Republicans To Raise Taxes In Texas

A month ago, just after beating back Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s GOP Primary challenge, Perry led White 49% to 43%. Now, seven weeks after incumbent Rick Perry and former Houston Mayor Bill White won their respective primaries, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Texas voters finds Perry has dropped a point to 48% while Bill White has gained a point to 44% of the vote, his best showing to date:

Fifty-nine percent (40%) of voters in Texas currently disapprove of the job Perry is doing as governor, including 22% who strongly disapprove. Perry has a slight lead among male voters and breaks roughly even among women. Voters not affiliated with either party give Perry a modest five-point edge over White.

Perry has a very favorable rating among 20% of voters and a very unfavorable rating of 22%. White has a very favorable rating among 21% of Texas voters and very unfavorably rating of 16%.

Perry picks up 75% of the votes among Texans who strongly favor repeal of health reform legislation. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Texas voters favor repeal of the health care plan, including 58% who strongly favor repeal while just 28% are oppose repeal, including 23% who strongly oppose repeal. White gets 89% of the votes among the group who oppose repeal.

Ten percent (10%) of Texas voters rate the economy as good or excellent. Forty percent (40%) think it's in poor shape.

Thirty-two percent (32%) say the economy is getting better, while 46% believe it's getting worse. [In January 35% believed the economy was getting worse.] Eighteen percent (18%) say it's staying about the same.

Read the full Rasmussen Report.

"Houston Chronicle: Ailing economy worries Texans, could hurt Perry:"

Vacant car lots, shuttered businesses and the grind of bad economic news is wearing down Texans' belief in a better tomorrow, according to a new survey of state voters, and that could be even worse news for Gov. Rick Perry.

While Perry touts that his strong conservative leadership has created a robust Texas economy, his 48% against White's 44% showing in the Rasmussen poll shows that a lot of Texans are starting to notice that Perry's strong conservative leadership has wrought some real problems for Texas:

• Almost 1 million Texans are unemployed, a state record.
• 5,550 Texans continue to lose their health coverage each week
• Texas leads the nation in percentage of residents without health insurance with only 49.5 percent of Texas residents covered by employer-sponsored insurance [DMN]
• Texas' state debt has doubled under Perry.
  
• The property tax swap Perry passed in '06 created a permanent structural deficit in our state budget, which is contributing to an expected $11-$15 billion shortfall going into the 2011 Legislative Session.
• A recent report showed the Texas Enterprise Fund is "not creating jobs as promised."
• Health care premiums have increased 91.6% since Perry became Governor
• Tuition continues to rise at Texas' colleges and universities
• Utility rates continue to rise, and some utility companies and Perry thinks that is just fine.
• Rick Perry's property tax increase is hurting our local schools
• The student dropout rate in Texas is upwards of 30 percent, and as high as 50 percent in some large urban districts.
• Texas currently has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States and “the highest rate of repeat teen births.
  
• The rate of student pregnancies has increased as much as 57 percent and rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rising in some urban school districts.
  

Originally posted at Jobsanger blog:
Texas is in financial trouble. The state will have a deficit of at least $8 billion in the next biennium, and that deficit could be as large as $11 or $12 billion. Part of the problem has been caused by the recession. But another part of the problem is due to Republican playing politics, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

About a year ago, Governor Perry turned down more than a half-billion dollars in funds to help the unemployed in Texas. Playing to his right-wing base, Perry said Texas didn't need the money and accepting it would force Texas to abide by federal government rules (to extend unemployment benefits).

More recently, He has refused to sign on to national standards for education, even though Texas should be exceeding those standards instead of refusing to come up to them. This is costing the state another $700 million dollars (at least). In addition, this refusal to meet federal education standards could cost Texas it's share of Title I education funds.

Texas has also cut property taxes, while creating a multi-million dollar fund for huge giveaways to corporate interests willing to move to Texas. Now the lower taxes, corporate giveaways and refusal to accept federal funds have combined with the recession to put the state in dire financial straits. The state will have a deficit of at least $8 billion in the next biennium, and that deficit could be as large as $11 or $12 billion.

Perry has already told all state agencies to cut their operations by 5% -- this on top of other cuts forced on these agencies in recent years. Many of these vital state agencies are now operating on a bare-bones budget, and are struggling to meet their obligations. More cuts are simply out of the question if they are to successfully complete their missions.

So how is the state going to meet their constitutional mandate of a balanced budget in the next biennium? That's simple. The state Republican leadership has painted themselves into a corner, and the only way out is to raise taxes. Of course, they won't raise any taxes on corporations. That would be unthinkable for these corporate-owned Republicans.

No, it is far more likely they will raise only the most regressive taxes, so that the new tax burden will fall most heavily on workers and the poor. And that is exactly what they are considering -- more sales taxes (the most regressive of all taxes, since it means that those making the least will pay the largest percentage of their income in the new taxes).

The sales tax in Texas is not applicable to everything sold in the state. There are many exemption including food, haircuts, children's day care, bottled water, dental work, tattoos, pedicures, gasoline and a host of other products and services. According to the Texas Comptroller, these exemptions total about $30 billion a year.

The Republican legislature has already begun hearings on cutting out some of these exemptions, and lobbyists are already gearing up to make sure their product or service remains exempt. It will be an interesting and messy fight when the new legislature meets in early 2011, but two things are clear right now. Taxes will be raised, and most of the burden for those new taxes will be borne by those who can least afford it.

I'm sure the Republicans will try to claim they didn't raise taxes, since they will be extending the sales tax to new products and/or services instead of raising the sales tax rate. But don't let them fool you. Texans will pay new and higher taxes, and it will be the Republicans who impose those higher taxes.

Conservative Political Theater

Rachel Maddow highlights how the GOP fakes outrage on everything from fake pimp James O'Keefe who helped take ACORN down, to Climate-gate, to recess appointments, to the individual mandate in the health care plan, to Miranda rights, to trials for terrorists, to the birthers to you name it.

Echoing the recent report of the Kings County, NY, District Attorney who completed a five-month probe of fake pimp James O'Keefe's ACORN "pimp-gate" videos, California's Attorney General has now reached a similar conclusion regarding videos recorded in three different California cities last year.

"In his actual [unedited full length] taped sessions with ACORN workers, [O'Keefe] was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp," says the AG's report.

The videos were highly edited by rightwing activists James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute and her law school boyfriend in the videos and played extensively on Fox News, as well as other non-partisan media outlets.

In a press release announcing his 28-page report [PDF] (and accompanying 55 pages of attachments and exhibits [PDF] with it), the AG's office says the publicly released videos taken in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino were "severely edited." The unedited California videos have now been posted on the CA Attorney General's website.

"The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality," says Brown in the statement. "Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

The description of the videos as "severely edited" also echoes the Brooklyn D.A.'s office, which was quoted as describing them as a "heavily edited splice job" when his report was released earlier this year. Brown's report also echoes an independent investigation [PDF] released by former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger early last December, but largely unreported in the national media.

Brown's report details that, "Although O’Keefe is dressed in stereotypical 1970s pimp garb in the opening and closing scenes of the videos released on the internet, when O’Keefe visited each of the ACORN offices, ACORN employees reported that he was actually dressed in a shirt and tie. Also, contrary to the suggestion in the edited videos, O’Keefe never stated he was a pimp. While speaking with the various ACORN workers, Brown's report notes:

Giles portrays herself as an abused prostitute desperate for help and pushed for any advice. She said she wanted to save the El Salvadoran girls from being preyed upon and raped. She claimed the pimp put a hit out on her and injured her by pushing her down the stairs.

Brown goes on to explain that O'Keefe's edited video tapes from the Los Angeles ACORN office, "did not include all Giles statements regarding the abusive pimp, her tragic life, and fear for the underage girls, or [ACORN worker Lavelle] Stewart's statements that ACORN could not help."

