Off to Redistricting Hearings – UPDATED
Y’all, I’m headed off to the Texas Senate Redistricting Hearings today in Houston. They say some Republicans are gong to speak and you know me, I cannot miss stoopid.
So, here’s some entertaining from one of my other jobs. Hope you enjoy it.
Meanwhile, feel free to talk about whatever you want to talk about. I’ll check in every now and then to approve comments, but not when a Republican is speaking. You have to keep both eyes on them to duck the idiocy if it comes loose.
UPDATE: Look, I know this whole hearing thing is a dog and pony show and meant solely to create a record for Democrats to take court, but the Republican senators didn’t even make a show of listening. Most of them had left before the hearing was half over. Luckily, I got a picture of Senator Dan Patrick defending his precious maps during the first part of the hearing, wearing his usual smug face.
The speakers were 50 – 1 against the GOP maps. Now all this stuff is more complicated than Chinese algebra using Roman numerals. These maps are bouncing around between about three different courts, the Legislature, and a Texas Attorney General who believes that the War of Northern Aggression ain’t over yet.
I heard only three speakers who favor the maps. One of them accused people of color of being racists because they would like the opportunity to be represented by a person of color. This fella believed that white men can represent anyone just fine and if you don’t believe that, you’re a racist.
He’s missing the point. Minorities are not asking for new minority districts that would insure that a minority is elected. They simply want the opportunity for a minority to win. Under current maps, districts are set up so that only a minority can win or only a white person can win.
Here’s an example. My state rep Rick Miller. His district was created not for merely a white Republican to win, but for Rick Miller to win. His predecessor wanted Miller to win so he fixed to maps to make it happen. Miller’s district looks like an octopus on crack.
It was so damn silly that two streets were cut out of his district to eliminate a popular minority female who wanted to run against him. They kept her from running by putting her in a safely Democratic district. To do this, my town, the county seat!, was sliced down the middle. The district was drawn to eliminate his enemies and protect his friends.
Rick Miller
He’s a damn thug. A normal drawing of the boundaries would have made it a coalition district – meaning that blacks, Latino, and Asians would together comprise a small majority. It doesn’t promise any of them the district, but it gives them a chance – a chance that Rick Miller was too chicken to take.
The upside is that this is Tom DeLay’s old district. I would like to warn Miller than the last man who tried to play cute with redistricting ended up on Dancing with the Stars looking like a damfool as a convicted felon. From what I’ve seen on Miller’s life, this would be an improvement.
My county has four state rep districts and at one time or another, I have lived in three of them. I haven’t move since Elvis died. Heck, I was in all three just during this redistricting process.
Decades ago, before Tom DeLay, redistricting in Texas was decided by a bunch of independent nerds who sat in backrooms and decided boundaries based on fairness and population, not by politics. Those were truly the good ole days.
The picture of you is very cute! And, your article was quite entertaining and true.
I’ll look forward to reading your recap of the hearing. When listening to the Republicans speak, please remember that egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
1RutRoh! Have a feeling some elephants are heading to a ‘Come to Jesus Moment’ today.
2I finding myself wishing more and more often that the Kristians (people who try to sound like Christians, but don’t) would just Rapture already. Of course, according to their creed that leaves the rest of us sinner sin hell on earth, but with those guys gone it would sure seem like heaven.
3You just go do all you can to keep them honest. I am so proud you will be at that hearing.
4It’ll be hard for the Kristians to go to Heaven, as the definition of Hell is any place populated by Kristians. (Christians, of course, actually follow Christ’s teachings of tolerance and love – so Heaven’s gates are open for them.)
5Texans will giggle to know that a Republican speaking in favor of the maps based his belief that dividing districts to allow for minority representation is racist on the “fact” that a white man in El Paso defeated a Hispanic incumbent in the Democratic primary. Nobody told him that Beto O’Rourke is actually Hispanic.
6The speakers are running 15 to 1 against the maps. People are passionate about redistricting because we know Rick Perry would be thrilled to deny any minority representation.
7Keeping our ears to the ground….I know you’ll make noise.
8p.s. Is the media there? I sure hope so.
9Give em heck!
10Oh, my… You have reached a Molly Ivins (may she be remembered forever) territory for a takedown:
“I’m not saying he’s stupid; he just has real bad luck when it comes to thinking.”
That observation is truly a thing of beauty. I stand in awe, ma’am! Thank you! 🙂
11@Lorinda: JJ reminds a lot of us of Molly–thank goodness! We’ve needed someone to carry on what Molly started for us.
