The Texas Blue: Front Page

TPA Roundup, Week of 1/10/2011

George Nassar — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:15:46 +0000

I might be back, but I'm sure not the only one writing -- and thank goodness, considering the mess that this coming legislative session is going to be. So here's a highlight reel of stories from the rest of your bloggers at the Texas Progressive Alliance.

Off the Kuff wrote about Governor Perry's sanctuary scam and what it says about his priorities.

South Texas Chisme notes that while Perry and his merry band of Republicans play to polluters, the EPA starts doing its job.

Lightseeker over at TexasKaos offers some ideas on how you can become a civility warrior, starting today. Hint: think leading with good values and standing up for what you want among your friends and colleagues. Check out: How to inject civility when Uncle Joe Starts channeling Glen Beck.

This week, McBlogger takes a look at No Labels.

Letters From Texas published a powerful guest editorial from Jeff Rotkoff, on the issue of tea partiers' claims that America is a tyrant state.

Bay Area Houston has a Perfect Picture of Palin, but not for children.

At Capitol Annex, Vince takes a look at the potential contenders for U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's seat now that her retirement has thrown the doors wide open for the 2012 primary.

After a two-part investigation last year on one town's air quality problems WhosPlayin was happy to report that the Town of Flower Mound is increasing the scope and frequency of its air quality monitoring program as complaints continue by neighbors of natural gas facilities.

On the scene for the 82nd legislative session's opening day, PDiddie managed to defy the Capitol's tech support department with laptop connectivity issues, and then quickly ran his Android's battery down Tweeting. Still, he managed a Brains and Eggs post about the day 24 hours after the fact.

TXsharon catches the Big Gas Mafia telling the truth. Gas does migrate up from the formation and it does so in a big way. Read about it on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

After reading a Texas Tea party blogger who had just attended a Tea Party meeting, Neil at Texas Liberal wrote about the Tea Party vision of America. Will English-only require a federal language bereaucracy? Will deportation of all undocumented person mean government raids in our homes? Does the Ten Commandments posted every public building mean that Christianity can't thrive without government support? Will repeal of Healthcare Reform allow insurance companies to once again cancel policies of people who get sick?

TexasVox reviews the showdown over greenhouse gas permits at an EPA public meeting in Dallas on Friday where over 100 local residents showed up to support the EPA and the Clean Air Act, demanding action on climate change because Rick Perry and TCEQ refuse to follow federal law.

"Look, we can't stand for this."

George Nassar — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:01:16 +0000

I'm exhausted.

As I'm sure most of you picked up on, I took a break from writing a few months before the election -- one more guy on the ground, right? Then November came, and I as everyone else needed some recovery time. But watching cable news for that next month or two sucked away any chance at recovery; the ridiculous quantity of poor punditry, of Republican talking points and Democrats second-guessing Democrats, was just too frustrating. Then a new year comes, and with it a renewed spirit and the desire to address all the burgeoning issues that come from an at times merely misinformed, and at times downright malfeasant elected Republican majority.

And then -- Arizona happens.

OK, let's start with the obvious disclaimers that seem so often necessary when speaking about this topic:

No, we don't know for sure what the suspect's motives were. He's not talking, so the best indicator we have is of his note found by the FBI stating that it was an "assassination." So it would seem political (as assassinations generally are), but we can't be sure.
No, we can't say this was caused by the poisonous spread of violent rhetoric that has so typified political discourse in the past few years.
No, that type of rhetoric can't be attributed to all members of any one political party or faction.

That being said, let's talk about what this is:

Yes, it is terrorism.
As the subject himself called it an "assasination," yes, it is most likely political in nature.
As the crime occurred with a Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol with an expanded 30-round magazine, yes, it is a reminder to look with a critical eye at how and how easily we parcel out firearms in this country.
Yes, it was in Arizona -- meaning his probably wasn't the only concealed firearm in the crowd, and yet the often-ballyhooed case of civilian intervention with a firearm in a crisis situation never occurred. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but either way, it does once again cast doubt upon the premise of having a concealed firearm in public for "self-defense" if it's usually too late for the target of violence to draw his/her weapon, and the bystanders are (justifiably) more interested in getting to safety.
Yes, it is just about as foolish to say that there is absolutely zero relationship between charged, violent political rhetoric and charged, violent political action as it is to say that a straight line can be drawn between the violent rhetoric of today and this one particular crime.
Yes, those who engage in such rhetoric -- a significant majority of whom, undeniably, come from one particular faction of one particular party -- bear responsibility, as Susan Milligan of U.S. News writes, "not for the horrific crime itself, but for accelerating a hostile and highly provocative environment that at its best, prevents Congress from working together and at worst, results in tragedy."

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has an "insurrectionism timeline" of incendiary speech and violent acts related to gun violence in the U.S. Because of the group dealing specifically with gun violence, they leave out some of the more creative non-gun-related rhetoric, like Glenn Beck's wanting to beat Charlie Rangel to death with a shovel, but it's still quite illustrative. (And yes, this list existed well before the Arizona shooting -- though it's now been updated to include it, of course.)

I'll just go ahead and close with Rep. Giffords' own words on violent rhetoric back in March 2010 -- I think you'll find them as relevant as they are eerily prescient:

“Are you afraid? Are you fearful today?”

“You know, I’m not. We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of protesters over the course of the last several months. Our office corner has really become an area where the Tea Party movement congregates. And the rhetoric is incredibly heated. Not just the calls, but the emails, the slurs. So things have really gotten spun up. But you gotta think about it. Our democracy is a light, a beacon really around the world, because we effect change at the ballot box, and not because of these outbursts — of violence in certain cases, and the yelling, and it’s just … you know, change is important, it’s a part of our process, but it’s really important that we focus on the fact that we have a democratic process.”

“I think it’s important for all leaders, not just leaders of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party … community leaders, figures in our community to say, ‘Look, we can’t stand for this.’ I mean, this is a situation where people really need to realize that the rhetoric, and firing people up, and even things … For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. And when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there’s consequences to that action.”

“In the years that some of my colleagues have served, twenty, thirty years, they’ve never seen it like this. We have to work out our problems by negotiating, working together, hopefully Democrats and Republicans.”

Have a Pre-existing Condition? You're Now Insurable

Rep. Garnet Coleman — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 18:48:25 +0000

Texans and Americans are seeing visible changes. Thanks to health care reform, Americans who have been unable to obtain health coverage due to a pre-existing condition will now be able to apply for reasonably priced health coverage under a new plan. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will administer the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). The PCIP will offer a benefits rich, moderately priced health package that does not base eligibility on income and does not charge a higher premium because of a medical condition. Benefits include primary and specialty care, hospital care, and prescription drugs. This program is open to individuals who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, have been uninsured for the past six months, and have been unable to obtain health coverage due to a pre-existing condition. Click here for an informational brochure. Click here for an application.

Prior to today, many Americans with health conditions were uninsurable and had no options. Those who were fortunate enough to find insurance were often not covered for the very medical conditions for which they needed the coverage. Thankfully, these individuals now have options and more security.

The PCIP will be in effect until 2014, when insurance companies will no longer be able to discriminate against adults with pre-existing conditions, and individuals and small businesses will have access to more affordable private insurance choices through new competitive Exchanges.

Governor Perry opted out of having Texas administer the program for its residents. However, given the Governor's track record on health care, Texans will surely benefit from his decision.

This piece first ran on Garnet Coleman's blog, and is reprinted with permission.

Giving the Texas Two-Step the Old One-Two

George Nassar — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:13:09 +0000

Silly me -- and here I thought that the big floor debate in today's general session of the Texas Democratic Party convention would be over the race for state party chair.

...ok, that's not actually true. We've seen Dallas and Harris counties turn blue during Boyd Richie's tenure; as much hay as the issue made for a while, it didn't seem particularly likely that any real opposition would form as the convention progressed. Other than an early endorsement from the Progressive Hispanic caucus (one of three Latino caucuses at the convention, with membership primarily from Travis County), South Texas schoolteacher and state chair challenger Michael Barnes simply didn't have much buzz going for him during the convention itself.

Even so, I didn't think there would be this much of a street brawl over the two-step primary process that made national news in the last presidential cycle, first for its uniqueness, and later for a lawsuit brought by LULAC against it citing that it discriminated against the Latino vote in Texas. A minority report successfully passed out of the Rules committee which would take the second step out of the equation: primary caucuses would no longer be used to determine delegate allocation for primaries. The report failed on the convention floor by a nearly 5-to-1 vote, but not before some impassioned arguments on both sides.

The argument against the two-step is, as LULAC cites in its lawsuit, that it blurs the one-person-one-vote line by rewarding those who can attend a single meeting on a particular day after 7pm with a disproportionately larger share of the vote by merit of being able to attend the caucus. While LULAC names Hispanics as affected, often the argument will be made that this also discriminates against the elderly, single parents, the deaf, non-English speakers -- the sorts of already-underrepresented minorities that Democrats tend to defend.

The argument in favor of the two-step is primarily a party-building one. Kendall Scudder, who I work with on the Texas Young Democrats executive board, spoke from his experience as membership director of the College Democrats and VP of membership for the Young Democrats in stating that the two-step caucuses were clear and dramatic boosts to membership and the creation of new chapters in the Young and College Democrats. Another Democrat spoke about how she hadn't even been aware of the two-step process until she attended her precinct caucus, and now she was a precinct chair -- though it seemed to me that she accidentally made the argument against giving delegate-apportionment power to the caucuses, as clearly if she didn't know about it, her involvement couldn't have been because of it, right?

Here's the deal with this whole thing: as with most contentious issues, both sides are right. Both sides can point to potential problems that their particular method solves. Anybody that tells you otherwise is selling something. The question isn't one of who is wrong; the question is about whether the benefits each side sees can be achieved in a different way.

The issue of voter disenfranchisement due to inability to get to the voting location at a given date and time is one we've dealt with before. We have early voting periods so that potential voters can pick the day and time they vote. We have absentee ballots for those who can't make it due to inability to transport themselves. We provide ballots in different languages, assistants for those who can't fill the ballot out themselves, and even provisional ballots for those who aren't properly registered. Unfortunately, none of our solutions for this can remedy this problem in a caucus situation -- the nature of a caucus requires one to actually be in attendance, to engage with his fellow voter, and to advocate for his candidate in person.

Of course, these are the very strengths that the pro-two-step side would cite. And while it is easy to say that one could keep the caucus while taking away its delegate apportionment power, many would say that that would defeat the purpose of attending a caucus in the first place.

Now, while there was a strong push for caucus involvement in 2008, I don't know that the folks that were driven to the caucuses by the campaigns were that likely to end up participating in the party after that point -- at least, I would say that my experience in my home county wouldn't indicate that retention was anywhere near proportional to the original response. And while parties can always do more to retain those folks -- is there that much of a difference between outreach to those who show up at caucuses and to those who would otherwise be identified as likely Democrats by, say the VAN? I just don't think the results bear that out.

But even so, that doesn't directly address the concern of those in favor of the two-step. And that's where the difference in the two positions becomes the most clear: those against the two-step argue in favor of equal access to the vote and equal protection, while those for the two-step are simply looking for an incentive for folks to attend the caucus.

When we look at it this way, it seems clearer that, while we have a broad history of voter access to draw from to find a solution to equal access -- and the methods we'd draw from that would at first blush be ineffective in the context of a caucus -- the problem of finding effective incentives for attendance of caucuses other than delegate apportionment has gone largely unaddressed. Obviously, the problem isn't a trivial one; finding an incentive that is commensurate, basically, to more votes is a difficult task. But I'm hard pressed to believe that, were we to seriously examine the issue, there wouldn't be other situations where turnout and representation can be made to scale along with participation in the caucuses themselves, and those participants could feel empowered by attending without skewing the presidential candidate vote itself.

I don't know how the LULAC lawsuit will play out; it could turn out that the Texas Democratic Party's hand will be forced in this issue, and delegate apportionment will have to be separated from the caucus process. The equal protection argument is definitely there, and is one that would seriously have to be looked at under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

But whether or not it comes to that, the stridency of the arguments on both sides of the debate are indication that we need to seriously look at finding new incentives for participants in the caucus process. I doubt, after such animated arguments noting the increase in Democratic involvement from the caucuses, that anyone would argue that more incentives for attendance are a negative. And if this gets us to the point where we can cast aside the system that causes so much strife within the party and smacks of unfairness to so many people, all the better.

