Bill White raised more money from more contributors than Rick Perry.
From the White campaign.
Strong fundraising results show momentum building for Bill White
Over 16,000 contributors back successful businessman, popular mayor
HOUSTON -- At the end of the last filing period on June 30, more than 16,000 supporters had contributed to Bill White's campaign for governor, propelling White towards November with over $9 million cash on hand.
Grassroots support for White is strong. More than 75 percent of individual contributors gave $100 or less and over 11,700 new contributors joined the team this period.
"Texans from all backgrounds and political viewpoints see Bill White as someone who's in it for Texas. People in over 200 Texas counties have generously contributed to the campaign, and over 11,700 contributors this period were first-time donors," said Scott Atlas, Campaign Finance Chair. "There's a growing sense that Texans are ready for a new governor."
In the first two fundraising periods after entering the governor's race, White raised more dollars than Perry. Between late February and the end of June, contributors poured more than $7.4 million into White's campaign, with more than $16.6 million raised for his campaign for governor since December 4.
Bill White has raised more money from the grassroots while Rick Perry's pay to play politics and his overwhelming support for corporate and special interests over those of the people has yielded fewer contributions.
Rick Perry has circled his wagons around avoidance and accountability.
The Governor of Texas is on a 24/7 rampage to avoid questions and he refuses to be held accountable for his policies, agendas and decisions for the past decade.
Rick Perry must be growing rather desperate for the Governor seems to have engaged the services of PR spin doctors to coach him on how to deflect his Enron type of accounting schemes that delivered a $18 billion budget short fall. The Governor is also trying to flee from taking responsibility for his house of cards methodology for measuring the state's K-12 school performance.
The spin doctors' solution for cowardly and frightened career politicians?
Blame the coward's own evil doing on Washington, the federal government and the coward's opponents and critics for cowardly, reckless and irresponsible policies and decisions.
A bunch of debt? Rick Perry should know all about debt, junk science and voodoo math. And it has nothing to do with Washington, D.C. and the federal government.
While Rick Perry slashes social services for children and the elderly, our welfare loathing Governor appears to be incapable of cutting back on his own taxpayer funded living expenses.
While there is an $18 billion budget shortfall, the state's schools rank second to last in the U.S. and Texas has the highest number of uninsured residents, the Neiman Marcus loving millionaire Governor expects taxpayers to pony up for his Gourmet Magazine subscriptions, fine wines, pate de foie gras and thousand dollar drapes.
This is very bad news for Texas. I find it uncanny that I learned about this sad state of affairs from outside of Texas on the Nation.com, of all places, on the very same day that Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle wrote an expose about the TEA. It seems that the rest of the U.S. has been aware of something that the public in Texas has not been informed about, at least until very recently.
From The Nation.com.
A recent report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center shows that the nation's graduation rate dropped for the second consecutive year, following about a decade of improvements. Three out of every 10 American public students will fail to finish high school, but in Texas that dropout rate increases to about 35 percent, according to the report.
Moreover, Dallas and Houston are named as two of 25 national "dropout epicenters" from whose high schools come one-fifth of all dropouts. Texas policymakers seem wholly unaware of this crisis, since the Texas Education Agency calculates the graduation and dropout rates in a manner that puts them at 88 and 12 percent, respectively. At schools like Robert E. Lee in Houston, where in 2008 the federal calculations placed the graduation rate somewhere in the thirties, those numbers seem almost comical.
For BP has messed with Texas. Again. God must be very angry at Governor Rick Perry. Maybe when the Governor blamed God for BP's disaster and then later, after Perry had stolen from Texas school children, he brought the wrath of heaven to Texas.
This past weekend tarballs washed up in Galveston on the Bolivar Peninsula at Crystal Beach.
About a dozen tar balls that washed ashore on Crystal Beach were identified Monday as oil from the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the first evidence that oil from the spill has reached the Texas coastline.
But it was unclear whether the oil from the blowout dropped off a passing ship or drifted nearly 400 miles.
Laboratory tests showed that the tar balls came from the BP Macondo well that blew out April 20, killing 11 crew members on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, said Coast Guard Cpt. Marcus Woodring, commander of the Houston-Galveston sector.
The handful of tar balls came ashore Saturday and a second wave amounting to about 5 gallons of oil was found Sunday scattered along 1½ miles of beach on eastern Galveston Island and Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula, Woodring said. Laboratory results on the oil discovered Sunday are expected today, Woodring said.
Will Governor Perry pray for a miracle or will he parrot RNC talking points and blame the spill on the Obama Administration? Will he rail against the feds while gladly stuffing U.S. clean up funds into the state coffer? Will the Governor use federal money to actually clean up the spill or will he try to use fed bucks to cover his $18 billion budget shortfall? As we well know by now, Rick Perry excels at playing games with the evil doing federal government taxpayer dollars that he hates but loves to spend.
I wonder what Rick Perry and his Party of Partisan Misery will do to prevent future oil disasters in the U.S.?
An article in the Houston Chronicle reveals that Rick Perry did not use federal stimulus money targeted to schools to augment their budgets, as required.