O’Keefe's purpose was to damage ACORN and not to objectively report a story. The video releases were heavily edited to feature only out of context statements of various ACORN employees, and to omit salient statements by O’Keefe and Giles. Each ACORN employee recorded by O’Keefe in California was a low level employee whose job was to help the needy individuals who walked in the door seeking assistance. Giles and O’Keefe lied to ACORN employees engender compassion, but then edited their statements into the released videos.

ACORN was an anti-poverty organization of 400,000 low and middle income members in 75 cities that helped the needy. The organization had been long targeted by Republicans because it legally registered hundreds of thousands of voters who tended to vote Democratic.

The 2006 Dallas County Coordinated Campaign

In the November 2006 election, Dallas lawyer Fred Baron was instrumental in establishing the Dallas County Coordinated Campaign which helped Democrats sweep all of the Dallas County courthouse races as well as make remarkable gains in Texas House races.

The 2006 Dallas County Coordinated Campaign targeted a get-out-the-base operation driven by direct mail, automated and live phone calls, and neighborhood canvassing efforts. The strategy was to pool money and effort into one coordinated campaign that asked voters to vote Democratic rather than for any particular candidate. This was a classic "Identify and Get Out The Base" campaign strategy.

As part of the 2006 Coordinated Campaign effort the Texas Democratic Trust and House Democratic Campaign Committee polled key legislative districts to identify what issues would motivate voters to actually get out and vote for Democratic candidates.

Toward the 2006 coordinated get-out-the-vote effort the Dallas County Democratic Party created a coordinated campaign committee with the Texas Democratic Trust and Texas Values in Action Coalition, a progressive North Texas PAC, contributing money to the effort, and the TDP, with support from the House Democratic Campaign Committee, generating most of the direct mail pieces targeting voters likely to vote for the Democratic candidates. This coordinated "get-out-the-base" campaign strategy run by Democratic organizations left individual candidates free to focus on their own individual races and individually target segments of the electorate with their own GOTV strategies. Harris County very successfully executed basically the same program in 2008.

The following article, which tells the story of Fred Baron and the 2006 Dallas County Coordinated Campaign, appeared in the December 2006 issue of the Texas Lawyer magazine:

Impact Player of the Year: Fred Baron

By Mark Donald
Texas Lawyer
December 25, 2006

As casual in appearance as he is in manner, Fred Baron props his legs on the coffee table of his spacious corner office on the 16th floor of a North Dallas high rise. He may not be practicing asbestos litigation anymore, may not lay claim to the title, "King of Toxic Torts" and the infamy that goes with it, may not be running a stable of 480 employees as the founding partner of the highly successful Baron & Budd, but he clearly is in his element. Exuding his trademark optimism, he draws you into his confidence, telling you exactly what he wants you to know, while making you feel it's exactly what you want to hear.

He has just returned from a luncheon for Craig Watkins, the freshly elected Democrat who surprised many politicos and pundits on Nov. 7 by upsetting alleged Republican shoo-in Toby Shook in the race for Dallas County district attorney.

"I thought the luncheon was a very unifying event," says Baron during an interview on Nov. 29. "Craig gave a great speech. He got a standing ovation."

Baron is keenly aware that Watkins presents a unique opportunity for Democrats ¿ one that should be handled with care. If Watkins missteps while growing into the job, the Dallas County electorate might rethink its decision to vote Democratic.

"Craig, though extremely energetic, is tremendously underfunded and needs a lot of professional help quickly," Baron says. "So we [his PAC] have been helping him since the election. . . . He has a lot of people who are helping him now."

Watkins is only one of the latest Democratic beneficiaries of Baron's largesse. A prolific fundraiser, Baron has used his considerable contacts within the trial lawyer bar and political donor community to raise mega-bucks on behalf of Democratic candidates.

In the November election, Baron was instrumental in the Democratic sweep of all Dallas County courthouse races as well as in the remarkable gains the Democrats made in Texas House races. This surprising Democratic shift may mark the beginning of a sea change in Texas politics, one that halts the momentum of a tort reform movement that in recent years has dominated the Texas Legislature and influenced the philosophical leanings of judges throughout the state.

Perhaps that is why Baron is still a lightning rod who sparks the ire of so-called tort reformers and Wall Street Journal editorial writers.

After the 2004 election cycle, Baron altered his focus somewhat, turning his attention to rebuilding the Texas Democratic Party, which was flat broke after more than a dozen blistering years at the ballot box. With an able assist from a hired Democratic operative, he formed the Texas Democratic Trust, a state political action committee through which Baron would pump money to prime the party's political machinery.

Baron dedicated funds to initiate the kinds of infrastructure changes that could make the party more competitive, beefing up voter files and hiring new senior political staff. The trust breathed new life into the House Democratic Campaign Committee, contributing nearly $450,000 to the PAC, which in turn helped fund the campaigns of competitive state House races. HDCC funding and contributions from trial lawyer PACs helped Democrats successfully defend all their House incumbents and gain an additional six seats in the House, narrowing the Republican majority and possibly moderating its pro-tort reform influence.

The Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC claimed 96 wins and 15 losses statewide for the candidates it endorsed in the 2006 general election. But the tort reform group, which declines comment for this article, came up wanting in five of six key state House races, despite pouring money into GOP coffers and branding Democrats "pawns of trial lawyers," says Harvey Kronberg, editor of the The Quorum Report. "For the first time in a while, waving the bloody shirt of being a trial lawyer didn't work for Republicans," he says. In fact, two of the six new House Democrats are trial lawyers ¿ and one of them, Allen Vaught, is a former Baron & Budd associate.

The trust also lent its resources to the Dallas County Democratic Party and its 47 Democratic courthouse candidates. Together, they orchestrated a coordinated campaign that would help turn the tide of the 2006 election.

In their campaign ads, the incumbent Dallas County Republican judges adopted the rhetoric of tort reformers, claiming they did not legislate from the bench and stopped "frivolous lawsuits." The ads must not have worked. Before election night was over, every Republican incumbent ¿ judicial and otherwise ¿ who ran in this election cycle had been swept from office.

With most of the newly elected criminal court judges coming from the criminal-defense bar and several newly elected civil judges coming from plaintiffs firms, Baron may have helped the Dallas County judiciary shake loose of its conservative moorings. "At least five of the new civil judges are Dallas Trial Lawyers Association members," says Susan Hays, a Dallas solo and former Dallas County Democratic Party chairwoman. "Several more have done plaintiffs work and think philosophically like Fred Baron." Ken Tapscott, the newly elected judge of County Court-at-Law No. 4, is a senior associate with Baron & Budd, working in its asbestos litigation practice.

Republicans seemed to be caught off guard by the impact Baron had on the election. "Fred ran a bit of a stealth campaign, helping with the get-out-the-vote drive," says attorney Tom Pauken, former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. "I don't think Republicans realized how much money he was putting into Dallas County."

Say what you will about Baron ¿ and his critics certainly have ¿ he has committed his resources and himself to this crusade. Though he still remains a player on the national stage, intending to help former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards realize his presidential ambitions in 2008, his trust has spent more than $1.7 million in the 2006 election cycle alone. Ask tort reformers why he is doing this, and they might say he is acting out of the same self-interest that fed his asbestos litigation machine.

That argument seems less persuasive now that he has stopped trying suits, although Baron remains a Baron & Budd employee until December 2009, according to the terms of the personal services contract he signed upon selling his equity interest in the firm. The contract is at the center of a suit Baron and his wife Lisa Blue filed this year against Baron & Budd and others alleging they're owed money.

Baron says his motives are still the same as when he represented asbestos victims, only grander: To elect Democrats to help regulate corporate misconduct and to protect the civil justice system from being dismantled by conservative, pro-business Republicans.

