Austin Chronicle: "Bell and Gammage on the Issues" & "Who Are These Guys?"

[Czolgosz]

Bell and Gammage on the Issues:

"Both candidates support ... Raising minimum wage: Gammage supports increasing the wage from $5.15 to $6.50 an hour. Bell would prefer to see a federal minimum wage indexed for automatic increases."

<http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2006-02-10/pols_feature2.html>

Who Are These Guys?:

"Bell actually elevated his political profile by subsequently filing an ethics complaint against DeLay, calling the then-powerful House majority leader the "most corrupt politician in America today.... "There were a lot of people, even within my own party, who told me that was the wrong thing to do, that it would lead to my political ruination, and that would go nowhere and simply be swept under the carpet," he said. "But four months later was unanimously admonished" by the House Ethics Committee.

...

But those Austin insiders, on the other hand, who make their livings analyzing poll data and crunching election numbers give Gammage a clear edge. Gammage, they say, has statewide campaign experience and drives a sharper message that appeals to populist and progressive voters. He also offers a refreshing break from what Rindy refers to as the "wishy-washy compromising Democratic Party establishment type."

For example, Gammage delivers a strong anti-war, anti-Bush pitch to voters, and explains his return to politics as motivated primarily by the dishonesty and incompetence of the Bush administration. Speaking to a group of Democratic activists last week in Austin, Gammage earned his loudest applause with his attacks on Bush, beginning with the administration rationalizations for the invasion of Iraq and steadily working his way down to the state Capitol: "Bush is wrong, Perry is wrong, Dewhurst is wrong, Craddick is wrong. ... We have a corrupt, incompetent leadership in this state.""

<http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2006-02-10/pols_feature.html>

[Texas_Kat]

1. Much more detail with the op-eds and issue statements

at Burnt Orange Report. The BOR guys have done an EXCELLENT job and asked some great questions. Check out

Gammage's Op-Ed: "Stand up and fight!"
http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=117

Bell's Op-Ed: "We Need Bold Leadership For Our Future"
http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=116

Interview with Gammage :

Part 1: http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=98
Part 2: http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=104

Interview with Bell

Part 1: http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=93
Part 2: http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=103

[Czolgosz]

2. Thanks. It would be nice if we could use this thread for articles that

compare and contrast Bell and Gammage on the issues.

Here are my favorite paragraphs from the Bell and Gammages op-eds you linked:

Bell -- "Rick Perry is putting the cart before the horse, and we’re getting nowhere. You can’t go around talking about how to finance schools until you know how much schools are going to need and where the money is going to go. Dropping the word “schools” from the school finance debate doesn’t change the fact that educating our kids is the highest purpose of state government."


Gammage -- "The Republican right-wing and a handful of greedy moneyed interests have Texas government firmly by the throat. They control all three branches of government, and they rule through brute force, misrepresentation, intimidation, fear, and the brazen manipulation of our legislative process and government agencies to acquire and maintain power for themselves in order to serve their own selfish interests. The Republican leaders of this state, and indeed this nation, have proven time and again that they cannot exercise power without abusing it and they cannot maintain control without corrupting it.

It is time, well past time, for Democrats to stand up and take them on."

Thanks, Texas_Kat

[alarimer]

3. They both sound pretty good

I don't know how a four-way race is going to play out. I can see Kinky pulling votes from Democrats and Republicans but I am more worried that he will pull enough votes to throw the race to Perry or Strayhorn. Although I think anybody but Perry is what I hope for, I really want a Democrat to win. I've already seen ads from Strayhorn. And of course Kinky has the name recognition going for him. Three weeks from the primary and neither of the Deomcrats have had any ads that I have seen. We need to get Kinky to drop out. We don't need a novelty act for governor. I am trying to convince a guy I work with (A dem) not to vote for Kinky. But he thinks it would be fun.

[Czolgosz]

4. Bell vs. Gammage on Education and School Finance

Excerpts from the BOR interviews:

Question to Bell: What do you believe needs to be done to improve public education in Texas?

For starters, we need a real education reform commission, like we had back in 1984 under Mark White. Let’s have a real bipartisan commission with people from all walks of life that come together and figure out how we can have the best schools in the country in the next ten years.

But the unfortunate reality is that improving public education costs money. It’s not cheap, and if it was cheap then private schools wouldn’t be charging so much more for kids to go there than what we’re paying for kids to go to public school. At some point we’re going to need to elect a Governor that’s willing to put his money where his mouth is.


Question to Gammage: What do you believe needs to be done to improve public education in Texas?

One of my first priorities as Governor will be to propose legislation that we will call the Texas Excellence in Education Act. It's our policy as a commitment to excellence, not adequacy. Not what it takes simply to get by. If Texas has an excellent quality of education in public schools - from Pre-K through the universities - the entire state benefits. Every person in the state, every business, every enterprise, every capitalist in the state benefits from having a well-educated foundation that they can build on and invest in to improve their business.

If Texas were an independent nation, we'd have the eighth largest economy in the world. Not in the United States - the world. Yet, we're 40th among the states in what we invest in each student and public education. We're the only state that spent less this year than we did last year per student. Rick Perry is running around telling everyone how he's proud of Texas. Well, I'm proud of Texas, too, but I'm not proud of its current leadership, because we have no leadership. He's a failed leader on almost every issue, including education.


Question to Bell:Why do you feel we need to do away with high stakes testing in our public schools?

I know it would be a dramatic departure to leave high stakes testing after twenty years, but we need a dramatic departure. Experts in education are now saying it’s not even a matter of teaching to the test – it’s just teaching the test, and little else. We need to return to when kids gained knowledge from the curriculum of their courses, and we need teachers deciding whether they’ve passed those courses.

We’ll always have standardized testing – I’m not saying we should do away with that. It’s required by No Child Left Behind. But the high stakes nature of it is not required. It drives up the dropout rate and has gutted the curriculum, which is why moving away from high stakes testing is a huge priority for me.


Question to Gammage: Talk about your views on the following Republican-proposed school reform proposals: merit-based pay for teacher pay raises, the 65% rule for classroom spending, and voucher programs.

Crap, crap, and crap.

I'm sorry - those are deceptive, devious, and dishonest policies. You are not going to make better teachers by pitting teachers against one another. You're going to make better teachers by paying for excellence and then demanding excellence of every one of them. You're not going to improve schools with vouchers that take money out of the public revenue to invest in private school education. Then those people don't effectively pay any taxes to public education because they're getting the money back to put their kids in private school. It doesn't work that way.




There is much more at BOR in the links posted by Texas_Kat, above.

[cosmik debris]

5. This is why I sometimes HATE politicians

In the first question Bell says we need a commission to talk about stuff. In the second, Gammage says I have a law with a catchy name and a lot of platitudes. Neither one said anything substantial about how to fund or administer our education system. If all I had to go on were the first four paragraphs above, I would vote for Kinky. At least his bullshit is funny some of the time.

I would love to hear a politician answer the question "What do you believe needs to be done...?" with a list of what needs to be done, not a bunch of feel-good homilies.