Bill White makes campaign stop in Harlingen; speaks about education

HARLINGEN — Texas students need a chance to go to college, or to be trained for high-paid manufacturing jobs, said Democratic Party candidate for governor Bill White.

White made a stop in Harlingen Friday morning.

The former Houston mayor said Gov. Rick Perry is cutting education programs.

Rather than just assuming that all manufacturing jobs will go to China, Texas needs to be aggressive about attracting and keeping the best industries, White said.

“We have an affordable cost of living, we have people who are willing to work and the jobs that we can keep are those that they call ‘high value-added manufacturing,’” he said. “That requires people who have more than minimum-wage skills.”

“I can’t stop China,” he said. “But we can prepare ourselves.”

High school students need to learn reading, writing and critical thinking, rather than just how to pass multiple-choice tests so they can pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills examination, he said.

Harlingen students who graduate from high school should be able to succeed in college, not just be accepted to college, White said.

Addressing the controversy over Arizona’s state immigration law, White said there is a way Texas could address the problem of dangerous illegal immigrants.

“Police chiefs and sheriffs along the border know best how to make communities safe,” White said. “We need more local police and deputy sheriffs. We need a governor who will fight effectively to get the funding we need, not just for overtime programs, but so we can get local police and deputy sheriffs who know the terrain, who know the community.”

The National Guard is not a long-term solution, White said of border security.

“There needs to be predictable federal funding,” he said. “There are limits under our law on what National Guard troops can do.

“We need peace officers who can arrest people, more local police and deputy sheriffs, having the tools and technology to expand what is called the Secure Communities Program,” White said. “People without identification who are arrested for offenses can be fingerprinted and be checked against databases that detect both deportable felons and people who are citizens.”
By fingerprinting everyone who is arrested and checking databases, racial profiling would be eliminated, White said.

Residents of the Rio Grande Valley deserve to have the same opportunities as other Texans, White said.

He also addressed the needs of veterans.

“I want to duplicate some of the programs we did for our returning veterans in the city of Houston,” he said.

“After seeing what happened after Vietnam and Korea and there was so much neglect of returning veterans,” White said. “Help them cut through the red tape of the bureaucracy at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Help them obtain jobs when they came back and find special housing for those that were injured,” he said.

Texans are tired of hearing about the governor cutting more and more state services and programs, White said.

So far, he has visited more than 60 counties and he senses Texans are ready for change, White said. “Many of those counties have not seen the governor for years and years and years, some not for 9 1/2 years.”

He said Perry is out of step, living in a $10,000-a-month mansion paid for by taxpayers while some of his fellow Texans are losing their homes through foreclosure.

“We need a governor who will be a servant, not one who thinks he’s better than other Texans,” White said.