Texas: The Eyes Are Upon You!

Last week, Dan Balz of the Washington Post wrote a compelling story about the 2010 Texas gubernatorial race, linking it to potential Democratic State Mansion pickups in three states, including California and Florida.  I will add some credence to this in that last summer when I was in D.C. jockeying for some national attention and money for Texas, I got a nod from a savvy pol who said, "Texas, if not precisely in play, has become a state of interest".

Republicans can no longer expect a "wave through" with their side of the ballot being the default choice.  And this presents a major challenge to the sitting governor, Rick Perry, who would prefer to run a "front-porch" campaign in which he could ignore the Democratic Challenger Bill White.  This was his stated intent, but when the early polls came out showing White in position to blast past him, Perry immediately launched negative and attack ads.  Hardly the reaction of one "ignoring" his challenger.

Perry is a career politician who ascended to the office when Bush was elected president and who has run election twice on his own.  Despite his decade-long tenure in the office, Governor Perry has not achieved any lasting or memorable accomplishments.  To the contrary, his efforts to force vaccination of pre-teen girls with against STDs and launch a pet project which would have seen family homes, farms and ranches taken over to build a "Trans Texas Corridor" which would have enriched a Spanish company both came up short.

Both were bad ideas, that as time passed and Texans became more aware of the ramifications of both, pretty much died prior to birth!  Neither added any luster to a governor already reviled by working families, school teachers, and individuals turned off by his matinee idol hubris and arrogance.  His $10,000 dollar a month rental (at tax payer expense) of a mansion while the governor's mansion undergoes repairs won him no champions of fiscal responsibility.

Earlier, we endorsed Bill White as our choice in this coming election.  But, today our focus is on Perry and the reasons why the Democrats for the first time in years are poised for success.   The anti-incumbency mood coupled with the populist sentiment of "a pox on both their houses" both work to the advantage of the Democrats.  Texans are painfully aware of an 8.4 percent rate of unemployment, a budget shortfall that could approach $20-billion while Perry parrots old anti-Obama, anti-Washington rhetoric which has no relation to the state's problems.

By all accounts, Perry should loose this election, and it is becoming more-and-more obvious that Perry very well could loose!  Texas, The Eyes Of The Nation Are Upon You.



Read the full WaPo article here.

Early Voting: Use It to Get Out the Vote!

Early Voting is Under Way in Fourteen States

Early voting is crucial for activists seeking to maximise the senior vote.  Aside from the obvious benefit of avoiding election day lines or "crunch", illness, or excuse or apathy, it gives the activist a chance to vote early and devote remaining time to action and getting out the vote or manning phones on election day.

Early voting begins in Texas on Monday, October 18, (First Day) with the last day being Friday, October 29.  The final day to request an absentee ballot is Tuesday, October 26.

According to USA Today, early voting, in which a voter may cast a ballot at an elections office, is already underway in 14 states. Early voting gets underway in another 17 states and in the District of Columbia over the next two weeks.

In all, 33 states and the District of Columbia offer some form of in-person early voting, while other states allow voters to file absentee ballots early, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS).

Vermont kicked the voting off on Sept. 20, followed by South Dakota on Sept. 21, Iowa and Wyoming on Sept. 23, Nebraska on Sept. 27, Ohio on September 28, Wisconsin on October 3, California and Indiana on Oct. 4, and Arizona on October 7. Rather than setting a date far in advance, some states began offering ballots when they became available. For the first time this year, Illinois voters are casting absentee ballots without having to explain why they are doing so; this is known as “no excuse” absentee voting. “I encourage Alliance members to take advantage of early voting, so that your ballot will count even if you can’t make it to the polls on Election Day,” said Barbara J. Easterling, President of the Alliance for Retired Americans.

Early ballots accounted for 41.3% of primary ballots this year, up 2 percentage points from 2006. In all, up to 70 percent of voters now have some access to early voting under state laws that permit voters to cast ballots before Election Day for any reason - not just because they expect to be out of town on November 2. If you need additional information about casting your ballot, call your state or local board of elections.

For your state's information, go HERE! 

We're Endorsing Bill White for Governor

It would be a laughable understatement if we were to say that this endorsement comes from our sense that it is time for a change.  The truth is, Rick Perry, over two terms, has done nothing to distinguish himself to the working people of Texas, seniors, and the middle-class.