The federal dollars were intended specially for schools. The funding was to have given Texas a means by which it could enhance and strengthen the educational outcomes for students. The federal government did not hand out the people's money to Texas for the governor to do whatever he wants with it. Of all people the governor should know that federal funding always includes specific requirements and guidelines, compliance is mandatory as is accountability. In this case the federal government made it clear that states could not replace what they normally distribute to schools with federal money.
Rick Perry must think the rules do not apply to him especially when they are made by a big bad federal government that will actually hold him accountable for how the governor spends the people's money.
As we can imagine, the ever arrogant Rick Perry thumbed his nose at Texas school children, their teachers and the U.S. taxpayers while stuffing the U.S. people's money into his state coffer. The Governor of a state in which the schools rank second to the bottom of the pile nationwide cut back on what Texas normally gives to its schools. Instead of receiving extra resources and educational opportunities Texas schools got the same stingy state funding.
Democrats charge that while Perry officially accepted the money from Washington, he simultaneously slashed the state's contributions to the education budget, allowing the state to essentially pocket the federal dollars without increasing school aid.
"Instead of a historic boost in local school support, our schoolchildren were left no better off," Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said. "Three billion dollars (in federal money) made no difference to our local schools."
Rick Perry has stooped to such a low level that he will actually steal from Texas school children.
Rick Perry must be terrified of losing the election to Bill White. He has to be scared because Perry's former aide may have brought in illegal, out of state money to prop up the Green Party. They desperately want to get the Green Party on the ballot in November. Rick Perry and his Republican operatives and henchmen hope that the Green Party candidate would take votes away from Bill White. I guess the boys and the Green Party conveniently forgot that it is illegal to use corporate donations to put candidates on the ballot.
Why is it that Republicans usually have to resort to dirty tricks, slime ball tactics, scorched earth politics, cheating, voter caging and voter disenfranchisement to get elected?
Why? Because fewer and fewer voters support them. When the Party stands up for the polluters, i.e. BP, the Wall St. banksters and gamblers that have both squandered and stolen our money, the big health insurance companies that hand out literal death sentences to patients with catastrophic illnesses, voters start getting the message that the GOP is most definitely not on their side.
Bill White rocked the Democratic convention this weekend by drawing stark differences between a Texas run by Rick Perry and a Texas run by Bill White. A Rick Perry Texas means every man is out for himself. Mr. White also made it crystal clear that Rick Perry is in this race solely for himself and his self-promoting interests. Case in point: Rick Perry puts in seven legislative hours per week while collecting a full time, taxpayer supported salary. He lives in a $10,000 a month rental mansion, compliments of we the taxpayers, when he could live in far more modest accommodations to save us a few bucks. Rick Perry needs to live like a king while putting the burden onto the shoulders of taxpayers.
Mr. White also reminded us of Rick Perry's appalling hypocrisy where federal dollars are concerned. For one who bashes the federal government on a daily basis, Rick Perry has taken more U.S. money than any other governor except for those of New York and California.
Mr. Perry continues to be too terrified to debate Bill White. Why is the Governor such a chicken?
I betcha Louie Gohmert and Sarah Palin did not realize that their hysterical invocations of Hitler when bellyaching about President Obama's demands to BP have brought the Evil One back from the grave.
Hitler is back and he is foaming at the mouth with rage. It looks like Hitler's ghost is going to haunt Smokey Joe and his GOP for a very long time.
Our esteemed Texas Republican lawmakers, especially U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, seem to have their lips perpetually super glued to the derrieres of BP and big oil.
I guess our Texas Republican lawmakers are completely incapable of thinking outside of any box that is unrelated to stuffing bucks into their personal campaign coffers.
As we all know by now, Governor Rick Perry has also super glued his lips to the derrieres of any big money that moves in his direction.
Meanwhile, back in a reality residing outside of the Texas GOP world of groveling and self serving pimpitude to corporate interests, there are grave and challenging issues that must be dealt with on national, state and local levels.
Last week at the BP Congressional hearing TX U.S. House Representative Joe Barton bluntly revealed the Republican Party's ideological view on the role their elected lawmakers believe they are supposed to play while serving in office. Despite his apology for the use of "shakedown" when referring to President's Obama demand for a $20 billion escrow account to pay for damages and despite his retraction of his apology to BP, behind closed doors most, if not all, Republicans are on the same page as Joe Barton. John Cornyn certainly is. When the BP Congressional hearing concluded it would not surprise me if all of the Republicans present sent text messages to their most generous BP contributors and wrote the following.
I am so very sorry that Obama forced you to pay $20 billion to the U.S. Please understand that I have to pretend that I am very angry at you right now, but you should always know how much I love and respect you. Please understand, from the bottom of my heart, that I will always work to loyally serve and obey you. And I promise, as soon as we can take back the House, Senate and White House, I will see to it that you get deep tax cuts. We will transfer your burden to taxpayers just as we did to bail out Wall St. Hugs and kisses, from your closest and dearest tool in the U.S. Congress.
It should be clear to any informed voter that Texas Republicans do not work for the people of Texas. They never have and they never will. Anyone who believes otherwise should pull one's head out Rush Limbaugh's, FOX cable TV news and Glenn Beck's trash cans.
