The 65,000-member Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA) is already getting much more than their money's worth from their Chosen One in the Gubernatorial campaign, as Texas Comptroller of (Exclusively) Public Schools and Accounts Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn yesterday came out vociferously (does she, of late or later, come out in any other fashion?) against incumbent Governor Rick Perry's desire to grant pardons to some of the state's poorest children currently conscribed in the educational backwater prisons that masquerade as public schools.

"We're at a critical crossroads. We're either going to have public education or we're not, and Rick Perry looks to vouchers as the only solution to a public school system that he has doomed to failure," said Strayhorn.

This short statement has a remarkable number of gross factual errors and incorrect assertions, so let us now begin the dissection forthwith.

"We're either going to have public education or we're not..."

Not once, ever, has Governor Perry called for the demise of public schools.

Destination Government School

(Editor's Note: We have, incessantly, but he has not.)

This flawed premise is, however, to be found on, and is directly lifted from, the TSTA anti-voucher talking points memorandum, which most assuredly came in the TSTA Official Endorsement Packet Madame Comptroller must have received, and she is now parroting large chunks of it verbatim for reasons beknownst only to her and anyone paying any attention to her perpetually politically expedience.

The TSTA, as have unions such as this throughout the nation, have continually used this completely factually devoid assertion as a means to maintain their total monopolistic status, as they seek to continue to failingly lord over as many children under their bureaucratic thumbs as possible.

And yet (Strayhorn) feels completely free to question the motivations of her opponent, who in this regard has consistently sought nothing more than parental autonomy in determining what is best for their children's educations, something she herself once sought in less desperate, less approbation-needy political times.

But the effort to begin to parole a small number of the minors in government scholastic jail is by no means a stone's throw, or even a justifiable rhetorical leap, from the complete destruction of public schools. If this charge were actually so, it would speak far more to the glass house status of the governmental educational edifice, were it so readily susceptible to this merest of operational alterations, than to any effort on the part of the Governor or any of the myriad other school choice supporters who seek to improve the futures of as many children as possible by allowing their parents, rather than teachers unions, to do the deciding.

Onward ... .

"... Rick Perry looks to vouchers as the only solution to a public school system that he has doomed to failure."

Nary a Voucher Amongst Them

In actuality, the Governor has proffered many solutions to the Good Ship Titanic status that is the governmental school system, both during the legislative process (both regular and special in session status) and by Executive Order after these facts.

Though well outside the ordinary parameters of the Lone Star Gubernatorial purview, the Governor in 2004 proffered a comprehensive financial outline for how to simultaneously increase the coin poured into the educational bureaucracy whilst substantially cutting the egregious property taxes made necessary by said scholastic Monolith.

One regular and three special convenes later, no agreement, on his plan or any other, had been reached, so Governor Perry then issued three separate Executive Orders requiring the following:

(1) 65% of school money be directed (a meager percentage, and undoubtedly only a Gubernatorial beginning, where in actuality far more should be) to the classroom,

(2) the implementation of a teacher merit pay program, and

(3) a statewide enhancement of college readiness standards and programs.

One will note that this is, in point of fact, a great many ideas of an educational nature having been put forth by the man in the Mansion, not one of them having anything to do with the school vouchers with which Madame Comptroller accuses him of being myopically focused.

House, Meet Senate

The Madame assertion that her opponent is exclusively responsible for the failure of these repair endeavors is to either woefully or willfully ignore the facts on the ground lo these last two years. There was a great deal of consternation and in-fighting on this issue within the confines of Big Pink. The House and Senate sometimes could not come to even rudimentary agreements, and at times when they did these best laid plans were undone by a petrochemical mud Constituency of One.

All of this lack of production has very, very little to do with the Governor upon whom Madame Comptroller seeks to place all of the blame.

Moving beyond this Chock Full of Nuts mini-statement, we now turn to the vaingloriousness that is Madame Comptroller's past. Her disdain for school vouchers is, in addition to being a horrendous policy position, also a decidedly newfound one.

Let us trip down Strayhorn Memory Lane, back to her tenure as Railroad Commissioner circa 1997, when she uttered the following:

"Parents know what's best for their children, and that's why I support more charter schools and vouchers. No child should be forced to attend a failing school, and right now hundreds of thousands of our children are being held hostage in failing schools.

"I challenge any opponent of parental choice to put their child or grandchild in the worst (school) for one year, and then we'll debate the issue.''

No ambiguity here. She is proffering a clear, concise and completely accurate assessment of the rights of parents to determine what is best for their children, in all things generally and in their scholastic endeavors specifically.

It is All Left Turns for Madame Comptroller From Here On Out

The nebulousness only arises when one compares her assertion then with her TSTA-tainted statement now. It is amazing how inexpensively some politicians' moral clarity comes unclear. All this one took was the endorsement of one traditionally Democrat, continually liberal union.

And yet she feels completely free to question the motivations of her opponent, who in this regard has consistently sought nothing more than parental autonomy in determining what is best for their children's educations, something she herself once sought in less desperate, less approbation-needy political times.