Lubbock Left

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Democrat Dan Barrett won the runoff election for Texas House District 97, a mostly suburban district which covers southwest Fort Worth, Benbroook, and Edgecliff Village. This victory closes the gap to 5 seats for a Democratic majority in the Texas House.

The folks over at Lone Star Project say it best:

Dan Barrett won 52.2% of the vote yesterday in a special election runoff for Texas State Rep. District 97. District 97 was a Republican stronghold that gave George W. Bush 63.9% of the vote in 2004.

Anyone who met Dan Barrett and observed his campaign immediately recognized his talents as a candidate and was impressed by the discipline and efficiency of his campaign. No observer outside of Tarrant County, however, including the Lone Star Project, was willing to predict that Barrett could pull off a win in the special election. Dan Barrett’s smart campaign combined with outstanding support from organized labor, teachers and local activists resulted in an important victory for Texas Democrats and a sound rejection of the failed leadership of Texas Republicans Tom Craddick, Rick Perry and others.

It’s worth noting that…

…TX-97 was gerrymandered to be a Republican stronghold district, but Dan Barrett won anyway.

…Gov. Perry moved the runoff election date to a week before Christmas in an effort to help the Republican candidate, but Dan Barrett won anyway.

…the prevailing opinion around the state was that Dan Barrett would lose, but Dan Barrett won anyway.

Congratulations, Dan! Make us proud.

www.danbarrett.com

According to LubbockOnline, a challenger has entered the Republican Party primary race for TX-85, Joe Heflin’s House seat. The challenger’s name is Isaac Castro, and he is currently the Republican County Chair of Jones County.

From the LubbockOnline article:

Castro, who lives in Hamlin, sits on the on the board of directors of the Jones County Appraisal District and is a trustee of the Hamlin Independent School District, his campaign statement said. He is also the current chairman of the Republican Party in Jones County and served as an assistant district attorney for Jones and Shackelford Counties and county attorney in Stonewall County.

Joe Heflin is one of the rising stars of the Texas House, and he deserves our support. If you are interested in supporting an effective West Texas Democrat, you can contribute to Heflin’s campaign via ActBlue.

Learn more at www.joeheflin.com.

The above message could be arriving in inboxes across the nation very soon. The National Democracy for America organization is considering whether to make Rick Noriega their first Senate endorsement for 2008.

From the email to DFA members:

Next week could be a big week for the Noriega campaign. Dick Cheney and George Bush are coming to Texas to raise money for Rick’s Republican opponent. With the national support of DFA, Rick could highlight the incredible amount of people power behind him against the back drop of a private $1,000 a plate Bush sponsored fund raiser.

The deadline to express support for the DFA endorsement is November 3rd. If you believe as I do that defeating John Cornyn must be a nationwide priority, then taking a few seconds to add your voice to the call for DFA endorsement is a great way to help.

http://democracyforamerica.com/supportrick

I ran across an absolutely fascinating project: the casa segura (safe house) project. Basically it’s a tiny structure in the desert that has food, water, and a specially-designed wireless internet terminal. From the above link:

Casa Segura proposes private property owners on the border to create a life-saving beacon in the desert, a platform for engaging with the anonymous individuals crossing their land in search of a better life, and a non-aggressive means of protecting their homes.

Inside the small solar-powered structure migrants can find water, some food and a touch screen. Drawing upon traveler graffiti, pictograms, and the Mexican tradition of ex-voto painting, migrants are invited to use the interface and share something about themselves and their journey with the homeowner and anyone who’s interested. Migrants can either draw, write messages, or make a pictogram from ready-made graphical icons.

The images and messages are uploaded to the bilingual Casa Segura website. The website functions also as an access point for resources about immigration issues and the borders of the southwestern United States.

The Casa Segura concept is a good jumping-off point for discussion about the immigration issue. It beats a Minuteman Project press release any day.

Personally, I am against illegal immigration, but I am in favor of saving the life of someone in the desert and learning a little bit about why they are there in the first place. I think that a lot of good — including more effective immigration control — can come from understanding the motivations and culture of illegal immigrants.

What do you think?

Learn more at: www.casasegura.us

Step on up, ladies and gentlemen, and get your November 2007 Sample Ballots!

• Lubbock County only
• Lubbock County + Abernathy ISD
• Lubbock County + Abernathy ISD + City of Abernathy
• Lubbock County + Idalou ISD
• Lubbock County + New Deal ISD
• Lubbock County + Shallowater ISD
• Lubbock County + Village of Buffalo Springs
• Hale County + Abernathy ISD
• Hale County + Abernathy ISD + City of Abernathy

Thanks to the wonderful folks at the Lubbock County Office of Elections for providing these!

