Ok what is bushies governor record?

[southernleftylady]

repugs are saying that they want to focus on Kerry and bush government service...
so..
how did bush do as a governor?? :)

[Hubert Flottz]

1. The GOPers have hidden Bush's record as Governor of Texas!

You won't find it!

[Vickers]

2. Texas Governor has practically no power

Except for signing execution orders (131 or so on his watch, compared with around 30 for Ann Richards, his predecessor).

But he did influence state legislation that decimated Texas' treasury.

[DebJ]

3. Here's a thorough and easy read: Is Our Children Learning?

by Paul Begala, copyright 2000. 135 pages, small lightweight paperback.

I read this before the 2000 election. My response was, oh my God, Bush couldn't, wouldn't do to the country what he did to Texas? To
my horror but not surprise, he absolutlely has.

Turned a state surplus into a record deficit within his one term.
Called a special meeting to give that surplus to oil companies...the
legislature in Texas only meets every other year. Bush came in in an off-year, and so called an emergency meeting to give the money to the oil companies.

Clinton had just gotten out of Congress special medical aid for children. The FEDERAL government would give states, including Texas, money...not state money, FEDERAL, so that kids, like those with asthma who die without their medicine, could get that medicine.
Bush did NOT include this item on his emergency agenda. He let it wait until the regular legislation convened the next year.

As this kids went without asthma meds, and died, in Houston, Bush told the heavy industrial polluters in Houston to NOT follow Federal Clean Air Guides. So while denying asthmatic children their medicine, he increased their suffering with more air pollution in a city with already very bad pollution.

Bush worked no more than half a day during his tenure as Texas governor. It is a figure head job. It is purposely designed that way. There is nothing for Texas Governor to do, really, but still he found a way to be destructive.

He personally signed death warrants for more inmates than ALL OF THE PREVIOUS GOVERNORS OF TEXAS ADDED TOGETHER. He laughed on camera, mocking one woman whom he said was pleading for her life. On camera, he smirked and imitated her, saying "Help me", in a whiny voice. He also refused to allow new DNA evidence in to re-hear cases where people had been sentenced to death before DNA evidence was viable and admissable.

That's just the few things I recall off the top of my head.

[Lithos]

4. Don't forget...

His dealings with Enron where he manipulated the investment of government funds and employee retirement funds into their coffers.

The scandal involving the cemetary firm where he squelched an investigation of malfeasance of one of his largest supporters. (Strange the purveyors of the dead LOVE Shrub).

Prior to governor, his acquisition of land which was supposedly nominally part of the Ballparks at Arlington, but which was never used nor planned to be used. This later was revealed to be land speculation via public Domain.

[amber dog democrat]

5. lots of executions

maybe presiding over more executions than any other state in the union.
That stands for something, i suppose.

[Bridget Burke]

6. Ask Molly Ivins

She & Lou Dubose wrote Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush--a biography that concentrates on his terms as Governor. The office doesn't have much power but he managed to do quite a bit of damage.

She also writes in The Texas Observer--in fact, is a former editor. Here's a gem about his tax cut: Boy, does this have a familiar ring. George W. Bush comes up with a terrible idea, and by the time it becomes law it's such a hopeless hash you can't even tell what it was supposed to do in the first place. That's the governor I know--ask us in Texas about charter schools, ending social promotion, and other dandy Bush schemes.

The Bush tax cut, centerpiece of his presidential campaign and signature issue, is so bad that Jane Bryant Quinn, the business columnist who is not normally given to overexcitement, calls it "a contemptible piece of consumer fraud." Time magazine's headline is "Stupid Tax Tricks." And the best the people who voted for it can say is, "Don't worry, we'll take it all back."

http://texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=229

Lots more information at the Observer site.

And, yes, it's all true.