After serving 10 years as the state's governor Rick Perry's anti-government, tax loathing, low educational achievement standards, building prisons while gutting schools crusade has yielded an unprecedented number of high school dropouts and an increasing pool of under-educated, unskilled workers. The rate of poverty has also increased over the past decade. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle a demographer at Rice University is truly frightened for the future of Texas.
The demographer who warned a decade ago about Texas' unhappy mix of dismal education achievement and high poverty is more concerned than ever. Actually, he's frightened.
Also getting restless are growing numbers of Texas business executives. Some don't see much leadership from politicians or the private sector in attacking the trend line that demographer Steve Murdock says will result in three of every 10 workers not having a high school education by 2040.
"I don't see business rearing up, and I sure don't see the state Legislature, with an $18 billion problem, saying, 'Man, we really need to muscle this thing up.' I think the thing that's going to change it is going to be another lawsuit," said Jack Lowe, chairman of Dallas-based TDI Industries and a board member of the Texas Business and Education Coalition.
The pattern of an increasing pool of low-income workers and high drop out rates in the high schools has us fast tracked to third world country status. This is what happens when our elected lawmakers believe they are lobbyists that serve corporate interests. The well-being of the people and the best possible educational and economic outcomes for the state never appear on their radar screens.
It looks like even some hardcore Republican loyalists are as fed up with Governor Perry as we are.
According to reporter Joe Holley of the Houston Chronicle stalwart Republicans say they support Bill White.
When his candidate for governor, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, fell to Gov. Rick Perry, he switched his support to Democrat Bill White.
Madden is one of a number of former Hutchison supporters who have crossed parties to support the former Houston mayor, including Houstonians Matt Simmons, CEO of Simmons & Co. International, and James Flores, CEO of Plains Exploration & Production Co.
It won't be a cakewalk to bring life long Republican loyalists over to our side but if any Democrat can do it, Bill White is the man.
If this is not proof that big oil owns the Texas Republican Party I do not what else is. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for President Obama's successful demand for $20 billion commitment from BP in order to help make reparations for those that have been financially devastated by the disaster. This includes fisherman who can no long fish for a living, the tourism industry and oil workers who are out of work b/c of the temporary ban on deep water drilling in the region.
Ol' Joe is obviously more worried about his own campaign coffer than he is the people in the Gulf region. Joe has received $33 million from big oil during his career in office.
God forbid should the government work on behalf of the American people.
While Governor Perry and his family vacation in China, his campaign spokesman, Mark Miner, thought it would be super cool if he were to hold a press conference in front of Bill White's campaign headquarters.
I think Mr. Miner seriously misunderestimated Bill White and his supporters.
A big thanks to Philip over at BOR and to Texas Democrats for their bold, effective and hilarious efforts at showing us a true Texas clown.
Meanwhile, it seems that, except for his daughter's expenses, the Governor is not paying for his family vacation in China. An organization called Texas One is funding the trip.
The Texas One top tier supporters that contribute $50,000 annually over three years include Exxon Mobil, Centerpoint Energy, Shell and others.
I think we've seen this movie rerun far too many times. Mark Miner might think it is cute to deliver a generator in front of Bill White's campaign office while his boss is off serving as a tool for the interests of some of the biggest corporate fat cats in Texas.
Rick Perry's Texas radical right wing supports anti-immigration and hate.
Aside from hate, racism and xenophobia, what else do Rick Perry and the Texas Republicans have to offer?
So, how will Rick Perry and the Texas Republican politicians break the bad news to the employers that hire undocumented workers? Rick Perry might find himself between a rock and hard place for the biggest employers of undocumented workers that get away with paying slave wages, demanding long hours with no benefits or sick or vacation leave are likely among Rick Perry's biggest and most generous donors.
Rick Perry must be running scared and desperate for he is in his Rovian full scorched earth politics mode. Perry had no problem stooping into the gutter in order to burn, torch and demonize his primary opponents Debra Medina and Kay Bailey Hutchison. Now, a more desperate and ethically compromised Perry has shown his willingness to step into the sewer to save his sorry political butt.
Rick Perry's hired and highly paid political guns have its targets focused on Bill White.
There are no lowest of lows where Rick Perry is concerned.
According to the Houston Chronicle Governor Perry, a life long politician is obviously terrified of losing an election. I mean, what else would Rick do if he can't live off taxpayer bucks and political donations?
A terrified Rick Perry called in all of his horses and all of Perry's tools to manufacture a scandal to save King Perry's butt.
A desperate and broken king Perry accused Bill White of profiteering during Hurricane Rita in 2005 while White served Houston's mayor.
Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday accused Democrat Bill White of engaging in profiteering during Hurricane Rita in 2005 by directing a local water authority to award a contract to a company to which he had financial ties.
I would also like to offer my deepest and heartfelt gratitude and thanks to my U.S. House Representative John Culberson (R-Houston) and to the Texas GOP for its blind and enabling support of the oil and gas industry.
Perhaps our Republican leaders would like to inform us about their rationale for enabling the devastating carnage in the Gulf of Mexico.