Bill White at the 2010 TDP Convention: Speech

George Nassar — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:24:44 +0000

Bill White just closed out tonight's convention with a well-written, well-presented speech. I would give you some greatest hits from it, but the Bill White campaign apparently was looking to save me the trouble with the press release they just put out giving the entire speech. Presser after the jump.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, June 25, 2010

Bill White's remarks at the 2010 Texas Democratic Party Convention

CORPUS CHRISTI -- Bill White, successful businessman, former Houston mayor and candidate for governor, addressed delegates of the Texas Democratic Party today at the state convention.

Below are prepared remarks, which may differ somewhat from actual remarks.

We come from the endless horizons of the high plains to the shaded forests of East Texas, from the bustling morning traffic of our great cities to the calm sunsets along our coasts. Texas is home to proud people. We come from all backgrounds, but we share so much:

We all believe that Texans need more jobs, with real futures.

We all understand that Texans work hard to create a better life for our children.

And we all know that Texans are ready for a new governor!

We gather in Corpus today because we share common values:

We believe in freedom and diversity, but we understand that real leadership unites us.

We take pride in our state's heritage, but we understand that we have come a long way in breaking down barriers and our greatest days can be ahead of us.

I am honored by your support, and especially by the love and fighting spirit of my family. I am inspired by the friendship of so many present today.

We gather with a sense of excitement, preparing for this great test of Texas' future.

In Rick Perry's Texas it is "every man for himself." You see, Rick Perry and his friends put special interests above the public interest.

And in promotion of self-interest, it is fair to say Rick Perry leads by example.

So we find that Perry this year has drawn a full state salary but scheduled only seven hours per week for state work. How can you explain this to state teachers, troopers and so many others are asked to do more with less? Simple: part-time Perry is in it for himself.

We learn that Perry charges taxpayers for a $10,000 a month rented mansion, larger than anything used by prior governors, with chefs and a subscription to Food & Wine magazine. How can you explain this to taxpayers when our state faces an $18 billion budget crisis because it is living beyond its means? Simple: part-time Perry is in it for himself.

We know that Rick Perry accepted more federal stimulus dollars than any Governor except those in California and New York. In fact, federal dollars have been the fastest growing source of state funding since he has been governor. Yet now we hear that he is writing a book on state's rights, called "Fed Up." How does he have time to write a book when hehasn't even written a state budget that adds up? Simple: part-time Perry is in it for himself.

Many may remember that Rick Perry was the statewide chairman for Al Gore's first presidential race, then immediately switched parties when he saw an opening to move up. Now it appears that he spots another opening--national leader of the far right wing. The opening was created when Ms.Palin cashed in. Are we surprised? No: Part time Perry is in it for himself.

Look, I may not have all the practice and polish of a career politician. Perry's been on the public payroll so long that his state pension is higher than the salaries of most Texans. But I can assure you of one thing: Though Rick Perry is in it for Rick Perry, I will always be in it for Texas.

I learned the value of service from my parents, life-long educators. My dad held down two jobs for most of the time I was growing up. My brother and I learned hard work, faith, and the value of education. En San Antoniocreemos que todos merecen respecto . We were taught that life is about what you give, not what you take; it's about preparing for the future-- leaving our community, our state, our nation, better than we found it.

I used this background to build great businesses, to create jobs, to balance budgets and meet payrolls.

These values and skills served me well as mayor of our largest city. We cut crime rates, expanded parks and health clinics, cleaned the air, brought dropouts back to school, and improved services for veterans. We did so while building surpluses and cutting property tax rates for five straight years.

Because I'm in it for Texas we'll do the hard work Rick Perry has never done: we'll prepare Texas for a better future. That means moving forward--not standing still--on education and job training.

First, we will expand pre-K programs that work.

Second, we will work with school districts, community colleges, and employers to improve career and technical education.

Third, we will cut drop out rates, by treating it as an emergency when students do not return to school.

Fourth, we will let educators teach writing, reasoning, and problem-solving skills rather than teaching how to make a minimum score on an annual high-stakes multiple choice test.

Fifth, we will make college education more affordable for more Texans.

Moving forward in education and job training will produce a better long run economy, more jobs. After all, people with more skills earn more, spend more, invest more, and that helps the whole economy.

Of course this campaign won't be easy. They will try to scare rather than to inspire. And Rick Perry is a career professional, who will say anything to hold on to power.

Perry will take credit for all that has always been good in Texas, though that attitude alone is proof he has been in office too long.

He will make false attacks, including attacks on our state's largest city. No wonder his handlers don't want him to debate.

Rick Perry will claim he represents Texas values. But Perry's Texas is different than our Texas.

In Rick Perry's Texas insurance and utility rates rise faster than in other states. In our Texas wages will go up faster because we invest in people.

In Rick Perry's Texas we import nurses and welders and other skilled workers from abroad. In our Texas we will train more Texans to do those jobs.

In Rick Perry's Texas the State Board of Education injects political ideology into classrooms. In our Texas we'll put more computers in our classrooms.

In Rick Perry's Texas state boards and agencies are pressured from the top to serve those who help the Governor's re-election. In our Texas government will be the servant, not the master, and our customers will be ordinary Texans.

In Rick Perry's Texas the governor threatens to leave the world's greatest country. He is content allow our state to compete with Mississippi for lack of social progress. In our Texas other states will follow Texas because we will be the leader.

In Rick Perry's Texas citizens are stuck in traffic in big cities because the Texas Department of Transportation was doing the bidding of a foreign company promoting the land grab known as the Trans-Texas Corridor. In our Texas we will work across party lines for a new mobility plan, assisting commuters to get from home to work and all communities to get their goods to market.

In Rick Perry's Texas the best days may be behind us. In our Texas our best days are ahead of us.

Let us go from this convention, staffing phone banks, knocking on doors, and sending emails. Lift up all who share our values, from the courthouse to the statehouse to the double-wide trailer Andrea and I will live in while the Mansion is rebuilt. Describe to friends and neighbors, from both parties, the simple choice we face in the governor's race.

Rick Perry is in it for Rick Perry. By the grace of God and with your help, I'm in it for Texas, for you.

Contact:

Katy Bacon

press@billwhitefortexas.com

713.501.3991

Civic Engagement and Voter Turnout

George Nassar — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:11:00 +0000

I bet a number of you guys are down here in Corpus, slogging through the heat and humidity to attend the TDP state convention. If you missed the Young Democrats caucus earlier this afternoon, you may have missed your best chance to see just about every elected official and candidate in attendance -- the speaker list was long and colorful.

State Representative Mark Strama's time at the microphone was spent telling the story of one of his staffers that left the campaign to volunteer for Edwards in Iowa, struck a chord with me.

Edwards, it turns out, came out first in the caucuses among existing voters. Obama was third. Typically, effort in campaigns is spent primarily on turning out known voters, but Obama's victory rested primarily on massive new voter turnout.

This is germane today, of course, because there is a significant effort being made across the country to retain those new voters that were identified in 2008 -- with mixed success. Representative Strama noted that the youth vote made up pretty much the entirety of Obama's victory spread both in the Iowa caucuses and in the general election, and yet these were exactly the voters that would be most likely to be disillusioned now and unwilling to participate in the process.

But is that by accident?

I've criticized more than a few Democrats on what sometimes seems like a defeatist attitude -- a tacit presumption that, by default, Democrats are doomed in Texas politics and everything is going wrong for them. We as a state party have plenty to point to over the past four years that we can be proud of as far as electoral gains go, whether we look at the Democratic sweep of over 30 judicial seats in Dallas in 2006 (along with the sheriff and DA's seats), a similar wave of Democrats winning in Harris County in 2008, or having gone from a state house that was 86-64 Republican to one which is 77-73 Republican -- the closest we've been to controlling the state house since we lost it a decade before. Meanwhile, we're watching the national Republican party be torn apart by their extreme right wing in the form of the Tea Party. Regularly, we are seeing signs that races that were "unwinnable" a month or two ago are in play for us because of Republican infighting -- and this in a midterm election, where the party in power is supposed to lose seats. While we may lose some battles, we seem poised to win the overall war -- chances are good that we'll hold both houses of Congress nationally, and we have one of the strongest statewide slates we've seen in Texas in decades.

But Representative Strama's speech reminded me that there is a bigger war -- and it is a war we're losing.

Republicans' tactics nationwide don't seem to be destined to give them much in dividends in the short term, particularly as the policies passed by Democrats start bearing tangible fruit and improving people's lives. But what Republicans are successfully doing is poisoning the well. Those new voters that turned out in droves for President Obama are very possibly disillusioned and less likely to vote, but the anti-incumbent sentiment that has recently been affecting Democrats and Republicans alike shows that it's not because Democrats are unpopular -- it's because government is unpopular. The bile-filled, vitriolic turn that Congress and American politics in general has taken is something that those hope-filled voters can't associate with.

It's easy to glamorize the past, but it does seem that political discussion not so long ago was tempered with a sort of civic understanding that now seems to be absent. It used to be that we all understood that as much as we may differ, we are all Americans, we all work for what we believe is the betterment of the country, and we do this -- by design -- through an adversarial process in which we determine the best solution to problems by having vocal advocates for each side of an issue, and letting the majority decide who is right. Tthe final arbiters of what is "best" are the people, and therefore as Americans who wish to do the best for America, it is necessary for us to get involved in the process by voting.

This fundamental truth that defines American democracy seems forgotten in modern politics -- and I suppose that in a way, it should come as no surprise. Educational systems are driven by math and English scores where the fundamentals of civics are often "taught" by the baseball coach; running narratives paint government as something to fight against instead of something that benefits us, because it comes from us; even political journalism, which once held itself to be the front line in the battle to reveal truth to the masses, now too often takes the easy road of avoiding real investigation and treating all viewpoints, no matter how ludicrous, as equal, so that they can cater to the viewing preferences of the "man on the street" instead of striving to benefit society by being the medium by which that man is informed. The current Republican track of turning every possible issue into an all-or-nothing street brawl just takes another kick at the already fallen standard of American civics.

Is this intentional on the part of Republicans? Representative Strama seemed to hint at that today, and I definitely couldn't argue with the point that Republicans, as the falsely self-anointed party of small government, stand to benefit most from that.

But my instinctive answer to that question is: does it matter? Whether Republicans intend to make politics so abhorrent to the regular American that they'll want to, as Grover Norquist put it, make government small enough to drown in a bathtub is not really the point -- as, intentionally or not, that's what's happening. And in the long term, that hurts Republicans and Democrats alike, and more than that, it hurts the foundation of American government. As Montesquieu put it just a few short years before America declared its independence, "The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."

Do I know what to do about this? Frankly, no. I couldn't even tell you how to honestly energize a willing voting base that came to the polls in 2008 with enthusiasm and hope and which now feel beaten down by political reality, let alone how to deal with the bigger problem of fighting to make American government something that Americans can feel proud to participate in. I'd love to give the "easy" answers -- invest more in civic education in schools, encourage elected representatives to maintain respectful dialog with their peers, renew the idea of true investigative journalism and reward media outlets that are willing to prioritize Congress over Paris Hilton -- but actually implementing those things is where this all gets hard. Encouraging an idea of principled civic discourse as a fundamental part of living as an American is a project that, were it started now, wouldn't be likely to see fruition for decades. It's difficult to incentivize so long a process. But considering what is happening to American politics, I'm not sure we have a choice.

State Board Of Education Votes Down In-Depth Study Of First Amendment

Patrick M McLeod — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:44:49 +0000

Earlier today, the Texas State Board of Education, in a straight party line vote, voted down an amendment that would require Texas schoolchildren to study the reasons why the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a state religion. The Board's seven Republican Board members voted against the amendment while the Board's five Democratic members voted for it. The amendment was proposed by Board member Mavis Knight (D-Dallas). For a group that has been running around Texas talking about how health care reform is unconstitutional and how Texas ought to re-affirm our sovereignty under the auspices of the 10th Amendment, it reeks of the deepest hypocrisy and the rankest moral dishonesty to privilege certain Amendments in the Bill of Rights while ignoring others. Welcome to Texas, where nothing is off limits for the Texas GOP.

