The Texas Progressive Alliance is glad that so many people will be getting health insurance even if that number should have been much higher as it brings you this week’s roundup.
Dos Centavos reviews the biopic of Cesar Chavez and reminds us that the radical fringe in Texas would like to keep his name and others like him out of our kids’ classrooms.
Horwitz at Texpatriate made the case for anyone but Hogan, including Kinky Friedman, in the Democratic primary for Agriculture Commissioner.
The Texas Central Railway, the latest effort to launch high speed rail from Houston to Dallas, made their initial plans public this week and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had the advance (before) and the post-press conference report (
after).
Texas has a woefully inadequate and unfair tax system, and that puts us in a bind when we need stuff. Because as WCNews at Eye on Williamson reminds us Stuff Costs Money.
Texas Leftist is glad Democrats have finally stumbled upon a winning strategy for 2014. The questions now… Can we keep the fire burning through November, and will Greg Abbott/ GOP weasel out of having general election debates??
Join Egberto of EgbertoWillies.com on his new radio show Politics Done Right on KPFT 90.1 FM, Monday at 8:00 PM discussing Obamacare and the 2014 election.
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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.
The two eventually ended up in a back and forth over a failed bill last session to prohibit the application of Sharia law in Texas courts.
Dewhurst said he supports such measures “101 percent” but acknowledged the bill last session died in a Senate committee. He pledged Friday to switch committee chairman mid-session in if the bill languishes again next time the Legislature meets in 2015.
Patrick said the failure of the Sharia bill lies squarely with Dewhurst.
“Sharia law should have come out” of committee,” Patrick said. “When there’s a law, there’s a bill, legislation … that’s the difference-maker, the lieutenant governor. You don’t blame things that don’t happen on senators and take credit for things that did happen that senators passed.”
Ho. Ly. Crap! Sharia. F-ing. Law! That along with immigration and border security are the most important issues to the GOP voters in Texas. Amazing. If that’s what this runoff is going to be about then the people of Texas need Leticia Van de Putte as the next Lt. Governor of Texas.
In one TV ad, Patrick – the frontrunner headed into a runoff – touts his opposition to in-state tuition at Texas universities for qualifying undocumented children. And Patrick’s campaign website uses the phrase “Stop the Illegal Invasion!” as a fundraising tool.
Now, several Hispanic Republican leaders are voicing opposition to Patrick’s rhetoric, and the overall tone of the Lieutenant Governor’s race.
“What I was hearing … was so hot that it was beginning to alienate an entire segment of the Texas voting population,” says Dallas Republican State Rep. Jason Villalba. He wrote an open letter to the candidates asking them to rethink their tone on immigration.
“And since that time I think you have seen a significant throttle back in some of the more harsh rhetoric that has been used on the trail,” Villalba says. But others, including Houston businessman Massey Villarreal, went as far as to say they that if Patrick won the GOP nomination, they’d back Democratic nominee Leticia van de Putte.
George Antuna, cofounder of the Hispanic Republicans of Texas, understands why some would contemplate backing the other party. “You feel kind of in a quandary when you’re thinking to yourself … all my hard work … I feel like I’m going backwards when it comes to Latino outreach or our Latino efforts,” Antuna says. “And so I can totally understand why Massey may feel like that, as well as many others.”
And Van de Putte has also found some unlikely Republican allies in her bid, which will pit her against either state Sen. Dan Patrick or current Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the general election. The primary runoff is May 27.
“I am part of Greg Abbott’s finance team and John Cornyn’s fundraising team. I am a Republican fundraiser and bundler, but I am hosting a fundraiser for Leticia,” said Louis Barrios, a Texas restaurant owner. “I have switched sides on this race because it is the most important race that we have had in Texas and I am leaving my Republican credentials at the door on this race.”
At issue for Barrios is what he sees as a harsh and alienating approach to immigration and Hispanics from both Patrick, who likened immigration from Mexico to an invasion, and Dewhurst, who has said that he will focus on securing the border.
E-mails to both campaigns were not returned.
