A Molly Ivins Story

Regular readers of this blog will probably know that I am a great fan of the inimitable writer and political humorist Molly Ivins. I truly believe that if there was a political satirist hall of fame, she would definitely belong there (alongside Mark Twain, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and others), as the above cartoon by Jen Sorensen shows.

A fellow blogger, vorjack at Unreasonable Faith, just passed along a great story by Molly (taken from her book Nothin' But Good Times Ahead). I simply could not resist the impulse to repost the story here, especially since it concerned a particularly bad elected official from my own part of Texas (the Panhandle). Here is how Molly wrote it:

The seventy-third session (1993) of the Texas Legislature is pretty much typified by the following Warren Chisum story, Representative Chisum being the Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa who has added such “je ne sais quoi” to the proceedings this year.

The Texas Senate had a rare moment of courage early in the session when it voted to remove homosexual sodomy from the revised version of the penal code. All were astonished.

Their vision made its way over to the House, where Chisum promptly rose and introduced an amendment to reinstate the damn thing. The Housies were afraid everyone would think they were queer if they didn’t vote for Chisum’s amendment, so they did.

Then some scholar explained to Chisum that unless he reinstated the ban on heterosexual sodomy as well, the law would be declared unconstitutional. So Chisum promptly got up and did just that.

Whereupon we had one of the more bizarre debates in the history of the Lege, with assorted avant garde members rising at the back mike to say, approximately, “Uh, Warren, uh, suppose I am in bed with my lawfully wedded spouse and I, like, kind of misaim and wind up in the wrong hole. You don’t want to send me to prison for that, do you?”

Chisum would stoutly reply, “Yes, I do. It’s against nature and The Bible.”

So the Housies were afraid everyone would think they were perverts if they didn’t vote for it, and they did. Chisum then shook hands with his ally, Talmadge Heflin of Houston, in celebration of this double triumph, and the Speaker had to send the Sergeant-at-arms over to reprimand them both.

Because under Chisum’s own amendments, it’s illegal for a prick to touch an asshole in this state. 

A Tough Year For Warren Chisum

It's been a tough year for the Panhandle's far right-wing fundamentalist nut-job, Warren Chisum. For years now he has been representing the Texas Panhandle in the Texas House of Representatives, and there were those who said he had a lot of power in Austin. But it doesn't look like he swings as much weight there as he thought he did.

He started off the year by running to replace the sitting Speaker of the House, Joe Straus (R-SanAntonio). He said Straus was too moderate to serve a second term as House Speaker. He was evidently wrong about that, as it only took one ballot for Straus to be re-elected.

Then redistricting came around, and the population shift in Texas from rural to urban dictated that the West Texas/Panhandle would lose a state house seat. It became obvious early on that the lost seat would probably be Chisum's, and that turned out to be true. His district was melded into the district of Rep. Landtroop (R-Plainview).

Chisum still thought he could turn the bowl of lemons he had been handed into a pitcher of lemonade though. He decided he would take a state elected position. Michael Williams had resigned from the Texas Railroad Commission to run for the U.S. Senate (and now has changed his mind and is running for a newly created U.S. House seat). Chisum made it known that he wanted Williams' seat on the Railroad Commission (which controls oil and gas production in the state).

But Chisum wasn't as well liked in Austin as he thought. Governor Rick Perry passed him over for the Railroad Commission job, appointing instead the current chairman of the Public Utility Commission, Barry Smitherman. And as the incumbent, it is unlikely that Smitherman could be beat by Chisum in the next election.

But Chisum is nothing if not stubborn. He now says he will run for a different seat on the Railroad Commission -- the seat currently occupied by Elizabeth Ames Jones. Jones has said she will probably resign the seat to run for the U.S. Senate seat of retiring Kay Bailey Hutchison. The way Chisum's luck has been running, Jones will probably come to her senses and realize she stands no chance of being elected to that seante seat and decide to keep her seat on the Railroad Commission.

I hope so anyway. Texas would be better served if Warren Chisum didn't hold any elected office in the state. Jones may be bad, but Chisum would be even worse.

