You just love spending taxpayer money don't you, morons? (a Texas Dem rant)

The BBQ Pit
1

I thought they were totally insane when they ran off to Ardmore, OK to protest the redistricting. Now they run away AGAIN, this time to New Mexico, to protest the fact that the Lt. Govenor has done away with having to have a majority (or whatever) in order to do a proper vote.

Well damn right he should have. If you dopeheaded, dumbass, dickfaced, dunderbrained, dookie-breathed Dems can’t even stay in the freaking STATE because you feel so offended by whatever issue is pissing you off now, you deserve to have the right to vote on an issue taken away from you.

Idiots.

Makes me glad I’m not a Dem.

IDBB

2

You mean you’re paying for their trips?

3

Lib, well…I realize now I forgot to mention it but because they chose to run away instead of stay and do their job, the Govenor has to call ANOTHER freaking special session of the state legislature. According to what the news said last night, it costs 1.7 MILLION dollars (all of it taxpayer money of course) to call a special session. He already had to call one because they ran away to Ardmore.

I can almost here the great big flushing sound coming from Austin as more money goes down the drain because of these yahoos.

IDBB

4

Wow. The wonderful thing about arguing against marjoritarianism is that you don’t even need hypotheticals.

5

NO, the Governor doesn’t HAVE to call another special session. In fact, he didn’t have to call the first. If he would quit being Tom Delay’s lap dog and trying to force through this unmitigated, unethical power grab the Democrats wouldn’t have to resort to last ditch efforts to protect Democracy. If you spent some time familiarizing yourself with how redistricting in Texas is usually handled - you know, with public input - you’d recognize this naked abuse of power orchestrated by Delay with the help of the Texas Republicans.

Furthermore, the state’s constitution requires a two-thirds quorum in order for bills to come up for a vote. So the Lt. Governor can’t do “away with having to have a majority (or whatever) in order to do a proper vote”. That’s not the issue they’re leaving over.

6

According to this one person it is the reason.

7

Well… if IDBB’s perception is in line with that of the general public’s perception of these events, then it seems the Democrats in Texas are going to have an image problem.

8

Betcha Texas democrats don’t cost their state anywhere near what the Texas republican President squanders in a month. So if you want to bitch about squandering tax payer dollars, the Texas democrats as culprits should be way down on your list.

9

The Away-to-Ardmore Democrats were from the state’s House of Reps; the Awashed-in-Albuquerque Democrats are from the state senate. So, really, not the same people.

10

Nah, most people in Texas don’t take politics seriously and the ones who do have done enough reading to know why the Dems have bolted twice. It’s like the McDonalds coffee lawsuit. The more you learn about the less outrageous it seems.

adam, there are two rules in place for the Texas Senate. The first is constitutionally imposed. A 2/3 quorum is necessary to do ANY business at all, even on bills already introduced.

The second is a matter of long-standing tradition, broken only once to my knowledge and I’m unaware of the circumstances of that instance. A two-thirds majority of the senators need to vote ‘yea’ in order to introduce a new bill into the senate.

The first rule, the constitutional one, is the one now in effect that Dewhurst, no matter what he does, can’t break. The second rule is the one Dewhurst threatened to break and so they took it to the extreme of denying quorum.

Enjoy,
Steven

On Preview: Skip, actually, neither house currently has a quorum. Both Senators and Representatives have skipped out on the second special session that the Republicans say we desperately need even though 89% of the actual people asked in the various hearings on the issue said we don’t.

11

You do realize the real monster here is Tom DeLay?

He is a horrible, angry little man. There is a special hell for people like Tom DeLay.

I would be more pissed that my tax dollars are funding his power hungry pissing match in Texas. And his addiction to Aquanet. I mean he has some seriously awful hair.

12

Oh, I wasn’t saying anything about who had a quorum; I was just letting ** I_Dig_Bad_Boys** know that it wasn’t the same people who left this time. So, her

doesn’t really apply.

13

Gotta agree with Mtgman that the more you know about the issue, the less outrageous it seems.

I would disagree, however, that most people don’t take politics too seriously. Hell, politics would be the number one sport here, if it weren’t for college football…

14

I know you qualified it by saying “Betcha”, but you wouldn’t happen to have a cite to back up that assertion, wouldja?