Victor Carrillo: Hispanic Surname Caused Loss

Patrick M McLeod — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:20:09 +0000

Republican Commissioner Victor Carrillo has served on the Texas Railroad Commission for the last seven years. Commissioner Carrillo's defeat at the hands of accountant David Porter in the G.O.P. primary last night was one of, if not the most, shocking upset of the night for either party. The Texas Tribune's Brian Thevenot blogs this afternoon that Carrillo feels his Hispanic surname cost him the election. Anyone familiar with the xenophobic atmosphere of politics in the Texas G.O.P. these days shouldn't be surprised by such a statement; what is surprising is hearing it come from a Republican office holder.

Commissioner Carrillo will have plenty of time to reflect on the nature of the Texas G.O.P. now that he'll be a former Commissioner. If the Commissioner is truly interested in supporting the candidate with the most oil & gas experience, he and all Texans should cast their votes in November for Democratic candidate Jeff Weems, a former roughneck and energy lawyer. I don't know about y'all, but I'd rather see an oil & gas person do an oil & gas person's job rather than leave it up to a candidate whose most germane qualification is that he lives near oil & gas infrastructure.

Tweet This: Your November 2010 Statewide Election Matchups

Patrick M McLeod — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:39:52 +0000

Governor: Bill White ( @billwhitefortx ) vs. Rick Perry ( @GovernorPerry )

Lieutenant Governor: Linda Chavez-Thompson ( @ElectLinda ) vs. David Dewhurst ( @dewhurst4texas )

Attorney General: Barbara Ann Radnofsky ( @TXBarbaraAnn ) vs. Greg Abbott ( @Abbott2010 )

Commissioner of the General Land Office: Hector Uribe ( @UribeForTexas ) vs. Jerry Patterson ( no Twitter account found )

Commissioner of Agriculture: Hank Gilbert ( @Hank4Texas ) vs. Todd Staples ( @Todd_Staples )

Railroad Commissioner: Jeff Weems ( @JeffWeems ) vs. David Porter ( @VoteDavidPorter )

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 3: Jim Sharp ( no Twitter account found ) vs. TBD

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 5: Bill Moody ( no Twitter account found ) vs. Paul Green ( no Twitter account found )

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 9: Blake Bailey (no Twitter account found ) vs. Eva Guzman ( @justiceguzman )

Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 6: Keith Hampton ( @HamptonForJudge ) vs. Michael Keasler ( no Twitter account found )

If you know of a candidate's Twitter account where I've listed them as account not found, please post that information in Comments.

The Lay Of The Land, Early March 3rd Edition

Patrick M McLeod — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:20:10 +0000

Last night's primaries on both sides of the aisle were some of the more memorable ones in my political lifetime. There was contention and drama in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, with statement victories at the top of each statewide ticket with a few incumbents either getting very close calls or being defeated further down the ballot.

No doubt the talk of Texas tomorrow morning will be Bill White's decisive victory over Farouk Shami and the rest of the Democratic field for the party's gubernatorial nomination along with Governor Rick Perry's victory over Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Debra Medina. For the former mayor of Houston, last night's lapping of the remainder of the field several times over was a strong signal of the unity of the party at the top of the ticket. On the Republican side, the Medina Surge ended up being more of a gurgle and Senator Hutchison's bid ended pretty much where it'd been stuck for the entire campaign: In the thirties, firmly in control of second place.

The night was not without some bipartisan incumbent drama. On the Democratic side of the aisle, seven-term incumbent State Representative Dora Olivo was defeated by lawyer and former Assistant Judge Ron Reynolds. Down in The Valley, freshman incumbent State Representative Tara Rios Ybarra was ousted from her seat by Kingsville restaurant owner J.M. Lozano in a highly-monied primary fight centering on tort reform. Out west in El Paso, State Representative Norma Chavez looks likely to go to a runoff with challenger Naomi Gonzalez.

Not to be outdone for incumbent defeat and close calls, it was a nervous night for some Texas Republican office holders. Multi-term Railroad Commissioner David Carillo was soundly beaten by Giddings CPA David Porter. The former Chairman of the State Board of Education, Don McElroy, is in a close fight for his SBOE seat this morning, trailing his opponent Bill Ratliff 49.5% to 50.5% with 97% of precincts reporting. If any office holder in this state deserved to be voted out by a sensible alternative in either a primary or the general election, it is Don McElroy. Another upset is in the offing this morning for a Republican SBOE incumbent; this time it is Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, who is losing to North Dallas High academic coordinator George Clayton. With 100% of precincts reporting, State Representative Betty Brown has lost to insurance and risk management consultant Lance Gooden. In East Texas, State Representative Tommy Merritt was defeated by timber company president David Simpson. In suburban North Texas, State Representative Burt Solomons looks like he will hold onto his seat in the face of a spirited challenge from financial consultant Mike Murphy.

There will be much to discuss in the coming days and weeks, and we hope that you will come back to visit us here at The Texas Blue for more news and analysis of this exciting primary election!

2010 TX Primary Elections: Races You Should Be Watching

George Nassar — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:19:50 +0000

EDIT: Patrick McLeod gives us a wee-hours rundown of tonight's events.

We have our Election Tracker sidebar up tonight, following a few of the biggest primary races tonight, but as always, there are turning out to be some sleepers and some surprises tonight. Click through to read more about these races.

The biggest question you'll be hearing from pundits tonight is whether Rick Perry can squeak a majority victory in the Republican primary, meaning he can start fighting the general election fight and avoid a messy runoff. It's a top-of-the-ticket race, and polling had earlier indicated that ours wasn't going to be so exciting: as predicted, Mayor Bill White is starting off with a solid lead over Farouk Shami for the Democratic gubernatorial bid.

In our Lite Guv race, labor leader and ex-DNC vice chair Linda Chavez-Thompson is leading early over Travis County DA Ronnie Earle, who is probably having some Travis County votes siphoned off from him by a stronger-than-expected showing from Marc Katz. And Hank Gilbert currently has the lead in the colorful Agriculture Commissioner race over Kinky Friedman.

The last race in the Democratic top of the ticket is for Land Commissioner, which is neck-and-neck this early on:
TX-LandCom-D

Bill Burton: 52.5%
Hector Uribe: 47.5%

It's too early to be looking at regional races, just from the low number of votes cast, but a few of the races to keep an eye out for are:

Dem-CD 18, where Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee drew two primary opponents, one of which (Jarvis Johnson) has been making the race -- what's the term I used previously? "Colorful?" -- with some aggressive campaigning and a tiff over stolen yard signs. (Kid you not.)
Rep-CD 4, where Congressman Hall's opponent, Steve Clark, made a strong showing in early voting.
Rep-RRCom, where incumbent Victor Carrillo got clobbered in early voting by David Porter.
The Republican SBOE races, where a couple of incumbents look like they're having to fight for their lives -- including universally disliked flat-earther Don McLeroy in
District 9.
And a number of state House races where anti-incumbent sentiment seems to be having a surprising effect on both sides.

Stay with us tonight, as we update you with numbers and hot races as they come in. And as always, thanks for reading!

Liveblogging the Health Care Summit

George Nassar — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:04:02 +0000

Today may mark the day that comprehensive health insurance reform lives or dies in the United States, as the President hosts a summit with congressmen from both parties at Blair House starting at 9am CST today to try and work out a bill that will pass both the House and Senate. And we've got it for you here, liveblogged after the jump.

A brief note: this liveblog will be a little different from our typical debate liveblogs. In those, we try to give a complete account of what the candidates are saying, as they're the primary players in question. Here, the primary players are policies, not people. We'll be giving you the rundown on the best talking points on each side, but if there's a good deal of repetition from the members of Congress (which there likely will be), don't expect to see that here.

We should also note that for those of you joining us during the summit, you can view it live online at the MyBarackObama.com web site.

9:00 The summit starts just a little late; a few handshakes on the live feed before President Obama leads off with an opening statement. Notes a "glimpse of bipartisanship" in the recent passing of the jobs bill, and moves on to express the gravity of the health care situation in America. Letters he gets from constituents and other such anecdotes. Premiums will double in the next decade like they did over the previous decade.

Shares some personal anecdotes as well -- of his two children going to the ER, and of his mother dying of ovarian cancer and spending the last six months of her life fighting insurance companies instead of with her family. Wow.

9:15 Not a brief opening statement, it seems. Cites some of the health care plans and ideas from the Republicans in attendance, and notes the overlap. Folks worked "long and hard" to get a bill, but in the end, "politics trumped common sense." He's kept a carefully bipartisan tone throughout.

Not that he's 100% sold on bipartisan agreement -- he notes that there will be some things that they'll walk out of the meeting clearly disagreeing on, but at least they'll have identified their similarities and clarified their differences for the rest of us.

9:22Senator McConnell is tapped for the Republican opening statement, and hands it off to Lamar Alexander. He says he feels their stances on health care represent the American people, and cites the elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts as examples. (I guess we could call those simply badly run races or bad candidates, and point to the majorities we still have in both houses as a counterexample.) He'd like to start from scratch and throw everything done so far out with a bill that would lower costs -- he doesn't like the current bill that lowers costs for paying middle-class Americans, it seems. He calls it "a car that can't be recalled and fixed."

He interestingly also gives an answer for why the Republicans don't have a comprehensive bill. He says "we don't do comprehensive well." Cites as examples the cap-and-trade bill, the immigration reform bill -- funny, I think Democrats would call those pretty good bills. And how about the jobs bill that just passed?

Anyway, he'd rather an incremental, piecemeal approach to the process. (Completely missing, apparently, all the experts that note that drastic change is needed to prevent the system from collapsing under its own weight.)

Ooh. And for the last thing, he requests that before we go on, that Democrats reject the idea of using the "little-used" process of reconciliation to pass the bill. Of course, that's already been refuted, as the Republican Congress under Bush used it far more often than Democrats have. "You may say that it's been used before, and it has, but never for something like this."

9:35 Time for the Democratic delegation's opening statement. Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid are splitting their time for this. Pelosi notes a much bigger recent bipartisan push in the House recently -- the vote yesterday to remove the antitrust exemption from insurance companies, forcing them to play by the rules in a competitive market. Calls out Congressman Dingell, the dean of the House (its longest-serving member), for gaveling through Medicare -- hey, there's a comprehensive reform package that is still around and that even Republicans don't want to get rid of.

Pelosi's defense of comprehensive health care brings up how it helps the job market -- people hurt from being "job-locked," she says, and having no mobility because of their dependence on their employer-provided health insurance plan; the current bill would immediately create 400,000 jobs.

9:44 Senator Reid starts off by saying he'll be talking about Nevada and the country, and not about what's going on in Washington. Heartwarming anecdote time! A Nevadan with a baby with a cleft palate was refused coverage for the baby's surgery because it was a "pre-existing condition."

Then calls Lamar out -- says he's entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Mentions the recent Kaiser poll that says that 58% of Americans want health care reform this year. Over 60% want to see it happen, period. Also mentions the "donut hole" of Medicare part D coverage, where seniors don't have coverage for a good chunk of their prescription drug bills.

He goes on with the fact-checking with reconciliation. Republicans have used reconciliation more than Democrats have, and for such big projects as the Contract for America, Medicare reform, and the Bush era tax cuts for the rich.

The health care bill that came out of Senator Dodd's HELP committee had 150 Republican amendments in its final form. Baucus' bill had significant Republican input as well. And the bill would cut the deficit by over $100 billion over the next decade.

Finishes off by noting that, again, Republicans don't have a plan. I like this "tough" version of Harry Reid -- you can tell he's running a contentious reelection campaign.

9:53 Obama gets in a quick response to Senator Alexander's statements on process -- many ideas he stated were things that Democrats wanted as well, so don't jump to conclusions, there may be more agreement than we thought; let's stick with process here, and we can find out how much agreement we have and how to proceed from there.

