"Stop Voter Suppression Rally", Educational Forum and Film
What: Join legislators and our coalition of organizations against Voter Suppression Legislation for a rally, educational forum, and film explaining why we need to oppose Voter ID (Photo ID) legislation and how we'll win this fight.
AUSTIN, Texas - Before the House voted Speaker Tom Craddick out of his powerful job, state officials wiped his computers clean and deleted scores of electronic files, raising concerns that important public records may have been destroyed.
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The computers were removed from the speaker's office to be wiped clean at 5 p.m. on Jan. 12, said Anne Billingsley, spokeswoman for the Texas Legislative Council. Rep. Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, was sworn in as speaker at noon the following day.
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"Everything that Speaker Craddick had on his computers as far as data and records, he was allowed to take with him into his (state representative's) office," Billingsley said. "As far as the computers go, they took all the computers for the speaker's office and they got wiped."
Forget the fact that Craddick is a card carrying arrogant crook in my book. He was part of the state government. He does not get to decide , unilaterally what belongs to him, and what belongs to the people of Texas as a record of how their government was conducted.
I hope those of you who met me at the Bloggers Party before the Texas Democratic Convention remember the joyful news I shared with you concerning the fact that my home county was changing it's eligibility rules for Indigent Health Care such that they would comply with State Laws.
My county is only one of over a hundred which have hospital districts or public hospitals and a large number of those fail to comply with State laws and I am seeking supporters to help me during the upcoming legislative session change the wording of the law to remove the wiggle room these public institutions are using to skirt the law.
Texas Deferred Adjudication seems like a great systemn especially if you have received a traffic ticket or been caught for some minor infraction of the law such as public nudity or playing around with an adult in public. What is stunning is that the Texas Deferred Adjudication is also available to a repeat sex offender including indecency with a child, sexual assault, or aggravated sexual assault. Doesn't this seem a bit extreme? I know that court dockets are overtaxed but to allow a sexual predator to take advantage of deferred adjudication seems to be a bit lax.
Here is your chance to meet and show your support the next Democratic Representative from Texas House District 129.
Sherrie Matula is one of the candidates to watch and support this November in Texas. She has what it takes to win and is running a great campaign with lots of great people supporting her. Texas needs another strong Texas Woman in the Ledge!!!
This election season, Tom Craddick and his allies are playing a skillful game of chess. Recognizing that he is unlikely to gain any votes for his continued Speakership in the general election--as Republicans are projected to fall like flies across the state--Craddick has, in effect moved all of his pawns on the chessboard into Democratic districts in an attempt to defeat progressive, anti-Craddick state representatives.
I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Brian Thompson last night and speaking with him at some length about his campaign for Texas Legislature House District 46. Brian is articulate and poised but even more importantly, he believes in representing the people of his district in East Austin and Texas. He is not willing to sell his soul to the likes of Tom Craddick as the incumbent-Dawwna Dukes- has.
This year, in addition to recognizing its Texan of the Year (which will come this Friday), the Texas Progressive Alliance elected to recognize a number of other Texans who have contributed to Texas politics and the Progressive cause during 2007. This week, leading up to the TOY announcement, we bring you our Texas Progressive Alliance Gold Stars (one each day through Thursday). Yesterday, we recognized Rick Melissa Noriega. Our Silver Stars, announced last week.
Denise Davis. Few stories this year enthralled the politically inclined among us this year like the ongoing turmoil in the Texas House of Representatives.
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TEXAS MONTHLY NAMES BEST, WORST LEGISLATORS
The big three all make the worst list.
Here's the list:
Best: Anchia, Sen. Carona, B. Cook, Sen. Deuell, Hochberg, Kolkhorst, Madden, Sen. Ogden, Turner, Sen. Williams.
Worst: Burnam, Chisum, Speaker Craddick, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, Sen. Fraser, C. Howard, Sen. Lucio, Sen. Patrick, Gov. Perry, Riddle.