Chisum Would Rob Dems Of A Vote For Speaker

The continuing political embarrassment to the Texas Panhandle, State Rep. Warren Chisum (pictured Above), has declared his candidacy for the speakership of the Texas House of Representatives.   It seems he doesn't like the current Speaker, Rep. Joe Straus of San Antonio.   He doesn't like Straus for two reasons -- Straus is fair-minded and will let even Democrats have their say in the House, and Straus is Jewish.

Chisum can't abide a Jew being Speaker of the House because Chisum is a right-wing fundamentalist christian who believes all Texans should be forced to believe as he does.   He's even gone so far as to try and mandate all Texas school children be required to take a Bible course (which he would have allowed to be taught by christian fundamentalist ministers).   Fortunately, he didn't get that approved -- the course is now an elective which no one is required to take, and must be taught by a qualified teacher.

But it still irks Chisum that the Speaker is Jewish, and it irks him even more that the Speaker would treat Democrats fairly.   In Chisum's opinion only right-wing speeches and bills should be allowed on the floor of the Texas House.   To accomplish this, he is running for election as Speaker.

But evidently he has learned how to count (or someone on his staff figured this out for him), because he has realized that if a vote is taken on the House floor for speaker when the new legislative session starts, and Straus is a candidate, then Chisum is sure to lose.   This is because every Democrat will vote for Straus, and although there are only about 49 of them, that would give Straus a good head start.   He would then need only 27 Republicans to vote for him (out of 101 total Republicans).

So Chisum has decided to deny Democrats a voice in who the new Speaker is, and have the choice of the new Speaker made in a Republican caucus.   He is hoping there are enough fringe right-wingers in the caucus to give him (or fellow right-winger Rep. Paxton) the nod over Straus.   Then the Republicans would put forward only one candidate on the floor of the House (instead of the current three candidates) and the Democrats would have to accept whoever the Republican caucus chose.

It is a sneaky, unfair and undemocratic move (since it immediately removes 49 Straus votes), but a legal one.   Chisum just needed 10 signatures to call for a caucus of Republicans, and he has gotten 9 of his cohorts to sign on to the request.   So now it looks like the Speaker of the Texas House will now be chosen in a Republican caucus rather than in a meeting of the entire House.   This should make it obvious to everyone that Chisum would not be a fair and impartial Speaker.

Will Chisum be successful in replacing the current Speaker?   Speaker Straus doesn't think so.   He says,   "Generally, I'm not opposed to the caucus meeting.   In fact, I can tell you as I stand here today, I have a supermajority of the Republican caucus who supports me so I have no fear about that."

I hope Speaker Straus is right, because he is by far the best choice of the three speaker candidates.   But I've lived in Texas too long to trust the word of Republican politicians.   We'll just have to wait and see candidate the Republican caucus sends to the House floor.

Chisum's "Marriage Tax" Is A Failure

Those of you who live in Texas may know State Rep. Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) as the right-winger who is trying to unseat Speaker of the House Joe Straus (R-San Antonio).   Chisum doesn't like Straus supposedly because he is a "moderate" Republican.   That's ridiculous, of course.   While Straus is a fairer speaker than the Texas House has had in many years, he's definitely a conservative.

Those of us in the Panhandle know the real reason Chisum wants to unseat Straus, and this has recently come out in some of the dirty infighting for the speaker position.   It is because Straus is Jewish, and Chisum (a fundamentalist christian right-winger) just can't stand the though of anyone but a fundamentalist christian being speaker (preferably himself) -- even if the non-fundamentalist non-christian is a fellow Republican.

Chisum is the kind of nut that thinks he was sent to the legislature to save souls -- that is, push his brand of fundamentalist christianity on all his fellow Texans (whether they want it or not).   To see this, all you have to do is look at the kind of bills he introduces.   He was able to wrangle two bills through the legislature in the last session (although thankfully the worst aspects of them were removed or toned down by his fellow legislators before they were passed).

The first was a bill to require the teaching of a Bible class in all Texas high schools.   Chisum wanted this to be a required course that all Texas teenagers would have to take to graduate.   The bill was passed and all Texas high schools must offer a Bible course, but the course was changed to be an elective course and no one has to take it that doesn't want to.