Back in the Day

Baron possesses an odd mixture of take-no-prisoners bravado and aw-shucks humility that often comes out in the same thought. "I think I am the luckiest human being that ever walked on the face of the earth. I get to do exactly what I want to do," he says. "I really had a great law practice, but as a consequence ¿ and I don't exactly know how it happened ¿ I made a lot of money."

It might have happened because Baron is a relentless ¿ some would say ruthless ¿ mass tort visionary with the entrepreneurial instincts of a Rupert Murdoch, only for the left.

While a student at the University of Texas School of Law, Baron says he was "proselytized" by a speech given by Ralph Nader about using "the law as an instrument of social change to regulate corporate conduct," he says. "Afterward, Ralph invited a bunch of us on the law review to come to Washington for the summer. It turned into a project investigating the Atomic Energy Commission."

Nader continued to mentor Baron, even after Baron graduated from law school in 1971. "Fred was bent on becoming a tax lawyer," recalls Nader. "After he heard me speak, he decided to become a tort lawyer."

His first job was with a Dallas labor law firm, Mullinax, Wells, Mauzy & Collins, and he remembers the day when a partner asked him to look into the complaint of one of its clients, the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union, about conditions at the Pittsburgh Corning Plant near Tyler where workers were turning raw asbestos into fiber. No one in the firm wanted to handle the case, but Baron drove to the plant. "People were walking around with shovels of asbestos and putting it into bins. It was in the air, and no one was wearing a respirator." he says.

The rest is the stuff of legal legend: Tenacious baby lawyer sues Fortune 500 company for $100 million. Baron wasn't the first lawyer to file an asbestos case, but he was certainly there in the litigation's embryonic stages.

In 1975, Baron started his own firm, leaving the Tyler case behind, only to rejoin it again when one of his Nader contacts referred him another group of plaintiffs. With other pioneering trial lawyers, he says he dug up evidence that showed a history of corporate misconduct on the part of asbestos manufacturers, who knowingly exposed workers to asbestos while hiding its lethal danger from them. He says he saw his mission as going beyond seeking compensation for his client's injuries. "I really wanted to stop this kind of corporate misconduct, which could be done through high-profile lawsuits." The $20 million settlement he brokered for his clients in 1977 also might have served as a deterrent.

Baron took to the lecture circuit, convincing trial lawyers to file asbestos suits where appropriate or at least refer them to him for a healthy fee. In 1979, he gained further legal renown as the author of a textbook titled "Handling Occupational Diseases."

That same year, he hired one of his first associates, Russell Budd, a recent UT law graduate who would become his partner in 1986. Budd was a great counterpoint to Baron, says former Baron & Budd shareholder Lisa Kivett. "Fred is more outgoing, more risk-taking," says Kivett. "Russell is more introverted and contemplative ¿ a great negotiator. Together they were a good yin and yang."

These were the glory days of the plaintiffs bar, when trial lawyers were still perceived as good guy populists who reined in greedy corporate giants, because the government failed to do so. Hefty contingent fees weren't a sign of attorney avarice but a means of ensuring that wage earners had access to the courthouse. Texas became a more hospitable place for those seeking to prove personal injuries; the Legislature abolished contributory negligence, and even nonresident asbestos victims could find a convenient forum here as the state's asbestos caseload exploded.

Many of the lawyers joining Baron's growing firm became almost devotional in their praise for him. "One of the things that impressed me about Fred was his unflinching confidence in the correctness of what we were doing," Kivett says. "Fred made you feel like you were part of a larger mission. . . . People think it was about becoming rich, but he was doing what he loved, and the money just came."

Baron treated his firm as his family, says Kivett, a feeling that was only enhanced when his wife, Blue, joined Baron & Budd in 1985, becoming a top Baron & Budd asbestos trial lawyer.

As Baron made his millions, investing wisely, he became generous with those who were philosophically aligned with his mission. Most of these were Democrats.

Baron was an ardent fundraiser for Bill Clinton in his successful 1992 presidential run. Baron says Clinton offered him a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Baron decided to turn the appointment down after speaking to friends, including Nader, who talked him out of it.

"Some people like being the great dissenter, but Fred would have become very frustrated in a large group of circuit judges," says Nader. "He wants to win. He also wants maximum elbow room, so he can use all the tools of persuasion toward his goal."

With the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and its Contract With America seeking to make tort reform a front-burner issue, the good-guys persona of the trial lawyers began to fade. In the ensuing debate, some plaintiffs lawyers didn't help themselves, taking heat for flooding courthouses with hundreds of thousands of asbestos suits, using the same handful of doctors to diagnose a staggering number of questionable asbestos-related illnesses, and refusing to give priority to the claims of plaintiffs whose asbestos exposure had deadly health effects over the claims of plaintiffs who were as yet unimpaired from their exposure. And with many asbestos manufacturers seeking bankruptcy protection, there was a dwindling reservoir of resources to pay for plaintiffs claims.

Plaintiffs lawyers began to fractionalize over how to allocate these scarce resources, and some worried that if they didn't give priority to more serious cases, the courts, which were buckling under the weight of asbestos caseloads ¿ or Congress, which was making loud noises about creating a trust fund to bail out asbestos manufacturers ¿ would do it for them. Baron, with his fierce access-to-the-courthouse ethic, believed that impaired and unimpaired plaintiffs were entitled to their day in court. He also had a boatload of unimpaired clients.

Baron felt that it was wrong to lump asbestos cases together in global class actions, preferring to litigate each case one at a time. So wedded was Baron to his position, he was willing to go to war over it.

In 1992, he turned against some of the same pioneer asbestos litigators with whom he had once fought in the trenches. They had cobbled together a class action settlement of all federal asbestos cases, which would have created a fund to pay current and future asbestos claimants. But Baron filed an objection to this settlement and the class certification in Amchem Products v. Windsor and later objected to a similar class action in Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp.

Baron argued that class actions were an inappropriate procedural vehicle for mass torts; the cases were so unique and diverse they ought to be handled individually. It took him seven years, $4.5 million and an able U.S. Supreme Court assist from Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe to prove his point.

"Fred could have made a lot of money if he would have signed onto the class instead of objecting to it," says Marc Stanley, a partner in Stanley Iola & Mandel and the president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. "But he saw something that he was convinced wasn't fair. It was probably one of his biggest accomplishments."

Although Baron says he has "never had a bad day practicing law," around the time of the Amchem decision, he needed a big win.

In 1997, he began fending off accusations that his firm was a litigation mill that manufactured testimony from plaintiffs who had been coached by Baron & Budd staffers on what to say and how to say it in depositions. The allegations stemmed from a 20-page internal document benignly titled "Preparing for Your Deposition," which had been inadvertently turned over to an asbestos defense attorney by a Baron & Budd associate.

Among its litany of instructions, the memo appeared to suggest many answers that clients should provide opposing counsel ¿ independent of the facts. "You will be asked if you ever saw any WARNING labels on containers of the asbestos products that said WARNING or DANGER," the memo said. "It is important to maintain that you NEVER saw any labels on asbestos products that said WARNING or DANGER."

Three asbestos defendants sought stays in suits brought by Baron & Budd clients, claiming the use of the memo perpetuated fraudulent claims by teaching plaintiffs to lie. A Dallas County district judge referred the issue to a State Bar of Texas grievance committee as well as to a Dallas County grand jury. The U.S. Attorney's Office also looked into the matter. A heated ethics debate ensued among members of the bar.

Baron, who wasn't even trying asbestos cases anymore, because he was focusing on pollution suits, managed the crisis. He contends that the memo was drafted by an unsupervised paralegal who had shown it to fewer than 20 people out of the 15,000 that his firm represented. "I think there were folks out there that believed that we must be doing something wrong to be that successful," he says. "But we were successful, because we did things the right way."

