This is a fascinating and funny and scary article about politics in Texas, written by Lawrence Wright, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and staff writer for The New Yorker.
The title of the article is “America’s Future is Texas,” and we better hope it is wrong.
When I was growing up in Houston, the state was reliably Democratic, although the Democrats were conservative.
Now the state is a red state, and Republicans have gerrymandered the districts so that they control everything.
The Republican party is divided more or less into two factions: those who are sane and concerned about protecting the state’s reputation as a friendly place to do business; and those who are to the right of the Tea Party and obsessed with God, guns, abortion, homosexuality, border security, lowering taxes, and tormenting people who are transgender.
The story has many very funny anecdotes about Texas craziness, along with some wonderful stories about Governor Ann Richards, who was an original. She had a laser-like intellect coupled with devastating wit.
Read it and learn how the Speaker of the House Joe Straus, a sane Republican from San Antonio, has managed to outmaneuver the zealots in the State Senate. Speaker Straus has fended off the worst excesses of the crazies in the Senate, including vouchers, a bill to stamp out any protections for transgender people, and other legislation that ignores the basic needs of the people of Texas. Speaker Straus is already on the honor roll of the blog. He actually wants to protect and improve public schools, not defund them. Imagine that!
If Texas is the future of America, we are hurtling back to the 19th century at warp speed, with no regard for the needs of our most vulnerable citizens and no concern for decency or human rights.
The hope for the future of Texas is that Anglos are now in a minority. If Hispanics begin voting in numbers, the political complexion of the state will change dramatically. Texas is actually a purple state, not a red one.
There is hope.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The Lone Star State of Mind”
The Lone Star State of Mind
Is of a special kind
The kind you often find
When brain gets left behind
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SDP,
Or there never was a brain to begin with. Think Rick Perry and Dan Patrick.
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Oh, come on, Diane! Rick Perry has glasses now – he are smarter!!!
Some of the BEST stuff I ever read was Ann Richard’s books about W – then governor of Texas. Can’t say we weren’t warned!!
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This is a fascinating look at the history of modern politics in Texas. It was nostalgic for me as I remember Anne Richard’s impassioned testimony before Congress. She was an original and the kind of Democrat we could use now. I am surprised there was no focus on LBJ who worked like a dog to get the civil rights legislation passed when he was president.
Texas is a massive state with massive issues. Gerrymandering has given the conservatives a vice grip hold on the state. The population should be leaning more toward the left with the number of Hispanic voters and out of state, especially Californians, moving to the state. It is unfortunate the Democrats do not have a force of nature like Richards to energize the party in the state. Wendy Davis has tried to speak for women in the state, but she was unable gain enough traction. Instead, Abbott and Patrick are working to set civil rights back a hundred years with their anti-women and anti-LBGT agenda. Thanks to the Texas pastors, vouchers have been stopped, but I expect they will come up with a convenient “work around” as they have done it Florida. Texas has lots of potential to become blue again, but the Democrats need to wake up and understand they are in a “bare knuckle brawl” with conservatives. This is no tea party, no pun intended. They need to fight in the courts and at the ballot box. Most of all they need to present progressive candidates to the voters and excite, inspire and provide the type of strong, confident leadership that Richards and LBJ offered.
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Volvo this morning just announced that it is moving its model line to all hybrids and electrics by 2019 (I think) model year. I nearly vomited watching Joe Manchin correct a women in West Virginia ,when she said WV is a Mountain State . He said no it is an extraction state.
“Blood on the Mountain” 2016. These mining communities were decimated long before climate became a concern . Decimated by strip mining, laying waste to whole communities and it will only get worse. So who is Democrat Joe Manchin working for. Not the citizens of his state but the mine owners who fund his campaign while they pit desperate people against each other for the few remaining coal jobs . While pensions ,healthcare ,unions and the mountain tops disappear. All while Volvo and the World move to renewable s.
The point is right wing policies that depend on dying industries will not improve the lives of people in oil dependent Texas or coal dependent
WV.. When Democrats are in power it is easy to blame them for your economic fate. When Democrats (Manchin/Clinton/Obama) are in power and they collude with Republicans against the interests of the working class(the 85% +) it makes it even easier to blame Democrats.
