Top 10 reasons to vote against Rick Perry

There are more, but I had to stop somewhere.

# Flunking math His 2006 property tax cuts left an annual $4.5 billion shortage in the state budget because he didn’t fully pay for them. Now, school kids and educators are paying the consequences with outdated textbooks, crowded classrooms and pink slips.

# Starving public education He wants to hold teachers and school kids accountable for their performances but refuses to hold himself accountable for an underfunded school finance system. Under his watch, Texas’ perpupil expenditures are 38th in the country and average teacher pay is 34th, several thousand dollars below the national average. The rankings will sink even lower if Perry, as he has promised, gets to slash and burn his way to “curing” a $21 billion revenue shortfall next year. His handpicked education commissioner already has proposed $261 million in additional cuts from the public education budget.

# All hair and no cattle He talks a good game of economic development and job creation, but underfunded public schools and universities undermine Texas’ ability to adequately prepare young people for the jobs that will make or break the state’s future.

# Payforplay governor – While school districts struggle with their budgets, Perry doles out millions of taxpayer dollars to private startup companies belonging to some of his highdollar political contributors.

# Twilight Zoner He pretends that the dropout rate – one of the state’s most pressing social and economic problems – is much lower than the onethird or more that it is. And, he vetoed a bipartisan prekindergarten bill that would have helped encourage many youngsters to stay in school.

# History class clown One of his former State Board of Education chairs was a leader of the rightwing clique that ravaged social studies curriculum standards, much to the delight of latenight TV comedians. Interjecting their own religious and political beliefs, the rightwingers tried to rewrite history, downplaying the roles of blacks and Hispanics, elevating Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and trying to demote Thomas Jefferson. Perry refused to “second guess” their antics.

# Still in the 19th century – Perry’s refusal to repudiate secession at an antigovernment Tea Party rally also prompted national ridicule, and his erroneous claim that Texas had the right to secede demonstrated an alarming lapse in his own knowledge of Texas and American history.

# The buckpasser – The tuition deregulation law, which he signed, is passing more of the higher education costs to students and their families and pricing more and more young people out of college.

# The bureaucratic meddler – He tried to impose a poorly conceived, onesizefitsall executive order that 65 percent of a school district’s budget be spent on classroom instruction. The Legislature axed it. He also has led efforts to impose a merit pay plan on teachers, despite evidence that such plans waste taxpayer dollars.

# The Bahama beachcomber – He invited two of the biggest enemies of public education – private school voucher advocate James Leininger and antigovernment guru Grover Norquist – to join him in the Bahamas for a few days of sand, surf and stiffing the public schools.

Early voting started today. This is your chance to do something about it!