“If anything is going to bring out the Latino vote, it’s going to be a Dan Patrick,” Barrios said. “He is waking and kicking a sleeping giant. Leticia’s race, this is one that can really be won.”
Barrios has been making phone calls for Van de Putte, trying to generate support among Republicans and business leaders in Texas, and others have gone public with their preference.
Barrios said he can imagine Republicans voting for Abbott and Van de Putte, which is possible in Texas because the governor and lieutenant governor run separately. George W. Bush had a Democratic lieutenant governor.
“I am not going to compare and contrast candidates but she brings qualities that are appealing to all sides and genders and races,” said Marcie Zlotnik, who started two retail electricity providers and describes herself as an independent who leans Republican. “She has Republican support and nobody is afraid to say it either.”
Certainly Van de Putte and Davis will be busy working on those who still think Abbott is a viable option. When we have such major problems with transportation, water, education and health care and the GOP candidates are focused on Sharia Law, it’s no wonder Texas, even Republicans, are looking for an alternative to this madness.
[UPDATE]: Van de Putte will be going around the state the next couple of weeks, go see her.
That’s the fundamental issue that’s been skirted when talking about taxation in Texas for decades. Critical needs have been neglected because politicians were afraid to cut programs or raise taxes. Instead we get tax diversions and neglect. Which is why we don’t have the roads we need, public and higher education are struggling, health care is inadequate, and we lack needed water infrastructure, just to name a few.
Texas State Rep. Drew Darby told a friendly crowd of road builders that he’ll continue to push for a gas tax hike to help shore-up the State’s road funding shortfalls at yesterday’s San Antonio Mobility Coalition (SAMCo) luncheon. Darby supported a bill to capture half of the vehicle sales tax receipts, raise the gas tax 10 cents a gallon, and double vehicle registration fees during the legislative session last year. So his support of gas tax hikes are well known. But what makes his comments to SAMCo so newsworthy is his open mockery of those who have a problem with ending the raid of gas taxes for non-road purposes.
The biggest diversion of gas tax goes to public education by constitutional amendment (twenty-five percent). The next goes to the Department of Public Safety (DPS) which gets roughly five percent. The constitution does say the gas tax can go to policing state highways, but that’s a small amount of the DPS budget. The Texas legislature has raided additional sums to the tune of billions over the last several decades for anything from computers in the Comptroller’s office to enhancing employee benefits in the Attorney General’s office. Taxpayers want accountability for those funds and restitution before any tax hikes are contemplated.
Diversions have been part of budgeting in Texas for quite some time. It allows politicians to shift money without raising taxes. Instead of “deficits” in Texas we have budget tricks.
There has been no support for a gas tax hike for the last decade when lawmakers first started to take note that gas tax was no longer keeping pace with road needs. They’ve turned to toll roads and massive borrowing as a get out of jail free card, but that one trick pony is pretty well used up as the state has maxed out its credit card and all the toll viable roads have already been built. But rather than pull the plug on loser toll projects, lawmakers have turned to subsidizing toll projects that can’t pay for themselves propping up toll projects with gas taxes, Texas Mobility Funds, general obligation bonds, and even local property and sales taxes in a double, triple, and/or quadruple tax scheme.
While the “Truth In Budgeters” have a point – raising taxes may be politically impossible – but truth in budgeting isn’t going to happen anytime soon either. What we have is a system that’s corrupt and underfunded, and those in charge are fine with that. They just don’t’ want to be blamed for it. The only people that have a problem with the current system are the people of Texas, who have to live in it. And no one is offering them a way out.
No one is standing up for the majority of Texans who need these problems to be remedied. The reality is Texas has a woefully inadequate and unfair tax system. It’s been documented here, via CPPP papers, repeatedly. And most politicians in Texas, from both major political parties, are unwilling to admit it. Let’s face it the reason there’s tax diversions in the first place is because elected officials were unwilling, and/or afraid, to raise taxes to pay for stuff. That’s also why debt has skyrocketed, The Lege sloughed that off to voters through the guise of constitutional amendments. And toll roads were sold as user fees, not taxes, as a way to pay for roads.
