Parent PAC Funds Bad Guys

PAC funds the Big K-12" crowd in Austin By Weston Hicks Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas If you search the Texas Ethics Commission for Texas Parent PAC " over the last three election cycles youll discover an extremely deep-pocketed contributor for Democrats and bad Republicans. Just last cycle Texas Parent PAC funded the opponents of solid conservatives Van Taylor Dan Flynn Charles Perry and others.   The primary agenda item of Texas Parent PAC is K-12 school funding. The primary giver to Texas Parent PAC and he gives the lions share is Charles Butt of HEB fame. Public school funding can be a difficult issue for people to figure out. On the one hand most people want schools sufficiently funded. On the other hand people know K-12 education is a huge money trough that many piggies have sidled up to. Looking at the entire agendas of people Texas Parent PAC has given to over the years provides clues about who is on the right side of this confusing battle. Texas Parent PAC funds the Big K-12" crowd in Austin. They desire more money for a broken system system that they will fight to keep unchanged. During the session members of the Big K-12" crowd consistently agitated for more taxation and more spending across the board and not just for K-12 funding. Also had the Democrat contingent of the Big K-12" crowd being in power conservative measures like the sonogram bill never wouldve had a chance. Thats because the Democrat contingent of the Big K-12" crowd is pro-choice. The same group never would have allowed tort reform a huge reason Texas has so definitively outperformed the rest of the country during this recession. The Republican contingent of the Big K-12" crowd are the kind of Republicans who stay silent on the issue of life until forced to take a position. When forced out as they occasionally are the words pro-life" quietly pass their lips but only because you can t survive in Texas politics with an R" next to your name and be pro-choice (pro-life Republican Donna Campbell will try to send home the only pro-choice Republican in the entire Senate Jeff Wentworth in the next Senate District 25 primary). In the 2008 cycle around $1 million was poured by Texas Parent PAC into the agendas of bad politicians. For state races this is a fortune. If agenda items can be judged by the company they keep and they can the more money for K-12" agenda item fails miserably. It doesnt hang around with any of the nice agenda items only the thugs and losers. In truth the Big K-12″ crowd supports the status quo in K-12 public education. The system we have is broken and you cant pour enough water into a broken jar. Teachers unions and associations love the status quo because it multiplies employees. The more members they have in their unions and associations the more membership dues they get and union membership dues fast-tracked to the Democrat Party is their power source. In Texas bad Republicans get much of this money because of the weakness of the Democratic Party here. People who contract with the public school system want it to stay the same too. And then lots of good folks have been convinced by slick political marketing that more money is the only answer. Its not. In the real world there is no efficiency without competition. We have neither in public schools. Texas Parent PAC has in its quest for more K-12 school funding empowered the entire Democrat agenda and the moderate business conservative" agenda (business" means crony" when you hear the term business conservative"). Conservatives the legislators who desire fiscal sanity traditional values and meaningful reform in education were the only ones who fought during the 82nd legislature for teachers. Conservatives pointed out that the non-teacher population has skyrocketed over the last 40 years for non-classroom reasons. Conservatives pushed for non-teacher cuts while moderate Republicans lead with teacher cuts knowing it was the best way to break the Texas resolve to limit spending.