Rather than circle the wagons, Baron went on the offensive, countering with a scorched-earth attack directed at those who attacked him. In the media and in court, Baron maintained that the memo was work product and that attorney-client privilege prevented its use in evidence ¿ and even protected his clients from being questioned about it by opposing counsel. With Baron & Budd claiming privilege for its clients, it was difficult for defense attorneys to prove through a plaintiff that the firm had used the memo to perpetuate a fraud.

Baron & Budd threatened to sue those who attempted to use the memo in court or otherwise interfered with the firm's client relationships. At the time, Baron told Texas Lawyer that his firm intended to disqualify any defense attorney who tried to introduce the memo, because it was unethical to use the privileged documents of another party.

Baron says he hired four ethics experts who opined that the memo was ethical and confidential, and he convinced two Texas intermediate courts of appeals that the memo was shielded from disclosure. Neither the State Bar of Texas, the Dallas County grand jury nor the U.S. attorney took any action against him.

Baron felt vindicated, but to tort reformers who were gathering steam and political clout, he became the personification of the trial lawyer they loved to hate. "I was outspoken, and they needed a target," Baron says. "I became the poster boy of a trial lawyer" working for his own self-interest.

Tort reformers were making dramatic headway in changing the civil justice system on the state level with their well financed campaign that vilified "greedy" trial lawyers for their litigation tactics that drove up prices, premiums and unemployment.

And trial lawyers were slow to respond. "We didn't think it would have the impact that it did," Baron says. "But if the other guy is spending $100 million on press and lobbyists every year, they can sell soap that doesn't wash."

Budd recalls that Baron led the firm's efforts in the Texas Legislature during the early attempts to restrict nonresidents from filing asbestos suits in Texas courts. Baron says he focused on the national scene, involving himself in lawyer politics, partly to help slow the rising tide of tort reform.

Despite the PR nightmare the memo caused, Baron became president-elect of ATLA in 1999, moving to Washington the same year then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush began his presidential bid, running on a platform that included tort reform.

Baron did what he could to get then-Vice President Gore elected. Besides being part of Gore's national fundraising team, Baron sent e-mails to all ATLA members asking them not to support Nader, whose third-party candidacy, many believe, hurt Gore in Florida and resulted in Bush's election.

"Ralph went completely nuts when I did that," Baron says. "Our relationship deteriorated after that."

"It is one thing to go Democratic," says Nader. "But then he went rejectionist on me. He had lawyers calling lawyers telling them not to vote for me."

Baron became ATLA president the same year Bush became U.S. president. "The entire government was controlled by ardent individuals that wanted to put trial lawyers out of business," says Linda Lipsen, ATLA's vice president for public affairs. "People around here were really feeling defeated. But Fred's leadership style is so optimistic under pressure, he was just what we needed. He helped our organization regroup, raise money and fight the initiatives we needed to fight.

Baron says The Wall Street Journal accused him of taking ATLA's top job only to protect his asbestos business, but he says he played a much larger role. Congress was proposing legislation for national caps on punitive damages, tort immunity for gun manufacturers, federal caps on medical malpractice cases, and he worked on softening or killing each bill. "We held the line in the Senate," he says, helping block legislation that would have taken asbestos cases out of the judicial system and put them into a government-administered trust fund.

Tort reformers at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, accused trial lawyers of trying to buy Congress with fierce lobbying efforts and hefty political contributions. Few seemed as effective at raising those contributions as Baron.

"It's a lot easier to raise money when you write the same size check as the one you are asking for," says Democratic activist Hays.

By 2002, Baron returned to Dallas, turned 55 and decided to change his life. "I had the opportunity to become involved in the Edwards presidential campaign, but I knew I would have to give up my law practice," he says.

In December 2002, he did just that: Baron and Blue sold all their Baron & Budd stock to Budd, and, but for a few major cases they still agreed to handle, he quit the practice of law, he says. "I didn't want to be 75 years old and still trying cases."

It wasn't hard to rally the trial lawyer troops for Edwards, since Edwards was one of them.

Baron had met Edwards through bar work, he says, and contributed to Edwards' campaign in 1998 when he ran for the U.S. Senate from North Carolina. When Edwards announced his run for president in January 2003, Baron joined his staff. The conservative National Review referred to Baron as "John Edwards' Evil Twin," but that didn't concern Edwards.

"I know Fred Baron," Edwards says. "He is a good man, and he is honest. There will always be criticism coming from the media ¿ that is the way the world works."

As national finance director for the campaign, Baron was in charge of all financial issues. But with Edwards' popularity among trial lawyers, money wasn't a problem. "We raised more money in 90 days than any Democrat ever. We still hold the record at $7.4 million."

Edwards' populist message seemed to resonate with voters, but it wasn't enough for him to catch U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who won the Democratic nomination.

But the campaign was far from over for Baron, who joined the senior staff of the Kerry campaign and lobbied for Kerry to choose Edwards as his running mate, which Kerry did. "Kerry made the decision for his own reasons," Baron says. "But I hope I had influence in the selection."

During the general election campaign, Baron served as chairman of the coordinated campaign between the Kerry-Edwards camp and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The Kerry campaign sent him to Florida during the last 30 days to work on the Democratic get-out-the-vote drive.

When the Democrats lost, Baron grew angry. "There was no lack of money, but there was the lack of a party organization," he says. "When we left Florida this time, there was no infrastructure left, and we were back in the same boat."

In February 2005, Baron expressed those sentiments to former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean, who had become DNC chairman. "Dean said that in over 40 states, the party was just a hollowed-out log, and what we needed to do was rebuild the state parties," Baron says.

Focus on Texas

Baron thought rebuilding the Texas Democratic Party would be "a great project" for him, since he was retired and the state party only had two or three full-time employees.

To examine its feasibility, Baron hired Matt Angle, who had served as chief of staff for former Democratic U.S. Rep. Martin Frost before Frost's defeat in 2004. In the late spring of 2005, Angle presented Baron with his findings, recommending, among other things, the hiring of new senior staff to run the state party machinery. "We didn't have a single staff person who had worked in a senior paid capacity in a competitive campaign," says Angle, who also suggested upgrading the party's antiquated voter file to enable the sophisticated targeting of Democratic voters; beefing up staff for an oppositional research group (the Texas Progress Council); and revitalizing the state House Democratic Campaign Committee, so it could help plan and manage campaign activities in targeted House races. "We knew Democrats could not yet be competitive for statewide office," Baron says. "But there might be some House seats we could pick up."

Baron decided to create a state PAC, the Texas Democratic Trust, which would be independent of the party but could give unlimited funds to it. Baron figured with an investment of around $100,000 to $150,000 a month "we could create this thing," and he began pitching the project to wealthy Democratic donors around the state. His only taker was Budd, who says he kicked in $100,000 early in the trust's formation. Later in the election cycle, Budd gave another $80,000, and Waco businessman Bernard Rapoport contributed $25,000. But Baron, experienced fundraiser that he was, found no other takers. So he decided to plant most of the seed money himself.

To gain the support of the state party, he met with members of its executive committee, some of whom were concerned that he wanted to take over the party, says Baron. To allay their fears, he said he would not take sides in party politics or primaries, and he would remove himself from the project as soon as it became self-sustaining. Until then, he wanted to hire roughly 15 staffers, and every 30 days the trust would write a check to the Texas Democratic Party to pay for them. "But there is one catch," he recalls telling them. "They are going to report to Matt Angle . . . and if I find out you are interfering with the work of these 15 people, that is the last check I will write."

The executive committee agreed, says Baron, and Angle got to work. With trust money, Angle was able to attract top talent ¿ new executive, political, finance and communications directors ¿ who, in turn, possessed the political acumen to raise funds for such things as a statewide mail ballot program that targeted seniors who were likely to vote Democratic. Two newly hired party staffers were charged with upgrading the voter files, with additional funds for the project provided by the trust, the state party and organized labor. "We put these files online so our county and legislative candidates would have access," Angle says.