What we have on the right is a game being played between the two wings, where they blame each other, nothing gets done, and neither side gets blamed. On one side there’s folks like Darby and Straus who are willing to begrudgingly admit that we need to raise taxes for stuff we need like roads, water, and maybe education. While on the other side, there’s a contingent that thinks the state already has enough money for to pay for everything, if the state would just scrub the budget and stop diverting tax payer money. And as long as those two sides are allowed to talk in circles nothing is going to get fixed.
Of course Texas needs to raise money/taxes to be able to pay for the stuff we need. Yes we do need to make sure our books are in order so that tax payers know their taxes are going for the stuff it’s intended. But there’s few if any politicians in Texas running on that. Unless someone starts holding their feet to the fire the blaming and inaction will continue.
Greg Abbott’s bad week has stretched into a bad month, as the the AG keeps stepping in (that’s not insensitive, is it?) messes of his own making. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs links to Harvey Kronberg, who declares that “all bets are off” in the Texas governor’s race.
When the political debate in Texas is about issues that are central to the lives of poor, working and middle class Texans, that’s a bad day for the Texas GOP, and a good day for everyone else in Texas. WCNews at Eye on Williamson says that’s what we need as a A Democratic Alternative.
Neil at All People Have Value took a long walk in Houston to note the first day of spring. Neil said that just as the work of freedom is up to each of us, so is the task of seeing the value in the everyday things around us. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.
As more Houstonians discover public transit, they are also beginning to expect a higher level of transit service. A sincere attempt to address this void is Houston METRO’s T.R.I.P. App- a geo-location tool that provides real-time arrival information to anyone with a smart phone. The app is potentially a game-changer, which is why Texas Leftist decided to test it out on a couple of routes. Does it really work?
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. - Matthew 6:21
It’s pretty easy to see where Ted Cruz’s heart lies, Unhealthy Presidential Politics and Ted Cruz.
While Ted Cruz was happily meeting with home schoolers in Iowa, the residents of the Rio Grande Valley in his home state were getting ready to sign up for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Cruz, a Republican, has been to Iowa four times in the eight months he has been in office but has made one appearance here in the sub-tropical region along the border. He continues to fight against Obamacare and the expansion of Medicaid in Texas.
But at a public sign up and educational event at the McAllen Civic Center, almost directly south of Iowa by close to a thousand miles, hundreds of people lined up to see if they qualified for Obamacare. Community organizers brought in dozens of extra navigators from San Antonio to manage the crowd but processing was still expected to take about three hours. Several people turned around and went back to work simply because they could not afford the time.
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The senator fighting to make sure Obamacare covers no one, instead of the five million who have already signed up, next travels to New Hampshire where he will continue to insist he is not running for president. In his one appearance here on the border as a U.S. Senator, Cruz spoke at a country club to a business group. He then went for a photo opportunity at Anzalduas Park near the Rio Grande. A number of community interest groups have urged him to return to get a better understanding of the needs of residents along the border. But Cruz has not accepted the invitation.
He’s been too busy not running for president.
Ted’s on a big adventure and his ambition means more then making sure those in need get health care. Now we know where his heart is.
It’s not surprising that since he won the primary the Texas GOP candidate for comptroller is starting to dial-back his crazy, wing nut rhetoric. Via the DMN.
During the recent Republican primary for state comptroller, state Sen. Glenn Hegar repeatedly endorsed eliminating local property taxes in Texas.
Borrowing from GOP opponent Debra Medina’s 2010 playbook, Hegar urged a shift to sales taxes to make up the more than $40 billion a year of revenue that cities, counties, school districts and other local governmental entities would lose.
Hegar, R-Katy, even suggested a very rapid transition to the new tax system. At a Longview tea party gathering in January, he told a man in the audience, “You just do it.”
This week, though, the governing implications of so massive a shift seem to have cooled Hegar’s jets.
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On Thursday, Hegar campaign manager David White said Hegar “has been clear that we are many years away from being able to implement such” a shift from property tax to sales tax.
White repeated a response he gave The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, saying “Glenn will review all options to reduce the burden on taxpayers.”