Then starts off with costs as a first step. Costs are particularly hurting small businesses. Less than half of businesses with 10 or fewer people offer health insurance. Business premiums are on track to double by the end of the decade. Presents the health care exchange idea as one that can help control that. Senator Alexander says that the CBO says it increases costs -- Obama calls him on it, saying that the CBO says it *decreases* costs so much that people may choose to get better coverage than the underinsured coverage they have now, which could cost up to 10% more, but that costs for comparable plans go down across the board. Republican Myth #1 debunked. Maybe I should keep a running tally?

Obama notes that he's included every cost-control measure that has come up and that has been shown to work. He asks that Republicans name any new cost-control measures they have, and that additionally they should name what things they *do* like about the bill, since it has had so much Republican input. (Which, of course, they won't -- a good way to highlight Republican obstructionism.)

Senator Alexander says that he believes that the President is wrong about costs decreasing, and would like to present his facts. The president, happy to take that on, says that he'd like that clarified today, because he's confident he's not wrong. "We'll be here all afternoon." Alexander punts back to Senator McConnell, who tries to get a not-well-worded barb in on reconciliation before handing it over to Senator Coburn to talk about cost control. He mentions prevention, fraud (20% of the cost of health care, he cites), and tort reform. He's actually pretty good at throwing subtle partisan barbs in there in ways that wouldn't be picked up as overt hackery (things like saying that one side wants "government-based reforms," and he'd prefer "patient-centric, market-centric reforms" -- see how he equates those two? I don't know any patient that has *any* pull in the market compared to even the smallest of health insurance companies, but hey -- he sees a parallel! I'm sure both sides would say they prefer "patient-centric" reforms.) Also throws states' rights in there -- "state mandates" versus "state incentives."

Says the bill has good fraud programs, but lacks the biggest fraud prevention mechanism -- undercover patients. Senator Reed notes that they're once again going way over time, and Senator Coburn says he's finished, noting that one out of three dollars are currently wasted. (It should be noted that the AMA is tentatively against the undercover patient program, saying it could interfere with treatment for real patients. Just throwing that out there.)

President Obama notes that they do have a number of state incentives which Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been working on.

10:13 Senator Hoyer goes next. His thing is increasing competition. Calls for an open, transparent market to do so and hopes they can find common ground. Says to Senator Coburn: "We agree with you." One out of three dollars is wasted, and we should wring fraud and abuse out of the system. And we have addressed that thoroughly in the bill. We also have numerous prevention programs like you mentioned, food stamp and school lunch programs like you mentioned. You may have ideas on how to improve those; we'd like to talk about those. Also stop problems with rate discrimination from some having access to large groups, and with pre-existing conditions.

Hoyer also brings up the public option as a significant cost control measure, assuring competition in the marketplace and preventing those rate discrimination problems. Mentioned Senator Baucus would speak with more detail on cost control.

10:21 Hope this keeps up: there was some "harrumph, harrumph" from Republicans chomping at the bit to follow Senator Hoyer, assuredly to say no to yet another idea, but Obama cut them off and asked first who on the Republican side would want to speak on the issues that it seems like they agree on -- like preventive medicine and fraud prevention; Obama notes that they seem in agreement with the exception of the one new idea Senator Coburn has, which Obama says he's interested in talking about and thinks that "conceptually... it shouldn't be a problem." Yet another Republican idea accepted for the bill that so far every Republican Senator has voted against.

10:25 Was that Representative John Kline? I missed the name and am not sure I'm placing the face. He speaks as to how they'd rather deal with providing big insurance pools for small businesses -- he prefers small business associations to a large health exchange.

Senator Baucus follows, and is much more comprehensive with cost control ideas for businesses -- selling insurance across state lines, HSA expansions, et cetera. Specifically on small business solutions, he notes that John Kline's solution is already in the bill in a very similar form -- and that exchanges are actually a Republican idea, and a very good one.

10:32 Republican congressmen have always been the most reliable sources of rote party-line argument, and Rep.Dave Camp is no exception. At least their senators sound like they are listening to what everyone else said. This guy complains about the "trillion dollar" bill, and then goes on to nitpick on how much he dislikes details of ideas that Republicans came up with in the first place. I'm not kidding here -- he's dissing the health savings account improvements. Then he starts talking about the governmental cost of all these programs, and government spending and deficits.

Ooh -- Obama redresses the guy, pointing out that what he's talking about isn't related to const control for families, and further, that if everybody "on one side" is just giving lists of what they don't like, they aren't really working toward common ground.

Rep. Robert Andrews goes back to trying to find common ground -- smart! He addresses association plans versus the health exchanges in the current bill, noting that the difference is mostly semantic. He says that there is one substantive difference, but that if they can find agreement on that matter, they'd likely be able to agree on the plan itself. The difference is assuring consumer protections in the health exchanges, which are not in the association plan that Rep. Paul Ryan presented. Andrews points out that Ryan calls for those same minimum protections in the roadmap he had presented in Congress previously; Ryan says he does support those, but at the state, not national, level.

A quick interlude from Mitch McConnell: he complains that Democrats have gotten 52 minutes, and Republicans only 24. Obama notes that that includes his opening statement, and he wasn't including that because, well, he's the president. ZING!

Schumer again notes similarities. Seems to like the "undercover patients" idea. He also takes a little time to shoot down Republican complaints on Medicare cuts: everyone so far has said they're in favor of cutting waste and fraud, but the supposed Medicare "cuts" Republicans have complained about are specifically cost reductions due to reducing waste and fraud.

Then John Kyl throws down the Republican gauntlet: there are philosophical differences "we can't paper over." Considering how everything that's come out so far is nearly identical, he really just looks like he's trying to pick a fight.

Senator Coburn, last to speak before the afternoon break, has two points: First, he says that a missing aspect is strengthening primary care -- a large part of emergency room cost is due to patients coming in not for emergency care, but for primary care, and so we should strengthen community health centers. He does note that's already in the bill, and it's a key cost-cutting measure. Second, he brings up that the employees of the small businesses in question in this debate on exchanges don't get to have a say in the quality of their plan. He wasn't too clear about it, but it seems like he was defending universal minimums of consumer protections in these plans so that those employees wouldn't get shortchanged by the small business owner looking for the most economic option, no matter what.

Obama gets to answer some of Kyl's concerns -- Kyl and Obama spar for a bit about whether costs go up or down with the -- Republicans say insurance mandates, Democrats say consumer protections -- in place in the current bill. Obama, in closing, says that we agree on certain things -- one being lack of rescission (being dropped from your insurance without warning), which he notes is in agreement with John Kyl's bill and leads to an amusing camera moment as Kyl can be seen frantically flipping through his bill in front of him to find where he made the mistake of agreeing with a Democrat.

11:12 Oh -- I guess there's another speaker before the break. Don't know who the guy is, but he's going straight back to political talking points. Booooring. He even reiterates the "plan costs go up" false argument, even though Obama went out of his way earlier (after Kyl's statement on that) to explain in practically little-kid talk that if you pay one price for an apple, and another for an orange, that doesn't mean your costs are going up -- it means you're buying something different. (Myself, I would have used "an apple" and "an apple and a half," but what do I know?) He also thinks that risk pools and reinsurance are *more* assured ways of making sure people are covered for pre-existing conditions than explicitly prohibiting pre-existing conditions. Huh?

11:19 Yeah, turns out we have plenty of speakers left. Rep. George Miller again sticks with the Democratic approach of trying to point out similarities. When he gets to a difference, it's with the pre-existing conditions clause that was just brought up. He goes back to Pelosi's point of being locked into a job and not having the flexibility to move jobs or start their own small business -- the driver of the American economy -- because they wouldn't be able to get insurance. He noted that business groups actually signed off on the changes in the bill.

11:26 McCain's up, and he wants to talk process. It's a little sad how he's turned from a man with a mind of his own to one that would spend time delineated specifically for issues to instead hammer on partisan points. He talks about the process by which the bill was developed -- kickbacks to states, concessions to PhRMA, etc. I don't really know how he can lay blame for that at the president's feet, but it can probably be argued that the Democrats' PR arm was asleep at the wheel when those things came out.

The president answers: "We're not campaigning anymore. The election's over." He notes that we've had months and months of floor discussion and committee debate, but that we're not here to argue process and try to gain political points in doing so.

11:33 HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gets to talk about the efforts that would be made on the executive side to cut costs for middle-class Americans. She talks about health exchanges, and notes that state associations have uniformly opposed cross-border health insurance offerings on the whole, *not* because they're against national health insurance, but because there are no across-the-board consumer protections, and therefore there's no ability to assure that the insurance available to people in their state conforms to some common-sense standards. That pretty much directly refutes Rep. Ryan's argument for small business associations with state-level as opposed to nationally defined consumer protections.

11:39 Rep. Cantor starts off pretty well -- he's doing less of the standard Republican talking points and a little more straight shooting. "There's a reason we all voted no" -- philosophical differences, and Washington defining the baseline consumer protections and benefits. He says if we were to try, costs would go up, and some people would not be able to keep the coverage they have now.

Obama answers by noting that it's not that they wouldn't be able to keep their coverage -- the CBO says it's that they'd actually find the deals in the exchange to be better and would switch.

Then he answers his underlying question, on the philosophical differences. "We could reduce food costs... by eliminating all meat inspectors." We make a fundamental decision to assure a baseline standard to avoid abuses in industry, as an appropriate application of government. It's not a Washington thing -- most states have stricter restrictions than anything that the federal government has.

And further -- Republicans *agree* that some regulation is necessary. They have already agreed to preventing denials from pre-existing conditions. Well, without a law for that, you can bet that they won't be prevented. It happens already. So you *have* to have all those spelled out, and you *have* to have that 2400-page bill to do that for all the aspects that they've agreed on -- a very large chunk of that to establish mutually agreed-upon fraud controls, for example.

So he basically notes that the "philosophical difference" is neither feasible nor honestly adhered to by the Republicans.

11:52 Have I mentioned lately that I love Joe Biden? He lays it down short, sweet, and simple: there is no huge "philosophical difference." Either you think that government has no place doing any of this stuff, or you acknowledge that government can and must regulate certain things -- and Republicans have already acknowledged that in calling for reforms to rescission and preexisting conditions. We're just arguing where the line is. The idea of this "philosophical difference" is a scapegoat. Heck, he may have actually explained that *faster* than I just did.

Cantor goes back to the idea that we can't afford the bill as it's currently structured. I'm wondering where the Democratic counterargument that we actually would see net savings -- that the cost would be more than offset by the savings. Haven't heard that in a little while.

11:54 Rep. Slaughter does the straight-shooting thing too. We have to get rid of preexisting conditions; they are cruel and unfair. The system's broken. We have to get this stuff passed.

Aaaaand an emergency break for a scheduled House vote. We'll be back at 12:45 CST for the continuation

1:00 Again, starting out a little late. Apparently, adjournment will be at 3:15 CST.

Senator Mike Enzi thinks that part of the piecemeal Republican effort can be fixing Medicaid. Funny how we haven't been able to pull that off before. But mostly he just complains about process some more.

Senator Harkin follows, and notes again the similarities between what Republicans and Democrats are asking for. 9 of the 10 items in the Republican proposal in the House are already in the Democratic Senate bill. We've spent a ton of time on this bill, and included a ton of Republican amendments. And again, we don't have the time to do this piecemeal -- Americans are already hurting. Considers current risk pools "segregation by health."

1:22 Representative Camp keeps railing against the individual mandate, and against setting of standards by the HHS secretary. Obama notes that the current solution they have is just setting up a high-risk pool, which basically locks them into ludicrously high rates. 21 states already do it, and only 200,000 people are in and they pay the highest rates in the nation. Apparently he likes the "segregation by health" line, by the way..

Rep. Camp wants to avoid the mandate, but does not give any explanation as to how they would get the broad coverage

1:30 Senator Rockefeller is up next. The problem is that health care should not be for-profit -- they're more concerned with the bottom line than with providing a public service. A public option would therefore help keep prices fair in the system, but that's not going to happen. And states clearly aren't controlling for that themselves. So we should assure by law that the medical loss ratio (the percentage of premiums that actually go to care) is always between 80 and 85 percent, and the HHS should get rate review.