To beef up the HDCC, the trust helped hire new staff and paid their salaries, says Baron. In previous election cycles the HDCC had been a small PAC for state House Democratic leaders to dole out campaign funds. In 2006, it provided funding and campaign planning for 17 House races that the Democrats felt were in play. HDCC was also funded by other political donors.

The trust and the HDCC polled 10 key legislative districts to determine which issues would motivate Democrats to actually vote. Certainly national issues such as the war in Iraq would drive voters to the polls, but their research revealed that issues with populist themes resonated strongly, says Angle. "People felt one-party control in Texas was failing them and we needed a change." The polling corroborated earlier research conducted by the Texas Values in Action Coalition, a progressive North Texas PAC that was working with the Dallas County Democratic Party. TEXVAC and the trust had sponsored focus groups of Democrats, Independents and Republicans, says Angle, who felt that Republicans in Austin were more interested in representing special interest groups than everyday people. The seeds of change ¿ particularly in Dallas County ¿ seemed evident.

Baron says the trust wanted to target one Texas county to see if it could "grow a real meat-and-potatoes coordinated campaign." He and Angle looked at Dallas and Harris counties but chose Dallas because it was further along organizationally and demographically. Although Republicans had dominated county courthouse races for decades, the county had been trending Democratic since 1998. Angle felt the tipping point had been reached in 2002, but with the Republicans' efficient get-out-the-vote machine, Democrats had won only a handful of county races. Even that modest success was enough to help incite a flood of Democratic judicial candidates ¿ 42 in all ¿ to run in the 2006 election.

For the past 10 years, "Democratic down-ballot office seekers ran their own campaigns," Baron says. "You might see a yard sign that would say, "Vote Joe Blow for Judge," but no one knows who the judges are, and the only way to win these races is through a coordinated campaign that gets more straight-party ticket voters on your side than theirs."

Also in the summer of 2005, Baron approached Dallas County Democratic Party Chairwoman Darlene Ewing about running all Dallas County Democratic candidates as a slate. Money, sweat and strategy would be pooled into one coordinated campaign that asked voters to vote Democratic rather than for any particular candidate.

Ewing says she needed no convincing. "There was already a synergy around the idea; everyone understood that is what we needed to do," says Ewing, a Dallas solo. "We just couldn't rely on the trend. We had to come up with a plan to take advantage of the trend."

Part of the plan included convincing Democratic candidates to part with their campaign funds and not go it alone. "I had only been party chair for a year and a half, and I was asking 47 county candidates to allow us to spend their money," Ewing says. "Fred and Russell gave us credibility; my candidates agreed to stick together and run a campaign of "Vote Democratic.'"

Toward this coordinated effort, the candidates would put up more than $200,000, the trust kicked in $100,000 and TEXVAC contributed $50,000, says Angle. The state party and the HDCC generated most of the direct mail pieces to target Democratic voters, which raised the price tag of the Dallas project another $150,000, he says.

To kick off the coordinated campaign, Baron & Budd provided $30,000 in seed money, says Budd, for a fundraising event in April 2006 that featured Edwards as its keynote speaker. "I hadn't been to an event where 800 Democrats showed up in 20 years," Ewing says. "It got everybody excited and made us feel we could pull this off. It also raised money, and that was good."

The coordinated campaign envisioned a targeted get-out-the-vote operation driven by direct mail, automated and live phone calls, and neighborhood canvassing efforts. Angle brought in Jane Hamilton, a seasoned political operative, to run the countywide ground campaign. Budd also had an active role as one of the primary coordinators, and his firm helped with fundraisers, giving office space for candidate meetings. State Sen. Royce West, a partner in Dallas' West & Gooden, came on board early, dedicating himself and members of his Senate staff to the coordinated effort. His radio spots, paid for by Budd, urged voters to get out and vote Democratic. His predominately minority 23rd senatorial district was considered pivotal to Democratic turnout. But the get-out-the-vote drive was by no means limited to the southern sector of Dallas County. Activists, with the help of the sophisticated voter file, sought out Democrats wherever they could find them.

"You want to target your time and energy and message to those folks who are going to vote your way," Baron says. "This was not a persuasion exercise for independent voters. It was an exercise in getting out the Democratic vote."

And it worked.

The Democrats swept every election in Dallas County, electing 42 district and county judges, a district attorney, a district and county clerk, a county treasurer and a county judge to preside over the commissioner's court. "The Democrats outvoted the Republicans in Dallas County by 16,000 straight-ticket pulls," Angle says. "Coming together the way we did gave us success beyond what we thought possible. The strategy to win some of the races was the strategy to win them all."

As expected, all the statewide races remained in the GOP column, but the Democrats picked up five new House seats to go along with one they had picked up in a special election. "We thought we might get two," says Baron. No Democratic incumbent lost his or her state legislative or congressional seat. And the Democratic delegation to the U.S. House increased by two.

"I think this election enhanced [Baron's] reputation as the political strategist and tactical leader of the Democratic establishment," says Bill Miller, an Austin lobbyist with strong ties to the Republican Party. "If I were a Democrat he would be one of the first people I would call ¿ even if he didn't give me any money."

Budd says that despite his firm's current litigation with Baron he has no qualms continuing his contributions to the trust. "This is more than just about us. This is about the goals of the Democratic Party. . . . This is a lot bigger than any bad blood we might have at the current time."

"In just over a year with a fairly nominal investment of less than a couple of million dollars, we have accomplished a lot," says Baron. "The real marker is 2010 when we redistrict again. In order to have a say in redistricting, we need to win the state House or the Senate or statewide office. And I think that is doable."

But isn't he leaving again? Hasn't he just bought a house in North Carolina to help Edwards make a run at the presidency?

"I am a bit nomadic," he says. "But I can write checks from anywhere."

Republican Primary Runoff In Collin Co.

With an unusually high number of ballot positions for April 2010 Republican Primary Runoff Election in Collin County there is a great deal of interest in exactly who can vote in the Republican Runoff.

• Republican Runoff Early Voting runs April 5th-9th and election day is April 13th.
  
• There is no Democratic Runoff Election in Collin County.
• Collin County Election Information and Sample Ballots
  
• League of Women Voters of Plano/Collin County Runoff Candidate Guide
  

The most frequent misconception is that you must have voted in the primary election to vote in the primary runoff. Another frequent misconception circulating is that you cannot vote in the primary runoff unless you were eligible to vote in the primary election.

Here is the fact: Anyone who was registered on or before March 13 is eligible to vote in the Republican Primary Runoff Election, as long as they DID NOT vote in the March 2, 2010 Democratic Primary Election.

Depending on where you live in Collin County you will have different candidates on your Republican Primary Runoff Ballot.

Every Republican Primary Runoff Ballot in Collin County will include these six ballot positions and candidates:
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 3 * Rick Green * Debra Lehrmann	District Court 219 * Scott Becker * Angela Tucker	County Court at Law 3 * Lance Baxter * Stewart Matthews
County Court at Law 4 * David Rippel * Matt Goeller	County Court at Law 6 * Terri Green * Jay Bender	District Clerk * Patricia Crigger * Alma Hays

If you live in Texas State House of Representatives District 66, you will have this additional ballot position and pair of candidates:

State Representative 66
* Mabrie Jackson
* Van Taylor (Taylor has the "TEA Approved" rating from the North Texas Tea Party)

If you live in Collin County Commissioner's Court Place 2, you will have this additional ballot position and pair of candidates:

Commissioner's Court 2
* Cheryl Williams
* Jerry Hoagland

To find your House of Representatives District number look on your Voter Registration card for the box titled "STATE REP."

To find your Collin County Commissioner's Court Place number look on your Voter Registration card for the box titled "COM"

To find your Collin County election Precinct number look on your Voter Registration card for the box titled "Prec. No."

To view your Voter Registration card information online click here.

