Stan Geiger

Edmonson Ads

My last piece brought a comment from a reader. The reader scoffed at a Drew Edmonson, Democrat for governor, ad. Edmonson's ad touts his forcing Southwestern Bell to give $30 million to public schools for computers. My reader says Edmonson is full of bull. He says Southwestern Bell overcharged customers and, when it got busted, the payback money went into public schools instead of going back to ratepayers.

Given a choice between believing a political ad or my reader, hmmm, I think I'll side with my reader.

Edmonson was already on my list. So I'll make a couple of my own points.

One of Edmonson's ads touts the fact that he went to Vietnam---40 years ago. The ad says nothing beyond that; it says nothing about what he did in Vietnam. For all I know, Edmonson did a year sitting behind a desk. Big whoop. Does that make him a hero?

The thing about Edmonson's ads that really grabs my nose, however, is his pledge to work for higher teacher pay. I was pretty close to posting about not seeing any political ads pushing for more goodies for schoolteachers. Then came Drew Edmonson.

Let's see, we've got a state general fund that has backed up by about a billion dollars of late. State agencies are taking cuts across-the-board. Hell, even public school districts are taking budget cuts. We still face a massive infrastructure backlog, totalling billions. We have a wholly inadequate prison system. DHS is reportedly a gigantic cluster-eff. And this boob wants to increase pay for a bunch of part-time state employees that are already vastly overpaid. Super.

If he needed any help getting there, Edmonson's pledge to raise pay for schoolteachers pushed him to the very bottom of my list of choices for the office of governor.

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