The very latest from TCDP
WASHINGTON – Texas Democrats are among the most generous donors to Democratic candidates in the nation. Just not to Democrats from Texas.
An analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Houston Chronicle found that more than three-fourths of Democratic political money raised in Texas has left the state.
By Laylan Copelin
Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s appeal has taken an unexpected turn as three Republican justices removed themselves from his money laundering case in just a matter of days.
That leaves the fate of DeLay, a high-profile Republican who argued that he couldn’t get a fair trial in the Democratic Travis County, in the hands of a 2-1 Democratic majority on the 3rd Court of Appeals.
For now.
Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.
Well, whaddya know?
Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we’re now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion — both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.
Two years ago, Comptroller Susan Combs‘ staff accidentally put the private data of 3.2 million Texans online. Now Attorney General Greg Abbott‘s staff nearly went one step further, almost releasing millions of Social Security numbers. The only thing that saved them from a monumental data breach were the eagle-eyed lawyers challenging Abbott and the state’s voter ID bill.
The gaffe was revealed in court papers filed in the ongoing voter ID pre-clearance trial in Washington, D.C. Hearings are scheduled to begin July 9, but U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the various voter rights groups are asking for that to be rescheduled. They say Abbott’s office has been dragging its feet through the discovery process, either failing to hand over data or doing it so slowly as to make a real review nearly impossible.
Here is a link to Representative Dawnna Dukes’ speech at Saturday’s Rally To End the War on Women at the Capitol!
WASHINGTON — Field workers for President Obama’s campaign fanned out across the country over the weekend in an effort to confront a barrage of new voter identification laws that strategists say threaten the campaign’s hopes for registering new voters ahead of the November election.
In Wisconsin, where a new state law requires those registering voters to be deputized in whichever of the state’s 1,800 municipalities they are assigned to, the campaign sent a team of trainers armed with instructions for complying with the new regulation
Republican strategist Karl Rove gives Obama the advantage in his first Electoral College Map polling memo:
In the first Karl Rove & Co. 2012 Electoral College map, there are 18 states (220 Electoral College votes) where Obama has a solid lead and 15 states (93 EC votes) polling solidly for Romney, according to the latest polling average in each state. There are six states with a combined 82 EC votes classified as “toss--ups” (IA, FL, MO, NC, SC, VA); five states (MI, NH, NV, OH, PA) with a combined 64 EC votes that “lean” Obama; and six states (AZ, GA, KY, SD, TN, TX) with a combined 79 EC votes that “lean” Romney. In other words, there are 17 states and a total of 225 Electoral College votes up for grabs.
Texas consumers and businesses are poised to receive an estimated $186 million in rebates from health insurers under a requirement of the Affordable Care Act, according a study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The health care act’s medical loss ratio provision requires insurers to issue rebates if their total administrative expenses and profits are relatively higher than those permitted under the act. The Kaiser study estimates that 92 percent of Texas consumers in the individual insurance market will receive rebates, the highest figure for any state in the country.
Gilberto Hinojosa is running for chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, a venture that would put him at the helm of a political organization that hasn’t won a statewide election in 18 years. Even so, the lifelong Democrat seems eager to take the reins.
A little history: Hinojosa was raised in the Rio Grande Valley, educated at what is now the University of Texas-Pan American, earned a law degree at Georgetown University, and then worked as a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Migrant Legal Action Program. He has served as a Brownsville school trustee, a state district judge, a justice on the state’s 13th Court of Appeals, on the Texas Board of Criminal Justice and as Cameron County Judge. He now practices law in Brownsville.
In a filing late Monday night, the Justice Department joined intervenors in the Texas voter ID case in asking for postponement of the July 9 start of trial in the case, telling the court:
Texas has failed to produce critical discovery in a timely manner or at all, and has asserted wide-ranging, shifting, and sequential privilege claims that will continue to require significant resources from the parties and the Court to resolve. These discovery delays have been caused by the State’s own conduct and strategic decisions, and have occurred despite the Attorney General’s best efforts to facilitate the expedited litigation of this matter. While the Attorney General shares the parties’ and the Court’s interest in resolving this matter as quickly as is reasonable, the State’s litigation decisions and discovery delays have rendered a July 9, 2012 trial date both impractical and severely prejudicial to the Attorney General … The State of Texas, which professes that ‘implementing SB 14 for the November 2012 elections is the paramount goal of this litigation,’ (ECF 83) has taken precisely the opposite approach at every step.