Plano Special Runoff Election In March

Updated Wednesday March 27, 2010 @ 8:56 p.m.
Today was the Plano City Council, pl 3 special run-off election day between André Davidson and Kathy Fang.

With 100% of the precincts reporting the Plano Special Election results are - Andre Davidson 56.03% Vs. Cathy Fang 43.97% on 4,931 ballots cast.

Updated Saturday January 30, 2010 @ 9:06 p.m.
Plano Special Election final results were reported by the Collin County Registrar's Office at 8:47 P.M. Saturday January 30, 2010. Out of 144,389 registered City of Plano voters a total of 4,199 (2.9%) people cast a ballot for one of the three candidates with the following results:

• Andre Davidson 1819 (43.74%)
• Cathy Fang 1517 (36.48%)
• Doug Shockey 823 (19.79%)

Since none of the three candidates topped 50% of the total vote, a special City of Plano runoff election between the top two candidates, Andre Davidson and Cathy Fang, will now be scheduled in March.

Beginning immediately in 2010 the Plano City Council must start identifying new ways to cut city spending and bolster city tax collections. Council members have already mentioned actions such as closing libraries on Fridays, eliminating school police patrols, ending taxi vouchers for the elderly and privatizing city government services as ways to cut city spending.

One of the two city council candidates André Davidson or Cathy Fang will soon add their voice to council discussions on how to make the difficult budget and tax choices that must be made in the months, and perhaps years, to come.

André Davidson has said, "It would be foolish to say we shouldn't look at everything - including whether we have to look at raising revenue." On her campaign website Davidson says she is committed to:

Continuing to provide quality city services, especially in the area of public safety, economic development to ensure a strong tax base and keep our community vibrant, and revitalization of our neighborhoods and commercial properties.

Ms. Davidson has been endorsed by the Plano Firefighters Association and a list of others.

Cathy Fang has said tax increases should be a last resort and that Plano should privatize city services and more closely scrutinize city spending.
On her campaign website Fang says, "I feel at this time, when the economy is not doing well, taxes are on the rise, our city government is not being accountable to the citizens..." [Fang campaign video] Fang has also said,

“Some tax increases are necessary, but there’s a limit -- the government cannot treat people like an ATM to get the money they’re lacking. Plano needs to be aggressive in the business market to attract bigger businesses and companies to bring jobs to the Plano community.”

Original Post Saturday January 3, 2010 @ 10:53 a.m.

You have probably heard that Plano plans to hold a special election to fill the City Council Place 3 seat of Mabrie Jackson, who resigned in November to run for the Texas state legislature district 66 house house seat left open when Rep. Brian McCall announced he would not seek re-election. The Plano special election day is scheduled for January 30, 2010 with several days of early voting starting January 13, 2010.

The Plano City Council initially wanted to hold the special election concurrent with the March 2 primary, however, Texas state election code prohibits the city from scheduling the election within 30 days of a primary election. State election rules also dictate that an election to fill the vacated council seat must be scheduled within so many days after the vacancy occurs. January 30^th was the only date that satisfied the legal requirements for a special election. According to City of Plano officials, the cost for the special election will be about $80,000.

While voters citywide elect members to the Plano City Council's seven seats, four of its seven members must reside in designated districts for representative diversity across the city. Three candidates, all political newcomers, have filed to run in the special city election to fill the designated north-central Plano Place 3 District City Council vacancy. The three candidates André Davidson, Cathy Fang and Doug Shockey currently live in the Place 3 District and have each lived in Plano for approximately 30 years.

With the City of Plano facing projected budget shortfalls of up to $50 million through 2011 budget year, the city council will be forced to make even more difficult budget decisions in the coming months of 2010 than they already made in 2009.

In 2009 the Plano City Council approved a $400 million budget plan that already included millions in cuts to city services plus a hike to the city's property tax rates. That budget plan doesn't take effect until October 2010, but the most current economic projections for Plano now show that the projections used to write the 2010 city budget were too optimistic.

Commercial property taxes, which accounts for roughly half of Plano's tax base, is now on a trajectory to decline 10 percent more than initially projected by the council. The additional commercial tax base decline added to continuing declines in sales tax collections and a troubled residential housing market are now projected to leave a $20 million shortfall in the city's next 2010 budget plan.

Unless the economy rebounds significantly through 2010 the city will likely see an additional $30 million contraction of tax revenues leading into the 2011 budget year. The tax base contraction trend could continue and even deepen leading into the 2012 budget year.

League of Women Voters: Voters Guide for Jan. 30 Plano City Council Special Election.
You must be properly registered 30 days in advance of any schedule election in order to vote in the election. (Check your registration status online here.) Properly registered Collin County voters began to see their new Blue and White 2010-2011 voter registration cards arriving in the mail during mid-December. The Collin County Registrar's office automatically sent a new Blue and White registration card to every "active" registered voter in the county during December 2009.

If you did not receive a new Blue and White voter registration card, it may indicate that you are no longer properly registered to vote. You should call the Registrar's office to ask why you did not receive your new Blue and White 2010-2011 voter registration card.

VOTER REGISTRAR
800-687-8546 / 972-547-1990
2010 REDBUD BLVD., SUITE 102
MCKINNEY, TX 75069
www.collincountytx.gov/elections/

For more information on the new Blue and White 2010-2011 voter registration cards, click here.

A Political Strategy Of FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

Videos: Rachel Maddow talks about right wing rhetoric urging violence against Democrats and the resulting acts of violence it has promoted.

Last Friday, former militia leader Mike Vanderboegh called for violence against Democrats across the country to protest the health care bill.

Vanderboegh posted the call for action Friday on his blog, “Sipsey Street Irregulars.” Referring to the health care reform bill as “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act,” he told followers to send a message to Democrats. And, apparently in response, attacks were made on offices of Democrats in–at least–Wichita, KS, Tucson, AZ, Rochester, NY, Niagara Falls, NY.

“We can break their windows,” he said. “Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”

Rep. John Boehner (R., Ohio), the House minority leader, is quoted in the National Review Online saying, “Take [Rep.] Steve Driehaus, [(D., Ohio)] for example, he may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati.

The anti-reform advocacy group then published an ad in The Cincinnati Enquirer featuring a photo of Dreihaus with his children. A conservative blog published Driehaus' address--complete with directions--on the Internet so that conservatives can find his house for a planned Sunday protest at his house. [TPM]

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has also done her part to raise the rhetorical intensity toward violence, telling her Twitter followers, "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America, to ‘reload’ and ‘aim for’ Democrats.

Of coarse, Palin's use of gun imagery in her rhetoric against Democrats is no more an intentional incitement to violence than equating Barack Obama with terrorism and portraying him as "not one of us" during the 2008 presidential election campaign was an intentional incitement to violence. None the less, Palin's 2008 rhetoric against Obama prompted people to call out, "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" at her 2008 campaign rallies. [Death threats leveled at Democratic congressman and their families / House Democrats report increased threats]

Denying that their intense rhetoric has in any way pushed their constituencies to the edge of violence, conservative leaders in congress and on conservative radio and TV excuse this "Rage on the Right" by claiming the people have a "right to be angry." That the people are angry because President Obama and the Democrats controlling congress are passing laws opposed by the people through totalitarian parliamentary procedures. [Conservative View Host Justifies Tea Party Rage / RNC Chair Steele Defends Tea Partiers]

Forget the parliamentary procedures are exactly the same rules that Republicans used to enact their conservative legislative agenda when they controlled Congress and the White House for most years of the past decade.

Conservative legislation, passionately opposed by Democrats, that cut taxes while radically increasing spending, and legislation that eliminated regulatory oversight of the American financial system.

Conservative legislation that turned budget surpluses at the end of the Clinton administration into a $1.5 trillion deficit at the end of the Bush Administration. Conservative financial deregulation legislation that allowed the American financial system to run wild to near total collapse.