The second bill that he got passed was nicknamed the "marriage tax", because it double the state fee for a marriage license to $60 -- unless the couple received pre-marital counseling.   This was a thinly-disguised effort to get people into religious counseling (since most pre-marital counseling courses are offered by churches and taught by ministers here in Texas).   Of course, the couple could opt to pay for a secular counselor (but that would cost at least as much, if not more, than just coughing up the $60 fee).

The new law has been a dismal failure.   The statewide figures for those who opted to take the pre-marital counseling instead of paying the increased fee are incredibly low -- less than 15%.   That's probably about the same number that would have taken the counseling without the new law and increased license fee.   And in some urban counties, the figures are even lower.   Tarrant County (Fort Worth) shows less than 10% of couples opted for the counseling, and in Harris County the number was only about 5%.

I'm sure some right-wingers will claim that even though the law did not get significant numbers of couples into marriage counseling, it at least increased the amount of money fed into the state's coffers.   That's just silly.   The amount of money raised by the state on marriage licenses is negligible when compared to the enormous state budget.

The fact is that the "marriage tax" law is as miserable a failure as Chisum is as a legislator.

This Should Scare All Texans

We were warned about a month ago that this might happen, but now Panhandle State Rep. Warren Chisum has made it official.   Chisum has sent a letter to all his Republican colleagues running for election to the House this year announcing his candidacy for the speakership of the Texas House.   Chisum is one of those Republicans who are upset because the current speaker, Joe Straus of San Antonio, is a moderate Republican who generally treats both sides of the aisle fairly.

Chisum is not just a Republican -- he is on the far-right fundamentalist fringe of the party who thinks bills written by moderates and liberals shouldn't even get out of committee and definitely shouldn't be allowed a vote on the House floor.   His one claim to fame in the last session of the Texas legislature is getting a bill passed that forces all Texas high schools to offer a Bible course.  

He wanted to make it a mandatory course for all students, an effort to proselytize students for his own religion, but his fellow House members wouldn't go that far. They watered the bill down and made the course an elective (so a student didn't have to take it if he/she didn't want to).

Chisum has also introduced in the past a bill that would prevent schools from teaching sex education to any student without written permission of the student's parents.   And he is in favor of teaching the religious concept of creationism in science classes to break "the evolution monoply in the schools."

He is a homophobe who has come out in the past against any kind of hate crimes legislation. He has also increased a bill to double the waiting time in Texas before a divorce decree could be granted.   He is a member of the Texas Conservative Coalition, agroup of far-right House members.

But the really scary part is that this nut, a member of former speaker Craddick's inner circle, may have a chance of getting elected to the speaker position.   It all depends on how the November election comes out.   If Democrats win a majority in the House there will be a Democrat elected speaker.   If Democrats maintain their present strength, then Speaker Straus will be re-elected.   But if the Republicans are able to significantly increase their margin in the House this November, then Chisum stands a good chance of getting elected speaker.

This makes it very important to vote for Democrats in House races wherever possible in November.   It's bad enough that Republicans hold majorities in both legislative bodies, but having a Speaker Chisum would be disastrous for Texas.

Chisum's Law Is Abject Failure

We have a right-wing nut-job here in the Texas Panhandle who has made it his personal goals to pass stupid laws and embarrass Panhandle residents. It is Republican Rep. Warren Chisum. In the last legislative session in 2007, he decided he knew how to fix Texas marriages and bring down the divorce rate -- whether anybody wanted him to or not.

He decided that everyone should get some marriage counseling before they got married. To try and force people to do this, he doubled the state portion of the marriage license fee from $30 to $60. All the couple had to do was get some pre-marital counseling, and the fee would be waived.

The only thing he didn't think of was that most people do not want the state to interfere in their marriage plans. As one Dallasite who wed last December said, "The state doesn’t have any business telling me what constitutes a good marriage."

It turns out that his program has been a huge failure (as anyone with half a brain could have predicted). Most couples have just paid the extra $30 and bypassed the counseling program. Tarrant County is a good example, where out of about 5,000 marriages only about 140 have opted for the counseling. That's less than 3%. That's not just a failure -- it's a spectacular failure.

But failure doesn't seem to faze Chisum. He's still determined to interject his ideas into other people's marriages. In this legislative session, he's introduced a bill that would force people to get marriage counseling before a judge could finalize their pending divorce. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that some divorces are good and need to happen.