12It was fun. Bubba, the Fort Bend County Democratic Party Chair and I each spoke about HD 26 which is held by Rick Miller (who is a very sleazy person in my opinion). My written materials had a color picture of HD 26 to show that it was a gerrymandered district. It was fun watching Miller get uncomfortable each time someone talked about his district. Bubba had fun telling everyone that AG Greggie Abbot was spitting on LBJ’s grave.
13What LynnN and Lorinda Pike said!
And, JJ, brilliant article and beautiful photo. Go get ’em!
14Gerrymandering is an art form perfected by Republican’ts
15“Re”districting is the biggest farce since The Producers appeared on film with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. In my county the aim is always to dilute the effects of those damn liberal stewed ents at the Penn Snake University to which end they created the “Pipe Wrench” district (a.k.a. the “Monkey Wrench” district) so-named because there is a section that borders the liberal bastion and it has two longish “jaws” which protrude from the longer “handle” and wouldn’t you know it but those two jaw portions are far more conservative than the area on the other side.
I want districts that follow county lines. Where that isn’t fine enough, break the county by township and if there is STILL a problem with getting the populations equivalent, draw a STRAIGHT line to accomplish the desired separation. This business of having lines that wiggle and jiggle like jello shots is for the birds.
16Bring back the nerds in back rooms.
17I have to say that Maryland’s districts are seriously gerrymandered to favor the Democrats, who hold 7 of 8 congressional seats despite being not nearly that big a majority of voters. There was a referendum in the last election on accepting this map and it passed. I voted against it because, come on, we’re supposed to be better than they are. And we shouldn’t let them point to this state and say that both sides do it, but alas, sometimes they do.
Yeah, the GOP has jimmied the districts and the voting requirements to keep themselves in power, and I don’t want the [word omitted] to get away with it… but there’s a limit to how much you can adopt your enemy’s tactics without becoming them.
18Mid term redistricting has been the death of many a majority-Dem district all over, but especially in the south. North Carolina should be the instruction manual for how-not-to.
19Groan!!!! Been there, JJ! Did that. Maryland, for example, is actually a very urban state with the largest city being, of course, Baltimore. You may notice on the map that the state itself is very oddly shaped (tactfully put). The far western end is considered rural. That end was held for years by one Roscoe Bartlett, a tea party vocalist, of a very ripe age. He was recently retired by the electorate by a Democrat of much, much younger years. The District did not need to be gerrymandered in order to do so. The folks there not only got smarter but evidenced some kindness in that they know that even old mules, horses and oxen should be gently led into the retirement they deserve.
20If I were you, I’d expect this to get worse before it gets better. Latinos, African-Americans, and women do the most of that voting thing. Most are not republican. Most don’t like anything the current republican party is doing, or has done.
There are only two ways to eliminate the LA-A and W threat to republican manhood is voter suppression and redistricting. Both are hot selling items down at the local rat cave.
21One of my favorite bloggers just went down. I realized that I had never told him how much I looked forward to reading his blog and his comments daily.
Thank you, so much for taking the time and making the effort.
22Here is a good report on yesterday’s hearing. http://gregsopinion.com/?p=14531
23I attended one of those “pre-re-districting local hearings” in 2010 in Abilene, which was about 4 hours of enduring a bunch of Repug good ole boys yucking it up among one another, cracking inside jokes, and being “stupid ole white men without a clue” toward the Abilene State Rep, Susan King. Ms King, a Republican doctor’s wife who always wears a red blazer or red leather jacket of some variety, endured it gracefully, and probably had a double martini or two shortly after the meeting. Justifiable self-medication. It was a terrible hearing. She wasn’t on the committee… she was just the hostess with the mostest in the Good Ole Boys eyes. She got even with them, however, by bravely voting against their “machine” on the school budget cuts last session. Susan King isn’t all bad….she’s just in the wrong party…
It was obvious as an arse on a goat that they boys on the committee were gonna do as they damned well pleased, and were simply doing the meeting to fulfill a requirement to have public hearings.
Time to clean house at the state house in 2014. Seriously. Anybody feel like helping me pull together a statewide fundraiser selling brooms from the State Prison system? I am SO OVER this idiocy.
24Redistricting may be the last hope of the Repugs to retain control of the House. We have to take this seriously and try to right the wrongs they are attempting to pull. Go, J.J.
25It’s going on all over the country and is a huge threat to progressive government.