Lubbock Democrats Get New Website

Lubbock County Democratic Chair Kenny Ketner asked me to help spread the word about the new website for that county's Democratic Party -- and I am more than happy to do so. We have a very important election coming up next year, and I urge all West Texas Democrats (and Independents leaning toward the Democrats) to drop by and check out the new website. Say hi to Kenny, and if you can, volunteer to do your part to turn West Texas a nice shade of blue. Here is the website address:

http://www.lubbockdemocrats.org

A Good Day For West Texas A&M Sports

I want to depart from my usual posting to congratulate our local Panhandle university -- West Texas A&M University. The WTAMU Buffaloes had a very good sports day yesterday.

It started with the football team, who once again qualified for the national play-offs in Division II. Last year, the Buffaloes advanced all the way to the national semi-finals. This year, they got off to another good start in the play-offs by beating the University of Indianapolis on Saturday by a score of 27-13. They will play Ohio Dominican next Saturday.

But football was not alone among Saturday's accomplishments. The WTAMU volleyball team won the Lone Star Conference championship. They beat Angelo State 3 to 2 in a hard fought contest.

And another sport also needs to be commended. Both the men's and women's cross country teams qualified for the Division II national championships, which were run on Saturday. Both teams finished in 14th place, but should be very proud to have earned a spot in the national finals.

All in all, it was a good day to be a Buffalo.  

Crazy In West Texas

The other day I handed the crown for craziest politician in this country to Missouri's Todd Akin, and he certainly is still a contender for that crown (with his insane pronouncements about rape). But there's a politician in West Texas who evidently doesn't want to see the craziest politician crown leave this state.

This idiot is Lubbock County Judge Tom Head (pictured above). What did Judge Head do to toss his hat in the ring for the crazy crown? Well, it seems he wants to raise county taxes so he can hire some more deputies for the Sheriff's Department. That in itself is not crazy. The crazy part lies in why he thinks those deputies are needed.

Now he could have told constituents that they were needed because of the increased county population, or because of an increase in crime, or a need to cut down response time. Those are all logical reasons and would probably be accepted by the voters. But that's not Head's reason. No, he had to turn loose the crazy -- in spades!

It seems that Head is afraid that President Obama will get re-elected. And once he is re-elected, the president will turn American sovereignty over to the United Nations (although he doesn't explain how the president could do that). After that, Head said the people would revolt and the president would send U.N. troops to Lubbock -- and he wants to stand in front of "their armored personnel carrier" with his new deputies (and he also doesn't explain how he and those new deputies would stop a whole army).

I think Akin may have to work a little harder to keep that crazy crown in Missouri. County Judge Tom Head may well bring it back to Texas. The only thing that worries me is that Lubbock County is only about 100 miles from where I live (less than a two hour drive). I wonder if we could move that border wall the GOP wants to build just a little bit north of Lubbock. I would feel a lot safer.

A couple of questions for Lubbock County voters? How on earth did you elect this mental patient (and when are you going to lock him back up)?

Texas Democratic Leaders Are Still Ignoring The Panhandle And West Texas

I received an e-mail from the Texas Democratic Party leadership in Austin yesterday. Here is part of that e-mail:

(Austin) - The Texas Democratic Party today announced the second phase of their Latino engagement program known as The Promesa Project.

Through this project, Texas Democrats seek to engage young Latinos and ask them to be our Democratic messengers to their family, friends and social networks. Research found that young Latinos, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college, are increasingly becoming the trusted sources of political information within their familial units. Another study found that young people are now getting more of their news via online sources than from television. Based on those findings, the Texas Democratic Party constructed Promesa to utilize a combination of online and grassroots techniques to recruit and engage young Latinos.

In this second phase of Promesa, Texas Democrats will launch a Fellowship Program and place fellows in at least eleven campuses across Texas, including: UTEP, UT-Pan Am, UTSA, UT, U of H, A&M-International, UT-Brownsville, UT-Arlington, UNT-Dallas, UH-Downtown, and A&M CC.