Forget the Tea Party speaks for only 13 percent of "the people" who say they are part of the Tea Party group; Four in five of who voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential race and George W. Bush in 2004 and who strongly support Sarah Palin for President in 2012, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll.

Forget that Obama won the 2008 Presidential Election with 349 electoral college votes to McCain's 163 votes.

Forget that two-thirds of the House seats won by Democrats in November 2008 (170, 66 percent) were won in landslide fashion, decided by more than 30 points over their Republican challengers and that over 90 percent of Democratic seats were won by double-digits in 2008 (233 of 257 seats), with just 24 seats decided by less than 10 points which increased the number of house seats held by Democrats by 21 seats.

Forget that Democrats increased the number of Senate seats from 49 before the November 2008 election to current number of 59 seats. All these Democratic Party wins came on a platform of "change." Change from the Republican's conservative governance.

Forget that the Republican minority now seeks to nullify the 2008 election and the will of the majority of voters who elected Democrats to represent them in the White House, Senate and House.

Forget that during the Bush Administration years when Republicans controlled the House and Senate, conservatives would shout that Democrats in congress were "with the terrorists" when they opposed the policies of the Republican leadership. In fact, any negative criticism of the president whatsoever was considered unpatriotic "while troops were in harm's way." That was the line we heard almost daily throughout the previous decade: don't undermine the commander-in-chief while troops were deployed in battle.

IBM had great success with a marketing strategy coined Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) during the heyday of "Big Iron" computers in the 1980's and 1990's. The message to IT Directors was that a decision to buy computing equipment from any company other than IBM could result in sudden professional death. The marketing catch phrase tagged to this FUD campaign was, "No one ever got fired for going with IBM."

For a decade, or more, the GOP has increasingly relied on the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) marketing strategy against Democrats to get Republicans elected. Increasingly, the GOP has adopted a message that Democrats are Godless, fascist, communist, socialist, totalitarian, satin worshiping, grandma killing, baby killing "evil-do'ers" determined to drag this country to the very depths of hell if they are not stopped by righteous conservatives.

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money in the 2010 election cycle through an aggressive campaign promise to "save the country" from Democrats. The 2010 GOP plan, as given in presentation given at an RNC meeting, is to promote and capitalize on “fear” of President Barack Obama and Democrats everywhere. It seems the only government policy idea the GOP will offer in 2010 is a visceral fear of Democrats. [Ben Smith has the story at Politico / An angry voter is an ignorant voter]

This is exactly the same type of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) marketing strategy that GOP consultant Frank Luntz’s told Republicans to use to oppose Health Insurance reform in his May 2009 strategy memo on health care. And this is exactly the strategy that Republicans have executed for the last year. [Politico]

The Daily Beast's John Avlon writes on, a new Harris poll released on March 24 that is based on the book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America."The poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama:

• 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
• 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

These numbers demonstrate that the fear, uncertainty, doubt and hate political strategy has pumped up hyper-partisanship since Obama took office. This FUD strategy is what drove some Tea Party protesters gathered on Capitol Hill earlier this week to yell "n*gger" and "f*ggot" at Democratic members of Congress and what prompted others to threaten violence toward members of congress and even their children.

The Harris poll, which surveyed 2,230 people right at the height of the health-care reform debate, also clearly shows that education is a barrier to extremism. Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It's a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: "Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

[Harris poll finds Republicans believe GOP smears of Obama]

Thank You All!

I want to express my appreciation and a heartfelt thank you to Linda Magid - Convention Co-Chair and SD8 Representative, Deborah Angel-Smith - Convention Co-Chair, Dick Hildenbrand - Election Administrator and Jamie Ramirez - Deputy Election Administrator, who put in so many dedicated hours of hard work to support every Collin County Democratic Primary election worker and who prepare one of the best ever Democratic Conventions in Collin County.

And, thanks to all the Democrats who volunteered to help make Primary Election Day and the County Convention such a success this year.

Michael Handley
Managing Editor, The Democratic Blog of Collin County.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott To Block Health Insurance Reform

Ten US states plan to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health insurance reform legislation as soon as President Barack Obama signs it into law.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Texas plans to join a multi-state lawsuit opposing the legislation immediately after President Barack Obama signs it into law. Abbott says the legislation violates the U.S. Constitution and "unconstitutionally infringes upon Texans' individual liberties." [Star-Telegram]

Florida's attorney general, conservative Republican Bill McCollum who is in Florida's gubernatorial race for the upcoming November mid-term elections, charges that a provision which requires most people to buy health insurance or else pay a fine is unconstitutional.

Virginia state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says,"Virgina will file suit against the federal government charging that the health-care reform legislation is unconstitutional." [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

Republican attorneys general of South Carolina, Nebraska, Florida, Texas, Utah, Pennsylvania, Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, Virginia and Alabama have indicated they will also join the multi-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the reform legislation.

The governor of Idaho signed a bill last week blocking federal mandates requiring individuals in his state to purchase health insurance. Some 38 states have either filed or announced their intention to file similar legislation, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which opposes the health insurance reform.

Here are some of the private health insurance industry reforms mandated in the legislation that Republicans have blocked for the past year and will continue to block though lawsuits:

• Health Insurers cannot deny children under age 19 health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. A ban on the discrimination in adults will take effect in 2014.
• Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees will get tax credits covering up to 50% of employee premiums for 2009 and 2010.
• Seniors will get a rebate to fill the so-called "donut hole" in Medicare drug coverage, which severely limits prescription medication coverage expenditures over $2,700. As of next year, 50 percent of the donut hole will be filled.
• The cut-off age for young adults to continue to be covered by their parents' health insurance rises to the age 27.
• Lifetime caps on the amount of insurance an individual can have will be banned. Annual caps will be limited, and banned in 2014.
• Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a temporary national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they're still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insured adults. Health insurance exchanges will eliminate the program in 2014.
• Free preventative care - New plans must cover checkups and other preventative care without co-pays. All plans will be affected by 2018.
• No more rescission. Effective immediately, insurance companies can no longer cut someone when he or she gets sick.
• Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders' amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
• Insurers must now reveal how much money is spent on overhead - All insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
• Any new plan must now implement an appeals process for coverage determinations and claims.
• This tax will impose a ten percent tax on indoor tanning services. This tax, which replaced the proposed tax on cosmetic surgery, would be effective for services on or after July 1, 2010.
• New screening procedures will be implemented to help eliminate health insurance fraud and waste.
• Medicare payment protections will be extended to small rural hospitals and other health care facilities that have a small number of Medicare patients.
• Non-profit Blue Cross organizations will be required to maintain a medical loss ratio -- money spent on procedures over money incoming -- of 85 percent or higher to take advantage of IRS tax benefits.
• Chain restaurants will be required to provide a "nutrient content disclosure statement" alongside their items. Expect to see calories listed both on in-store and drive-through menus of fast-food restaurants sometime soon.
• The bill establishes a temporary program for companies that provide early retiree health benefits for those ages 55-64 in order to help reduce the often-expensive cost of that coverage.
• The Secretary of Health and Human Services will set up a new Web site to make it easy for Americans in any state to seek out affordable health insurance options The site will also include helpful information for small businesses.
• A two-year temporary credit (up to a maximum of $1 billion) is in the bill to encourage investment in new therapies for the prevention and treatment of diseases.

House Passes Health Care Legislation

President Obama appeared before cameras in the East Room of the White House just before midnight, with Vice President Biden at his side, to hail the historic health care vote in the House.

"This isn't radical reform, but it is major reform," Obama said in the late-night speech. "This isn't going to cure everything that ails our health care system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction. This is what changes looks like."

Obama is expected to sign the Senate health care bill Tuesday.

Message From President Barack Obama:

For the first time in our nation's history, Congress has passed comprehensive health care reform. America waited a hundred years and fought for decades to reach this moment. Tonight, we are finally here.

