An e-mail forward slamming Dubya - Debunk this, please...

Great Debates
1

The state of Texas, under the leadership of Governor George W. Bush, is ranked:

50th in spending for teachers’ salaries

49th in spending on the environment

48th in per-capita funding for public health

47th in delivery of social services

42nd in child-support collections

41st in per-capita spending on public education
And …
5th in percentage of population living in poverty

1st in air and water pollution

1st in percentage of poor working parents without insurance

1st in percentage of children without health insurance

1st in executions (average 1 every 2 weeks for Bush’s 5 years as Governor)
[/quote]

Dismiss or verify, please. And how important are these things anway in terms of the difference a governor could make?

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

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2

I would observe many of those things are quite meaningless. What does “spending on the environment” mean?

All those things look vague and would need much clarification. Otherwise anyone can prove them or disprove them according to their own views

3

I agree with Sailor, every single one of those accusations can be made with simple games of semantics…

Which teachers? Maybe teachers in small, obscure fields, or maybe retired teachers, or maybe Texas’ teachers haven’t gotten a significant raise recently, or whatever.

Does this include illegal aliens? Or maybe Texas has had less demand per-capita on their public health system than other states recently?

What’s the definition of “poverty”? What percentage is this being compared to, all states that begin with the letter “T”?

I’m not saying any of that’s accurate, or the “real story” or anything, I’m just saying that without any real definition to these accusations, they’re meaningless.

However, I’m going to take a look for counters anyway (just don’t expect me to put any real effort into it… it’s late, after all :D)

4

This thing (or some version of it) started circulating a while ago – like before the primaries. Some parts of it are true (for example, Houston is the smoggiest city in the U.S.).

The status of this one, according to snopes, is “undetermined.” You can read all about it at http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/bush2.htm .

An excerpt: “Attempting to ‘prove’ the above list true or false would be a pointless effort, as just about any of the above items could be considered true, false, or somewhere in between, depending upon the interpretations placed on their wordings.”

5

There is a fairly good discussion of this list in this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=9858

UncleBeer has some good comments, as do others. That is, until the thread degenerated into one of those “so when are we getting together” chats.

6

I assume “spending on the environment” means the amount spent by the state environmental protection division on the enforcement of environmental regulations. (The implication being that Bush appointees don’t much care about enforcing environmental regulations.)

7

I can tell you that this one is true. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.

I have severe doubts about the veracity of the rest.

8

Texas also has the largest percentage of inmates on death row that were sent there as juveniles. But when you’re number one in executions I guess it wouldn’t be hard being number one at killing children.

Needs2know

9

I know that as of 1997, North and South Dakota were 49th and 50th in terms of the average salary for grade school teachers, with something like $19,000 per. I don’t know about high school or college, but I’d think that those numbers haven’t changed drastically since then.

10

This sounds just like the Arkansas list from 1992. The concept of a list like this is statist; it assumes a governor is some kind of king that controls all of life.

Back then SNL did a Presidential debate skit in which Clinton bragged about things like Arkansas’ now being 49th in prevention of rickets (up from 50th).
> Houston is the smoggiest city in the U.S.

I starting hearing about Houston’s dirty air long before Bush was in office.

11

I have heard this list before and I think the most accurate thing you can say is, to paraphrase Ben Kenobi, “it is true…from a certain point of view.” It would depend on what you choose to use to quantify these labels.

12

I’m a life-long resident of Texas (well, I hope to be anyway), and I can believe these things. Many folks don’t know that Texas is also one of the poorest states, near Arkansas and Mississippi. It shouldn’t be surprising that it’s near the bottom of the list for social spending.

Also, the libertarian ideal is alive and well in Texas, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone to find that we spend less on socialist programs than Minnesota or New York.

As for air pollution, Houston is now declared the city with the worst ground-level ozone problem (although they’ve been reducing levels of other pollutants). Ozone is exacerbated by hot weather, which we’ve had in spades lately (111F in North Texas on Sunday). However, Los Angeles has benefitted from the El Nino stronger winds to blow much of its pollution to other areas.

13

Re. Spending on Schools. I believe DC has one of the highest if not the highest spending per pupil while on of the Dakotas (maybe West Dakota) has the lowest, and yet DC does a lousy job while all those states that spend less do a much better job. Utah I believe also spends much less and does a much better job at education.

So just saying “we spend more” is a pretty stupid thing to say if you are getting nothing in return.

Why does Utah do better in education while spending less? Could it be they have better government and administration? Or maybe it would be some other factor like being closer to the Canadian Border? Should we move DC closer to Canada and see if things improve?

14

Depends on what you mean by “doing better”.

South Carolina is 50th in SAT scores because only the “ivy league” people test.

15

err i meant test in other states… not SC:)

16

TampaFlyer said:

Yeah, and? Don’t you think maybe he should have done something about it?

Instead, he killed a vehicle emission reduction program that would have reduced smog levels (as it has in many other cities). Oh, he eventually brought back a version of it, a number of years later when he was deciding to run for president and after pollution had gotten worse. What a guy!

17

I can’t really address this thread directly, but I do have a comment. I worked at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when Dubya was the owner (sorta) of the AL Texas Rangers. I will carry to my grave the image of the baseball writers and sports columnists coming back to the office shaking their collective heads about what a complete dork George W. was.

And now I get to choose between the creative genious who came up with the name “The Ballpark” for his new baseball stadium and Al “I can Balance the Earth” Gore.

My head hurts.

18

Speaking as a Texan…

Well, gosh, not EVERY state can be a paradise like Tennessee (snort… snicker…) or (guffaw) Arkansas!!! HOO HOO HAA HA HA! I can’t stand it!!!

19

We’ll help you through it. Isn’t there a twenty step program somewhere?

20

I don’t like Bush, and I’m not voting for him so I think I’m qualified to comment on this email.

It is impossible to compare one state to another and then conclude that state A has a better governor than state B. A better system would be to define waht your goals were and the compare them before and after the governors term. Even then it would be problematic because a great governor might be stopped in his plans by the legislature. Also many government programs don’t show benefits for years, even if they are good programs.
I live in Louisiana and we are constantly rated at the bottom of lists like these. But we are a chemical producing state, so of course our environment is not as clean as Oregon. We have 50% of the population living below the poverty level, but we also have a large minority population, and a higher than normal percent of senior citizens.