Texas Democratic Party Needs New Leadership

It seems that the current party leadership is no better than past leadership -- mistakenly believing that progressives can't win in Texas (and encouraging candidates to run as conservatives). I have said several times that this is a mistake -- that Democrats need to offer the voters a real progressive choice. There's no reason for people to go vote if it's just a choice between right-wingers.

Fortunately, there is someone running for state party chair -- someone that is not ashamed to be a progressive and knows that Democrats do better when they stand up for their progressive values. That person is Rachel Barrios-Van Os. She ran for party chair in 2012 and came up short, but she has tossed her hat in the ring again. I'll be voting for her at the convention, and I urge other delegates to do the same. Here is her letter to  state delegates:

Greetings, Fellow Delegates. I am Rachel Barrios-Van Os and I am a candidate for the office of State Chair of the Texas Democratic Party. Texas belongs to the People, not to the corporations, and definitely not to the Republican Party.

It's time we take back Texas and take back the reins of power from the rich and powerful who solely care about themselves and care nothing about the middle class or the under-privileged.

Everybody counts - not just the rich, everybody should count and that includes the poor and those who are less fortunate. In order for our society to continue to prosper and grow we must leave no one behind. Unfortunately our schools are failing us and our children are getting left behind more and more because some of our elected officials and leaders in government are ignoring what needs to be done to educate and improve the lives of our children.

We must insist on higher standards and higher ethical values to become a stronger party and to elect good-hearted, caring, ethical and honorable candidates who will work for the betterment of our society and its people.

  

We need an organized party that truly cares for the people. We need to connect with the people and communities of Texas all year long and not just during election season. Once the people know we care about them and that we will fight for them the voters will come back again to the Democratic Party but it takes more than sending emails and 'targeting'. The only targeting we need to do is to target Texas- and I mean the whole state of Texas not just the big 5 (Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Ft. Worth and Houston). We need to embrace each and every voter in every community across Texas and that includes the rural areas as well. Every vote counts! Every voter across Texas wants to feel that they have a voice in their community and with the right type of leadership at the top of the Texas Democratic Party we can change the course of history and turn Texas BLUE again! 

The secret to success in a political party is working with the people from the bottom up - not the top down. We need to go back to our roots because grass-roots campaigning is what we did when we used to win.

The next state party chair will be elected by the delegates at the State Convention in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday afternoon June 28, 2014. I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you for your consideration. It's time to win - Together we can make great things happen!

   

Thank you for your time and dedication to democracy in the hopes of great things to come for all the people of Texas.   

Viva Democracy!!!

Of, By and For the People,

Rachel

David Van Os Blasts Corporate Robber Barons

The following is a letter from David Van Os to the voters of Texas. I don't need to say any more, as he makes himself very clear (as usual):

Mainstream journalists are beginning to notice that $3 per gallon gasoline now looks routine and that it won't be too long before we routinely see $4 a gallon.

Hmmm. Which candidate for Texas Attorney General said a year and a half ago that the 2006 escalation in gasoline prices was not a temporary up-tick and that the price at the pump would keep going up?

For approximately 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, gasoline prices were relatively stable.

But in the late 1990s, the biggest of the giant Big Oil companies began to merge and create even more gigantic companies in a series of mind-staggering mergers. Exxon and Mobil; Shell and Texaco; etc. The continual escalation in gasoline prices of the past 9-10 years began with the beginning of the Gigantic Oil mergers and corresponds with the series of mega-mergers that took place over a few years' time.

These mergers naturally decreased competition. That was their purpose. When competition decreases, robber baron monopoly power increases, and unless there is government price regulation, prices go up. It is a rule of economic power as old as time. Instead of a free market, we end up with a monopoly market and a robber baron economy. It wasn't an accident that we ended up here. It is the very reason for the mergers.

Today, under the Clintonite-Bushite economy (sorry folks, some may find it hard to admit, but Big Bill opened the floodgates to the runaway monopoly economy), our government institutions protect monopolies from the people instead of protecting the people from monopolies.

As long as our public institutions continue to protect the monopolization that is at the root of the robber baron economy, there will be no end in sight for we the people from ever-worsening Giganto-Oil price squeezes - not to mention from the similar depredations of the Big Insurance, Big Health Care, Big Pharmaceutical, Big Toll Road, Big Banking, and other Big Robber Barons. And as long as we the people stand back and fail to take control of our public institutions, then those institutions will continue to protect the robber baron economy.

Isn't it time we get serious about taking control?

David Van Os

A Message From David Van Os

We Need a People's Candidate

Have you heard any of the rumors going around about potential Democratic candidates to challenge John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate in 2008?

Well I have, and I don't like what I'm hearing. The Washington Beltway Insiders are trying to pick a candidate to run against Cornyn on the basis of their ideas about what the people of Texas need and want, and -- surprise, surprise -- on the basis of who has or can raise the most big money.

John Cornyn is a supporter of Bushite tyranny who needs to be taken out for the good of the people of this state, for the good of the whole country, and for the good of the Constitution that he has so repeatedly dishonored by being a lapdog for the Bushites' attempts to stuff our rights and our heritage into the trash. But I'll be damned if I want a private club of wealthy Beltway-centered elite deciding who the Texas Democratic nominee will be to carry the people's banner against Cornyn. And I'll be double damned if I want the choices for the people of Texas to be decided by the power of money rather than the power of the people.

It appears nothing has changed with the Insiders. But we are supposed to live in a system of democracy, not aristocracy! The people are supposed to govern themselves, not be governed by money and those who have large amounts of it.

We cannot allow the blooming populist movement of the last few years go die on the vine in relation to the Cornyn seat. We need a people's candidate.

David Van Os

Just a thought, but wouldn't David Van Os make a great Senate candidate?