In what is perhaps one of the greatest examples of political farce I have seen in quite a while, 53 Texas legislators from the Democratic party have fled the state capitol to avoid a vote that could cost their party seven congressional seats.
So let me get this right… it is okay to be a member of an elected assembly of lawmakers that passes laws compelling people to do this or that, but if you don’t like the laws being passed because it interferes with your party political agenda, well, screw democracy, just quite literally run away and prevent there being a quorum.
Okay, that works for me. Anything which bring into disrepute the elected bodies at the very heart of the system is just fine by me… I can think of few ways to de-legitimize the public face of democratically sanctified force which robs and regulates its ‘citizens’ that by having them act like petulant school children taking their ball home because they don’t like the other team’s rules. No quorum means no voting and no voting means no new laws on anything, at least for a while. Excellent.
It is pretty funny that they call themselves Democrats though, eh?
[Thanks to Shannon for the link]
Perry, some glitch is stopping me reading this post – the bar at the bottom appears after only two lines. Could you check the code, Perry?
You must have read it moments after I put it up but before I fixed the glitch a couple mins later… it should be fine now.
The same thing happened in the fall of 1789 in Penn. The issue was approving the constitution. A mob picked up and literally forced the anti-federalists into the legislative building, so they had a quorum and approved the constitution.
Just a then and now comparison.
Hold on a sec. Since when is blatant gerrymandering “democracy”?
The Dems deserve to have some sticks thrown at them, but it seems to me that the larger sin against democracy is being committed by the Republicans.
I think you miss the point of the dude’s article: he is pissing on the holy cow called democracy generally, not defending the abusive system against the abusers who abuses it (if you get what I mean).
And anyway, we all know the Democrats never stoop to gerrymandering. hahahahahaha. All the parties play the ‘redistricting’ game, there is nothing special about that form of corruption. It is endemic in the system. Just walking out however, now that is a new twist, at least for me.
It is all complete horsehockey. All of it.
Check out the link below. The Texas Department of Public Safety has issued a missing persons statement for the 53 legislators. It’s great! (why do we give these people our money?):
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/director_staff/public_information/pr051203.htm
The latest word this morning as I drove to work, was that they had gone to ground in Ardmore Oklahoma, beyond the jurisdiction of the Texas Department of Public Safety (I like that name, don’t you? Sounds like something out of the French Revolution) and the Texas Rangers. Apparently we can chase Pancho Villa into Mexico, but we can’t follow the real crooks into Oklahoma. (I know, it was the US Army and New Mexico, but I’m trying to be sarcastic).
This happened about ten years ago, again with the Texas legislature and again with the Democrats. That time they were called the ‘Killer Bees’ and they managed to hide out successfully in a hotel in Texas.
This is great! It goes to show that even politicians can do something good once in a while…
Now if we’re lucky, other politicians all over the country will follow their example and start boycotts of their own.
I’ve never been prouder to be a Texan. If the Democrats had any guts, they’d declare themselves to be Al Queda and get shipped off to Camp X Ray, where nobody could find them…..
The Republicans here in Colorado did the same a week ago. The dems stayed and took their medicine. They have resorted to the courts.
All the parties play the ‘redistricting’ game,
I don’t know for certain, but I would hazard a guess that the Dems started the political district gerrymandering with their politics of race and class in the 60s and 70s.
You’re a little off. The word “gerrymander” comes from Elbridge Gerry, the Governor of Massachusetts (he was a Jeffersonian). It was coined in 1812.
The battle is over the redistricting plan, which is pretty close to the one Republicans drew up in 2001 but which couldn’t get through the Texas Legislature. The courts stepped in and came up with their own plan, which was as close to the 1991-2001 map as possible while adding new districts in and around Dallas, Austin-San Antonio and Houston due to population growth. But the court also told the Leg to come back and try again in 2003.
Given their rout over the Democrats in the 2002 election, and the fact that the current congressional lines still give the Democrats a congressional advantage in the state, the Republicans in Austin would have redrawn a map on their own that eliminated that situation to a great extent. The problem came when Tom DeLay stepped in very vocally from Washington and pushed a plan that would have dramatically shifted about 40 percent of the Dems’ seats into Republican hands.
