-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
The Texas legislature finished up its business last week without getting to some pretty important legislation. Since the legislature only meets every two years, we may be in for a long wait on additional children’s health care and a few other pieces of business. Why would that be of concern, you ask? The only reason that the usually efficient legislature got bogged down is that Senate Republicans pulled a Tom DeLay power play to jam thru a piece of legislation they couldn’t ordinarily get passed because the rules would have given enough power to the minority Democrats to stop it. They jammed the bill thru by changing the rules because they could not get the bill thru any other way. The result of this tactic is the slowdown of the rest of the session once the bill came up on the calendar of The House. Democrats talked every bill to death even the ones that would have passed on a voice vote with no debate just to keep the bill from ever seeing the light of day.
What was this infamous bill? A Voter ID bill. Why would this be a problem in Texas? It isn’t but republicans see the tide is turning against them and their base is slowly being overcome by the Democratic base and they want to stem that tide if they can. The only way they can do it is to keep people from voting. The obvious tactics of trimming the voter registration lists the way that Jeb Bush did in Florida to get his brother elected in 2000 has been tried already. Folks are wise to that maneuver. They are also wise to the phony voter registration drives where they sign people up to vote but stamp their cards as GOP so they cannot vote in the Democratic primary. All that’s left is to subvert the on-going process in place to help wipe off long time voters that tend to lean Democratic.
The process as it stands allows for citizens to register by submitting the appropriate documentation, waiting 30 days for the local registrar to authenticate your documentation and then send you a voter’s registration card. This card is all you currently need to take to the polls. That’s not good enough for republicans. They are all hot and bothered about voter fraud even though there hasn’t been any substantial voter fraud since LBJ left the state. The Texas Secretary of State hasn’t prosecuted any cases of voter fraud where people have voted multiple times on election day or where bogus ballots were added to the mix.
He has gone after minority voters on specious and unfounded charges. After he was sued by the people he tried to intimidate, he was outed and backed down. It showed that his “prosecutions” were political witch hunts without a basis or foundation. Fast forward to the 2009 legislature: republicans, with no basis or foundation either, introduced a Voter ID Act that is as racist as the Secretary of State’s prosecutions. They insist on two forms of photo ID but still charge people to obtain that ID. That is nothing more than an old-fashioned poll tax which is unconstitutional. That little something never stopped the GOP from plunging ahead in their ever increasing attempts to fix elections and limit minority voters access to the polls.
Voter intimidation and suppression have become standard fare for republicans faced with their shrinking voter base. This is their last hurrah at maintaining control and they see the power slipping from their fingers despite everything they have tried. Texas republicans are barely holding on to power in the Legislature and the defeat of this bill could very well mark the end of their sad and tragic rule here in the Lone Star State. One can only hope.
Rick Perry could call the lege back into session to deal with hurricane relief and children’s health care but he’ll be playing with fire if he adds the racist Voter ID bill to the mix.
link: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/html/SB00362H.htm
supporting link: http://www.alternet.org/politics/86737/voting_rights_
lawyers_defeat_texas%27_bogus_voter_fraud_prosecutions/
I keep waiting for the republicans to step up to the plate. There is a lot of whining and hand wringing from the rightwingers but very little in terms of concrete proposals from the Gang With No Ideas. It seems like once you get past the mantra of tax cuts (which, as I have pointed out in this space before, is merely a ploy to starve social programs and eliminate entitlements without having the testicular fortitude to actually say so) the republicans have nothing. No new ideas. No proven concepts. Only tried and failed practices that the American public isn’t buying into anymore.
Instead of submitting a budget proposal of their own, republicans are content to try and nitpick the Democratic proposal which merely goes to further show that even when they do not have the power that republicans cannot govern, only criticize. Given the brain trust available to them you would figure that some think tank, some Senate staffers, some rightwing thinkers could cobble together a proposal to run the government. After all, they have been pushing budgets out since 1995 when they took over Congress. You would think they would have it down pat by now. I say that knowing full well that the last few attempts that republicans made to pass such a budget, much less put it together, ended in abject failure.
This pretense at governing is truly pathetic. For all the ideas and concepts they claim to have, the proof that they really have nothing is borne out by the Senate Minority Leader’s inability to present an alternative to President Obama’s budget that they claim “taxes too much, it spends too much, it borrows too much.” They can pick at it and offer substandard alternatives to Democratic proposals but they are failures when it comes to establishing a beach head and advancing their cause in the face of overwhelming popular support for the president’s plans.
It appears that the republicans have little more to offer the budget process than a big fat NO to anything offered up by the Democrats. McConnell could not suggest one program or solution to our current situation that isn’t just a warmed-over complaint about a previously advanced proposal. There was no No Child Left Behind. There was no Medicare Drug Plan. There was no Social Security Recovery Program. Nothing. Just whining and bitching. Quite frankly, it’s all they have left. All the big ideas and new fixes are coming from the left side of the aisle. The republicans are out-of-the-loop, clueless, and in danger of becoming a larger, more incompetent form of the Libertarian party.
Oops, too late.
link: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/15/mcconnell-budget/
Black & White and Cardinal Red All Over 