I Voted

I voted Thursday night with early voting. I saw that this year broke the record for early voting, between 30-40% of all ballots cast this election will have already been cast by election day. I kind of enjoy the excitement of voting on election day, but I waited in line 45 minutes Thursday night as it was, so next Tuesday would be much worse.

No surprise, I voted for Romney in the presidential election. Why? Go review the great 121 comment debate over at ANCIANT's site for one of the most intelligent political debates that I have ever had the privilege to participate in. It is here.

I did not vote straight ticket, though. Never do. In fact, the majority of my other votes on the 23 page ballot, especially locally, were for Democrats. Working in education, I have seen first hand the damage done by the Texas brand of Republican. I am a conservative in many ways, obviously from my comments in the above referenced debate. And in the abstract, I do not have a problem with a standardized testing system. Students and teachers should be held accountable for at least a minimum competence before graduating.

But the beyond absurd version that has been created here in the Lone Star State, while at the same time cutting billions (yes, that's a "b") from the education budget...well, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years. If you think Republicans nationally hate taxation in any form, you should see Texas Republicans. Being a moderate at heart, I dislike extremist views all around, and that includes on taxation. The problem in Texas is rooted in our property tax and business tax system. We were doing really well, but a few years back they decided to alter the property tax system, and it cost the state billions. (We famously have no state income tax, so property taxes were the primary source of taxation revenue). To make up for the lost revenue, they claimed that changes in the business taxes here would make up for it, making it a revenue-neutral change. Didn't work out that way, and now we have a structure that mathematically cannot be balanced. Most intelligent observers on both sides understand this, but it is politically very difficult to change the property tax system now that it has been done. It would, in essence, be seen as an increase in property taxation, which is against Texas religion.

So Texas will continually need to cut heavily in different places to make up the difference. In the past couple of years, the target has been education. At the same time they have hoisted this amazingly complex standardized system on the schools (where students used to have to take 4 state tests in high school to meet graduation requirements, now there are 16 of them, with the scores on one effecting what you need to score on the others, and then the scores on the tests are now 15% of their average in that particular class...there is much more). And this year it appears that a school voucher system is in the works. Again, I do not object to a standardized testing system. But this one is ridiculous, and needs resources to help the students be successful, instead the school budgets are being slashed. I'm not sure that I even object to a voucher system, philosophically. But the voucher system also takes money out of the public school system at a time when they are broke.

So for these reasons, locally and statewide, mostly, I voted Democrat. In the school board race locally, the Republican candidate apparently feels that 16 standardized tests throughout high school is not enough and we need more.

Although, for the judges that will be hearing criminal cases, I went Republican on all of those.

I had promised earlier a post on Benghazi. I'll just tack a few thoughts on here. It is a very disturbing situation, and one that the national media has not really pushed for answers on. The Obama administration was caught with its pants down. Much evidence indicates that they knew very early on that it was a coordinated terrorist attack having nothing to do with some ridiculous YouTube video. Yet that was the story they pushed for days and days and days afterward. This is bad for several reasons. First, it is dishonest. Secondly, they unnecessarily brought attention to this stupid video and basically apologized for it, giving an already hostile region more fodder to use as fuel to dislike us. And it was unnecessary. Several talk radio commentators that so many people deride were saying, the very next day after the attack, that it had nothing to do with the YouTube video and it was a terrorist attack. Does Mike Gallagher and some local San Antonio radio jocks have better intel than our government? I doubt it. They were just immediately telling the truth, and it took the Obama administration two weeks to get around to the truth. Obama said the "intelligence was still coming in."

Secondly, it appears that there were real time requests for assistance from our military and special forces. They were held back, because according to one administration official, you don't send forces in harm's way without proper information. I'm not sure we would have ever fought a significant battle in our military history if we went by that standard. When do you ever have enough information to feel comfortable before entering the fray? By its very nature, warfare is chaotic, constantly changing, and you do not have enough information about what the enemy is doing.

But Obama goes further and states that "as soon as he knew" what was happening, he ordered aid. So, either he is not being honest about that because we know no aid was sent, or his orders were ignored. Not good either way. There is also evidence that ambassador Stevens had repeatedly requested more security. Yet Biden, in his debate, claimed that the administration knew nothing of these requests.

Anyway, Benghazi pisses me off. It should piss you off too. And not just because four brave Americans who were representing us abroad lost their lives.