15

In other words, you have zero understanding of the istuation and are pandering to simple partisan politics.

16

Hey IDBB, who’s the …

[quote]
If you dopeheaded, dumbass, dickfaced, dunderbrained, dookie-breathed Dems can’t even stay in the freaking STATE because you feel so offended by whatever issue is pissing you off now, you deserve to have the right to vote on an issue taken away from you.

[quote]
…now?

It’s you. Go get and education. Really.

Sam

17

Please demonstrate where the Albuquerque Eleven have “spent” one dime of “taxpayer money” in regards to the special session called by Governor Perry. Thank you very much.

18

Bah! High school football would kick the crap out of college football. Even the tiniest high school has a nice football field and rallies and such.

I looked through the election results from last year and the voter turnout was pretty pathetic. People may talk the talk about politics, but I’m not sure they walk the walk.

Enjoy,
Steven

19

See, this is what gets me. There have been at least four attempts now to re-district the state to gerrymander along political lines to Republican advantage. First the Attorney General was approached with a claim that the disticts were unfairly drawn. The Attorney General did not find the claim credible and refused to order redistricting. Then the last-second cram-redistricting-into-the-regular-session that the “Killer D’s” shut down by fleeing to Oklahoma. Then the first special session. Not only did they not get the support they would need from the Democrats in the legislature, several of their own Republican Senators said they “hadn’t seen a map they would vote for” and one stood up to say he would oppose redistricting period. Now they’re going to call a second special session and change the rules(Howdy Mr Dewhurst!) so as to disenfranchise the minority party and force the issue through.

Screw that.

Enjoy,
Steven

20

Damn it! All that and I didn’t mention the point. The first two attempts, using the court and the last-minute issue in the regular session, defied Texas traditions by bypassing the hearings where the public gives their input. In the first special session they actually DID hold some public hearings to get feedback from the public. They just ignored it. 89% of the people who showed up at the hearings around the state were against redistricting. Dewhurst has hand-waved these people as “[Democratic] party activists”.

Here’s the rub. The new district map would, in theory, swing the Texas Federal House of Representatives from the current 17-D 15-R makeup to something between a 18-R 14-D and 22-R 10-D split. Taking the middle road would be a 20-R 12-D split. Something like this is what the Republicans are aiming for. Let’s be naieve for a second and assign only the purest of motives to them. Let’s say they truly believe this is the split which would properly represent the will of the people of Texas. So they believe the state is populated by approximately two Republicans for every 1 Democrat. Keep that 2:1 ratio in mind.

2 Republicans per 1 Democrat.
Statewide public hearings on redistricting were held. 2,620 people turned out at the various places to testify as to their opinions on the issue. 2,325 were against. 217 were for. 78 held other opinions. Now the 2,325 were dismissed as Democratic activists. Let’s make another assumption. Let’s say 3% of people care enough about political issues to become “activists”. So 3% of Republicans are Republican “activists” and 3% of Democrats are Democratic “activists”.

A estimate for the Texas population is 20,851,820. Divide that by 3 real quick and you get 6,950,606 That’s the number of Democrats. Double it and you get the number of Republicans 13,901,213. Now let’s apply our 3% rule. Multiply each by .03 to get the number of “activists” of each party. 417,036 Republican “activists” in the state. 208,518 Democratic “activists”.

So, now what percentage of each party’s “activists” turned out at these hearings? And make no mistake, the Republicans were making drives to get their people to turn out as well. 2,325 people who testified in the statewide hearings were against redistricting. These were the alleged Democratic activists. Out of a potential 208,518. 2,325/208,518 = 1.1% of the Democratic activists turned out. Now, the Republicans had 217 people turn out in favor of redistricting. 217/417,036 = 0.05%

So the question, to my mind, is that if Texas is such a staunchly Republican state, whey can’t they get more than 0.05% of their “activists” to turn out to support them? Remember, that 0.05% was based on 3% of the alleged Republican population of Texas. So that means .03 * .0005 = 0.00156% of alleged Republicans who care enough about redistricting to say something about it.

Yep, our faithful representatives, carrying out the will of the people, that’s all this is.

Enjoy,
Steven