What's your take? Did they miss anybody? Over-rate, under-rate?
I take exception with Turner on the best list. Most oppurtunistic maybe. If Craddick's on the worst list, why is Turner not taken to task as one of his chief enablers???
Few in Austin are serving the public good. Examination of debate rhetoric and actual votes in the Texas House and Senate shows that few actually represented the people in their districts. They blocked passage of most of the helpful bills and passed bills which help fleece the voters! The one bright point was blocking passage of the VOTER ID bill.
Both houses rolled over and stripped protections from the so called moratorium bill excluding the TTC from the moratorium before passing SB 792. If anyone tells you they VOTED for the moratorium, check the list of those who voted against SB 792 before you believe them. Anti toll /anti TTC groups all begged and pleaded with Legislators to REFUSE to vote for SB792 if amendment 13 were deleted and market valuation language was left it. They stripped the Amendment and they left Perry's Market Valuation in and passed it. Now they'll try to bow and convince us that they voted for it because it was a MORATORIUM! That's a lie. It's no moratorium and they knew it!
Our only hope is to confront them on home turf back in the districts. Our only hope is to confront local elected officials and their appointees at MPO and RTC meetings. Our only hope is to activate people to SHOW UP and SPEAK OUT!
Johnny Castle and Baby could have taken lessons from Texas Speaker of the House Tom Craddick and Joe Pojman of Texas Alliance for Life. With the Speaker's one-man rule of the House facing an unprecedented challenge from within his own party, with the passage of a high-impact antiabortion bill at stake, and with the Texas legislative session in its final days, Craddick and Pojman were caught dancing the political payola polka.
"One of the sources of irritation with the Speaker this session is the amount of blood spilled and floor time that has been committed to socially conservative issues," but Craddick and the "pro-life" lobby are longtime partners - and one good move deserves another.
In the Texas Legislature, dirty dancing is only politics as usual.
Crossposted from DFW REGIONAL CONCERNED CITIZENS
What is so bad about the "apply market valuation" clause in SB 792? Q. Does this clause give landowners a better price for land confiscated by eminent domain?
A. No, in this bill, they are referring to market valuation for the ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT rather than for getting an appraisal on the real estate before they pay the land owner. There are rules that apply to acquisition of land by eminent domain which will not be changed by this phrase in this bill.
Q. What is Market Valuation as used in HB 792?
A. What they are referring to is HOW THEY VALUE the land years after it is acquired, how they VALUE the entire infrastructure throughout the life of the contract.
A couple of months ago, a Karl Rove disciple by the name of Florence Shapiro introduced Texas Senate Bill 785. Shapiro's bill required doctors to make detailed reports to the state about women who had abortions. And the Senate passed it, too - but only after removing sections that made targets of judges who issued judicial bypasses to minors, and sent women to jail for failing to reveal highly personal information about their private lives to the state.
But now the bill is in the House, all the dangerous and intrusive provisions have returned with a vengeance, and the vote is tomorrow.
Another bill by Sen. Dan Patrick pressures even women pregnant through sexual assault, or those whose fetuses are diagnosed with severe anomalies, to examine ultrasound images before being allowed abortion care.
Should this legislation by Shapiro and Patrick succeed, the confidentiality of personal information, and medical privacy as we know it, will become a thing of the past for women in Texas. And doctors, instead of inspiring confidence in their patients, will be forced by law to pressure women with emotional blackmail.
All's fair in love, war and politics. If ever that were true, then it is true of Texas politics. Thanks to the instestinal fortitude of Senator Uresti, one piece of bad legislation was kept off the books. The voter registration bill was denied a hearing because he got out of his sick bed.
Give the guy credit for this effort!
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Uresti ran, sprinting up the Capitol steps to reach the chamber just seconds before his name was called, thwarting Republicans trying to rush through a controversial voter identification bill.
And then Uresti hurried off to the Senate lounge - to vomit.
