Common Sense

I just start giggling like little school girl when I think of Gina Parker and her fellow “grassrots activists” for their little stunt Monday morning. I really wish I could have seen pictures of that, but I’ll settle for a story in the Trib.

“We need to buy down the surplus,” said Gina Parker, a Waco lawyer rallying the anti-tax effort in Austin on Monday.

Meeting with lawmakers in Austin and calling their offices, the self-proclaimed “Texas Tea Party” presents Perry and Republicans who dominate the Legislature with opposition in their political base as they attempt to complete long-awaited school finance reforms during the current special legislative session.

Proponents of Perry’s plan say that the surplus should play a role in property tax relief but that it does not provide a long-term fix and is not a reliable funding source.

“At this point, it’s just a projection,” Anderson said of surplus figures. “It’s not 10 bags of money sitting there waiting to be spent.”

Oh. My. God. I never thought I would be agreeing with Doc Anderson, but that is totally right. I don’t agree with him on the plan to be implemented, but at least he has a grasp on reality. How do you ‘buy back the surplus’ anyway? I don’t understand what that means. I think that’s because Gina Parker rarely makes sense.

By the way, “Texas Tea Party” Republicans takes too long to type, so I’m just going to keep calling them “Gina Parker’s Teabaggers.” It’s much shorter that way.

Because Gina is so f-ing clueless, I don’t think she understands the difference between a long-term fix and short-term fix. This surplus, even if it is as big as projected, represents a one-time chance to fix a few things. Since public schools in Texas don’t seem to be able to make ends meet, large chunks of money to some school districts to pay for bond elections, building refurbishments and school supplies should be at the top of the list. If we just lower property taxes without coming up with a new source of revenue, schools are still going to be in a hole and we’ll just have to raise property taxes next year to meet demand, totally making this whole special session a waste of time (as if it wasn’t already).

I’m not exactly in favor of higher taxes on anything. My income bracket (the ‘oh my God, how do you survive on so little money’ bracket) is usually the one most heavily affected when Republicans are coming up with new taxes. But I am willing to pay a little more if it means helping out Texas’ schoolchildren. I understand that I belong to a pretty exclusive club, the state of Texas. I’m willing to pay my dues. Gina and her Teabaggers (God, they make it too easy sometimes) wants all the priveleges of membership, but she doesn’t want to pay for that membership. And that makes her a bitch.