Would the House Dems have made a run for the border if the GOP had drawn up a slightly less severe map or if DeLay had not gotten involved? Quite possibly, but by getting so involved with telling the state legislature what to do, DeLay created a convienent boogie man for the Democrats to exploit as they made their way across the Red River.
Even so, I haven’t seen anything written yet that says the Republicans can’t go to a federal judge and have the redistricting deadline extended past Thursday due to extenuating circumstances. If that’s the case, then the Democrats will face a quandry, since right now most people in the state view this matter as a source of comedy, but if their not back in session in time to beat the bi-annual budget funding deadline (which in Texas begins on June 1), then you’re going to see some anger from the public.
I’ve posted a few times about this on my blog. Here’s the best part:
We did not choose our path, Tom Delay did. We are ready to stand on the House floor and work day and night to deal with real issues facing Texas families. At a time when we are told there is no time to deal with school finance, and when we must still resolve issues like the state budget crisis and insurance reform, the fact that an outrageous partisan power grab sits atop the House calendar is unconscionable.
Our House rules, including those regarding a quorum, were adopted precisely to protect the people from what is before the House today – the tyranny of a majority.
-Texas Democratic Party Chairwoman Molly Beth Malcolm, my emphasis.
I’m never letting them off the hook for this statement. Expect them to violate it within 24 hours the next time they oppose or support a bill; it’s inevitable that a politican falls for a “legitimate tyranny of the majority” arguement in most discussions. For example, the Dems are absolutely furious about cuts in the state budget, and by extension, in the budgets of all these entitlement programs.
There are ___ things to know about redistricting in the U.S.
1. All states have 2 senators each, no matter the size, but the 435 House members get allocated among the states by population, as determined every 10 years by national census.
2. The last time around, there were immense political struggles involving “sampling” in the census taking techniques. The Dems claimed that women, blacks, hispanics, and democratic voters were naturally and rightfully terrified of state power and would cower when the census takers came around, or would in the alternative be reluctant to fill out the form asking “how many people live here.” To make sure that everyone got counted, even the people who didn’t want to be counted, the Dems wanted to guesstimate how many people refused to fill out the forms, how many people hid from the census taker, or being loyal Dem voters, how many were under the table, stoned to the gills thinking it was some wierd police raid. Naturally, poor urban minorities were thought to be underrepresented in the ranks of census respondents, while white, conservative suburban respondents were thought to be so anal retentive that maybe some even filled it out twice, just to be sure. The Dems therefore wanted to artificially boost the number of people estimated to be living in liberal urban areas, to boost the number of votes there in order to get extra congressional seats allocated, a scheme similar to their recount ideas in election 2000. Republicans stuck by the incredibly radical fundamentalist right wing loony idea that the census should only count people who actually exist, rather than those posited by mathemeticians. After all, mathemeticians assure us that imaginary numbers, such as the square root of -2, actually exist. After a long battle, the Republicans wound up in control of the presidency, and the census bureau.
3. The Dems control large numbers of voting blocs in two big states that are hemorrhaging people – New York and California. NY just lost a couple seats, Cali is fixin’ to. These seats are being re-allocated to the mostly Republican South.
4. States handle the redistricting. They can’t do anything too crazy to create all-white districts, or all-black districts, or all whatever districts. Our history of Jim Crow laws makes it a singularly bad idea, and oh by the way the Constitution and several civil rights laws forbid it. However, you can gerrymander by political party.
5. In Republican controlled states, minority politicians are making deals with Republican legislators to divvy up the pie, and shut out White Democrats. The Republicans lay claim to mostly White and moderate areas (conservative to moderate areas are slowly, but increasingly becoming more ethnically diverse). Meanwhile, black legislators get a mostly black, or black and low income Hispanic district. This produces a lot of Black or Hispanic legislators. You see, we are a lot more worried about disenfranchising minorities than Whites, so most of the liberal groups outside of the immediate area are happy with this gerrymandering. The problem falls on the White Dems. They are left with fewer “reliable” Dem votes when Blacks and lower income Hispanics are shifted into “majority minority” districts. Meanwhile, Republicans have cherry picked all the known conservative precincts. Often, two White Dems are redistricted into an election battle – with Blacks drawn out of one district, Whites drawn out of the other, the two remaining districts get merged, and the two Dem lawmakers have to duke it out. Minority interest groups win because they get to put “their man” into office. The Republicans win because they lock up a seat, and they look like civil rights mavens, or at least unlike the lynch mob that the NAACP usually portrays them to be.