Marsha Blackburn sticks with talking points. We need to start with a blank sheet of paper, and put in things like shopping for insurance across state lines -- which of course is in the current bill.

Obama defends the mandate again -- everyone gets cheaper insurance if they're in one big pool. If we don't do that, we get cost shifting. And the insured are already subsidizing the health care of the uninsured, and the mandate fixes that too.

1:45 Vice President Biden leads off the third major subject, on how the bill affects the deficit. Again, on message -- puts out a list of points of agreement. Costs are doubling every ten years, there is tons of waste, and we're already paying a heavy tax burden for the current system in covering the uninsured -- 35 cents out of every dollar. The Republican plan cuts the projected deficit by 300 billion dollars over the next 20 years; the current Senate bill cuts it by 2 trillion. (We win.) And, again, the "cuts" in Medicare are savings from cutting waste, not cutting services. Exhibit A: Medicaid Advantage. We assumed that private insurance would manage costs better than public insurance, so we subsidized private insurance entering the program. Except it turned out that they managed costs *worse*, not better. And now we want to end that program and bring that back to the public sector, and Republicans are calling that a "cut" -- though no services are being taken away. Republicans are the ones making Medicaid suffocate the country in debt.

1:53 Representative Ryan is back. Says the president promised not to raise the deficit in the campaign -- come on, that was before the economic collapse. Even so -- the CBO says it doesn't raise the deficit, and Ryan says it does. It's ten years of cuts for six years of funding on the bill, he says -- "smoke and mirrors." (No, Representative -- the CBO also gave estimates for 20 years out -- and the savings just get bigger.) Says he doesn't want this stuff decided by the government -- he wants it by the people. Wow. If the government isn't the people, what is? Does he really think insurance corporations setting their own rules is better -- that somehow they represent the people better than the government does? And doesn't that directly contradict the corporate profit motive? Good partisan soundbite, I guess, but it doesn't make any sense. (Keep in mind that this is the guy that wants to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid altogether.)

2:00 The president again points to Medicaid Advantage -- an $18 billion program that experts agree doesn't actually make anyone healthier. Privatization doesn't work. Wants to spend that money on closing the donut hole.

McCain again starts talking process -- he's really committed to making this a partisan points war. Obama shuts him down by saying he agrees. Touche! That's really the only right answer right now: yes, those concessions were bad ideas, and that's why we took them out. Acknowledge, transition, and then back to the message. That's some Damage Control 101 for you there.

Representative Becerra up next -- he asks Rep. Ryan if he believes that the (nonpartisan) CBO is a legitimate source for these numbers, seeing as he was saying that they were inaccurate now but he'd been perfectly willing to use CBO numbers in the past. Wow -- major fail on Ryan's part. Believes the CBO, but not "the reality of their numbers." That's like saying that I'm a big fan of Republicans -- I just think all their policies stink.

2:09 Senator Grassley is coming across as a little senile. Says that 75% of Medicaid Advantage dollars go to benefits and 25% to the government. The President says that's not really possible, because it's a private subsidy -- at least *some* of that percentage by definition goes to insurance companies. Then Grassley rambles about the CBO counting dollars twice (trust me, Senator, they know what they're doing better than you do), about the individual mandate being unconstitutional, and how we can't cut Medicaid Advantage. The president basically calls him on being chicken -- everyone across the spectrum agrees it's not helping anyone and it's expensive. If we can't get rid of any entitlements, ever, we're in really big trouble.

Senator Conrad is down with fixing Medicare. Says half the costs of Medicare are taken up by 5% of the people on it.

John Boehner is almost painfully predictable. It's like he didn't hear -- or didn't want to hear -- anything about keeping this related to substance. Government takeover this, we're funding abortion that. He's a fact-checker's dream. Obama basically laughs at him for being so transparently partisan -- his facts are false, the CBO says so, and he should stick to substance and not bomb-throwing.

2:40 Representative Cooper wails on Republicans a little. Republicans talk tough, but they don't act. They shot down the bill for a bipartisan fiscal commission that would force them to reduce the deficit. And they want to punt on Medicare, which everyone agrees needs to be fixed now. Medicare Advantage added $8 trillion to the debt. Quit talking and act.

Jeez, is McCain consistent or what? He and Boehner win the Partisan Hack crown. Gets up and talks about starting from scratch, medical malpractice, and how reconciliation is apparently the new "nuclear option."

The president notes that most Americans don't *care* about process junk like reconciliation -- dead true -- and that a majority vote makes intrinsic sense to them. And he'd be willing to look at tort reform -- but he smacks McCain and Boehner down for making that the cornerstone of their "savings" when that won't come even close to covering the costs of their plan. Then he turns the tables on all the reconciliation talk -- hey, none of it would be necessary if they wouldn't abuse the filibuster by applying it to everything that goes through the Senate. Hey, Republicans -- we won't go through reconciliation if you don't filibuster! Even stevens! I bet I know who wins that one.

Senator Durbin follows up with hard numbers on tort reform -- it would cover only 1/5 of 1% of the ten-year cost, and decrease accountability in the system and lead to more deaths. Also knocks down McCain's ideas of it being some rampant problem by noting that cases and awards have both actually gone down by half in the past ten years. And when Boehner talked about this all ruining "the best health care in the world" -- right now only people like us Congressmen get the best health care; the rest can't afford it. It should be available to all Americans.

I hope all this tort reform stuff ends up in a sound bite somewhere -- it destroys both the argument for it and any remaining shred of legitimacy the Republican "plan" had.

2:50 Now to expanding coverage. Obama noted that Boehner's plan covered 3 million additional people, and his covered 30 million. So are we going to agree that we do need to cover more Americans? And if we're going to do that, we're going to have to pay for it.

Thank you, Representative Barrasso, for representing the loony right wing of the Republican Party. Barrasso apparently only wants catastrophic coverage available to people. We have a name for those people -- the underinsured. Obama asks if he would support a plan cutting all Congress' benefits and only providing them catastrophic coverage, and he says yes. Let's start with his! After all, Republicans prefer a slow, piecemeal approach to things... Oh, and apparently the premier of Newfoundland came here to get heart surgery. Obama points out that premiers who can afford their own care aren't the guys he's trying to help.

Senator Waxman then asks if he also supports cutting all Medicare benefits except for catastrophic coverage. ZING! There's yet another one for the sound bites -- put that in an ad and see how fast senior citizens abdicate the Republican Party that wants to cut their Medicare.

3:09 Representative Roskam is back on message: "entitlement expansion" and starting from scratch. Obama gets back to the question: do Republicans support covering more people? Better to do it through the exchange than through Medicaid, he says.

Dodd then points out that expanding coverage is a fiscal concern too -- stuff like cutting costs and the plan's hit on the deficit requires that we include as many people as possible.

Representative Joe Barton makes up some numbers in talking about the same point of having to start all over. But he still wants tort reform and competition across state lines -- but no mandates, without which competition across state lines doesn't work. Clearly he wasn't listening when we hashed this out half an hour ago.

Representative Wyden says that the only real divide is that Democrats want comprehensive reform and Republicans want incremental reform, but studies show that incremental reform only ends up costing more in the long run. McConnell mentions that Americans don't support this bill. Obama counters that they don't know what's in it, and they actually majority support many measures within it. (True.) Senator Coburn talks about connecting purchase and payment, to give people reasons to buy better insurance. (Wonky!) Representative Charlie Rangel doesn't think Americans care about reconciliation; they don't get the 60-vote requirement, and a majority vote makes sense to them; and he doesn't think they care about the size of the bill either, as long as it works.

Representative Dingell says that purchasing insurance across state borders without mandated minimums for coverage would cause a "race to the bottom" of providing low-quality health insurance services. He also thinks that the Senate shouldn't be so "fussy" about helping Americans through a 51-vote majority.

3:56 Pelosi makes a brief closing -- she wanted a public option but settled for the Republican exchange plan; hey, Sen. Coburn, we have things in the bill that deal with encouraging quality insurance; hey, Sen. Boehner, we already refuse to pay for abortions with federal dollars AND your thing about cutting Medicare for seniors is a flat-out lie.

And Obama with some final talking points: hey, Republicans, which insurance reforms in the bill should Americans *not* get? Exchanges aren't a "government takeover" -- they're market-driven, just like they should be. Purchasing across straight lines is a Republican idea, and it's already in the bill -- but it doesn't work without the consumer protections piece. Government does consumer protections all the time, and they have been very successful at it. Without them, you get the "race to the bottom," just like you got with the credit card industry.

Republicans came up with the exchange idea and were big fans of it until Obama embraced it -- they're playing just for political points. Obama tells them they should look through and find something they agree on. They should use market-based ideas, like the Democrats have; there might not be any consensus to be had on whether or not to cover 30 million more people and that bipartisan support might be hard for Republicans to come up with, though starting over is pointless because everyone agrees on what the issues are. Hopefully, the Republicans will find some common ground; otherwise, "decisions will have to be made" and elections will decide who's right in the end.

Aaaaand, over an hour over schedule, it's finally over! Let us know what you think in the comments.

2010 Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Debate

George Nassar — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:30:57 +0000

I hope you guys are watching this -- you're not going to get to see another one.

The two presumptive frontrunners for the Democratic spot in this year's governor race, Farouk Shami and former Houston mayor Bill White, are debating in Fort Worth tonight. The debate is hosted by KERA, the local public access station, and can be caught on TV, radio, and on the Texas Debates website.

My opinions after the jump.

I am restraining myself from saying that the line of the evening is Farouk Shami saying that "a day without Mexicans is like a day without sunshine in our state." Oops, there I went and did it, didn't I?

I wasn't kidding when I said you're not going to see another Democratic gubernatorial debate in this primary season. After this one, I don't think anyone will see a need -- and even if someone tried, the White campaign would probably turn it down.

The reason for this is that, of the seven (!) Democratic candidates for governor, the two that appeared on the stage were the only ones with any sort of potential for credibility. I don't say that with any disrespect for the other five candidates -- I'm reporting, not judging. There was a reason that only two were invited to this debate, and though that reason is based on KERA's judgment, there are many that would share it. Bill White clears the bar because of his many years of experience and his popularity in the largest city in the state, and Shami clears it because... well, because he can drop millions of dollars at the drop of a hat. Again, I'm reporting, not judging.

The problem with running with lots of money but no political history is that people will question your qualifications for the position. Shami, for better or worse, entered this debate with Damocles' microscope above his head with regard to knowledge of the Texas political system. He needed to walk in and knock any knowledge-based questions out of the ballpark. And by this measure, he pretty demonstrably failed. He was clearly given some messaging drilling for this debate, and stayed on message -- but it was the wrong message. He effectively turned questions to attacks on Bill White, which would normally be the Politics 101 underdog strategy, and he had a few standard campaign messages he repeated often, which would also normally be good execution out of the standard playbook. But in my estimation, the emphasis on these grossly missed the mark as to what Farouk Shami needed to get out of this debate. Promising 100,000 jobs in the next two years and no electric bills for Texans within ten years sound wonderful, but if no one believes you know how to govern in the first place, those promises end up looking pie-in-the-sky.

By comparison, Mayor White could play straight out of the playbook. He's the traditional frontrunner, and he's not burdened by the assumptions of not being ready for prime time. He recognized that his opponent was the Republican party, and he refused to engage Shami on the attacks on his record. This was clearly intentional, as his closing statement noted how the tone of the debate was very different from the Republican debate with candidates "shouting over each other" -- pretty sure that line wouldn't be in there if that hadn't been the plan. He has always had a talent for being detailed with policy without getting overly wonky, so he could simply walk up to the podium and do what he has done for years knowing that his typical approach to these things would also have the convenient side effect of highlighting Shami's lack of detail on any questions on specific subject matters. Shami was able to present the details on various plans he had presented previously in his press releases, but when asked questions requiring detail as to substance or implementation, he very obviously would redirect back to a broader talking point. Bill White just as obviously was able to address them head-on.

So when the dust settles, it is clear that Bill White won this debate -- but it can equally be said that Farouk Shami lost the debate.

