We need to inject new blood into Texas Democrats especially in the Austin area. It’s time for a fresh outlook to manifest in Texas. It’s time to retire the views of the past and focus on the winning arguments for the future. However, there are a good number of Texas Democrats who want to pretend that Texas Democratic history never existed:
The focus for the future is the same as we have always been fighting for a fair system that works for all Americans, we just have not had the majority vote to be able to get it done. The views of the past, raise the wage to a living wage, healthcare for all, education for all, a fair justice system and fair treatment for all Americans, transparency, pass laws to prevent corruption, good paying job growth, protect unions, protect, expand, and improve needed safety net programs, protect our environment and transition to alternative energy , progressive fair taxes where top income pay their share, These are all things we have been fighting for since the 50’s what would you have us change?
J.J. Pickle was all about lining his pockets, and a good many of the current crop of Democrats (my sitting local rep included) are still about lining their pockets. There is a problem in Texas with compensation of officeholders. A fair days pay for a fair days work. If you steal from your legislators they will be more inclined to steal from you. LBJ was known to do a fair bit of ballot stuffing in his day, and the Democrats were gerrymandered all to hell long before the current crop of GOPpers perfected the art of gerrymandering. The issues aren’t nearly as touchy-feely as the newcomers to politics make it all out to be.
I won’t vote for my state representative, Dawnna Dukes. I won’t vote for her because she lied and said she would step down if she was re-elected, and this was after she all but completely missed the last legislative session. She hasn’t stepped down. I will be voting for whoever runs against her this time; in both the primary and in the general if Texas Democrats are stupid enough to let her run again. I have no party loyalty. I am a liberal first, a Democrat second. I was a Libertarian for the last twenty years and if the GOP ends its love affair with crazy christians I might even consider voting for them. Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive in his day and Lincoln was also a liberal and a progressive.
Party (also known as faction) is the problem in US politics; and believing things will ever change as far as the business of politics is concerned, at least as long as parties run politics in the US, is just making things the same as they ever were.
You come off as very arrogant and condescending, not sure whether it is intentional or not, but I don’t play that game you want to push buttons take it somewhere else or I will help you take it somewhere else.
I am not about silencing anyone, but this is NOT a debate group it is a support group for democratic candidates so if you want a debate group you need to join a debate group if you want to support democratic candidates then you belong here, but you need to be supportive because that is the purpose of joining a group when that is what group is about. Kapeesh?
(The guy uses the word for understand in Italian, misspells it even, and I’m supposed to believe he knows what he’s talking about or that he wouldn’t ban me from his Facebook group? I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. Also? His typing is atrocious. Be thankful I edited it for you. -ed.)
I’ll happily support the rep the Democrats chose so long as they chose someone other than the one I have now. I won’t support someone I can’t trust no matter which party they’re part of.
…and let me educate you ” moron” , lol. your words in your blog right back at YOU, the only times in the history of this country that prices have overall declined a few cents instead of increasing has been after the 2 largest minimum wage increases because it increased consumerism so biz was able to sell more to make more profit and they cut prices to compete for that increase in customers.
(Ah. He read the article I linked in the text. I’m touched. -ed.)
First off, the moron isn’t me if what you got from the article I linked was that I was opposed to people getting more money to spend. As a stop gap measure, raising the minimum wage will be acceptable. In the end it won’t be enough.
I agree with that and why I supported Hillary , she had a comprehensive plan to tie tax cuts for business to profit sharing and wage increases , training programs and more everything business needs to actually make increasing wages viable and profitable for them and their employees.
Under democratic administrations this last one included unemployment numbers have always decreased to below 4% but under GOP it never has gone below 5% and under Dems wages increase for low and middle income but under GOP they either stagnate or decline we don’ t have a job problem we have a problem with people electing GOP that have the wrong economic policies that just don’t work.
(He’s so cute. I just want to pinch his blind little Clinton-supporting cheeks. -ed.)
Wages are irrelevant when there isn’t enough work for people to do, a point in time which we’ve probably already passed. Bill Clinton’s neoliberalism was just Reaganomics warmed over. Trickledown and low taxes on the wealthy have been the status quo from Reagan until now. Even President Obama didn’t do enough to take stolen wealth back from the wealthy.