Why would you force a woman to go to counseling with a husband who beats her (and who she may be trying to hide from)? Why would you force a woman to go to counseling with a man who was abusing her children? Is it really a good idea to force a woman to go to counseling with an alcoholic or drug addict?

He seems to think that men and women are too stupid to know when a divorce is the best thing, and they need a psychologist to tell them if it's OK or not. Chisum may be that stupid, but most other people are not.

I think it's time for Chisum to get his big nose out of other people's marriages.

Chisum And Swinford Are Out

As most of you probably know, the Texas Panhandle is one of the reddest areas in the state (hell, it's one of the reddest areas in the nation). We don't just elect Republicans up here. We elect dyed-in-the-wool right-wing fundamentalist nutjobs. It's so bad, that at times I feel like the Panhandle owes the rest of Texas and the nation a huge apology.

Two of the worst of the wing-nuts are Rep. Warren Chisum (pictured) and Rep. David Swinford. Both were die-hard Craddick supporters, and under his dictatorial regime, they had important committee chairmanships. Chisum was chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee and Swinford chaired the State Affairs Committee.

But these Craddick loyalists backed the wrong horse this year, and now they must pay the price. Craddick lost the speakership to San Antonio's Joe Straus, and Chisum and Swinford have lost a lot of clout in Austin. Both men have lost their chairmen positions. They are no longer powerful chairs who can kill a bill at their whim.

This is a very good thing for Texas. It would be better still if Democrats could gain control of the Texas House, but it's going to take another couple of years to do that. Until then, I'll settle for Chisum and Swinford losing their political clout.

Good things happen a step at a time, and this was a pretty big step.

Panhandle's Biggest Embarrassment

What is the Panhandle's biggest embarrassment? That would be Republican Texas State Rep. Warren Chisum. In the last legislative session, Chisum introduced legislation that would mandate teaching the Bible in all Texas high schools. Evidently, he doesn't think churches do an adequate job of teaching the Bible, so he makes the schools use taxpayer money to teach it.

Then he got a law passed that would significantly raise marriage license fees for couples that didn't take a marriage counseling course. Now I could understand warning couples against getting married, but mandating counseling seems to be taking things a little far.

It doesn't look like Chisum has changed much in the last two years. Now he is in trouble with the Texas Ethics Commission because he failed to include his $600 a month legislative salary from the state on the required financial disclosure form. He said he left it off because he doesn't think he's a "state employee", since the Texas Constitution says he is a "citizen legislator".

Chisum said, “I don’t actually have an hourly job where I draw a salary. In the truest sense of the word, I may be considered an employee of the state, but the constitution says we are citizen-legislators. I didn’t apply for this job. I don’t punch a clock. I don’t get overtime. I can’t sue the state if I get hurt on the job.”

That's some of the silliest reasoning I've ever heard. First, he did apply for the job. He applied when he put his name on the ballot. And there are many state employees who don't work for hourly pay, don't punch a clock and don't get paid extra for overtime worked. They are still state employees, and so is Chisum.

But even so, the financial disclosure requires the listing of all income, no matter where it comes from. He may be a rich legislator, but that doesn't mean he can ignore the small salary the state of Texas gives him. Amazingly, this financial whiz is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

But the silliness continues. Chisum has now decided he knows how to fix Texas high schools and it won't even require the spending of any state money. His solution is contained in a bill he has authored -- House Bill 131.

Texas, like many other states nowdays, has an unacceptably high drop-out rate in its high schools. Now the proper way to combat this is to provide enough money, training, counseling and programs to solve the problem. But Chisum has decided there's an easier way.

HB 131 would just change the definition of a high school drop-out. The bill would exempt anyone who has gotten a GED, anyone who committed a crime and was sent to a juvenile facility, or anyone who committed a crime and was sent to an adult facility. These three groups of students would no longer be counted as drop-outs when statistics are compiled.

This doesn't sound like a real solution to me. It sounds like he wants to hide a part of the problem by lying to the people of Texas and the federal government. Maybe he thinks if you don't acknowledge a problem, it will go away.

I can't even imagine what this nut will come up with next, but I'm sure it will be embarrassing to the citizens of the Panhandle.