Second 2010 Republican Gubernatorial Debate Liveblog

George Nassar — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:14:36 +0000

Two debates for Republican gubernatorial candidates in one month -- and Debra Medina in both of them? Who would've guessed that two months ago?

Well, as much as the upstart candidate must be loving the earned media, Democrats are likely equally excited about seeing Senator Hutchison and Governor Perry trade blows again this evening. So we'll be liveblogging tonight's debate here, starting shortly before the debate time of 7pm. Come join us after the "read more" jump!

6:53pm Was that Rick Perry telling Debra Medina that "prayer works" as the feed comes back on? ...nah. Must've been the moderators he was talking to. But my way is *much* funnier.

Hey -- turns out that BOR is liveblogging this one too. Link over here.

Ooh, and so is the Texas Tribune! Here.

6:57 Somebody needs to tell the WFAA guys when their Internet live stream is going. Fascinating little interchange there now between the Governor and who I'm guessing must be a WFAA staffer about the Buckeyes. And apparently two of the candidates are wearing blue... amazing what you can find out by listening in before the debate!

6:59 And finally we have the "professional" feed from WFAA. Little blurb on the three candidates and what they're here for. In case you're wondering, it's KBH and Medina wearing blue. Perry's in a dark suit. Not that anyone cares. No studio audience, so they go straight into the first question.

Perry: was the Trans Texas Corridor a mistake? No, of course not. Perry makes no mistakes. The backpedaling on the TTC was TOTALLY intentional. --huh. He gave a weak answer, addressing the need for transportation generally but not the TTC, and yet there was no followup. This might be setting the tone for the debate.

7:02 KBH given an equal softball on concealed carry vs. security in the Capitol, referring to the recent shots fired near the building. Shorter KBH: I love concealed carry. And I don't want metal detectors in the Capitol. I'm a conservative. Have been all along. Really!

Medina gets the only semi-real question, about calling Guv a "frat boy" and about the tone of the discussion. She avoids addressing what she said, and says her campaign is addressing real issues she hopes no one avoids.

Introductions and rules -- oh, apparently they *will* make candidates answer the questions they're asked. I wonder when they'll start on that.

7:06 Wayne Slater asks everyone that, well, TxDOT needs $332 million. We need more revenue. How do we get it: Fuel tax, debt, or toll roads? Gotta support one! KBH rejects the premise, saying we don't know how much they're misspending, and that there would never be a new tax without an "election of the people." Huh? Statewide referendums on taxes? Medina does the same, saying we can't trust their numbers. Funds should not go to the Fed; we should be able to opt out of the federal gas tax and use all those funds ourselves.

Perry plays the process card, telling KBH that the Lege already audits TxDOT, and if she doesn't like the job they're doing, she needs to say that. "I cut spending." KBH, in a rebuttal, defends her work in Congress saying that Texas is getting all of its gas tax back for local transportation.

7:10 Would you require all employers to use the E-Verify system to assure that they're hiring legally? Medina is against it, because it's a federal program and we can apparently do better. (How are we doing so far?) Perry also says that the federal government is the problem. They haven't secured the border, he says, so apparently that makes E-Verify a bad idea. Hutchison is the only one that sticks up for E-Verify, saying that it's the best system we have to assure legality.

Medina, in rebuttal: "We have a system to verify legality in Texas. We use I-9 forms. All business owners know that." Yeah, except that the I-9 is a federal form. Oops!

7:13How would you balance the state budget now that we have a shortfall? Perry answers first -- probably didn't want to do that. He basically says we'd stick with what we have -- work with the institutions and officials we have now (cites Todd Staples) to shrink the budget.

KBH jumps on that -- unnecessary spending for failed jobs programs that Perry's pushed (the Enterprise Fund), etc.

Medina: "unfortunate that the Governor isn't taking his own fiscal advice." Comptroller's notes apparently say that we've seen a 13% increase in spending in the executive branch. Nice gotcha! Must eliminate property taxes in Texas and introduce a sales tax. It's a shame neither of the other two will call her on how crazy that idea is and how bad the numbers she uses are -- too process-heavy.

Perry gets the rebuttal, and goes to defend the Enterprise Fund by basically citing different numbers. Fact-checkers on that as we speak, I'm sure.

7:18 One-on-ones: apparently more in-depth questions. First up: KBH asked about the abortion question. She *must* have prepped for this, right? Wayne Slater asks for a yes or no. She says, "no in this sense..." and goes to explain. Senator, you needed to make that a "no." You can then follow that with a "here's why." Boo on whoever does your debate prep.

She does a poor job of explaining *again*, to boot. She says what she said in the last debate, which is that she is pro-life, but is afraid that shooting down Roe v. Wade. would create abortion sanctuaries. Wayne follows up with the predictable question: so you're saying that there would be *more* abortions if we rescinded Roe v. Wade? That's where she really flops. Could've gone the states' rights path with that, said that "well, now we can prohibit it outright in Texas," but she tried to defend the general premise.

Question 2: You're against the Democrats' "big spending" health care plan, but you've been for Republican big spending in the past. Man, there is no good answer for that one. These guys just worked up gotcha questions. Should be interesting to see what the other candidates' questions are. She sticks with bashing the Democratic health care plan -- with the audience they have, that's probably the smartest move she's made tonight.

And the third is regarding her resigning from the Senate. She again confirmed that she would. Doesn't that jeopardize the seat? "There is not a scintilla of a chance that a Democrat will be elected to the Senate." Cites the Massachusetts special election, of course.

7:26 Medina first gets asked about her speaking appearances regarding secession. She says that she was actually supporting nullification. (Which pretty much every constitutional scholar in existence has said is unquestionably unconstitutional.)

Next question: you're all for personal liberties. What about gay marriage? Well, the state has voted against it, and that was a decision of the people. Funny -- the federal government is government, but the state government is the people? What if the state voted to rescind your concealed carry license? How would you feel about your personal liberties then? The point is, if you have a right to your personal liberties, they're protected *despite* the will of the majority.

Not that any conservatives listening will get that point. From that point of view, it was a pretty good answer.

Lastly, she gets pushed on the idea of a state sales tax replacing the property tax. Wow, does she run away from addressing details on that. She says the sales tax replacement would be between 6 and 14 cents. Um, it's at 6 and change now.

7:30 Perry's one-on-one next. Illegal immigration and in-state tuition first, regarding a bill allowing illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition after promising to apply for legal residency. He says that is being enforced, "is his understanding," by the TEA. Uh huh. Fact checkers, again, will have a field day.

Second, trying to mandate the HPV vaccine to much Republican opposition: was it a mistake? No -- I considered it a pro-life issue.

Third: will you serve all four years if you get another term? If I live that long. That was kind of dark! I thought he was trying to cast himself as the strapping, virile type. Either that or he's paying *way* too much for his hairdos.

7:36 A Jeopardy section? Really? Outside of Rick Perry not knowing the Texas employment numbers in 2009 (wow! How'd the preppers miss that one?), nobody embarrassed themselves completely with any of those (frankly silly) questions, because the only difficult ones were way too obscure for the average Texan to care about.

7:40 KBH gets asked a viewer question about illegal immigration, and what she'd do about it. Get DPS to help the border patrol, apparently.

Medina shoots down a corporate income tax to get some revenue from the folks that have benefited so much from tax breaks. "All taxes are a drag on the economy." Well, at least she's consistent. And as Texas is clearly OK with running broke anyway... what's money good for anyway? Besides schools, roads, police and fire departments...

Perry rambles about teachers getting shorted on Social Security benefits -- it's a "debacle," and yet both of them want less money to go to the federal government. Way to dodge answering how to solve the debacle!

7:43 Wayne calls the Enterprise Fund one with a "checkered past" and asks why so much was spent on A&M. Well, he answered it the best way possible. Rejects the premise -- cites the positives of the plan, defends the recent restructuring of contracts under the Fund that were beneficial to businesses and footed by Texas taxpayers.

KBH gets asked about TxDOT, cites percentages about their wastes of money, and then quickly proceeds to get back on Perry and attacking the Enterprise Fund. Also the right approach, really. As much as I would've loved to hear a good TxDOT answer (and as much as I know that no one on stage has one), it would've been too process-heavy an answer anyway.

And besides, the more mud slung, the better, right?

Medina again gets to defend her stance on taxes. Did she pay these guys off or something? Her -- I'm going to go out on a limb and call it her "base" -- is eating this stuff up. And some of her base comes naturally from Perry's base...

7:50 Lost an update there. I'll try to catch up. More one-on-one questions: Perry on the TTC and turning free lanes into toll lanes -- Perry notes that that died when the legislature prohibited it, in a bill he signed. Wayne Slater tries to ask why that wasn't his original stance, but he bobbles the question and Perry takes the opportunity to drown him in process.

KBH also asked about the TTC, and she tries to take a little of Medina's thunder -- toll roads are against the spirit of Texas, apparently. Why not? It's a safe tack, and it lets her cast Perry as an insider. Ooh, nice touch -- she's taking credit for the federal amendment prohibiting the tolling of federal highways, and notes that the biggest lobbyist against that amendment was TxDOT. Indirect Perry slam!

Closing arguments. Perry's is pretty old news by now: Texas is doing great! We're number 1 in lots of cool things! KBH -- huh. She seems like she's trying to shift her message to specifically play with the Medina-style conservatives. I don't know if moving away from the simplicity of her original message to try to blend that with the populist schtick is wise, but it is interesting. Medina did stick with her original message as well -- fortunately for her, since she's new at this, it's not old yet. Power to the people and all that jazz. "The only endorsement I'm interested in is yours."

And that's a wrap! Analysis up next.

Democratic Gubernatorial Primary Debate To Be Held Feb. 8

George Nassar — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:07:19 +0000

KERA, the Dallas-area public broadcasting television station, has announced that it will hold a debate between the two frontrunners for the Democratic nomination for governor, Houston mayor Bill White and hair care magnate Farouk Shami on Monday, February 8 at pm.

The debate will occur at KERA's studio in Dallas and will be broadcast on the Internet as well as on TV and radio. We'll keep you posted with more details as the event gets closer.

2010 Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Debate Analysis: KBH Wins, Thanks to Medina

George Nassar — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:36:06 +0000

Looking for coverage of the second debate, held January 29? Go to this link.

I think my first reaction to tonight's debate was that if this is what we have to look forward to in the Republican primary, political fact-checkers are on the gravy train. There was so much unsubstantiated he said/she said in this debate that there will likely be a feeding frenzy over parsing the "facts" the candidates were throwing out.

That being said, I'm going to have to give the win in the debate to Senator Hutchison. I'll tell you why in a second -- but first I have to say that I *want* to give the win to Debra Medina.

Who's Debra Medina, you ask? Well, she's the third candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary, a registered nurse, a prior chair of the Wharton County Republican Party -- and the fact that you have to ask is why she deserves a mention. She wins the debate solely by getting to show up, and wins again by not going off the deep end. She has now basically earned credibility (and likely lots and lots of money) by getting to stand toe-to-toe with the two "real" candidates and coming out with the least dirt on her.

The only reason she doesn't come out as the outright winner is that, frankly, she's a pawn. I have trouble believing that she can establish a statewide organization that can rival the two longstanding juggernauts of Texas Republican politics. The only thing Medina adds to the Republican primary is the ability to be used by one of the candidates as a foil to the other.

And Hutchison gets the W tonight, partially because she came in ready and able to use Medina to her advantage in beating up Perry's conservative credentials, and partially because she attacked more, got weak answers to her attacks, and had a couple of decent saves to attacks against her.

I noted throughout my debate liveblog that Rick Perry's answers came across as out of touch -- that his insistence on channeling his cheerleading roots in talking about Texas' strong economic position when the facts indicate that unemployment is up, record numbers of Texans are uninsured, and people are generally hurting and looking for solutions makes him look like he has a tin ear for the problems we need to solve. KBH, as a challenger, gets to pin the blame squarely on Perry while advertising party-line solutions to the problems. She's the "safe change" candidate.

