, 42 of them in the lege sent a strongly worded letter to Abbott (and are probably still wagging their useless fingers): “Your office is using state financial power to manufacture a discrimination accusation and to single out Muslim Texans for treatment that no other faith community in this state would face.”
To your accusation that Islam is anti-women, have you seen all these pathetic trad-wives in their stupid ankle-length floral-print dresses around town recently? At least Muslims don’t reflexively hate Blacks and Mexicans.
This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
