Charge the Troops to your Campaign Fund Instead, Mr. Perry

This week Governor Perry announced that he will send 1,000 National Guards troops to the border to solve the border crisis. Perry did this despite hearing a report from border police departments that crime has not risen due to the growing number of immigrants coming in, specifically the unaccompanied minors. Militarizing the border is the answer if the problem is crime, but the problem isn’t crime. The real problem (and one that can be fixed) is people not efficiently being legally let into the country and granted citizenship or quickly deported depending on the circumstance. This problem can’t be solved with increase border security. This can only be solved through legislation, but it is not happening because there is so much gridlock and stubborn debate. Governor Perry is doing a good job in making public the need for something to happen for immigration reform, but that something is not 1000 troops. The goal should have been to make the federal government look like the fool, not Texas.

                This current immigration problem cannot be fixed through military. Increased crime can be fixed through military, but, despite what Perry thinks, that is not the problem. The only thing these troops can do is wait around with these kids that are waiting to either get their citizenship or get deported. In fact, it has been reported that children run to the new troops after they cross the border. This shows that not only are these troops not helping the situation, but it shows that these kids aren’t afraid of law enforcement because they don’t want to do anything illegal or be involved in crimes.

                Governor Perry wants the federal government to pay the 3 million a week that it costs to send 1000 troops. While it is the federal government that is not fixing the problem when they are capable to, it should not be them to pay the money. Instead, Governor Perry should pick up the bill because this whole thing was publicity for his presidency. No problems were solved by what he did, except the problem that he was not currently being talked about in the news. So in the end the troops were a huge success and did exactly what they were supposed to do: get Rick Perry on the news. But in all seriousness, Texas should pay for it because it has the most support for what Perry did and it was Texas (in the form of Rick Perry) that made it happen. Deploying troops had nothing to do with the federal government and they shouldn’t pay money for it.

                What should happen is the troops need to be brought home immediately and that 3 million a week should go towards a better cause like feeding law-abiding children that we have locked up in a large room at the border waiting until congress passes a law that decides their fate.

Extreme Conservative stating what's wrong with the Democratic party? This should be good.

Obama’s Man in Texas posted July 22, 2014 by Rick Perry vs The World is about what the Democrats’ plan of attack is to get increased votes in Texas for candidate Wendy Davis and why it won’t work. The author states that their plan is: “turning out registered minority voters who often stay home; registering unregistered minority voters; and attracting the support of suburban white women.” My initial feelings were that this was a reasonable strategy for Davis to have a fighting chance and to maybe even make Texas a purple state. Moreover, seeing this as an extreme conservative criticizing the Democratic Party, I was ready for the author to scoff at the idea while maybe even being a little racist or sexist. But I was mistaken. He shot down all three components with fair reasoning and evidence. He stated how Davis would not get more registered minorities to vote and would get even less minority turnout than the last major election (2012 Presidential). He stated that Davis is less relatable than Obama to minorities and how their vote for governor would make less of a difference in this election than the close 2012 presidential race. He used this same reasoning for the strategy of registering minority voters and stated how it would be even harder to convince someone to register and then vote for a candidate that will most likely lose (and is less relatable to the target audience—minorities). He then stated that winning the vote of suburban women is absurd because they would be pushing a pro-immigration and pro-abortion platform and hope that Republican women would go for that. I agree with his claim that you cannot try to get the vote for both minorities and suburban Republican women because they have almost opposite ideologies. While I was far from the extremely right wing target audience and skeptical about a piece about the faults of Democrats, I was happily surprised to agree with the majority of his reasoning. I think that all three strategies of the Democratic Party will work to some degree, but I agree that they will be, for the most part, unsuccessful because of the reasons he stated. Something that he did not touch on in his argument is the long-term affects. While I agree that these strategies will not work in this upcoming election, I believe that mobilizing minorities will be significant in the long run (especially with all the Hispanic population growth predicted in our readings). But, as of now he is most likely correct in arguing that these strategies will not work for the upcoming election. What I learned from this is that (even as a moderate) I was the one who came in with bias into this topic and was persuaded out of my initial beliefs by someone who is far to one side of the political spectrum. I now know that people can be resistant to new information from someone based on the stereotypes of that person’s ideology or political party.

Love what you are saying, just not how you are saying it

While I enjoyed and agreed with the Texas Tribune opinion piece Now is the time to stand with Powers written by the Texas Tribune editorial board, I did not get anything too much more out of it than “Powers is great, everyone in the government sucks, yay Powers, boo government”. The opinion piece was about UT President Bill Powers fighting against the Board of Regents, UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa, and Governor Rick Perry. The author does tell us the details of the fight like when it started and exactly who is involved. The author even goes into details about what all parties involved have contributed to the fight (only good things from Powers and only bad things for everyone else). Although I love hearing details about one of my favorite people, President Powers, winning in a fight, this piece was disappointing.

I am the definitely their target audience: young, a student at UT, skeptical of Governor Perry but politically involved, against anti-intellectuals, and having nothing but respect and trust for President Powers. So I should be one of the people saying “the author is so right, Powers is perfect and these government anti-intellectual idiots are so wrong, GO UT!” However, the one-sided nature of the argument left me wanting to know more about what the other side thinks. I should clarify that after researching this conflict fully and discovering the true ideological conflict at work here I am still 100% a supporter of what President Powers is doing, which makes me even more disappointed with this editorial’s lack of content.

This opinion piece is rooted in an ethos argument, which proves its point by making well-known people that agree with the author seem great and people that disagree seem awful. To a certain degree I went along with it, because, like so many others, I thought “I have so much trust for Powers that whatever he believes in, I believe in.” While effective, I would argue that it is not good journalism. I prefer to know that this conflict is actually about how Perry wants higher education to be more about teaching and giving professors more lecture hours and less about research. This conflict is ultimately about intellectualism, which excels through research, and how, instead, Perry wants skills to be taught in a pro-business fashion instead of an intellectual way. I gathered all that information through outside sources and was disappointed that the piece did not attempt to explain the higher education debate that caused this conflict (even though it is an opinion piece which has a purpose other than presenting both sides of an argument). The only mention of anything close to explaining the higher education debate is this- “Powers made known his disagreement with Sandefer’s business-minded proposals, which were wholly inappropriate for a university of UT’s caliber.” That line for me was not enough detail into the real debate for me to choose one opinion over the other and really sink my teeth into this opinion piece.