Perry's regular campaign message that Hutchison is a Washington elite without his Texas bona fides was blunted by his having to spend most of his time defending from the combined Hutchison/Medina onslaught and therefore not being able to aggressively follow up on attacks on Hutchison. Perry's attempted shot at her asking what specific departments she would consolidate to cut the budget backfired when she was able to offer detail on the subject -- what should've been a big plus for Perry as a "gotcha" moment instead became a small win for Hutchison, who got to look knowledgeable about state issues. Perry's attack on Hutchison's bailout vote similarly backfired when the letter he wrote was brought up, and the following "yes you did/no I didn't" bickering basically made it a small ding to the performance of both -- essentially a wash between these two candidates. The same thing goes for his claim that she voted for sanctuary cities; she flatly denied it, and that quickly came to the same impasse.

By contrast, KBH's attacks were better justified, more poorly defended against by Perry, and stayed on message questioning Perry's conservative credentials. Perry basically had one line of defense against most of the attacks he saw tonight: that Texas did well under his tenure, is doing well now, and that others are trying to malign one of the strongest states in the nation. The problem with that is that no one believes it. Not only did Medina and Hutchison question his numbers and contradict the claims he made about his policies, but even the moderators gave him grief over his factual inaccuracies and misrepresentations of the numbers. If he is seriously going to try to stick to that message, he's going to need a much stronger set of facts and figures to base it on -- and it was clear that he did not come into this debate prepared with those. By contrast, Hutchison had clearly prepared and much more credible answers for the attacks she knew she'd see. I find it hard to believe that a politician as savvy as Perry would've been blindsided by the frankly predictable attacks he saw tonight, so I can only wonder at how he could've walked into this situation. Is the Perry political bubble so impermeable to the real world that he really thinks that Texans will ignore unemployment numbers, as well as their own personal plights and those of their friends and neighbors, and blindly believe that we live in the best of possible worlds? I wouldn't have thought that someone could have come so far being that out of touch, but frankly, I don't know what else to think.

So Senator Hutchison walks away with a pretty clear win tonight, with a powerful assist by Debra Medina, who now becomes the credible third option in this race in the eyes of everyone watching tonight. And Democrats, of course, walk away from the debate happy -- the incumbent got pounded, the dark horse got a huge boost in credibility, and enough slime got thrown around to make us look forward to the rest of the Republican primary race.

2010 Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Debate Liveblog

George Nassar — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:39:38 +0000

Looking for coverage of the second debate, held January 29? Go to this link.

No, they're not Democrats. But I'm sure I'm not the only one interested in what the three Republican candidates for Governor have to say about the state of the state and how they plan to get us out of the mess they got us into. Besides, the Tea Partiers are represented — how could this not be fun?

The debate will start at 7pm CST, and we'll be following along with the action here. Feel free to join us with comments or send me an email at editor@thetexasblue.com, and I'll throw your ideas into the fray.

EDIT: You can now also get my analysis of and opinion on the outcome of the debate at that link.

7:00pm The live feed has just come up. I was a bit concerned, as they were advertising a 6:55pm start time, so I figured I'd point you guys to the Perry TV ad released literally minutes before the start of this debate. I just heard about it, and haven't seen it yet. Anybody know if there are any good KBH swipes in there? Comment or email and let me know.

Apparently the debate is funded by Lockheed-Martin and the AARP. The latter is on record as supporting health care reform, so I'm curious to hear what we'll be hearing about that tonight.

KERA News Director Shelley Kofler will be moderating. The candidates are sitting governor Rick Perry and senior senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, plus Debra Medina, who is apparently a registered nurse and ex-chair of the Wharton County Republican Party, as well as that she took the Texas Republican Party to court. Maybe a little bit of a thin resume compared to the other candidates. 1-minute answers, with unspecified followups as decided by the moderator, plus the chance to ask each opponent a question.

First question: All of you have been critical of the federal government, and Perry and Medina have both said they understand why people would want to secede. Explain, and give your favorite federal program.

Perry starts: his favorite federal program is the United States military. Three things the government should do well: deliver our mail, maintain the military, and protect our borders. "I guess one out of three ain't bad." So he has a beef with the Post Office?

Gets asked about nullification too, which has come up with regard to healthcare. It's basically us saying we won't follow a federal program. He dodges with asking KBH to stop healthcare and such programs before they get passed. Gets asked the question again more directly, and dodges again. Asked about the hypocrisy of using federal funds while talking bad about the government, he says we send plenty of money to the federal government in the way of gas taxes and income tax, and when it comes back to us without strings attached, he'd be happy to take it.

7:08 Same question to KBH; she also likes the military, and uses a little of the time to say that yes, she's fighting against the "government encroachment" and "tax increases" that Perry tried to imply she wasn't on. Called Perry on BS for getting transportation money back from the federal government -- Perry said we got 70% back; KBH says she fought to get that up to 92% and currently has a bill to opt out of giving that money to the federal government altogether. "For him to say 70 is absolutely wrong, and I think he knows it." Ouch!

As far as eliminating specific government programs, she didn't dodge like Perry did -- she says she'd eliminate the support of ACORN. Of course, that's not a federal program, so that'd be hard to nullify.

Debra Medina starts her answer with thanking Texans for allowing a "regular Texan" to sit with a governor and a senator. Subtext: I'm not part of the political elite. I'm one of you. Not bad for a rookie. Says they all like military, but for them to claim they've supported them is weak when we've done such a disservice to our veterans. She doesn't like the federal health care changes, but thinks the EPA should be a "close second" on the list of federal programs to opt out of.

7:12 A Facebook question asking about the state of unemployment in Texas. Debra Medina give the standard fiscal-conservative answer: get the federal government out of our hair, get the EPA out of our hair, and we create more wealth and jobs. You'd think we'd be done with that sort of short-term thinking from conservatives by now, but then again, you wouldn't expect different from Ms. Medina either.

Perry doesn't feel like answering this question either -- he rejects the premise. "Texas is the number 3 place in America for small business." Created "100,000 jobs." The moderator notes that we may have created those, but we lost more than that over that period. Perry says no, that's not the case, and then uses '07-'08 numbers. The moderator and all other candidates call him on it. He does make a good point that no other state in the nation was creating jobs in '09 either, but it comes across as a tin ear — look, Rick, I get that you think that Texas is sitting pretty as far as the unemployment situation goes, but you're the only one. You might want to quit talking like the problem doesn't exist.

KBH follows up to nail him on job losses, and to strike from the right by blaming the problem on increases in taxes due to governmental mismanagement. The moderator asks that she stick to talking about what she wants to do to fix the problem, not what Perry did wrong. Ouch again. Quick answer is effectively "cut taxes."

Debra Medina criticizes the growth of government, I think? She notes that we lost 14,000 jobs in the private sector and gained 156,000 in government. The question was what are we doing about unemployment, right? Is employing more Texans supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?

Perry asks for the right to reply -- says he's cut taxes more than any other governor in America. KBH says that he also presided over the largest tax increase on business in America -- specifically, the business margins tax. Perry says he was responding to how businesses wanted the tax structure to be. Process answer -- that'll also fall on deaf ears. You can't govern over the biggest tax increase and say you're cutting taxes. KBH is doing pretty well here.

7:21 Abortion, next. KBH gives the right-wing version of her abortion stance -- she thinks it should be much rarer, she doesn't like partial-birth abortions, she doesn't want abortion havens. She tries to defend the overturn of Roe v. Wade from the right because of the creation of abortion havens and allowing partial-birth abortions. So she's saying it shouldn't be overturned because federal restrictions should be strengthened. I guess she'd *have* to defend this from the right, but I don't know how many people would buy the argument. Probably the best she can do, but still even the fact that the question of her adherence to the Republican party line had to come up is a strike for her.

Debra Medina gets asked about being against gun registration or any gun restrictions at all in the light of the many gun-related tragedies, most recently at Fort Hood. She says that gun registration has historically been used for only one thing -- taking them away. I'm sure the gun-owning citizens of states that already require gun registration would disagree. She is then asked if she still stands by her statement that private citizens should be "as well or better" armed than the government, and she cites the Second Amendment in saying they should. While we're at it, I'm sure we can give private citizens the responsibility for enforcing law, since they'll be the only ones able to do it. Vigilantism, anyone? On the bright side, she says doesn't take her concealed handgun into grocery stores. Makes me feel a little safer, at least.

Perry gets asked a question on eminent domain and landowners feeling like they lost their shirts over these things. Perry tries to level the tort reform argument on this -- the state is strong because people know they can come here and not be frivolously sued. Ideological purity, but no relief to those that lost their shirts. Ideology can't trump losing your home. Again with the tin ear. Who prepped this guy, anyway?

7:30 Now for candidates asking each other questions. Perry asks KBH about consistency -- she said in late '07 that she wouldn't vote for the bank bailout, then she voted for it, then said it was probably a bad vote, and then voted for the auto bailout too.

KBH's answer: when Bush came to Sen. Cornyn and me when people couldn't get loans for their businesses that we help him shore up our financial institutions -- he hated to do it, but it needed to be done. And she never said she wouldn't vote for it -- she said she wouldn't give $700 billion to anyone, and she didn't -- she voted against distributing the second half. And then she calls him for being for it before he was against it -- he wrote a letter to the federal government in support of the bailout and the Republican Governor's Association backed him. Some he said/she said on what the letter actually said -- Perry says that's not what it said, of course. Wish I had time to look up the letter. Anybody want to do that?

7:34 Debra Medina then gets to ask Perry a question, and called him "a Democrat before he was a Republican" for managing Gore's campaign (?), and Perry tries to defend his Republican bona fides of tax cuts and whatnot over the past few years. Debra Medina follows up by citing a source I missed (anyone?) that Texas' debt has tripled in Perry's Tenure. KBH gangs up by telling Debra Medina that in meetings KBH has attended, she says that Perry says that he's cut property taxes by 1/3 and then asks who has had their property taxes drop, and no one raises their hand, and what is her experience in the meetings she's seen? Red meat for the base -- they're both happy to beat on Perry for failed policies.

A softball on the Advanced Directives Act which allows health care facilities to pull the plug on patients when it's considered medically futile. Debra Medina gives the only interesting answer -- same as everyone else's, except she lays the blame at Perry's feet for being all talk about pro-life issues. The moderator notes that this passed while Perry was Lite Guv, and asks if he was against it then -- he doesn't recall.

Another softball on constitutional interpretation and states' rights -- just an excuse to talk bad about the federal government, and that's basically what KBH does -- feds shouldn't encroach on states' rights.

KBH's turn for a question, to Perry -- you say you're a fiscal conservative, but you've raised business taxes by 80%. Perry: "it's hard to recognize the truth when you've been in Washington for 16 years." Ouch! He's cut business taxes; we have the second lowest tax burden on businesses in America. That's why business comes to Texas. Governor -- *no one will believe you*. When you turn a deaf ear to state unemployment, no one will think you're telling the truth about bringing business to Texas -- if they're all here, why can't we get jobs? KBH says basically that -- that Perry's raising the burden on businesses and calling it a tax cut, and that keeping that up is a poor tactic for someone who's "been in the seat for 10 years and asking to make it 14."

Perry gets to ask his second question, and asks one to KBH again instead of Medina: will you resign the Senate? KBH answers anyway, and says yes. He then asks Medina her question -- I missed that. Anyone want to fill me in?

7:47 Debra Medina gets asked what she calls "the toughest question of the night," about tax structuring in Texas. She defends using a sales tax as a primary source of funding, that exemptions on food and drugs like we have now makes it the least regressive of any option (which is patently false, even if we exempted all food, which we don't), and says we shouldn't have property taxes.

KBH gives her business bona fides before talking about cutting taxes across the board and consolidating state agencies and scrubbing our expenses, which we haven't done in the past 10 years (hint!). Perry calls her on what agencies we should merge -- turns out she has details, or at least enough detail to look competent and knowledgeable on the issue for the brief remaining time she had to answer.

Perry uses his time to hit KBH on criticizing people that have been "in the trenches" in Texas and have already cut the budget while she's raised the deficit ceiling in the Fed nine times. KBH gets to respond, of course, and says that he's doing the same by attacking those trying to prevent the health care takeover, etc. Please keep this up, guys. We're loving it!