Of course his recent comments sound much more weasely then his “just do it” tea party bravado.
His Democratic opponent Mike Collier was quick to pounce on his opponents softening tone.
Democratic comptroller nominee Mike Collier, though, has blasted Hegar’s happy talk on property tax during the primary. Collier, a Houston businessman, called it an “unimpeachably bad” policy idea that would produce a monster increase in sales tax, shift power away from localities to the Legislature and “put our schools at unnecessary risk.”
He warned Hegar’s “promise” to eliminate the property tax would require sales tax “to be at least 20 percent – and possibly as high as 25 percent.” In most Texas cities today, the combined state-local sales tax rate is 8.25 percent. Collier even created an online petition drive so voters can protest “Senator Hegar’s sales tax.”
Replacing property taxes with sales taxes would shift the state’s tax burden from the wealthy to the working class. The Center for Public Policy Priorities reported that to replace “all property taxes in the state would require a state sales tax rate close to 18 percent. Add the current local sales tax of 2 percent, and the sales tax rate in most parts of the state would approach 20 percent.”
The equal pay narrative looks to be causing problems for the GOP and Greg Abbott in the race for Texas Governor. Not only did Abbott take days to answer the primary question – Would he veto the Lilly Ledbetter/Equal Pay bill? when he did finally answer he gave the answer most knew he would – he would veto it just like Rick Perry did. Via the Texas Observer, Greg Abbott Scores an Own Goal on Equal Pay.
The situation in Abbott’s office, of course, is part of a much wider problem. Cases like these don’t require active prejudice or intentional discrimination (though that sometimes happens too.) Elsewhere in the article, Abbott touts the number of women the agency has hired during his tenure, something he’s probably genuinely proud of.
Pay discrimination happens because of entrenched institutional and personal biases and assumptions—ones the people responsible for hiring and setting salaries may not even be aware of. It doesn’t mean someone said: “I’m going to pay women less.” It’s not because women aren’t “better negotiators,” as the executive director of the state GOP recently said, or because Texas hasn’t amped up “job creation” enough, as the director of the RedState Women PAC recently said (before she said a lot else.) So why not give women more tools and legal leverage to address pay discrimination, to balance out the fact that many institutions—often without malice—value their work less than their male counterparts? Let’s go live to Attorney General Abbott:
Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott would not sign a measure to make it easier for women to bring pay discrimination lawsuits in state court if he were governor, a spokesman said Wednesday, hoping to get past an issue that has dogged the campaign for weeks.
So sayeth the man today to the Associated Press, after a lengthy period of equivocating on the issue of whether he’d veto it. From a political standpoint, this seems like an incomprehensibly weird move. Will the Davis campaign stop hammering Abbott over this issue now that Abbott has swept away doubt from his position? The opposite! He’s given the Davis campaign—even more than they had before—a clear line to use against Abbott: “Abbott opposes making it easier for women to demand equal pay.” Pay equity is something women really care about. And he did it, apparently, just hours after a major newspaper raised substantial questions about pay equity at his own office.
As stated before at EOW, the GOP struggles when they have to discuss issues of fairness and equality in economics. Because they fundamentally don’t believe in it. Whether it’s because they believe in the fictional “free market” or the factual rigged market makes no difference. Either way it’s hard for them to seem caring or compassionate about an issue they fundamentally abhor.
That’s why the statements about women being too busy or bad negotiators were made. Those justifications make sense to them. And the reason the PAC is bombing so bad is because it run by the same old dudes that have been running all the GOP operations, New Wendy Davis Attack Group Run By Political Cronies.
This morning, the Dallas Morning News‘ Wayne Slater noted the connection between RedState Women, Mike Toomey and Dave Carney—the latter two being longtime GOP insiders. But the RedState Women’s staff and board feature an even more eclectic crew.
This feeds into the bigger narrative and inequality in general, and the fundamental neglect of issues, (transportation, education, health, etc..), that matter most to Texans since the GOP took over control of the state. The next issue should be raising the minimum wage, which is a populist winner and the right thing to do.
