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“You know what Texas teachers need?” Juanita asks.

“Less money and more unpaid work time – that’s what they need.”

School districts should be allowed to give teachers unpaid furloughs and cut their salaries to help deal with a funding shortfall that one estimate says could cost 100,000 jobs, a leading state senator said.

“One of those burdens that we have placed on our school districts is that they cannot decrease your salary. They can’t have furlough days. It’s not allowed in the law. The only option is to fire,” Shapiro said. “We need to give them the ability to lower teacher salaries.”

“So, all you teachers out there who voted Republican, please hold up your hand to be first in line for the pay cut and unpaid furloughs,”  Juanita shakes her head and sighs.

“You know one cut I’d like to see?  I’d like to see a law that says that an administrator can only make twice what the lowest paid teacher makes and a superintendent can only make three times that number.  That will save some damn money where it needs to be saved!”

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A couple of days ago, Juanita made a comment over on Facebook that it was “a nakkid on the back porch kind of day.”  She was a little stunned to hear people respond that they didn’t know what that meant.

“That’s an old saying that it’s a perfectly beautiful day,” she explains.  “And we’ve been having a string of those on the Texas coast lately.  It’s often said that we most certainly do have 4 seasons on the coast – drought, hurricane, sizzle and blue norther.  It’s blue norther time —

But, not to fret about Texas staying as cold as Rick Perry’s heart.  We’ll be back up to 65 by Sunday – and that’s his IQ.

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“Aaron Pena has only been a Republican for a couple of months, but he’s already learned how to screw Hispanics,” Juanita announces.  “He must be in the advanced placement class.”

Juanita was amused reading the morning papers.  “Aaron Pena (no tilde because Republicans don’t have any) is a South Texas Democratic turncoat who switched parties before the ink dried on the D after his name on the ballot.”

“He got off to a great start by supporting Voter ID and not supporting helping people at the polls,” Juanita reports.

Peña, the Edinburg legislator who switched to the Republican Party in December, was selected chairman of the conference that he said will advocate for Hispanic issues within the Republican Party. Among those issues he said the conference should tackle is abuse by politiqueras in mail-in ballots and through assisted voting.

“I think this is some sort of record.  It did not take long for Señor Peña to become Senor Pena, El Chaquetero,” she says.

“One more thing – has it occurred to anybody that if I get mugged or my purse gets stolen the day before election, I won’t have my picture ID and I can’t vote,” Juanita hollers.

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Customer MB found this and wondered if the Texas Lege was having some worldwide influence.

Probably so.

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The State Representative from Sugar Land, Tom DeLay’s best friend Charlie Howard, is all about keeping government out of business and our private lives, unless, of course, it’s your uterus or his gun.

“Bless Charlie’s heart, he’s short, he’s old and he needs a weapon to feel like a real man.  And, double bless his heart, he thinks you’re impotent, too,” Juanita says with uncommon compassion for old short white men with an attitude.

“Charlie, who hollers all the time about government intervention in private enterprise, now wants government to own private enterprise – at least in the parking lot.”

“Here’s the deal, our state doesn’t have any money.  We are in a budget crisis, but Charlie found something far more important to occupy his time,” she smiles.

Today District 26 State Representative Charlie Howard cosponsored House Bill 681, which would allow Texans to leave their lawfully owned firearms in their privately owned and locked vehicles. Many companies with Texas operations have adopted “No Firearms” policies that extend beyond the physical workplace to include employee parking lots.

Yeah, yeah, he only owns one shirt

“Well, ain’t that handy!  Now when an employee gets pissed off, he only has to go to his trunk in the parking lot to fill the workplace with more lead than a sinker factory,” she sees that Charlie is now pro-shoot-your-workmates-made-simple.

“I wanna know who is going to accept liability for some nut shooting up his co-workers in the employee parking lot,” she asks.  “Certainly not Charlie.”

“One more thing,” she wonders. “How much help is a firearm when it’s locked in the trunk?  I don’t have much experience with this, but most bad guys aren’t willing to wait until you pop the trunk and retrieve your gun to make it a fair fight.  I could be wrong about that.  We could have a nicer breed of bad guys in Texas.”

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Y’all, it is 75 degrees and sunny here today.  Juanita pulled some folding chairs out on the patio and fired up the Margarita machine.

We have the electric teevee tuned to the news and Verdelia is following world events on Twitter for us.  But, we’re outside in the sunshine.

We’ll try to enjoy it for you, too.