Tuesday the 9th marks my first legitimate campaign appearance of 2014, appearing in the candidates' forum at Lone Star College's Kingwood campus. I appeared there whilst running for US Senate two years ago. It is a two-year college, but that doesn't mean nobody there will remember me.
The forum that night is specifically for judge candidates on the ballot in Harris, Montgomery, and Liberty Counties. By "judge" they mean not just County Judge, but various county and state judicial positions as well. Even more specifically, it is for Green Party candidates for judgeships. The Green Party of Texas has four such candidates apart from Yours Truly, and all are running at the state level:
Supreme Court Justice Place 7 - Charles E. Waterbury
Supreme Court Justice Place 8 - Jim Chisolm
Court of Criminal Appeals Place 4 - Judtih Sanders-Castro
Court of Criminal Appeals Place 9 - George Joseph Altgelt
I don't honestly know how many of these folks are going to show up Tuesday night. These are busy attorneys. Jim Chisolm, at least, lives in the Houston area. As for me, I am not a busy attorney, but the office of Harris County Judge does not have a "ten years practicing law" requirement.
I have a friend who works for the LSC system, at the main campus in Aldine. He has taken a position of leadership in the struggle that academics face here in the US: keeping academia a good place to make a living. The tenure system exists for a reason: to provide faculty members with at least a semi-secure place to conduct research and pass their knowledge on to the rising generation (and some older students looking for better careers).
Community college instructors don't expect to make the same salaries as professors in more prestigious institutions, but those who have earned their PhD's should not have to teach four courses a week at four different colleges for subsistence wages and no benefits. The "adjunctification" of academia must stop. It is all about keeping tuitions competitively low, which seems admirable enough when fancy schools charge $50,000 or more per year.
The Green Party has taken the position that public post-secondary education should be free to students, as it is in a number of nations, even some nations that aren't Norway. This would mean changing the tax structure fairly radically so that colleges can be fully funded without relying on tuitions. Read about the Green New Deal that Jill Stein put together as the foundation of her 2012 Presidential campaign, particularly the portion dealing with education.
The forum that night is specifically for judge candidates on the ballot in Harris, Montgomery, and Liberty Counties. By "judge" they mean not just County Judge, but various county and state judicial positions as well. Even more specifically, it is for Green Party candidates for judgeships. The Green Party of Texas has four such candidates apart from Yours Truly, and all are running at the state level:
Supreme Court Justice Place 7 - Charles E. Waterbury
Supreme Court Justice Place 8 - Jim Chisolm
Court of Criminal Appeals Place 4 - Judtih Sanders-Castro
Court of Criminal Appeals Place 9 - George Joseph Altgelt
I don't honestly know how many of these folks are going to show up Tuesday night. These are busy attorneys. Jim Chisolm, at least, lives in the Houston area. As for me, I am not a busy attorney, but the office of Harris County Judge does not have a "ten years practicing law" requirement.
I have a friend who works for the LSC system, at the main campus in Aldine. He has taken a position of leadership in the struggle that academics face here in the US: keeping academia a good place to make a living. The tenure system exists for a reason: to provide faculty members with at least a semi-secure place to conduct research and pass their knowledge on to the rising generation (and some older students looking for better careers).
Community college instructors don't expect to make the same salaries as professors in more prestigious institutions, but those who have earned their PhD's should not have to teach four courses a week at four different colleges for subsistence wages and no benefits. The "adjunctification" of academia must stop. It is all about keeping tuitions competitively low, which seems admirable enough when fancy schools charge $50,000 or more per year.
The Green Party has taken the position that public post-secondary education should be free to students, as it is in a number of nations, even some nations that aren't Norway. This would mean changing the tax structure fairly radically so that colleges can be fully funded without relying on tuitions. Read about the Green New Deal that Jill Stein put together as the foundation of her 2012 Presidential campaign, particularly the portion dealing with education.
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