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Re: more replies » mair

Posted by lil' jimi on May 16, 2003, at 15:39:44

In reply to Another question » lil' jimi, posted by mair on May 16, 2003, at 12:24:50

hi mair,

thanks for your reply! ... sorry this is so long.

but first, "finally ... "
you wrote:
> Finally, why are there so many cool people from PB living in Austin? You, shar, phil that I know for certain plus the tragically departed and much missed sar?
>
> Mair

i had no idea these folks came from austin! i am grateful you told me, and reminded me, that, of course, it seems appropriate that austin would be represented here .... although i wouldn't have guessed it to be represented by such revered and august company .... and tragic.

except for one thing, unlike those folks you mentioned.... i am Not cool... sorry .... {this has been our public service announcement}.

and now i know (or should have known) that knowlegeable austinites will be checking to see how i do here ... and i need that .... thanks!

> jim
>
> The article I read also said that the legislators ran off because a republican legislature coupled with a republican governor had been ramrodding a bunch of legislation through and this was the only way the Dems could come up with the avoid certain bills from passing by the deadline. Has it been really that bad this year? - from your perspective of course.
>

(the legistlators are due to arrive in austin at 7 a.m.) .....

redistricting

redistricting is the where u.s. house majority leader, tom delay, drew a line in the sand and
redistricting is the reason the democrats were forced to deny the lege a quorum.

there is a very long historical perspective on this, including the not-to-be-ignored 130 year reign of house democratic leadership Ending with This session of the lege.

then there are the ambitions of mr. delay to eliminate the districts of encumbent democrats .... 5 or 6 districts are to be gerrymandered into republican majority districts, including the district of my representative, lloyd doggett, who currently represents almost all of austin ...... while under delay's proposed redistricting, austin would be sliced up into 4 different districts, solely to dilute the liberal voting strength in austin.

this redistricting is to replace the redistricting that was approved by the republican attorney general, the republican governor and a 3 judge panel as legit just 2 years ago, but it just didn't give tom delay enough republican victories for him to feel comfortable enough as majority leader of the u.s. house.

the new redistricting is needed because when the voters voted they voted for too many democrats, so what tom delay's republicans could not win at the ballot box, they want to gerrymander in the state legislature.

besides this redistricting/gerrymandering fiasco ? ...... things have gone very badly indeed for the democrats because there are many very urgent issues before the lege and tom craddick placed redistricting ahead of even the state's bugetary disaster .... tom delay comes to town and all of a sudden those things are not as important to the people of the state of texas as how many votes tom gets to play with in the u.s. house of reps.

by and large, any democratic agenda in the lege has been deleted and /or ignored (and not surprisingly so), because the republicans now hold every major state office and both house of the lege and every seat of the texas supreme court..... but ...

<i have just finished washing the dishes and now i'm back ... just to reveal how this may not maintain my once-hoped-for continuity .... heh.>

.... those defeats have been tolerated by the democrats because they were to be expected given the republican majority in the texas house and senate ..... the texas house democrats did not object, in the same way as they have demonstrated to the gerrymander threat, to these massive, yet more ordinary legislative defeats (more like rude domination, given craddick's leadership style) .... draconian cuts to more desparately needed social services would be tragic enough...

... but, it was the highjacking of the whole legislative process to do the bidding for tom delay's defiantly partisan political gratification ... (along with gratifying guys like rove and card and cheney) ....

this managed to bring the house democrats together on one issue as nothing has in decades and it created more party untiy than anything else could have ..... the dems will of course go back to their usual infighting once the gerrymander threat is gone.

> Also why wouldn't the legislature just extend the deadline after the Dems get back?
>

naturally, texas state government courses are part of the legislative state requirements for high school and state university degrees ... i mention this because it makes it more impressive that what goes for the state constitution is widely known for being an archaic and flawed document for effective state governance, But deliberately so, we understand .... state of texas founding fathers held a deep distrust of central authority and crafted a constitution with as many encumbrances to weilding authority as possible...

to change that date would require amending the state constitution, which would require voter approval ..... although, there have been other possibly threatening strategies suggested ... time will tell....

and you wrote:
> - from your perspective of course.
>

.. ..ah, .. yeah, ... my perspective .... i suppose it shows ...
well, as Will Rogers used to say,
... " I've never been a member of an organized political party!
I've always been a Democrat!"

cure mad cowboy disease, y'all!
~ jim


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