His current campaign theme is: Open for Business!  Yeah, well we've known that about him from the "git go".  And, we also have taken note of how early in the campaign he went negative---usually the resort of politicians who cannot run on a substantive record.  A bit of advice, people who live in $10,000 a month rented, at taxpayer expense, glass mansions  really should not throw stones.  Nor should politicians who dole out $16-million in state money to companies whose investors are top donors.  Nor should politicians linked to rumors of impending divorce, infidelity, and putting to death the innocent.  Shootin' up a gol-derned coyote jest don't cut through all that!

All that aside, since it merely makes him the atypical Republican, there is still the nasty reality of what is going on during his watch:  The student growth of our public schools is among the top ten percent (6%) in the nation, but Texas is the only state in the nation to cut per student expenditures.  And, it shows, as our kids rank 49th  in verbal and 46th in math SAT scores.  Administrators have grown by 33%, and in-school staffing by only 16% and teachers by a mere 13%.

Texas is in a marked descent toward third world status where the rich get richer and the poor, middle-class, working families, and seniors get screwed.  Open for business?  Monkey business maybe, bad business certainly.  Texans pay some of the highest utility and home-owner insurance rates in the nation and lag behind the rest of the country in services to its poor, disabled and older citizens.  No more monkey business, it's time for a change.

Clearly, the issue must not be that be that Rick Perry is so bad, it has to be that Bill White is so much better.  And that, dear reader, is quite easily demonstrable.

As United States Deputy Secretary of Energy Bill White led a reform team that resulted in saving billions for American taxpayers.  As mayor of Houston, the 4th largest city in the nation, White restructured the city's debt allowing for the creation of new libraries and parks and improved public safety.  He balanced the city's budget at the same time he lowered tax rates and increased homestead exemptions for the city's disabled and older citizens.

His education initiatives will put Texas back on the path to education parity and affordable college educations.  As mayor, he and is wife, Andrea, initiated a drop-out intervention program that saw nearly 9,000 "at risk" youngsters complete their high-school education that otherwise would have dropped out.

Perry has taken Texas well past the point of mediocrity.  Let's change that and vote for Bill White for governor of Texas and begin the road back to preeminence.

GOP Pledge :: A Piss Pot of Previously Failed Policies!

In large part, President Obama was elected as a repudiation of that dry-drunk sociopath George W. Bush and every lousy thing stood for by him and his minions of deep-forest hobgoblins, bridge trolls, mendicants, cut-purses, thieves, debauchees, and drunkards.  Americans had enough.  Now, the GOP, nostalgic for all that which got us here, have trotted out their failed policies of the past, stirring them into a festering piss pot they're calling a pledge.

Fortunately, most Americans, while dumbed-down and anesthetized by unrewarding, or,  no work, crushing debt, cheap watered down beer,  no way out, and diminishing dreams and hope; see through the pledge as nothing new and altogether the same as the so-called Contract with America, conjured up by that philandering fool, Newt Gingrich.

Here's some of what they are pledging to do on behalf their Wall Street, Big Oil, Insurance Tsars, and Drug Company Oligarch masters:

• Cut Taxes for the wealthy, while the American middle-class disappears.
• Snip away at the health care reform that is bringing relief to seniors, boomers, adult children, and those afflicted with preconditions or life-time chronic diseases.
• Continue conditions guaranteeing windfall profits to stateless corporations during the the worst economic crises in America since the great depression.
• Hand over Social Security and Medicare to Wall Street, Drug and Insurance companies.
• Cut back or entirely eliminate regulations reigning in the excesses of credit card lenders, insurance companies, Wall Street bankers and financiers, and oil companies like BP and Exon.
• Make rich the lobbyists, big corporations and special interests while driving up the deficit by trillions of dollars.

They will do all this without ever putting forth and program, proposal or policy to improve education, put America back to work, rebuild a decayed infrastructure that threatens to bring us down to third-world levels, or any plan to invest in key industries like clean energy and manufacturing.

If you're not registered to vote, do so today!.  Make certain you do vote....for a Democrat.  And volunteer to work with your Democratic precinct chair in getting out the vote on election day.  Otherwise, you're going to see mnore of the same..only much, much, much worse.

Democrats Alert: Change the Framework and Outcome in 2010

Yesterday, we wrote of the advantage that Republicans are gaining from angry and apathetic voters and the success they are having delivering a message of big-government spending and waste, federal take over, and a perceived failed economic policy.  Democrats, on the defensive, are losing donors and traditional big-dollar contributors who are sitting out 2010 preferring to rebuild for 2012.