The Shock Doctrine has been buzzing around the net all week, but a clip of Naomi Klein interviewed by Bill Maher up on rawstory really condenses the main point nicely: politicians are using shocks to our national psyche (e.g. 9/11, Katrina, Iraq) to advance a corporatist agenda, and it’s working.

I believe we have to watch out for this kind of shock corporatism at the State level as well as at the national level. CHIP not working well? Privatize! Schools not “performing?” Privatize! Prisons getting out of hand? Privatize!

And watch out for the new lie that privatized government is good because it’s a “free market system.” Whether or not you believe that a free market system is the best way to accomplish the goals of society, corporations and government working together very rarely do so in a free market manner. The Halliburtons of the world will always have the hook-up with those in power.

Corporatism is a form of fascism, and that’s exactly what’s shock-and-awe-ing America today.

See also: shockdoctrine.com and the video by Alfonso Cuaron below.

Depending on where you live in Lubbock County, your November 2007 ballot will contain one or more of the following:

• Texas Constitutional Amendments (everyone in the county)
• City of Abernathy
• Abernathy ISD
• Idalou ISD
• New Deal ISD
• Shallowater ISD
• Village of Buffalo Springs

I am looking into acquiring sample ballots for each ballot style to post here.

Also, the Texas League of Women Voters 2007 Constitutional Amendment Election Voter Guide (pdf) is available. The LWV voter guides are the most useful, nonpartisan resources for any voter.

For all future haters of public education, I have written down the 5 easy steps for assaulting our schools:

1) Underfund schools and underpay teachers for at least a decade in the name of “cutting taxes” and “smaller government”
2) Create bullshit standards for everyone to meet, and watch the poorer schools fail to meet them
3) Complain that schools are failing to meet standards while at the same time criticizing them for not teaching important civic and life skills because they spend all their class time “teaching to the test”
4) Offer the “solution” of letting a “free market” of competing private schools educate our children
5) Profit!

The rest of us — who believe that public education is America’s greatest strength — are up against “Attacking Public Education 203,” the advanced class. For their class project, state legislators like Lubbock’s own Carl Isett are actively writing legislation to destroy public education. Financiers like Leninger bankroll pro-voucher candidates to speed their project along, and privatization cheerleaders like Robert Pratt rant about their project on the radio. They’re working hard to get an A at being the bad guys.

That means we need to roll up our sleeves and work to elect people that are serious about preserving and improving our system of public education, as opposed to those who want to throw out the whole thing and start over.

If you’re not happy with our current system of public schooling, get in there and fix it… before it hits the auction block!

The Texas Youth Commission (TYC) is ordering all of its juvenile inmates removed from the privately run Coke County Juvenile Justice Center in West Texas. The A-J covered the story today. “Unsanitary and unsafe conditions” were the reasons cited for the removal of juveniles. The private facility was run by the GEO Group, which appears to be a multinational corporation. From their website (emphasis mine):

We are a world leader in the privatized development and/or management of correctional facilities. The North American market is growing rapidly, and we are focused on expanding Federal procurement opportunities. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is operating over capacity and Federal law now authorizes longer term contracts than ever before, resulting in more favorable financing alternatives for new privatized development.

We are an industry leader in the international privatized corrections market. We expect substantial growth in Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and other areas in Europe for corrections and immigration services.

Our diversified services include health care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, home detention/electronic monitoring and secure prisoner escort/transportation and court custody services. Our success in delivering some of our industry’s finest diversified services is evidenced by our numerous contracts in the United States and around the world. We are intently focused on extending that success in privatized health care, mental health care and other diversified services to government agencies around the globe.

Does anyone else find the fact that the private prison industry wants to “branch out” into the private health care industry a little creepy? I’m glad these guys are no longer operating anywhere near me… oh, except for Littlefield and Spur (not to mention Santa Rosa, Hobbs, Pecos, Bridgeport, and Fort Worth). Crap.

Also in the news today: Blackwater is defending the actions of their contractors in Iraq. This is fine, and it’s expected as the FBI begins investigating the company. Did you know:

Blackwater bills the U.S. government $1,222 per day for a single “protective security specialist,” the report says. That works out to $445,891 on an annual basis, far higher than it would cost the military to provide the same service.

Now I can list TWO functions of government that I definitely do not want to be privatized, backed up by terrible examples of same: Military operations and Prison/Correctional operations.

Okay, watch this video:

and let’s talk about how we can fix this problem. This doesn’t appear to be a D or an R problem, but a systemic problem. And it’s embarrassing for our State.

One solution might be to get rid of the ridiculous “one session every two years” nature of the Texas House and Senate. If there were more time to get the business of the State taken care of, legislators wouldn’t be so rushed that they would break their own rules.

Another solution is to have a speaker that cares enough about this problem to slow down the pace of the legislature. Or, another group could be created to oversee these type of “self-policing” rules that never get enforced. (Of course, the only group with authority to create such a group is the legislature itself…)

Thoughts?