A couple of months back House District 33 Representative Kris Hansen announced that she would be resigning her post as Deputy Hill County Attorney effective November 30th. Hansen at that time said she would begin work with a group of people interested in modernizing education in Montana and would be working on education reform legislation and policy. She also said she would run for re-election in 2012.
Since that time a few of her local political opposition have seen fit to begin to start telling folks she is leaving the area and are spreading untruths about her as they are wringing their hands in glee at the thought that they might regain the HD 33 seat. The fact of the matter is that this is what the political operatives call a “whisper campaign.” It is not a campaign that is ran above-board and honestly but rather a tactic that is used behind the scenes to sling mud in an attempt not to get any on yourselves or accept responsibility for untruths and outright lies.
Wikipedia defines a whisper campaign this way;
A whispering campaign or whisper campaign is a method of persuasion in which damaging rumors or innuendo are spread about the target, while the source of the rumors seeks to avoid being detected while spreading them (for example, a political campaign might distribute anonymous flyers attacking the other candidate). It is generally considered unethical in open societies, particularly in matters of public policy. The speed and anonymity of communication made possible by modern technologies like the Internet has increased public awareness of whisper campaigns and their ability to succeed. This phenomenon has also led to the failure of whisper campaigns, as those seeking to prevent them are able to publicize their existence much more readily than in the past. Whisper campaigns are defended in some circles as an efficient mechanism for underdogs who lack other resources to attack the powerful.
Contrary to what is being passed around by the behind the scenes “operatives” Representative Hansen will begin her consulting venture after the first of the year and will be concentrating on education issues in Montana. She will be staying in Havre and she will be filing for re-election in HD33. Hansen will be concentrating on school reform and other legislative issues full-time. Plans are being laid to contact people up and down the hi-line to start gathering information and ideas about what problems the schools are dealing with and where some changes need to be made. Hansen says she is hoping to work with teachers, parents, administrators, members of the public and MSUN to deal with issues schools are facing.
All we can think to say is that those of us at the Corrector think it is about time we took a new look at what can better our education system in Montana without being locked in to the same old same old that has proven to be a disappointment year after year. Perhaps, just perhaps there is indeed a solution to education funding issues other than just throwing more money at the problem.
If you have some positive, and I stress positive, ideas with regards to what can better Montana schools I am sure Representative Hansen would be glad to hear from you. She has always been very gracious in responding to the Corrector’s inquiries in the past even when we haven't agreed with her. Contact her via e-mail at krishansen33@gmail.com
Best Wishes on your new venture Representative Hansen
I was told a story about her a couple of weeks ago which I knew for a fact was false. It is just plain disgusting what some of our Havre democrats will do to discredit an honest and decent person.
ReplyDeleteEach school district should lay off all their administrators and all their faculty, sell all the school buildings and give each student in the district money to attend a school district, public or private, of their choice.
ReplyDeleteAfter laying off all the administrators and all the teachers and selling all the school buildings and most other school district property, the school district would no longer be an operating school district and would simply be a mechanism for collecting property taxes and inter-gov't'l transfers and passing these funds as vouchers to the students in the district to use at a private school or at another still existing gov't school in districts that did not lay off their teachers and sell their buildings.
Newly formed private schools will bid for many of the school buildings that the school district will be liquidating and they will interview and hire many of the teachers laid off by the school district.
Then there will be competition between all the private schools that have replaced all the gov't schools.
I like that idea Walter
ReplyDeleteWhat about just using vouchers so parents can choose what school they want?
Superman, there's an inherent problem with gov't schools which vouchers alone will not be able to solve, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete