Monday, August 21, 2006

More mud from JD today...

In his latest press release, he criticizes Harry Mitchell's education cred, citing a report from the "non-partisan" Goldwater Institute. He quotes the Goldwater Institute as saying that "Mitchell never received higher than a 53 percent with regards to education votes from 2003 to 2005."

Sounds damning, until you look at the Goldwater Institute itself, and find that it is an organization that's as fundamentally opposed to public education and academic freedom as JD himself.

With their
grades for legislators, they consistently grade Republicans at 'A' or 'B', and Democrats at 'D' or 'F'.

Did a little research. For Legislative Year 2005, they graded 17 legislators at 'A' overall (not just in the area of education) , 21 at 'F' (I included Harry Mitchell's D- for the sake of this post). All 17 A's went to Republicans; all 21 F's went to Democrats.

Their A-listers include Russell "Teachers don't need no free speech" Pearce, Jack "Culture of Corruption" Harper, and Ron "Confederate Flag" Gould.

Their F-bombs? The list includes the likes of career teacher Harry Mitchell, ASU instructor Kyrsten Sinema, and UA professor Ted Downing.

The Goldwater Institute is NOT non-partisan; it's just non-credible. Especially in the area of education.


In addition, Hayworth goes on to tout his own education cred as stronger than Harry Mitchell's.

Not only did he vote for massive cuts in federal financial aid in an era of skyrocketing tuition, he has supported abolishing the Department of Education.

[Fun note: Found during the research for this post - JD's profile on MySpace.com. He's got some "interesting" friends, lol. While it reads like it's legit, I'm not absolutely sure how involved he is with the site/page.]

If you really are wondering about the candidates' education bona fides, know this:

Harry Mitchell has the endorsements of the Arizona Education Association and the National Education Association.

JD Hayworth received a grade of 'F' from the NEA for his work during the 109th Congress.

'Nuff said on this.

In other CD5 campaign news, the Mitchell campaign issued a press release criticizing the use of the Congressman's taxpayer-supported aide to conduct a campaign attack on Mitchell. Joseph Simon was the aide.

Writing in The Hill's CongressBlog, Congressman Hayworth argues, in regard to the President's warrantless surveillance program, that "individual civil liberties" shouldn't be allowed to interfere with the President.

He writes that "we need more tools, not fewer, to defeat the terrorists." What he doesn't say is that the government, specifically the FBI, did not need more tools prior to September 11, 2001; they had all the information they needed to know that there were some potential terrorists taking flying lessons. And not bothering with *landing* lessons.

They (meaning the political appointees assigned to administer and oversee the agency) just ignored the info.

Later!!

3 comments:

TimWilsonAZ said...

J.D.'s campaign team must have no fingernails left if they are going to attack Mitchell on education issues. Ironic, eh?

Craig said...

Maybe, but I'm beginning to think that maybe there's a method to the desperation -

By bringing up the issues that Mitchell is strong in and JD is weak in (ethics, education) now, JD builds up a tolerance for the weaknesses, kind of like an alcoholic builds up a tolerance for what ails him.

Zelph said...

That's the Rove method. Attack your opponent's strengths.