Republicans Poised to Lose Ground in the Texas House

According to what I am reading in the Austin American-Statesman today, the Tea Party is about to make some more inroads on the Republican Party in the 2012 elections in a year when they will suffer setbacks due to the redistricting process.

In short, what is happening in Texas, and across America, is a continued polarization of politics, as moderates get primaried, and conservative agendas get progressively more radical. This is not so much happening on the left as it is on the  right.

Barry Goldwater, today, would be a Democrat.

Hard to fathom, but facts are facts.

How does this bode for Texas? Not well. Not well at all. It will probably be the case that Texas will shift to the right even more. Like Voter ID laws? Like Mandatory sonograms? Like underfunding education? Like mediocrity and loss of public services? Welcome to Republican Paradise in Texas, USA.

In short, while Texas will become less Republican in numbers, it will become more conservative in its majority make-up.

Maybe it’s time to book passage on a steamer to New Zealand.

Or a road trip to California.

Charlie Howard Gets a 3-Way

Republican state representative Charlie “Furniture” Howard has drawn not one but two primary opponents in next year’s elections. Jacquie Chaumette, a member of the Sugar Land city council announced at the beginning of the month. And now Fort Bend ISD Trustee Sonal Bhuchar has declared her candidacy.

Now while I like the idea that two women are ganging up on Charlie Howard, a man who rues the day (actually, today is the anniversary of the day) that women were given their long-denied right to vote, I hate it that they will inevitably split the anti-Howard vote.

Charlie Howard, when he isn’t acting like furniture in the state house, is casting votes that hurts Texans. Hurts Texas schoolchildren.

News that he has two opponents must be making Howard jump for joy. He really wants to stay in office and nearly shot himself in the foot by drawing his own new district boundary in such a way as to put Chaumette’s house in the newly redrawn HD 85 by about 2 or 3 blocks. Chaumette, I was told, moved her residence to deny Howard the satisfaction of knowing that he had pulled yet another fast one.

Had Chaumette not been able to relocate, Howard would have only one opponent, Bhuchar, and she has lots of friends.

So, yes, I am not pleased that Howard has 2 opponents. Republican primary voters are arch-conservatives and like the idea of having a state rep with Neanderthal family values in office. Kicking Charlie Howard out of the state capitol building is hard enough, but this next Republican primary is bound to attract all sorts of TEA Partiers to vote for their darlings, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and who knows, maybe Sarah Palin.

Like my blog title proclaims, I am not overly optimistic.

Who Are These Demented Fools?

Well last night the Texas State House passed by a huge majority (98-49) a job-killing budget bill.

Job-killing.

Republicans referred to the Healthcare For All Act as the job-killing healthcare act and got away with it even though it has been the law of the land for one year now and there is not one solid piece of evidence that one job was lost because of it.

Not so this job-killing budget bill. Heck, this bill is such a job-killing budget bill that jobs have already been lost in anticipation of its passage. Ask the 91 employees of the Texas Education Agency who were riffed last month. Ask the hundred and some teachers at my local school district who were riffed on April Fool’s Day.

All around the state, educators are being told that they have no position in the next school year, all due to the fact that it was expected that the state house would pass this job-killing budget bill.

What can be on the minds of these demented fools? Are they purposely trying to drive Texas economy into a ditch? So Texans will blame Obama? Is that the reasoning?

If that is so, what a price we must pay. CNN, in this article published just after the LBB published its report on the job effects of passage of the House bill in its present form, reminded me that not only will 335,000 public sector jobs evaporate as a direct result of a 12% cut in spending, but this will drive the loss of yet another 263,000 private sector jobs because some businesses depend on the business school districts and nursing homes give them. A domino effect if ever there was one.

That’s just shy of 600,000 jobs lost in Texas.

Oddly enough, Rick Perry’s justification for pushing all of these cuts is, wait for it, job creation. I kid you not. Here is a quote from a Perry spokesperson:

“Gov. Perry firmly believes that government doesn't create jobs: entrepreneurs in the private sector do," said Katherine Cesinger, his press secretary. "We must remain committed to the fiscal principles that have helped us add more jobs than any other state in 2010, as well as lead the nation in job creation over the last decade.”

I’ll have to admit, Perry is correct in one very oblique way. With passage of this job-killing budget bill, state government no longer creates jobs if it ever did.

It destroys them.