We Have Issues For '06

With the main item on the agenda for this session left unaccomplished the finger pointing has begun. Great post session wrap-up from InThePinkTexas, Dewhurst vs. Craddick: In Praise of Gridlock. Here are a couple of excerpts:

So what’s new here? The players. The Republicans rule the House and Senate roosts. The Governor’s Mansion, too. The House sent a truckload of white Republican legislators to the conference committees on HB2 and HB3. Nobody’s ever accused Steve Ogden of being a closet liberal. They all look alike. They all talk alike. They all vote alike. Alas, they can’t stop fighting with each other.

[and]

Today’s scrape isn’t a Democrats vs. Republicans fight. Not urban vs. rural. Not Valley vs. suburbia. Those conflicts actually involve ideas and intelligent arguments about real issues affecting real people. (Or at least they can.)

Today’s arguments are about how to best facilitate our state’s unencumbered race to the bottom. In the price and quality of our education. In spending on the most vulnerable among us. In the distribution of tax burden. In environmental quality. We have problems that need to be fixed. This just ain’t the crowd to fix them.

The state’s current leadership is presiding over the complete unraveling of state government, and it’s no accident. With one hand they are choking off any income for the state. With the other, they are stripping away the government’s power to protect its citizens. They may be foolish, but they’re not fools. They are running us into the ground with their eyes wide open.

The Governor is in serious trouble now that his self-described #1 issue went down the tubes. I don't think another special session will do him any good either.