Consider the staggering scope of what you have just accomplished:

Every American will finally be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage.

Every American will be covered under the toughest patient protections in history. Arbitrary premium hikes, insurance cancellations, and discrimination against pre-existing conditions will now be gone forever.

And we'll finally start reducing the cost of care -- creating millions of jobs, preventing families and businesses from plunging into bankruptcy, and removing over a trillion dollars of debt from the backs of our children.

But the victory that matters most tonight goes beyond the laws and far past the numbers.

It is the peace of mind enjoyed by every American, no longer one injury or illness away from catastrophe.

It is the workers and entrepreneurs who are now freed to pursue their slice of the American dream without fear of losing coverage or facing a crippling bill.

And it is the immeasurable joy of families in every part of this great nation, living happier, healthier lives together because they can finally receive the vital care they need.

This is what change looks like.

My gratitude tonight is profound. I am thankful for those in past generations whose heroic efforts brought this great goal within reach for our times. I am thankful for the members of Congress whose months of effort and brave votes made it possible to take this final step. But most of all, I am thankful for you.

This day is not the end of this journey. Much hard work remains, and we have a solemn responsibility to do it right. But we can face that work together with the confidence of those who have moved mountains.

Our journey began three years ago, driven by a shared belief that fundamental change is indeed still possible. We have worked hard together every day since to deliver on that belief.

We have shared moments of tremendous hope, and we've faced setbacks and doubt. We have all been forced to ask if our politics had simply become too polarized and too short-sighted to meet the pressing challenges of our time. This struggle became a test of whether the American people could still rally together when the cause was right -- and actually create the change we believe in.

Tonight, the answer is indisputable: Yes we can.

Thank you,
President Barack Obama

Late Season Snow And Cold Prove No Global Warming

"It's cold. So there's no Climate Change" Facts From The National Snow And Ice Data Center

Get ready to hear climate change deniers point to the unusual late season late snow storm and cold weather as evidence that global warming isn’t really happening.

North Texas had one of the snowiest winter seasons on record. The National Weather Service in Fort Worth reported today that North Texas got 17.1 inches of snow this cold season, ranking it No. 2 behind the 1977-78 season which got 17.6 inches.

Dallas/Fort Worth Airport recorded 1.2 inches of snow on Saturday, which shattered the old record of 0.4 inches established on March 20, 1970. An additional 0.1 inches of snow earlier today brought the weekend total to 1.3 inches. The last time an inch or more fell on North Texas was March 29, 1937, when 2 inches fell.

Union of Concerned Scientists:

There is a significant difference between weather and climate. Weather is what we experience on any given day or even over a couple weeks. Climate describes a region’s prevailing conditions — including such things as temperature, rainfall, wind, humidity and atmospheric pressure — over long periods of time. Climate is a good indicator of what to expect. For example, in the Midwest, one would expect cold winters. Whereas, in a Mediterranean climate, one would expect a generally milder winter.

Climate change refers to shifts in prevailing conditions observed over decades. One such shift is a long-term rise in global average temperatures. The current cold spells are occurring against this backdrop.

Putting aside the difference between weather and climate, climate change projections show that a warming planet generates more precipitation in areas that typically experience rain or snow. Rising ocean surface temperatures already have increased the temperature and moisture content of the air passing over the United States, setting the stage for heavier snow and rain storms.

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that global warming has increased the frequency of storms that dump heavy precipitation over most land regions that experience storms. Most deserts, conversely, are getting drier.

“Climate scientists aren’t at all surprised that there are more drenching rain or blizzards in certain parts of the country,” said Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “That’s consistent with well-documented climate change trends over the past several decades. Unless we take some dramatic steps to curb global warming, we likely will see a lot more regional precipitation over the next few decades.”

Precipitation in the Northeast has increased markedly over the last century, according to the Northeast Climate Impact Assessment, a collaboration between UCS and a team of more than 50 scientists and economists. Over the past few decades, winter precipitation in the Northeast has increased 0.15 inch per decade.

The Northeast is not alone. According to Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, released last year by 13 federal agencies, Great Lakes states are experiencing more precipitation because the lakes have less ice and more open water in the winter. The maximum seasonal coverage of Great Lakes ice decreased approximately 30 percent from 1973 through 2008. That means more lake water is likely to evaporate into the atmosphere, resulting in heavier snowstorms.

The current decade likely ranks as the hottest since temperature records began in the 1850s, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization announced in December 2009. On December 8th 2009, at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), reported that 2009 was likely to rank in the top 10 warmest years since 1850. He added that since 1980 every decade has been warmer than the previous one. He also stressed that greenhouse concentrations were highest now than at any time over the last 800,000 years.

While conservative Republican lawmaker continue to strongly deny all evidence of climate change, Military planners in the Pentagon have concluded that “global warming is now officially considered a threat to U.S. national security.” In its upcoming 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, Pentagon planners will report that climate change could result in food and water scarcity, pandemics, population displacement, and other destabilizing events that could create conflict.

“The American people expect the military to plan for the worst,” says retired Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, a 35-year Navy veteran now serving as president of the American Security Project. “It’s that sort of mindset, I think, that has convinced, in my view, the vast majority of military leaders that climate change is a real threat and that the military plays an important role in confronting it.”

Democratic Party of Collin County Convention

The Democratic Party of Collin County will convene its County Convention, the kick-off event for the general election season, on Saturday, March 20th, beginning at 10:30 a.m. at the Plano Centre, located at 2000 E. Spring Creek Parkway in Plano, Tx. [map] All local Democrats are welcome to attend. For more information - click here.

* Must be elected as a Delegate to the County Convention by your Precinct Convention on March 2nd to vote.

Dems Lead In Poll, But GOP More Enthusiastic

In mid-term elections, enthusiasm matters and Democrats, particularly young Democrats, are not very enthusiastic about the 2010 mid-term election, according to Gallup's latest polling. The poll shows Democrats are ahead in the generic ballot preference, but Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters are much less likely to help get out the vote or vote themselves than their GOP counterparts in the November 2010 general election:

Democrats lead Republicans by a slight 47% to 44% margin when registered voters are asked which party's congressional candidate they would support in their district "if the elections for Congress were being held today." At the same time, Gallup's inaugural weekly tracking update on the 2010 elections shows Republicans with a distinct advantage over Democrats in terms of enthusiasm about voting this year.

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That enthusiasm gap, measured for the first time since the 2008 election in this Gallup poll, is a real problem for Democrats:

There are significant differences in enthusiasm by party, with an 18-point "very enthusiastic" gap between Republicans and Republican-leaning independents on the one hand, and Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents on the other.

Only 20% of voters age 18-29 are very enthusiastic. Obama received a blowout 66% of the vote among the 18-29 year old age group in 2008, compared to McCain's 33% of that vote. The youth also voted 63% for House Democrats in 2008 -- Young voters not only voted for Obama at the top of the ballot, they also voted down ballot or straight ticket for other Democratic candidates. In 2010 it's the young Republicans who are more likely to GOTV.

If you don't deliver for the base, the base isn't motivated to delver for you. The Democratic base is having a difficult time getting enthusiastic about Democrats, who were elected in 2006 and 2008 on a "change" platform, showing no fight for real transforming change.

Democratic leaders in the White House, U.S. House and particularly the U.S. Senate might want to think about giving their base voters something to get enthusiastic about. Maybe a health care reform signing ceremony in the Rose Garden, perhaps? It’s hard to picture these enthusiasm numbers getting worse for Dems, but imagine if reform failed!

Washington Post's Ezra Klein explains the reconciliation process, that Democrats now plan to use to pass health care reform, in the following March 8, 2010 video of The Colbert Report. "Americans don't want health care reform jammed down their throats - unless it's first battered and deep fat-fried," says Stephen Colbert.