The problem is the way the races are funded. The problem will not go away by changing who sits in the chair unless the new person was put there to alter the system and they know they’ll be replaced if they don’t follow through on that mandate.
The Democrats lose the house and senate because of current campaign funding laws and the ability of the various state houses to gerrymander their districts. This means that structures within nearly every state in the union have to be changed (Texas specifically) so as to alter the way districts are drawn and to alter the way campaigns are funded. Even Democrats who win end up beholden to the wealthy who fund their campaigns more than they are to the voters who put them there, this makes the possibility of getting what we want from our government even more remote than it would be without the corruption of current campaign finance law. The voter suppression of gerrymandering and onerous ID laws.
As for Bill Clinton’s record:
The law at issue was the sweeping Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which provided funding for tens of thousands of community police officers and drug courts, banned certain assault weapons, and mandated life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes. The mandated life sentences were known as the “three-strikes” provision.
The law is blamed by some for rising incarceration rates, though as we will explain later, that trend actually began in the 1970s. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders — who voted for the 1994 crime bill — has frequently noted on the campaign trail, correctly, that the U.S. has, by far, the largest prison population in the world (though we have noted that his promise to correct that dubious distinction in his first term would be an almost impossibly tall order).
factcheck.org (bbc.com)
…and:
The law replaced AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) with TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families—“temporary” being the key word). It stipulated that people could receive no more than five years of government benefits in a lifetime, though states could set their limits lower and many did, with some instituting a two-year lifetime limit. It required a certain percentage of welfare recipients in states to be working, and said that those who couldn’t find jobs would have to participate in community service or get vocational training. Those who didn’t work or volunteer would eventually be kicked off the welfare rolls.
theatlantic.com
I won’t quibble over the little things that were done. The poor quality of the Democrats opponents is not an excuse for Democrats getting a pass for things they’ve done that were damaging to the public at large. Reaganomics has never wholly been abandoned. Not under Clinton and not under Obama either. This is a stain on the American soul, that punishing the poor for being poor is something that we have pursued for generations. Even LBJ’s great society made little difference in the long run, because the causes of poverty were never alleviated. Economists attempted to point out, even to Reagan, that trickle down would never occur, that the policies he favored would not benefit the poor and middle classes. Still he pursued these goals, and the tax rates on the wealthy haven’t been raised since then to an extent that the predations of the wealthy class on the lower classes could be countered.
Other countries (Like China and India) have taken our lessons to heart and have used American corporatist policies as a blueprint for how to grow fat and happy on the backs of the slaving poor. These trends have to be reversed. There shouldn’t be a thing called the working poor. There shouldn’t be homeless people in a country with thousands of empty houses. But there are and there is. This has to stop and the most damning thing that can be said about the Democratic leadership is: they haven’t proposed a plan to fix these problems.
Rot starts at the root. The Texas Democratic party is rotten from the root and it has to be struck, root and branch, if we are to fix the party in Texas. We won’t even get started on the job at hadn if we keep backing the same corrupt officials that represent us now. Kick them out. Let’s see what the new batch of leadership brings with them.
Postscript
This was a conversation I had with the owner/moderator of a group that was supposedly formed for Texas Democrats on Facebook. It wasn’t until after I had joined that it was pointed out to me that it was for blind Democratic support only. Aw, shucks. Here I thought talking about problems was how we worked them all out. He banned me shortly after I made the last comment I copied here.
Dawnna Dukes was defeated in her primary. Sheryl Cole ended up winning in the runoff between her and Chito Vela, which meant she won the seat because Republicans can’t win in Austin unless they are a damn sight more liberal than the average Texan is.
All of this is to say, all political change starts locally. Yes, Sheryl Cole was on the city council before she was in the state House. All I know or care is that she wasn’t Dawnna Dukes, who had held the seat for so long she thought she could not show up to do her job, and we would keep voting for her. This is the problem with one-party rule, the essence of the problem with parties and factions. They exclude all agents of change because the status quo is always more powerful than the progressives or liberals are, so long as they are united against change.