"These universities were selected because they have a large Latino enrollment and is perfectly located to provide the opportunity to affect several local competitive races,” said TDP Deputy Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez.

The Promesa Fellowship program will include a training program conducted by experienced campaign professionals. Fellows will then work to register voters, recruit Latinos to the campaign, organize campus events, get out the vote and much more. All the work done by Fellows will be geared towards turning out young Latinos in the Democratic Primary who would likely not participate otherwise.

Now don't get me wrong. I think this is a smart move by the state party, and should have been done long ago. By their attacks on Hispanics (and their language and culture), the Republicans have made the Hispanic demographic (the fasted growing demographic in the state by far) a fertile hunting ground for new Democratic votes.

But as I read the list of universities in phase two of this project, it became clear to me that this, like other efforts by the state party is far from a statewide outreach effort. In the past, they have only reached out to urban areas and tended to ignore the many rural counties in the state. Now it seems they are only reaching out to certain portions of the state's large and growing Hispanic population -- which makes no sense to me, since all areas of the state now have a significant percentage of Hispanics. Why not reach out to ALL of them?

Commission Endangers The Ogallala Aquifer

As if there weren't enough already, here is one more example of how the Republican leadership in Texas puts the interests of corporations ahead of the health interests of citizens or the environment.   The black dot on the map above shows where Dallas-based Waste Management Specialists corporation has put a dump site for low-level radioactive waste (in Andrews County, Texas).

The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Commission, created to approve the dumping of radioactive waste in Texas, has fulfilled its mission.   It had already approved the dumping of low-level radioactive waste at the site for waste from Texas, Vermont and the federal government -- that was done a few months ago.   Now it has approved the dump site receiving radioactive waste from another 35 states.

This means the Texas highways will be full of trucks transversing the state full of radioactive waste, endangering both Texas citizens and motorists from other states.   That would be bad enough, but note that the site sits above the southern part of the Ogallala Aquifer -- one of the largest fresh-water aquifers in the nation.   Eight separate states draw water from the aquifer.

The corporate spokesmen for Waste Management Specialists has convinced the commission that there is no way the radioactive waste can possibly seep down into the aquifer and poison it with radioactivity.   If any of you believe that, I've got some ocean-front property here in Amarillo for sale real cheap.

Even if it's true that radioactive-polluted water can't seep through the soil and into the aquifer (and that's doubtful), all it would take is one natural disaster (like a small earthquake caused by all the West Texas oil and gas drilling) to create a small crack and allow the aquifer to be polluted with radioactivity.   And once that happens there'll be no way to ever clean it up.

The fact is that the commission has just approved the eventual poisoning of the Ogallala Aquifer.   It may not happen tomorrow, or even next year.   But it will happen.   Count on it. And it was done so one company can make a few million dollars.

As someone who lives in the Texas Panhandle, which depends heavily on water from the aquifer, I don't think it was worth the risk.   But then I haven't been paid off with corporate money like the Republican leadership in Austin.

West Texas / Panhandle Will Lose Seats

At first glance it seemed like good news for West Texas and the Panhandle. The area, according to preliminary growth maps, had gained about 4% in population. This was a good sign in an area that has seen at least two dozen counties lose population for the last half-century. But it turns out that the news was not good enough.

That's because that 4% growth in population in the last decade was dwarfed by growth in other areas of Texas. The I-35 corridor, from Grayson county in the north to Zapata county in the south, has grown in population by an astounding 57%. In addition, the area from Brownsville up through East Texas has grown by at least 39%.

Of course the final figures from the United States Census Department has not been released yet, but there is little reason to believe they will be much different from those preliminary figures. There is no doubt that the area will lose some representation in the Texas legislature as the redistricting process takes place. And the area could lose some representation in the U.S. Congress (unless the 3 or 4 new Congressional seats Texas will get can prevent that).

This means that a fairly large area of the state that already had very little voice in state affairs will now have even less of a voice in what happens in the state. I can understand that political representation needs to be apportioned by population, but to those who live in West Texas and the Panhandle it certainly doesn't feel fair.

(The above map shows the population density of Texas in the year 2000.)