Twitter was all a-flitter this week with pro-Bill White tweets about “Chicken Rick Perry” refusing to attend last night’s Harris County Department of Education/League of Women Voters gubernatorial “debate”. I put debate in quotes for a reason – this wasn’t a debate, it was an exercise in gum-flapping from a contender and two wannabes.

I guess that Joe Holley’s guess on attendance is about as good as any, although the initial invites said that it would be limited to 250 guests. There were around 430 chairs out, give or take a row. The middle section was pretty full, the wings were almost empty. So 300 is good enough as a guess. The non-debate was “moderated” by ABC13’s Melanie Lawson – again, the quotes around a word that was used but isn’t really accurate. Emcee would be a much better term for what Ms. Lawson was tasked to do.

The Education Forum

The evening was split into two parts. Because it was co-hosted by the HCDE, the focus was naturally on education. As such, the first part of the evening was a forum about education, designed to “allow the audience to hone in” on the second part of the evening, which featured the gubernatorial candidates. The education forum’s panel consisted of:

• Dr. Adrian Johnson, Superintendent of North Forest ISD
• H. D. Chambers, Superintendent of Stafford Municipal ISD
• Dr. Wanda Bamberg, Superintendent of Aldine ISD

You’d have to go to a wine and cheese fest to hear more whining. Mr. Chambers came across as somewhat positive but even he succumbed to the “I have to teach each child with the same amount of money today as in 2005”. So? Dr. Bamberg made it a point several times to mention that Aldine had cut their budget $20 million – yet when asked how much that was in terms of percent of the total budget, she didn’t know. Although a few minutes later she said that she had “figured it out” and it was 5%. Well, I’m not exactly a genius but when I look at the budget that isn’t what I find.

Check it out for yourself. The 2009 budget was $487,503,071. The 2010 budget was $476,479,677. The budget wasn’t cut $20 million, it was cut $11,023,394. That would be 2 1/4% for those counting. But who is counting at a forum, right? But let’s go a little deeper. Take a look at the dollars spent on Function 11, Instruction. They were cut by $9,950,924, or 3.4% Now, take a look at  Function 41, General Administration. Not only wasn’t it cut, it was INCREASED by $3,218,626, or 25.2%.

Are you kidding me?

And I refuse to discuss the social implications of Dr. Johnson’s whines. He wants to expand Pre-K and Kindergarten to full days not because they will necessarily learn more but because his district is poor and someone needs to take care of the kids. There is so much wrong with that philosophy that it makes me want to puke just thinking about it.

The Non-Debate

After that warm up, I didn’t think it could get much worse and luckily, it didn’t.  It just remained about the same.

I think it is appropriate that Stafford Municipal School District has a word of the day up on its home page. Let me do the same with “debate”:

de-bate [dih-beyt] n - a discussion, as of a public question in an assembly, involving opposing viewpoints: a debate in the Senate on farm price supports.

dis-cus-sion [dih-skuhsh-uhn] n - an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., esp. to explore solutions; informal debate.

There was no debate last night, just as there is rarely a debate between any two politicians. The format doesn’t allow for debate. The format last night was the norm – the emcee asks a question of an individual, who gets two minutes to respond, then the other panelists get half that amount of time to respond. Except that they rarely do, instead choosing to talk about their own ideas or talking about whatever the first guy talks about. There is no engagement, or at least none worth noting.

If you want a debate, let them talk to each other, ask questions of each other, or at a very minimum, have the emcee ask a follow-up when an individual refuses to answer the question posed. Is it any wonder that Rick Perry skips these meaningless gum-flaps?