A recent tracking poll and focus group  study conducted by Democracy Corps (Carville * Greenberg)suggests that Democrats can still overcome this powerful Republican message by changing the framework of the message to move young people, unmarried women, and minorities, and the more conservative white working class back to the Democrats. 

The essence of their study is that the election is not fixed in concrete and a tidal wave of Republican success is not inevitable.  Based on their study, they recommend several things.

First, Democrats must change the context of their message to that of an "against Wall Street outsider", saying, "We need to change Washington for the benefit of the middle-class".  This context moved 16 percent of voters to be more supportive of Democrats than Republicans.

Then, within that context and message, Democrats must communicate a real commitment to change Washington in order to take it out of the hands of Wall Street to the benefit of the middle class.  The issue is very clear, Democrats have to be reformers reigning in corporate power.

Democrats would weaken this message if they engage in attacks on Republicans for spending cuts harming the middle class.  While this particular message has resonance and generates head nods of agreement, it does not move voters as effectively as does hearing of the determination of the candidate to change Washington first!

Finally, lip-service will not suffice.  Voters want to know precisely how the candidate will help the middle-class, how corporate spending will be brought under control, and, maybe most importantly, has the candidate "walked in our shoes"?

Democrats must overcome the perception that they have gone Washington, backed bailouts, forgotten all their previous campaign promises, and are cashing in. Despite all this baggage being toted by Democrats, Republicans remain very suspect, and can quickly lose what is a rather tenuous support growing out of emotionally volatile feelings of despair, anger, and apathy.

Obama: Not A Lot Of Help In 2010

Special Two-Part: Today...Big Worries For Dems!

We progressives, liberals and leftists are facing some very daunting issues this election cycle.  The certifiably insane tea-baggers, along with fundamentalist, hard-shell religionists, and the ever present reactionary right-wing, have captured the Republican party and are on their "Great March"; burning, pillaging, and trashing everything and everyone not associated with their race and class based hate-war on Democracy and working families.  This is compounded by a president who seems determined to ride an already spavined centrist philosophy which rewards Chamber-of Commerce Republicans and Wall Street mendicants while those of us who worked so hard to elect him to bring about change are left shaking our heads in disbelief--Obama is making Clinton look good, and that ain't all that easy!

Republicans hate him, and many, many Democrats are growing less fond of him. The glibness of the cliche' recently launched by the White House that, "we're must be doing something right, if everyone is unhappy with us", is mere whistling through the graveyard, and hardly suffices in the real world of politics.  Believe me, that left many pols snickering!

Politics is about money, and at the moment, at the most critical time in this election cycle, traditional liberal contributors and donors are leaving their checkbooks in the desk.  According to a very reliable and well-placed activist based in Washington, there are several reasons for this.

First, he says, is Obama.  The president is not providing the leadership or doing the things which progressives expected of him.  While not yet toxic, too many Democrats are avoiding any linkage to him or his administration this election cycle--some, such as Bill White here in Texas, have built firewalls between themselves and the president and, not all that secretly, dread any successful Republican attempt to link them to Obama.

Secondly, the current framework of debate seems to favor the hard right, and traditional donors to leftist, liberal, and progressive causes are taking a wait and see approach, preferring to let whatever happens in November happen, and use their money to build for 2012.  In effect, the money is setting out this round.

What makes this particularly bad and worrisome is that the Republican message targeting "big" government, deficits, spending taxes, and the recession it helped spawn has seeped into the minds of independents causing too many to see Democrats as the source of "out of control spending".

So, here we are between the proverbial "rock and a hard place" while someone is pounding us with sledgehammers of debt, spending, failed recovery, and government take over of our lives. 

That is the message that is gaining resonance as the rabble from the tea-baggers, abetted by the corporate media, continue to prance around their bonfires of anti-this and anti-that without ever proposing a sound solution for any of the problems facing this nation...other than do nothing, and let the wealthy get richer.

They are framing the debate, and Democrats, with or without their traditional financial backers, and with or without Obama, must refocus and frame the debate in a new and positive way that shows, to their advantage, that they can handle the economy and bring about the changes which will restore the middle class and create jobs for working families.

Democrats will have to accomplish this without enough money and burdened with the baggage of a president seemingly intent on the pacification of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce.


Tomorrow: We will examine how this might be done.