Posted on 04/22/2004 5:59:52 AM PDT by Arrowhead1952
Another day, another squabble as Perry-Strayhorn fight continues.
By Ken Herman and Michelle M. Martinez
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, dabbling in subject matter a tad sexier than the usual daily number crunching, said Wednesday that the state should shut down all topless bars by prohibiting them from selling alcoholic drinks.
The proposal is the latest in what have become daily Strayhorn attacks on Gov. Rick Perry's proposed school finance package. The Perry plan, aimed at drumming up more money for public schools while reducing property taxes, includes a proposed $5 admission surcharge at adult entertainment venues.
What kind of state, Strayhorn said, would depend on that kind of money to pay for schools? What kind of governor, Strayhorn asked, would propose such a thing?
"I don't want my five granddaughters growing up in a state where the governor says partnering with sexually oriented nightclubs is an acceptable way to finance their education," she said.
Strayhorn is considering challenging Perry when he seeks re-election in 2006. Both are Republicans.
Perry defended the proposed fee, noting it aligns with his goal of increasing taxes on "unhealthy" behavior. He also wants a dollar-per-pack hike in cigarette taxes.
"There are a lot of activities that are legal in the state of Texas that some individuals find to be distasteful and not appropriate," he said.
Perry noted that "the question has come up: Why don't you raise the liquor tax?
"The fact of the matter is, drinking a glass of wine is not necessarily an unhealthy activity," he said.
Perry also wants to legalize slot-machine-like devices at the state's pari-mutuel tracks. He declined to categorize gambling as an unhealthy activity.
"The state has said clearly that it is going to accept gambling as a form of entertainment to be legal in the state of Texas," he said, pointing to popular votes that legalized the state lottery and pari-mutuel gambling at horse and dog tracks.
Strayhorn was adamant in her call for legislation barring alcohol at "sexually oriented nightclubs."
"If these clubs can stay in business selling lemonade and iced tea, at least I will feel better about the safety of the dancers," she said. "Alcohol can make the meek violent, the quiet loud and the passive aggressive. People can and do get hurt in these clubs."
Strayhorn, branding Perry's proposal as a "sleaze tax," said the true goal would be to put the clubs out of business.
Perry and Strayhorn have been going at it all week, beginning Monday, when, in numbers vehemently challenged by Perry, she said his plan would produce a $10 billion deficit after five years, provide little meaningful property tax relief and do little to help schools.
Perry on Wednesday criticized Strayhorn's analysis as a "shoddy, fly-by-night" effort based on "eye-popping miscalculations."
"It is an astonishing fact that the top number cruncher in this state could be so wrong on the numbers and the facts about my plan," he said.
Said Strayhorn, "How dare this governor question the integrity of this office?"
But Perry was not alone in questioning Strayhorn's operation.
Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock and a Perry ally, admonished her staff during a meeting of the House Select Committee on Public School Finance and questioned the comptroller's estimates of how much new money each school district would receive under Perry's plan.
Krusee put Perry's plan on the table Wednesday as a starting point for the committee, which can use any part of Perry's plan -- or none of it -- as it crafts the House's school finance bill.
Strayhorn's numbers, which showed many districts would get no additional money under Perry's plan, differed substantially from a similar report issued by Perry's office.
Krusee said the report inaccurately puts the Lexington school district in his district.
"You said you had a real high degree of confidence in your numbers. You got the school districts wrong," Krusee told James LeBas, the comptroller's chief revenue estimator. "You still have a high degree of confidence in your numbers?"
LeBas stood by his numbers and defended his boss: "I'm sure the comptroller had every intention, and still does, on being helpful to the Legislature."
Strayhorn's office said it plans to release new estimates, and House Appropriations Chairman Talmadge Heflin, R-Houston, said work will be needed to reconcile any differences between the two sets of numbers.
"We don't know right now whether it's apples and oranges, pears and oranges, kumquats and bananas or whatever," Heflin said.
You proposed a principal of moral relativism. For you to choose moral relativism for sexual matters but not for matters of violence is hypocritical. Either moral relativism works or it doesn't.
She will make $1000 a week
Wrong. That is what the manager of the strip club claims will happen. If it does, where are all the rich strippers? Why limit it to one night a week if it is such a wholesome activity?
Which option is better for the child? Which option is better for the mother?
Right out of "I learned all I need to know about strippers from Demi Moore."
You can insist that YOUR morals are the only ones that are relevant and that anyone who dissagrees with you is wrong,
But that is just the point. They aren't my morals any more than the air or the sea belongs to me. They just are, always have been and always will be. They apply to you no matter how loud you hum with your fingers in your ears.
Strip clubs are cesspools of crime, corruption, and exploitation, and I don't mean simply having dirty thoughts about naked girls. If you believe otherwise you aren't connected to reality. You have bought the whitewashed version peddled by the frauds on the nightly news.
Women who turn to stripping for a living find themselves immersed in a culture of prostitution and drugs. They usually get hooked on the drugs, wind up as prostitutes to make a little more to pay for the drugs, and end up dying at 35 on the streets, looking like they are 70. If they aren't murdered outright somewhere along the way.
The press loves to do their "college girls paying their way through school by stripping" story every now and then because it feeds their enlightened egotism. But it is just as fraudulent as their "tax cuts for the wealthy" mantra.
I am not an expert. But I have read numerous accounts of women who escaped the lifestyle of drugs and prostitution that stripping led them into before that lifestyle killed them. I have seen plenty of accounts of strippers found murdered. I have seen many, many accounts of strippers who died of overdoses.
If these women are friends, what else would you expect them to say? Of course they are going to minimize the immoral nature of what they did if they bring it up. You think it is just about nudity, so that is the line they feed you. You add that to the TV newsies bumping up their ratings with titillating stories of college strippers, and voila, a mythology is born.
BS to the Nth degree.
My friends know that they can tell me the truth no matter what it is.
Maybe, just maybe, there are women out there that show their nude bodies that are NOT prostitutes or drug addicts.
But you wouldn't admit to that if it were staring you in the face, would you?
Stay Safe !
Of course they can. But will they? Will they bare the darkest regions of their soul for a friend?
Not a chance. People only seriously talk about that sort of thing when they are looking for absolution. Absolution is painful. If they are not ready to seek it, they will deny the need for it. If they have it, they won't run around talking about the subject anymore.
It is possible your friends got in and out of it before they got swept away, but it is highly doubtful they spent much time in it and are exaggerating for effect or are making it up altogether for attention.
From the 2002 - 2003 Dallas Morninig News Texas Almanac:
Whatever....
The women I know were in it for one reason and one reason only, to get through college in a normal amount of time beholden to no one for it.
I will admit that I don't make it a habit to go, I don't go at all, to strip clubs or topless bars so I don't know hundreds or thousands of strippers.
I don't doubt that there are strippers out there that are exactly like you describe.
You DO seem to doubt that there are any strippers out there like I describe.
My experience versus your reading. I'll take my experience, with these particular women, over your reading.
I now have a completely different term for her.
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