I saw this tweet last night that kind of cracked me up during the Harris County Tejano Democrats (HCTD) endorsement meeting:
John C. Gorczynski @JCGorczynski11h
I move the Harris County Tejano Democrats endorse @JJWatt for King of Htown.
It was an outstanding night last night for some of Commentary’s folks. HISD Trustee Anna Eastman picked up the HCTD endorsement with the help of a lot of folks out in the crowd wearing her yellow stickers. Anna’s eighth grader was there helping convince Tejano Dems to support her mom.
Graci Garces won out over two of her opponents and a motion to duel endorse. Graci did it on one ballot – nice. Graci had widespread support last night.
We managed to stop an endorsement in the HCC Trustee 3 race.
Folks pretty much got along last night although there was a bizarre moment when a Ben Mendez supporter got up and made a motion along the lines of “Sheriff Adrian Garcia nominates Ben Mendez.” The sheriff was nowhere in sight – huh!
The Mayor was able to withstand a challenge from Ben Hall last night, quite handily may I add.
The Yankees have the record with most World Serious grand salamis with eight. Name at least five of the Yankees?
In today’s Chron Lisa Falkenberg has a few questions about the details of Early to Rise. Of course you have to have a subscription to read the Falkenberg take. Here is a part:
Reasonable people, many of whom strongly back early education, are wary of a program about which they know little.
"While I appreciate the effort to increase access to high quality preschool," Houston Independent School District board president Anna Eastman told me, "when was the last time a self-appointed group of people said ‘we’re going to collect a tax and spend money on something that’s not clearly defined?’ "
If you ask me Early to Rise has done a terrible job of rolling out Early to Rise.
Here was a tweet that Commentary saw from my good pal Sue Davis a couple of days ago:
Sue Davis @suedavis197414 Aug
Ben Hall whining about negative campaigning=laughable. Can’t stand the heat, get out of Oz. Click your heels 3 times, go home to Piney Point
Ouch!
If the local Dem Party wants to be useful, they ought to head over to Pasadena and help the Latino folks from a redistricting grab. Check out the today’s Chron E-Board take:
After former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay‘s fall from grace, we thought that Texas politicians would know better than pursue mid-decade redistricting. Not so in Pasadena, where Mayor Johnny Isbell is trying to change Pasadena’s city council districts.
Isbell proposed last month to replace two of Pasadena’s single-member districts with two at-large seats. The Bond/Charter Review Committee recommended against moving forward with the changes, at least for the upcoming election. But the proposal alone is distressing enough. Historically, replacing districts with at-large seats has been used to discriminatory ends, and such moves are often blocked by the Department of Justice. Only a few months ago, that would have been the case here. Not anymore. For decades, the Voting Rights Act has been a useful speed bump in Texas. Due to our history of discrimination, any alteration to voting laws or processes had to be approved by the Department of Justice. When the Supreme Court struck down the part of the VRA that based preclearance requirements on past discrimination, it busted open a hole in that wall, and Texas politicians have wasted no time to climb through.
This newfound lack of federal oversight allows local politicians to implement maps that threaten to discriminate against minority voters. The current individual districts in Pasadena allow large, compact and politically cohesive minority populations to elect the representatives of their choice. Replacing these districts with at-large seats could dilute minority voting power, submerging the voting-bloc in a sea of majority voters.
As our Founding Fathers wrote in the Federalist Papers, our republic cannot function if the full spectrum of our nation’s diverse interests do not have representation in government. Decades of discrimination kept vast segments of society away from the table, and only now do we start to see representation rising to the ideals our nation was founded upon. That progress is brought to a halt when cities such as Pasadena make it more difficult for a growing Hispanic population to take part in the democratic process.
Even with the removal of direct barriers to voter registration, historic discrimination in education, housing, employment and health services hinders minority ability to participate effectively in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Pasadena’s city government makes this point painfully clear – Hispanics comprise a majority of the voting-age population, and a majority of a voting-age population in six of the eight city council districts, but have yet to turn that into electoral success.
Anyone who cares about functioning government should be troubled by such a disconnect between population and representation.
Tony Lazzeri (1936), Gil McDougald (1951), Mickey Mantle (1953), Yogi Berra (1956), Moose Skowron (1956), Bobby Richardson (1960), Joe Pepitone (1964), and Tino Martinez (1998) are the eight Yankees of course with World Serious grand salamis.
We would have to go 24-18 the rest of the way to avoid another 100 loss season.
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