At the start of this non-debate, each candidate (panelist) was given two minutes to say whatever it is they wanted to say. Then the emcee asked a total of twelve questions, rotating in order amongst the panelists so that each panelist was given four direct questions. Here are the subjects of the twelve questions and to whom the question was directed:

1. Would you have taken the 800+ million in federal funds that Gov. Perry turned down because he claims it would be unconstitutional to take it? Deb Shafto – Green  Party
2. How will the looming budget shortfall affect education? Kathie Glass – Libertarian Party
3. Should we educate undocumented and allow them to attend college at in-state rates? Bill White – Democratic Party
4. Should achievement be a part of teacher appraisals? Deb Shafto – Green  Party
5. Should Texas adopt National Standards? Kathie Glass – Libertarian Party
6. What would you do to move our education system into the nation’s top ten? Bill White – Democratic Party
7. What do you think of Charter Schools? Deb Shafto – Green  Party
8. What would you do to lower the dropout rate? Kathie Glass – Libertarian Party
9. What would you do to lower the cost to attend college? Bill White – Democratic Party
10. What are your thoughts on Vocational Education? Deb Shafto – Green  Party
11. What do you think of teacher unions? Kathie Glass – Libertarian Party
12. Would you support earmarking Lottery funds for education and if casino gambling passes, would you earmark those funds as well? Bill White – Democratic Party

And then each panelist was given two minutes to wrap it up.

Overall, Bill White was Bill White. He answered the easy ones and avoided answering the hard ones. For example, he didn’t answer his first question at all. Here is the question and answer, transcribed as well as I could:

QUESTION: Texas is one of the border states facing a major problem with illegal immigration. Do you believe it is appropriate to provide public education to those who are of undocumented status or to the children of those and what about allowing illegal immigrants to attend college at in-state rates?

ANSWER: Well first off, those people who are citizens, and there are plenty of citizens, under our constitution have equal rights as other individuals. And as Governor I would do as much as possible to actively support the local government entity, the school district, the hospital district, the county government ought to decide who they choose to serve and how they choose to serve those individuals.

There are certain things that we all have in common. I think there are, remember when we had that flu epidemic that originated in Mexico, I can tell ya, when I was mayor of the city, it was important for, to prevent epidemics, that you had a good sense of who was coming in and who had what flu because as we all know, whether somebody has a legal resident or a green card, whether they're an international visitor who had business here, or whether or not they've been citizens for 80 years, if they have some kind of disease that could be communicable, it is important that we get a hold of that and that we not let that burden spread.

Look, we're a great country and we're a great state, and I'm tired of this (unintelligible). Rick Perry has complained about the lack of federal support to secure our borders for the last, you know, for year after year after year, he's been governor for 9 and a half years! It is his job to get the federal resources that we need! George W. Bush was President for eight of those years. President Obama for a year and a half. He just complains but he doesn't get results. That's what we need. Look, you can go on my website, you can see my border security plan - the reason that Sheriff's representing 98 percent of border Texans support my candidacy for governor is that I listen to them, I listen to local law enforcement on what we can do to enforce our borders. We need a thousand more local policemen and deputy sheriffs and let the gang members and the narco-trafficers who want to impose (unintelligible) community know that it will not be safe on this side of the border.

This is one of those that BEGS for a follow-up because he didn’t answer the question in the least! And it shows what happens when a guy tries to answer a question the way he thinks someone wants him to rather than say what he really thinks. Gov. Perry had the courage to answer the same question in a Republican primary and he was straight-forward and answered it even though he KNEW it would not be a popular answer. Bill White talks about swine flu? Had Ms. Lawson been a moderator or had the other panelists had the opportunity to ask a follow-up, they would have said, Mr. White, could you answer the question please?

My takeaways: Deb Shafto wants to be governor to tell people that there is a better way of life than consumerism. Kathie Glass wants to eliminate truancy laws and let people be dropouts if they wish. Bill White wants to spend more money.

Wow. Such enlightenment.

But the real takeaway? I think I know why the League of Women Voters wouldn’t let us low-life’s take pictures. Two reasons. This is one and the other would be that if we did take pictures of the crowd, you’d see the same exact diversity that I see at a King Street Patriots meeting and less diversity than I see at either a Houston Tea Party Society or Kingwood Tea Party meeting. That’s right; there was token attendance by minorities at this League of Women Voters event. Are they racists?