Donna Campbell evading questions like "the Artful Dodger"

Meet Donna “the Artful Dodger” Campbell, who thinks she’s won the Texas Senate seat in District 25 just because she beat Jeff Wentworth. I call her “the Artful Dodger” because she’s made a habit of dodging questions from columnists at this newspaper and others.

Campbell dodges opportunities for voters to get to know her at non-partisan events when her opponent John Courage will be in attendance, like the San Antonio CRS, a realtors group, Rotary Clubs, and others. She’s been invited by League of Women Voters groups on Wimberley and San Marcos but has failed to even be respectful enough to respond to them.

With so many opportunities dodged you’ve got to wonder if she’s hiding her ignorance of the needs of the district. Is she hiding the fact that she’s as inarticulate as the video of the editorial board interview shows her to be? Is she hiding her elitist views such as school vouchers, which only cover a quarter of the cost of private school tuition, will somehow give poor people a choice in where to send their children to school. Or could it be all of the above?

John Courage has been interviewed by newspapers around the district, he’s attended non-partisan events and even attended a TEA Party meeting. I’m voting for John Courage for Texas Senate because he listens to everyone.

TEA Party candidate in SD25 afraid to face voters

Who’s afraid of John Courage in Senate District 25? Donna Campbell, that’s who. After watching Courage and Campbell being interviewed by the San Antonio Express News editorial board for an hour I can understand why she doesn’t want to be seen in the same room as Courage. She’s both clueless and inarticulate; most of her responses were TEA Party rhetoric without specifics.

With nearly half a million voters in Senate District 25 yet to hear from Campbell she’s only been seen at TEA Party events and cowering at the homes of existing supporters. Campbell won’t accept invitations to be interviewed by opinion writers for the major newspapers in the district. When she and Courage have been invited to non-partisan candidate forums she has refused the invitation which means those organizations won’t let Courage address their members either because they don’t want to be seen as partisan. When voters ask her questions she doesn’t want to respond to on her Facebook page she bans them.

John Courage recognizes that Texas per pupil funding for education is near the bottom in the U.S. causing overcrowded classrooms in which there aren’t even enough desks for the students. Campbell’s solution is to violate the Texas Constitution and provide half the per student funds to pay part of the tuition at religious schools.

Campbell should be very afraid to be seen in the same venue as John Courage but voters should demand it.

Desperate people do desperate things

While the TEA Party continues to play into the hands of Wall Street bankers and billionaires with delusions of grandeur the U.S. economy is once again swirling around the drain. If House Speaker John Boehner is successful in his oft stated goal of making President Obama a one term president we can all look forward to further austerity measures which will put the economy into a tailspin the likes of which haven’t been seen since Herbert Hoover was President.

Many Americans were in desperate shape even prior to the Great Depression and once it struck their ranks only grew. Our parents and grandparents often went hungry sometimes for days on end. What is usually glossed over in history classes in this country is that there was quite a bit of civil unrest in this country in the early part of the 20^th century with labor strikes and government troops used by the corporate bosses to break those strikes often using deadly violence.

We’ve already seen pre-cursors to such heavy handed tactics in places like New York and the University of California at Davis where police pepper sprayed peaceful protestors who were sitting on the ground. What the Koch brothers and the Walton family seem to have forgotten is that in this age of improvised explosive devices when people have nothing left to lose they are willing to take measures that they would never have risked with just a little food on their tables and a roof over their heads.

Captain Obama has left the Mad Hatters of the TEA Party at the helm

Once again President Obama has caved to pressure by the Chamber of Commerce and TEA Party Republicans; this time over whether or not to update smog standards in order to the protect Americans from increasing incidents of asthma. This means that the same standards put in place by George W. Bush and believed to violate the Clean Air Act by Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, will remain in place for another two years while Americans suffer.

The excuse is that requiring additional scrubbers on pollution generating industrial plants will be too expensive and cost jobs. Tell that to the 12,000 or so people who die from pollution induced asthma and other respiratory conditions. I’ve got news for the Chamber, going to the emergency room nearly unable to breathe is too expensive. Jobs would be created by updating these regulations as new equipment would have to be purchased and installed and it could all be paid for by the record profits that corporate America is racking up while it isn’t hiring new employees.

The Mad Hatters in the TEA Party would have you believe that freedom and deregulation are synonymous but the air we breathe is shared by us all and if government doesn’t regulate what can be dumped in it, our air may not be fit to breathe for much longer. So TEA Party members I have news for you too, air and water are shared by all and if that makes them socialist – get over it.

Why aren't tax breaks for working stiffs the same as tax breaks for millionaires?

President Obama has proposed to extend the payroll tax cut for low income Americans. Since the TEA Party acronym stands for “taxed enough already” you’d think that TEA Party Republicans would jump on that and agree with the President for a change. You’d think wrong.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) told the AP “It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn, but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.”

Rep. David Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he also opposed the 12-month tax cut because it would cost the government about $120 billion next year if it were renewed.

According to the Washington Post the Bush tax cuts amount to about $130 billion per year so I guess that means Republicans will now be against renewing those too. Why aren’t we hearing Lamar Smith and Quico Canseco coming out in favor of either continuing the payroll tax cuts or not renewing the Bush tax cuts? Is expecting logical consistency too much to ask?

It looks like Smith, Canseco and Hensarling never saw a millionaire tax break they didn’t like.

Thanks TEA Party Republicans

We all owe a debt of gratitude to TEA Party Republicans like Quico Canseco and Lamar Smith who trashed America’s historically sterling credit rating and caused a 630 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Their sheer petulance over what is normally a simple housekeeping measure that has been passed dozens of times during both Democratic and Republican administrations, notably 19 times under Reagan alone, has added further drag on our already fragile economic recovery.

Taxpayers will foot the bill for higher interest rates on our national debt while simultaneously losing billions in the stock market which will undoubtedly lead to further job losses as Americans have less money to spend. All this is brought to us by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who promised to do everything in his power to make sure that President Obama doesn’t get re-elected.

So thank you Lamar Smith and Quico Canseco for showing America just how spiteful the TEA Party Republicans can be before the next election so we have our eyes wide open when next we vote.