6. Now, making it really interesting, the redistricting occurs at the state level, as the Constitution reserves such decisions to the state. So, instead of having a battle royale in Congress, we get 50 bitter, partisan regional conflicts. Federal Courts will intervene if it looks like race was a primary consideration, or if the districts are ridiculously gerrymandered (like a North Carolina district that included a neighborhood in Charlotte, a 40 yard wide stretch of interstate running 80 miles to Greensboro, a neighborhood in Greensboro, a 60 mile long stretch of 40 yard wide interstate running from there to Durham, and then a couple neighborhoods in Durham). So, you have the issues of federal/state conflict, race, power, corruption, and the usual hypocrisies of politics all rolled into one political battle — played out in miniature in 50 states.
Goddam, I love this country…
Someone once said that you’d kill everyone in that district if you drove down that interstate with your car doors open on both sides.
Heck, this is nothing compared to past Texas politics. If you want to see some really serious skulduggery, read Robert Caro’s books The Path to Power and Means of Ascent. “Landslide Lyndy” Johnson’s infamous Democratic primary victory in 1948 is about par for the course when you’re talking about Democratic politics in Texas. After 35 years of watching the Democratic Party I have no compunction whatsoever about stating that the term “Democrat” is completely synonymous with “criminal.” The Republicans leave much to be desired but they are, by comparison, such an improvement on the Democrats that I confidently expect to see ice hockey televised from Hades before I ever again even consider voting for a Democratic candidate for any position. They are truly a contemptible, disgusting and venal lot.
I had to laugh.
A Texas law-enforcement official hauled a Texas state Democritter’s arse from her home to the state Capitol to try to get a legislative quorum. She had refused to attend the session.
You can run, but you can’t hide!
Democracy doesn’t function on only your terms!
It’s all of a piece with the filibusters in the Senate — and other things. See also: Flexing Their Flab
Federal Courts will intervene if it looks like race was a primary consideration, or if the districts are ridiculously gerrymandered (like a North Carolina district that included a neighborhood in Charlotte, a 40 yard wide stretch of interstate running 80 miles to Greensboro, a neighborhood in Greensboro, a 60 mile long stretch of 40 yard wide interstate running from there to Durham, and then a couple neighborhoods in Durham).
Bill, that’s essentially what the GOP drew up for a new congressional map in Austin. I do believe the AWOL Dems are doing the wrong thing, but they are fighting against a proposed redistricting that makes sense to oppose.
Dan, ever hear about the opponent of LBJ who was found dead on his (the opponent’s) ranch, shot about 20 times with a .22 caliber rifle?
The local coroner ruled it the worst case of suicide he ever saw.
As for the Gerrymandering, I’d be huffy about the constitutional principles, but I’ve learned that the Republicans can never, ever give the Dems a break; give ’em an inch, and they’ll take the china. Moreover, complaining about the principles of redistricting fights would be faintly ridiculous sounding at this point — akin to visiting to a brothel and complaining that the women there are kind of slutty.
So the Dems are having a hissy over redistricting. It’s only the same treatment they’ve been dishing out to the Republicans forever. Texas has 254 counties. Only 2 of those are majority Democrat. The only way the Dems could have held the majority in the congressional delegation all this time is by control of the redistricting process. Now the shoe is on the other foot and they don’t like it.
Omnibus Bill-
Is it true that the .22 cal suicide weapon was bolt action?
One correction to Omnibus Bill’s post:
There are somewhat fewer than 50 bitter partisan conflicts as my home state, Vermont, and at least one (Wyoming?, Alaska?) other rate only one congressman, and thus have no congressional redistricting battles.