Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott lost another case. This is very good news for Texas families, school teachers and administrators.
This has not been a splendid week for Republican politicians across the board. This is also true in Texas where a judge ruled the school finance system as unconstitutional. He noted that the public education in the state is "inefficient, inequitable and inadequate."
This is the second time a judge has ruled the school finance system as unconstitutional. For the method of funding schools is a de facto state property tax in which such is not permitted by the state. In 2011 the state's Republican dominated Legislature had cut $5.4 billion from school budgets in order to close a financial shortfall. The Republican dominated Legislature refused to touch a penny from the state's rainy day funds so they slashed and burned budgets for education and human services instead. Of course everyone in this state should know by now that the Texas GOP has always been anti-public education and most of those on the far right also loath human services, especially those for the poor and minorities. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis tried to filibuster the deep cuts to school budgets in 2011 but the ruthless Republicans in the majority prevailed.
This recent second ruling is not good news for the state's Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate, Greg Abbott. For he lost his case for the Texas Legislature vs. 600 public schools.
A judge on Thursday again declared Texas' school finance system unconstitutional, reaffirming his 2013 ruling that struck down the current mode of funding public education as inefficient and inadequate.
"The court finds that the Legislature has failed to meet its constitutional duty to suitably provide for Texas public schools because the school finance system is structured, operated and funded so that it cannot provide a constitutionally adequate education for all Texas schoolchildren," state District Judge John Dietz wrote in his ruling.
He also ruled the system "constitutionally inadequate" and "financially inefficient." Finally, he said it effectively imposes a state property tax in violation of the state Constitution.
Greg Abbott has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to protect a broken school finance system while other Republicans such as candidates for Lt . Governor, Dan Patrick and state Comptroller Glen Hegar have publicly applauded the cuts to education.
"Republicans like Sens. Dan Patrick and Glenn Hegar have touted their education cuts as a victory, and Attorney General Greg Abbott defended those cuts in court," Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said. "The decision today is clear: these cuts were bad for Texas students and our state."
David Hinojosa, Southwest Regional Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, said the ruling was especially important for Texas' Spanish speaking students.
Meanwhile it seems that Greg Abbott has
chickened out on the one scheduled debate with Democratic candidate Wendy Davis. Ms. Davis had requested six across this huge state but Greg Abbott was apparently too afraid to debate more than one time. And now it seems he is too terrified to debate at all.
Hide and don't watch oversight.
Wendy Davis has been attacking Greg Abbott on his past record especially one in which he looked the other way when his donor cronies looted the state's cancer institute's (CPRIT) piggy bank.
It is not quite September yet but the elections in the state are already heating up.
Just know that those of us on behalf of the Texas Democratic Party and Battleground TX are working around the clock in order to elect Wendy Davis and other Democrats. We are registering voters, making phone calls and knocking on doors. All throughout the state, several times a week. We had four events in my area alone in Houston last weekend. We ignore the polls, we blow off the pundits and we keep our noses to the grindstone instead. Yours truly is a neighborhood team leader and let me just say we have one pretty amazing and dedicated group of volunteers. We are more than ready for transformational change in leadership in Texas.
As of now we have a Governor who has been indicated for the abuse of the power of his office and a candidate for Attorney General who is threatened with indictment and censure for sleazy financial dealings.
A culture of corruption and greed has pervaded this state for far too long. And if Republicans like Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton are elected, it will get even worse.
Vote, Texas, Vote. Right now we are a low voting state.
Intolerant, lacking compassion, wanting to drag women into the past.
Moving along to the national Republican loony tunes bubble, Karl Rove actually thought he had to commission a poll to learn how women feel about the GOP. I cannot repeat what some of my lady friends on Facebook had to say about this. Karl Rove may as well have hired a poll to ask if the Pope is Catholic.
Please follow me under the orange croissant.
File this in the Captain Obvious category, aka, the unskewed poll area. Naturally, because this is a real thing, Republicans will continue to deny it. But for the rest of you who enjoy laughing at the clown car as it guns for the cliff, a Karl Rove group and another major Republican group needed to commission a poll to find out that women say Republicans are “intolerant,” “lacking in compassion,” and “stuck in the past.”
Who knew that the ALEC stamped red state's heavy handed approach to women's reproductive rights, voter suppression efforts and income inequality wouldn't be very popular among my gender. Even in red states.
Meanwhile, as the clown cars careens toward the cliff ol' Mitch McConnell couldn't help himself from accelerating the gas peddle.
For Mitch pulled a Mitt Romney when he tried to impress billionaires like the Koch boys at a posh resort in Dana Pt., CA. The things that Mitch McConnell would do on behalf of the billionaire class, if elected Senate Majority Leader.
Caught on Tape.
A crusade against healthcare reform, the EPA and financial services protection.
“So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill. And I assure you that in the spending bill, we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what’s called placing riders in the bill. No money can be spent to do this or to do that. We’re going to go after them on healthcare, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board [inaudible]. All across the federal government, we’re going to go after it.”
He'll go after Dodd-Frank regulation and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
McConnell’s pledge to “go after” Democrats on financial services—a reference to declawing Dodd-Frank regulation—is a key omission from his Politico interview. He has been a vocal opponent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in particular, and presumably under his Senate leadership funding for the CFPB would be high on the list of riders for the appropriations chopping block. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street was the number-one contributor to McConnell’s campaign committee from 2009 to 2014.
Blocking an increase in the minimum wage and efforts to ease the burden of college loans.
“And we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals. That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage [inaudible]—cost the country 500,000 new jobs; extending unemployment—that’s a great message for retirees; uh, the student loan package the other day, that’s just going to make things worse, uh. These people believe in all the wrong things.”
In late April, Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, successfully filibustered a bill to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, a widely popular measure that would increase wages for at least 16.5 million Americans. Earlier in the year, McConnell also led a filibuster of a three-month extension of unemployment insurance to some 1.7 million Americans. At one point in the negotiations, he offered a deal to extend unemployment only if Democrats agreed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even though the ACA does not add to the federal deficit.
Just days before he addressed the Koch brothers’ billionaire donor summit, McConnell was instrumental in blocking Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to help Americans refinance their growing student loan debt. Warren’s plan would have been funded by a new minimum tax on America’s wealthiest. After McConnell’s filibuster, Warren began campaigning for Grimes in Kentucky saying, “Mitch McConnell is there for millionaires and billionaires. He is not there for people who are working hard playing by the rules and trying to build a future for themselves.” On the campaign stump, McConnell has said that “not everybody needs to go to Yale” and that cash-strapped students should look into for-profit colleges.
Who on earth votes for these vile creatures?