7:53 Question on border security -- Perry again attacks KBH with his time, saying she voted for sanctuary cities -- which she directly calls false. He said/she said. Debra Medina takes the opportunity to nail both of them on politicians not doing enough.

7:54 Closing statements. Debra Medina, oddly, *doesn't* attack her opponents on it, and spends the majority of the time on campaign stumps: strengthening Texas' sovereignty, protecting the border, etc.

Perry thanks everybody for the opportunity, and "reminds" everyone that the reason we have the freedom to do this is -- you can see where this is going already, it's the standard segue -- because of our men and women in uniform. You know, I always wonder if some of our heroes in uniform feel a little pandered to when their service is referred to on every possible occasion, no matter how related to the Armed Forces. Maybe that's just me -- I think the folks willing to die for our country deserve better than being reduced to a standard Republican soundbite. The rest of the closing argument is conservative bona fides. I'm sure he feels he needs them, after the clobbering he got.

KBH is the only one that uses some of her time to attack Perry, for not being conservative enough. Nothing too surprising outside of that.

Candidate Musical Chairs

George Nassar — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:57:28 +0000

You know, if there's anything I've learned from watching Texas politics for the last couple of decades, it's that how the field looks before filing starts doesn't tend to have much in common with how it looks by the end of the filing period. So I tend to save prognostications for after some of the inevitable mayhem has hit the fan.

And now some of it has. Ross Ramsey, of Texas Weekly fame and now with the Texas Tribune, is reporting that gubernatorial candidate Tom Schieffer will be dropping out of the race this afternoon and endorsing Bill White.

But, you ask, isn't Bill White running for Kay Bailey Hutchison's Senate seat, which will be open any day now as soon as she resigns to run for governor? Didn't he just confirm that a couple of days ago, in fact?

Well, it turns out the same folks that were giving me "yeah, right" looks a year ago when I was saying that KBH either enters the race knowing that she'll have support of the Texas Republican Party (read: Rick Perry bows out after a smoky-back-room discussion) or doesn't run at all are now starting to second-guess the assumption that she is in and in to win. Don't get me wrong — I would love for Hutchison to honestly run against Perry in the Republican primary; even with Hutchison barely making any effort in the race against Perry so far, the vitriol each camp has thrown the other has been newsworthy. But I've always thought Senator Hutchison was, sadly, too smart to get into a rough-and-tumble with the other most powerful Republican in the state, and that has effectively turned out to be true with her declaration that she won't resign her Senate seat until after the March primaries — therefore effectively giving up on the gubernatorial primary altogether while getting out of saying she flip-flopped on running on a technicality.

So it can't be too surprising that Mayor White would want to compete in the race that will actually occur, instead of the one that won't. Unless, of course, Senator Hutchison wins the Republican gubernatorial primary while sitting in the Senate and having her public agenda tied up with health care and credit reform legislation, and likely not making any real effort to get a leg up on Perry by attacking him like she had been the past few months — and if you think that'll happen, I've got some Florida swampland to sell you.

The only real question now is, who wins the Democratic gubernatorial primary? Do we get some Lite Guv candidates falling out of this? Or do we go to the voting booth with the current 4- or 5-deep field for the nomination in front of us?

What, do I look like the type to prognosticate this early? One thing you can be sure of, though — the field at primary time will look little like the field looks now. Expect changes, and soon.

Voting Guides: 2009 Constitutional Amendment Election

George Nassar — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:43:14 +0000

OK, OK. We know. It's an off-year election. You forgot to vote early. That's OK -- you can redeem yourself today. (Don't worry too much about voting on election day instead of early; the lines will probably be embarrassingly short anyway.)

What? You don't know what the issues on the ballot are, either? No worries: we've got you covered.

In a hurry? Looking for the Cliffs Notes version of where to go for info? Skip to the second-to-last paragraph. And then go vote!

Let's start with the obvious -- you can go to the Secretary of State's website and see the ballot language and a brief synopsis of the amendments, but unless you're up on the subjects themselves this is liable to be more confusing than anything. Good for knowing what specifically you'll read on the ballot, but perhaps not that much more.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have the Texas Legislative Council's report on the amendments (PDF). Great if you like reading the full text of the amendments themselves instead of overly sanitized ballot language, but the explanations are -- well, exhaustive is the nice way to put it. If you're looking to get a good idea in the span of a day, though, exhaustive will probably not be the word that comes to mind.

For a more manageable, yet still thorough, look at the amendments from both sides, you could try the House Research Organization's document. Most of the meat, little of the filler.

Of course, all these documents so far come from our state government -- which you may see as a good or a bad thing. If you'd prefer a third-party opinion that still offers both sides, the League of Women Voters has done the regular excellent job they do coming up with a brief and intelligible review of the amendments that hits all the important talking points for each side. If you're in a hurry and want something to print out and read in your spare time, this eight-pager is the way to go. (If you know your way around a voting booth, you could just print the first seven and save some paper.)

And finally, if you're in a big hurry (which, if you're reading this, is a very real possibility), state representative and Democratic rock star Scott Hochberg has once again put up his analysis of the amendments. They're brief, pithy, and have hyperlinks to the full text of the amendment as well as the HRO report's analysis if you decide you want more detail on a particular topic.

And I'd like to give special thanks to Houston mayor Bill White, who gave us his take in support of Propositions 4 and 8.

In Favor of Prop 4 and Prop 8

root — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:49:30 +0000

When Texans go to the polls today, they'll have the chance to vote on two propositions that could help make our state a leader in higher education and veterans' services. Proposition 4 would provide funding to enable emerging universities in Texas to develop into major research universities. Proposition 8 would forge a partnership between the state government and the federal government to bring a VA Hospital to the Valley and help boost facilities across the state.

Improving higher education is critical to our nation's future. For Americans to win in a world economy based on our skills and knowledge, we must make smart investments now. Currently Texas only has two public national academic research universities, but there are seven universities across the state that have the potential to achieve national prominence. By investing resources in higher education on the front end, Texas universities could set themselves up to lead the nation in higher education, keep more of our talented students in the state, and receive more research grants, all which promote long-term economic growth in Texas.

I talked about the importance of funding in higher education at a University of Houston Faculty Senate Meeting earlier this month. To read the full article, click here.

With Proposition 8, Texans can make sure that our military veterans receive what they deserve. Proposition 8 would give the state government authority to contribute funding to the nine in-patient veterans hospitals that serve more than 1.7 million veterans in Texas. By allowing state funds to be combined with federal funds, veterans' services and facilities could expand and improve.

Making sure that veterans receive the respect and resources they deserve is an issue that hits home for me. My father is a disabled WWII veteran who went to college on the GI Bill, and I was able to go to the college of my choice because of the American Legion. I have not forgotten those who serve our country, and as mayor, I joined other elected officials to create the Returning Veteran Initiative (RVI). This special initiative, which has been recognized by the Military Affairs Council, gives returning veterans the welcome they've earned with coordinated social services, reductions in red tape, and employment opportunities. Since its implementation in 2007, the Department of the Army has recognized the program as one of the finest in the country and Houston has been named one of the most military friendly cities to live and work.

Texas veterans deserve the best, and it takes the cooperation and resources of local, state and federal governments to make sure they get the services they deserve.

To find out where you can vote today, click here.

----
Reprinted with permission from Mayor White's senatorial campaign blog.

Top Ten Rick Perry Failures

George Nassar — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:10:22 +0000

Over the past week, the Texas Democratic Party has released a Top Ten list of the biggest blunders of Governor Rick Perry's tenure. You could go to their site to check out all ten -- or you could get the executive summary of Perry failures in their under-two-minute YouTube clip:

Coming up: Kay Bailey Hutchison isn't any better -- and the TDP releases their Top Ten on her failures this week.

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

George Nassar — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:35:55 +0000

There were those who were originally thought that Chicago's loss in its bid to be the host city for the 2016 Olympics after Obama went to speak on its behalf was indicative of Obama's international standing not being as high as was originally thought. Those concerns can now be safely put to rest.

President Barack Obama has been declared the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee today. The award announcement states that Obama received the prize particularly due to "Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons," though the body of the announcement focuses more on Obama's hairpin turnaround of US foreign policy: "Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position... Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts... His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population." It also states that, "The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"

Former Nobel laureates Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev and Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the nominee who was considered by many the front-runner for the award this year, commended the Committee's decision. But some, like Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri and Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the conservative Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami party, as well as some local conservative critics, have been critical of the choice, saying that Obama had not yet done anything of substance to merit the prize.

Even so, the response overall has been overwhelmingly positive, indicating that the international community considers the refocusing of the direction of United States foreign policy to in itself be a pivotal achievement in world politics -- particularly, one can imagine, after eight years of a foreign policy that prided itself on ignoring the best advice from the brightest minds around the world on nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction specifically as well as more broadly on the limited utility of force in resolving "difficult international conflicts."

The last United States president to receive the award was President Jimmy Carter, who received the prize in 2002 for his work leading to the Camp David Accord during his presidency as well as his work for Middle East peace in the years following. The last time a sitting United States president received a Nobel Peace Prize was in 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson received the prize for founding the League of Nations.

EDIT: Turns out Josh Micah Marshall reads our blog! (Hey, a guy can dream, right?) Seriously, the Talking Points Memo story hits upon the same point as we do: that turning around American direction on foreign policy from where it was going for the past eight years is in and of itself an accomplishment that the world sees as helping international peace and stability in a significant way.

President Obama's Health Care Speech

George Nassar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:16:05 +0000

The speech is being called by many one of the best of his career. Watch the full speech here, courtesy of MSNBC, along with our take on what it means for health care reform and for his presidency.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

There was a lot to like in Obama's speech for Democrats and a few surprises, including a letter from Ted Kennedy, a pledge to look at reducing instances of "defensive medicine" that had Republicans alternating between applause and shock, and a present from the Republican party, in the form of South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson having the chutzpah to interrupt the President's speech.

During a myth-debunking run in the President's speech, Wilson cut the president off from explaining that the bill would not provide health care for illegal immigrants with, "you lie!" This gross breach of congressional decorum was, expectedly, greeted by boos from the chamber. Of course, Obama happened to be correct in that the bill has explicit prohibitions on spending federal money on health care for illegal immigrants, and a number of Republicans interviewed afterward, including Obama's general election rival, Arizona senator John McCain, were forced to admit on television that indeed, the bill doesn't have any provision permitting that — we won't say here that Congressman Wilson was himself lying, as he accused the President of doing, and will just chalk his outburst up to Hanlon's Razor.

But the clearest message coming from the President's speech was: We will no longer suffer this foolishness. Obama gave possibly the clearest defense of the health reform bill he's given to date, putting insurance industry reforms ensuring consumer protections and the establishment of the collective bargaining "insurance exchange" front and center before giving an impassioned defense of the need of a public option to assure competition in the marketplace, and following that immediately with the debunking of the most vitriolic myths about the public option.

The letter from Ted Kennedy led into Obama's closing, which was what MSNBC's Rachel Maddow called:

...the only full, basically formal, at length defense of liberalism and defense of the idea of government for the people's good, in ideological terms.

All in all, the speech was a powerful reminder of who won the 2008 elections. There was a good deal of divisiveness coming from the Republican party over the August recess, and this speech is basically a well-defended carte blanche to Democrats to move forward without having to try to "negotiate" with those in the Republican Party who want only to kill reform altogether. Already, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus has said that he will be releasing the committee's health care bill by next week, with or without Republican support. This would finally clear the way for the proposals to be heard by Congress in full, and for a final bill to be ready by perhaps as soon as by Thanksgiving, according to Joe Biden. For one, I hope he's right — though I'd be happy to wait longer if it meant getting a public option included.

Ted Kennedy, 77, Passes Away

George Nassar — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:11:56 +0000

Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy has died of brain cancer at the age of 77.

...The torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans, so with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.

-Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy, at 2008 Democratic National Convention
1932-2009

Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

Patrick M McLeod — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:08:06 +0000

Multiple news sources are reporting that Senator Edward Kennedy, Teddy to his family and Ted to most of us, passed away early this morning after a long struggle with brain cancer. He was 77.