Abbott’s campaign, AN (After Nugent), has been on the defensive and Davis has been setting the narrative. The GOP is not used to it, and it shows. The more they talk on issues that make them look bad the better it is for Democrats.
Remember the old news axiom, If it bleeds it leads? Well it appears that’s not the case when it comes to the consequences of denying Medicaid expansion. The Texas Observer has the latest on how many lives not expanding Medicaid will cost in Texas and the media’s near silence, Texas Media Underreports the Costs of Refusing Medicaid Expansion.
A team of Harvard researchers recently released a deeply sobering study quantifying how many Americans stand to die needlessly in the unflinching states hellbent on denying Medicaid expansion, as provided by the Affordable Care Act. The study singles out Texas:
“In Texas, the largest state opting out of Medicaid expansion, 2,013,025 people who would otherwise have been insured will remain uninsured due to the opt-out decision. We estimate that Medicaid expansion in that state would have resulted in 184,192 fewer depression diagnoses, 62,610 fewer individuals suffering catastrophic medical expenditures, and between 1,840 and 3,035 fewer deaths.”
Crunching the numbers, the study suggests that Texas could bear almost 18 percent of a potential 17,104 unnecessary deaths nationwide. The figures are stark, damning, and presented with dispassionate and clinical precision—and yes, the study was quickly subjected to right-wing critics arguing the math.
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Just one or two mainstream Texas outlets have tried to put a human face on the issue. In late January, the San Antonio Express-Newswrote about Irma Aguilar, a mother of four who earns $9 an hour at her no-health-insurance job at Pizza Hut. Because she makes a whopping $19,200 a year, by Texas rules she is unable to secure the Medicaid benefits that would help offset the $80,000 in emergency-room care costs she’s accumulated over the past two years, including an uncovered surgery to remove her gallbladder.
I hate to be one of those people telling the Wendy Davis campaign what to do – in part because I think most of the “advice” given to her has been in response to trivial matters, and in part because I doubt any of us armchair quarterbacks have any idea how to win statewide races – but I’d really like to see her jump all over this. I see no real downside for her in going big on economic populism, which includes Medicaid expansion and raising the minimum wage. The latter is broadly popular, including in Texas, and the former will put her on the side of most doctors and hospitals, as well as county officials. It fits with her overall message of breaking from the Rick Perry past that Greg Abbott represents and it will help drive turnout from the Democratic base, which is job one for her. We need to be talking about this, and that means we need Wendy Davis talking about it.
It better be on her radar, and it most certainly is, but I doubt they want to change the message, (here and here too), right now. That being said it’s long past time for Democrats to embrace, if not Obamacare, then what is in it and learn how to communicate that, Balls.
I’m no genius about marketing but I know this: If you don’t define the good parts of your program, your opponents will define it for you with all the horrible aspects and a few lies to boot.
All the polling I’ve seen shows that people despise Obama Care. But when they are asked about a program that eliminates pre-existing conditions, life time caps, can’t throw them off their plan because they’re sick; and my favorite for old farts like me, Obama care makes drugs for seniors cheaper by filling the doughnut hall.
So I would respectfully like to encourage all the Democratic candidates running for office, to grow a set of balls!
Democrats are going to be in a world of hurt this year if they keep this up. There’s no running from Obamacare. There just isn’t. If they want to win, they’d better emerge from their fetal crouch and start fighting back. Nobody likes candidates who won’t stand up and defend their own party’s achievements.
The good news is expanding Medicaid is much more popular.
This issue is not just about running on economic populism, but there needs to be an emotional appeal. Expanding Medicaid in Texas is a ridiculously good deal financially and will save lives. Why is the Texas GOP dead-set against that? There’s no good reason, other then they’re just not very concerned about poor people who don’t have health care. What ever happened to if it bleeds it leads?
It was rather sad, from a left-of-center perspective, to see the post primary reactions. While I may not believe the results on the Democratic side are as bad as the GOP, and some in the media, have made them out to be, they’re not good news for the Democrats either. But mostly it was bad news for democracy.