Texas and the Nation are in Republican hands. If their policies keep decimating working people there will come a time that the Pitch forks come out. The bibles will be used as kindling for the barn fires . The election of Trump if it proves one thing, it proves that the Christian values crowd cares little about Christian values. Are we expected to believe that the crew who cares nothing about the fetus once it is born ,cares nothing about access to prenatal care actually cares about aborting a fetus. The entire right wing movement relying on race and religion, has been orchestrated by the Oligarchy to deflect from their theft.
But will the Democrats be there to fight the battle? Or will they once again be Republican light serving the same masters as we have seen since Bill Clinton.
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WV might not have any mountains left when the coal companies get done decapitating every mountain with coal in or under it. Instead, WV will become to toxic sludge state, a flat place filled with cancers and other diseases caused by the coal industry.
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Lloyd Lofthouse
Exactly my point .
I am the (lefty )economic populist . I understand that coal mining is dead, as it should be . The heartbreak is that these people are being played . The Union is all but gone . employment is a tenth what it was and it is spread across the Nation. Massy Energy holds pep rallies like Walmart and other abusive employees . Be happy you have a job as we ignore your health saftey and poison your communities. When we are done you will have no job no community and a wasteland. So who does Joe Manchin represent the mine owners . It is not Neo-liberalism it is corruption .
Consider Success Academy and other robotic charters training to be a subservient slave to an abusive employer. Learn your Walmart pep rally chants young in life.
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employees = employers
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While I agree, as you asserted above, that the conservative democrats used to run the south, they often ran it for white people alone. The solid south lynched people, mostly of color, in an almost insane response to the economic domination of the industrialists during the Guilded age and after. Southern politicians had to make peace with people who were extreme in order to get elected.
Thus is is no surprise to me to see the modern Republican Party making peace with the right wing. What is a growing concern in the south is the growing population and the stress put on the environment. Almost any solution to this problem requires everyone to give a little. Can we build a party around giving a little? Such a policy already sounds suspect to those who do not have much at all. Surely the wealthy will have to give a lot. It is lost on the wealthy members of suburbs surrounding the major cities. Who is left to vote for a new party direction?
We need a middle.
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How do you define middle . When the New Deal is being reversed . By the way that assault started in 1947 and has gone down in stages since.
The Republicans became the Dixiecrats after Nixon
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2016 Texas Presidential Election Results
The Kremlin’s stooge took 52.6 percent of the vote for almost 4.7 million votes
H. Clinton had 43.4 percent for more than 3.8 million. She took Brown Country by a massive landslide with 86.1 percent of the vote – about 12k to 1,621 for The Kremlin’s Agent Orange (also known as the Kremlin’s Stooge). She also took Cameron County by a two to one vote. Cuberson County 454 to 280 (Not many live there but the majority clearly does not like the Kremlin’s Stooge. Dallas County with Almost 459k to 262k. She took a few other counties, but I’ll stop with the list.
Eligible voters in Texas:
4.818 million Hispanic
9.246 million white
2.240 million Black
573k million Asian
http://www.pewhispanic.org/fact-sheet/latinos-in-the-2016-election-texas/
There were 15.1 million registered voters in Texas but only 59.39-percent voted and more than 19 million are eligible to vote.
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I am a former resident of Texas, and I still have an ex-wife in El Paso. Texas is more than a state, it is a state of mind.
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Yes, Texas is a state of mind, a mental one.
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Can’t help this one, Chas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMNw_-yUm_0
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http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/15/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/
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The maxim in common law is “Qui tacet consenteris”, Latin for “Whom is silent, gives consent”. If only 54% of people vote, then the other 46% is giving consent. Non-voters still have the right to complain, and make their desires known, to their elected leaders. No one gives up their constitutional rights by declining to vote.
But, politicians are required to accept the decisions of the electorate.
I say, if you do not vote, do not complain.
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I disagree and say if you don’t vote because you have complaints and can’t stand the current crop of elected and appointed leaders, keep complaining and when the balkanization of the United States is complete, be willing to join up and fight to stay free of billionaire oligarchs and corporations. In fact, take advantage of your 2nd Amendment rights and buy a firearm and a few hundred rounds of ammo and then learn how to shoot at a firing range.
If we don’t stop the oligarchs from turning the U.S. Constitution into toilet paper like Trump is already doing, then the civil war is coming. Not if, but when.
History repeats. It always has and this so-called modern era of enlightenment is not immune. We are still human. Trump as president is proof of how imperfect humanity is.
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