Day: <span>July 9, 2014</span>

Real security is more than political rhetoric

 

Real security for Texas families is more than hyperbolic, politically charged rhetoric over “securing” Texas’ border with Mexico, a refrain that Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, among others, continue repeating ad nauseam.

For example, there is the future security that a well-funded public education system can bring for thousands of Texas school children, a goal that Abbott and Patrick – the Republican candidates for governor and lieutenant governor – already have undermined and may wreck completely if promoted to higher office.

Patrick, you may recall, voted with the legislative majority three years ago to slash $5.4 billion from public school budgets, and Abbott, as attorney general, continues to defend those cuts in court in a lawsuit over school funding brought by more than 600 school districts. And, both candidates are running on a Texas Republican Party platform that calls for even further cuts in state spending for all levels of education, K-12 as well as higher education.

Abbott also is continuing to defend his incomprehensible decision to prohibit the public release of information about where dangerous chemicals may be stored, even though those chemicals probably pose a greater security threat to millions of Texans than the terrorists he claims he is trying to protect us from. Many of those plants are dangerously near homes, schools, churches, parks and other places where people gather.

Abbott, who has received thousands of dollars in political donations from the chemical and fertilizer industries, is deservedly being pounded on this issue by his Democratic opponent, Wendy Davis. And, his suggestion that private citizens drive around, asking the managers of industrial plants what chemicals they store, has met with deserved ridicule.

So, with no real defense for the indefensible, he has lashed out on Twitter, claiming Davis “wants to make it easier” for terrorists. See the Houston Chronicle blog linked below.

Abbott may think he spots a terrorist – or an undocumented immigrant – behind every tree, but Texas deserves a more talented and far-sighted governor than that, folks.

http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2014/07/abbott-equates-supporting-release-of-chemical-data-with-aiding-terrorists/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_reader=feedly