The larger question moving forward is the one put forward in the post below on taxes. Essentially the reason we have such low voter turnout in Texas is because most Texans know our political system in this state is rigged and/or corrupt. And until a candidate, or candidates, offers an alternative the voters will likely continue to stay home.
It’s axiomatic that turnout in the Texas primary is low – for both Democrats and Republicans.
But exactly how low is highlighted by a look back at the heyday of the Texas Democratic Party.
In 1926, for example, 821,234 Texans voted in the Democratic primary – at a time when the state had just barely over 5.4 million residents.
Contrast that to the 546,523 Texans who voted in the 2014 Democratic primary in a state that now is home to over 26 million people and more than 13.6 million registered voters.
Now, there are plenty of reasons why turnout would have been higher in 1926. And, of course, the chief of these is that Texas back then was functionally a one-party state in which everything of consequence got decided in the Democratic primary. If you wanted your vote to count, you needed to vote in the Democratic primary.
But still it is striking by just how much primary turnout – for both Democrats and Republicans – has lagged the state’s remarkable nine-decade population boom.
Most Texans don’t see any reason to turnout to vote for candidates who are not speaking to the issues that matter to them. And notice that the registered voter number is starting a downward turn, away from the upward turn of population growth. The situation is getting worse, not better.
Everyone knows for Wendy Davis and Democrats to win they must register and turnout out several hundred thousand new and non-voting Texans. Why anyone would think that could happen appealing to the same issues, the same way Democrats in Texas have been doing for the past two decades, is beyond me. There should be a clear Democratic alternative to the GOP.
Even better is seeing the press releases this week also.
— “Davis: Abbott took huge pay increase but fights equal pay for equal work” (on March 12, the same as his Tweet linked above)
— DAVIS CAMPAIGN SLAMS ABBOTT’S SILENCE ON POTENTIALLY UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR ON CPRIT BOARD (yesterday)
The campaign Tweeted this to emphasize the first one, and Wayne Slater at the Dallas News wrote this in response to the second one. So I would say Zac is off to a fast start.
Cristman told WFAA that the PAC believes women “want and deserve” equal pay, but doesn’t believe legislation like the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is the right solution. When asked what would resolve the gender pay gap, Cristman repeatedly said women are “busy.”
“Well, if you look at it, women are extremely busy,” she said. “We lead busy lives, whether working professionally, whether working from home, and times are extremely busy. It’s a busy cycle for women and we’ve got a lot to juggle. So when we look at this issue we think, what’s practical? And we want more access to jobs. We want to be able to get a higher education degree at the same time that we’re working or raising a family.”
The Dallas Morning News pointed out that Abbott’s office has successfully argued before the state’s Supreme Court that equal pay protections don’t apply in Texas, while Davis sponsored an equal pay bill last year that was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Rick Perry (R).
A spokeswoman for Davis’ campaign called Cristman’s and Abbott’s comments out of touch.
“Here’s a newsflash for Greg Abbott: women aren’t too ‘busy’ to fight for economic fairness for all hardworking Texans and they aren’t too ‘busy’ to reject his business as usual opposition to equal pay legislation at the polls next November,” Davis spokeswoman Rebecca Acuna said Monday in a statement.
Maybe they’re too busy, because they’re having to work too many hours, because their pay is too low! Equality and fairness are not issues the GOP is comfortable talking about and it shows. When the political debate in Texas is about issues that are central to the lives of poor, working and middle class Texans, that’s a bad day for the Texas GOP, and a good day for everyone else in Texas.
Who knows who would turnout to vote if we had an election based on what matters most to most Texans. I would certainly be nice to find out.
A Fort Bend Republican wrote an article for Houston Style magazine about “Democrat” Kesha Rogers. You can imagine how ridiculous that was. Well, no you can’t, because it’s even worse than you can imagine. PDiddie at Brains and Eggscalled BS on it about five times. But nobody involved bothered to correct the record.
Neil at All People Have Value said we should self-edit our lives in the same way that time has edited the works of the Ancient Greek poet Sappho. All People Have Value Is Part of NeilAquino.com.
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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.
Cody Pogue calls the new abortion restrictions in Texas what they are – a threat to women’s health.