Moments before the dramatic entrance, a verbal skirmish had erupted between Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and the Senate's senior member, Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston. When Whitmire cursed, Dewhurst threatened to evict him.
The tension followed Republican efforts to require photo or other forms of identification as a prerequisite to voting.
Many professed shock after last week's attempted bombing of an Austin women's clinic. Others felt shocked by their shock, since the religious right's thinly disguised rhetoric of hatred has so permeated our public discourse as to have become the norm. But for some it is easier to pretend not to see what is before their faces, far easier to remain willfully blind.
In 1998, nurse Emily Lyons lost her left eye, was partially blinded in her right and sustained other horrific and disabling injuries when another bomb - similarly packed with nails that flew as deadly shrapnel - was detonated at a Birmingham clinic by Eric Rudolph.
"Many may find the graphic images of my trauma ... to be offensive. I hope so. Violence is ugly. You should be offended by the senseless damage caused by the attack. It isn't the photographs that are bad; it is the act of hate that created them."
Hers are powerful words. But are Emily's courage [pdf photo link] and Emily's words more powerful than the rhetoric of hate that made them necessary?
(According to sources much better informed than I, several important bills -- good, bad and downright ugly -- are expected out of committee in the next couple of days. Updated information below the flip. -- moiv - promoted by moiv)
As reported by the Dallas Morning News and Vince at Capitol Annex, Warren Chisum's HB 175 -- a "trigger bill" to make abortion a felony in Texas should Roe v. Wade be overturned -- appears to have gone down for the count.
A stiff anti-abortion bill is probably gone for the legislative session, dragged down partly by a budget analysis that showed outlawing all abortions would cost the state more than $400 million in health care costs over the next three years.
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The cost from ending abortions in Texas would come from an estimated 63,000 more births, of which 67 percent are likely to be supported by Medicaid, according to projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board.
Based on current abortion rates of about 78,000 a year, the board estimated that if abortion were illegal, 20 percent of women would go to a state where the procedure was legal. The remainder, based on projections, would carry their pregnancy to term and require medical and social support.
While Warren Chisum says his bill failed to make the cut because "It got hung on a bad vote in committee," and Vince Liebowitz wonders whether "some in the Legislature are simply tired of voting for bad public policy time and time and time again," a projected bill for $400,000,000 in social services was just as likely the real sticking point for the solons of the Tax Relief State.
A total abortion ban might not make it onto the floor this session, but there are plenty more insulting, intrusive and just plain dangerous anti-woman bills where that one came from -- all coming soon to a legislative chamber near you.
The deadline for filing new bills in the Texas Legislature passed some weeks ago, but State Senator Dan Patrick is so very special that he's been granted a very special suspension of the rules to file yet another of his very special anti-abortion bills. His Texas Baby Purchasing Act of 2007 drew more snickers than sponsors, and his co-effort with Rep. Warren Chisum to ban abortion entirely remains in committee, but the legislative session's not over yet. And the religious right never gives up.
Women in Texas already are denied abortion care until after a doctor warns them of nonexistent risks of breast cancer and mental illness, after which they must spend at least 24 hours pondering misinformation that no responsible physician would have given them, nor ever did, until forced by law to do so. Patrick's SB 920, to be heard in the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services on April 24, adds yet another moralistic barrier by denying a woman abortion care unless she examines an ultrasound image of her pregnancy, whether she wants to see it or not.
Patrick (left), a Christian conservative talk show host and first-term senator who broadcasts his radio show from the Capitol, had his own vasectomy performed live and on the air. Had a compulsory ultrasound viewing been a part of that procedure, we would all be grateful that the fact-challenged Patrick is one publicity hound who didn't have a television gig.
Women who seek abortion care deserve to have much more medical privacy than that, along with a lot more respect for their constitutional rights.
Denise Davis. Few stories this year enthralled the politically inclined among us this year like the ongoing turmoil in the Texas House of Representatives.
