How to Win Democratic Campaigns in Collin Co.

The Democratic Party of Collin County has posted an announcement on its website that it is joining with the Democratic Campaign Development Coalition (DCDC) and Texas Democratic Women of Collin County (TDWCC) to put on a series of education seminars they are calling "How to Win Democratic Campaigns in Collin Co." The DCDC group is sponsoring the seminars.

According to a spokesperson for DCDC the group has recruited a number of guest speakers from across North Texas who have experience organizing GOTV activities and running political campaigns as well as some former North Texas Democratic candidates. "We hope to have Precinct Chairs, active Democrats and possibly some potential local candidates from Collin and several surrounding counties attend some or all our training days," said the spokesperson, "Anyone who wants to help Democratic Candidates win in Collin Co. and North Texas is invited to sign up for the training"

The training program will begin Monday evening October 12th and continuing every Monday from 6:30p.m. till 9:00 p.m. until Monday November 30th at Collin College – Frisco Campus, Library Room L245. The guest speakers will cover a variety of topics during the training series including:

• Week 1 – How I Won: It Can Be Done
• Week 2 - The Winning Team
• Week 3 – Organizing to Win
• Week 4 – The Winning Message
• Week 5 – Marketing to Win
• Week 6 – To Win It Takes Money
• *No workshop Thanksgiving week – Nov. 23
• Week 7 –Creating the Winning Plan

The county party organization is charging a nominal registration fee to cover the cost of producing the training program. Registration for the class is now open. For registration information go to the announcement posted on the Democratic Party of Collin County website.

Google Wave - A Future Campaign Support Tool?

At Google's recent "I/O" developer conference in San Francisco, the company unveiled an intriguing new tool called Wave. Wave is a web-based, open-source platform that is designed to seamlessly integrate communication and collaboration. When Wave is available it may make an interesting campaign support tool. Take a look at it in action: video left.

Poll: Public Option Favored By 65% Of Americans

By Jeff Parker, cagle.com

NYTimes.com: A New York Times/CBS poll again finds that 65% of Americans want a public health care option, while only 26% opposed such a plan. Those polled also responded that they feel President Obama has not clearly explained the main points of health care reform. Fifty-five percent said he had not explained his plan clearly, and many felt under-informed about the policies under discussion.

Maybe it's not so much that President Obama hasn't repeatedly and clearly explained the main points of health care reform, and more that Republicans and health insurance industry lobbyists have so widely and loudly sowed fear-based mis-information, that people feel confused and therefore under informed.

After all, the program of mis-information has closely and successfully followed the plan written by right-wing message guru Frank Luntz last May instructing the Republican Party how to frame the health care debate to both alarm and confuse people on the issues. More...

By R.J. Matson, cagle.com

Have You Ever Thought About Running For Elected Office?

Have you ever thought about running for elected office? With the pivotal 2010 elections fast approaching, now is the time to give it some serious thought! One great place to get experience running for and serving in elected office is by serving as a Precinct Chair in your own neighborhood. There are many other elected office positions that you might consider too.

Precinct Chairs, of either party, serve as the most direct link between voters and their respective political party and and the party's candidates. Precinct Chairs help to carry the party's and candidate's message to their neighborhoods and they help Get Out The Vote for their respective party's candidates.

The Chairperson of each county Democratic Party Election Precinct is publicly elected by precinct voters during the Primary Election. The term of office for a Precinct Chair is two years, beginning on the 20th day following Primary Election Day or the following primary runoff election day, if scheduled. (The Party's County Executive Committee can elect interim Precinct Chairs for unfilled Precinct Chair offices and for Precinct Chairs who are unable to serve out their two year term of office.)

The next Precinct Chair election for the March/April 2010 to March/April 2012 term of office occurs on Primary Election Day, March 2, 2010. Qualified candidates can file (form PDF) to have their name placed on the March 2, 2010 Primary Ballot for the position of Precinct Chair from Monday, October 5th, 2009 through 6:00 PM January 4, 2010. Contact your local Democratic County Chair to ask if a Precinct Chair vacancy exists in your election precinct and find out the requirements to run for this, or any other, elected office. To find out more about Democratic Precinct Chairs - click here.

There are many other elected office positions that you might consider too. Of coarse, nearly all the elected office positions that will appear on Collin County ballots in 2010 are currently filled with incumbent Republicans, but perhaps it is time for incumbent Republicans to have a Democratic challenger in 2010, for the first time in many years.

The following elected office positions will first appear on each of the March 2, 2010 Democratic Party and Republican Party Primary Election ballots and then finally on the November 2010 General Election ballot.

Collin County Executive and Judiciary

• County Clerk
• District Clerk
• District Attorney

Collin County Commissioners Court - info

• County Judge - incumbent Keith Self
  
• Place 2 - incumbent Jerry Hoagland
  
• Place 4 - incumbent Kathy Ward
  

Collin County Courts

• 5 District Judges
• 6 County Court at Law Judges
• 1 Probate Court Judge
• 4 Justices f the Peace

State Executive

• Governor
• Lt. Governor
• Attorney General
• Comptroller
• Commissioner of General Land Office
• Agriculture Commissioner
• Railroad Commissioner - info
  
• State Board of Education, place 9 and 12

State Judicial

• Several Justices of the Supreme Court - info
  
• Several Justices of the Court of Criminal Appeals - info
  

Regional Courts

• Several Justices, 5th District Court of Appeals - info
  

State House of Representatives

• State Rep., Dist. 66 (McCall)
• State Rep., Dist. 67 (Madden)
• State Rep., Dist. 70 (Paxton)
• State Rep., Dist. 89 (Laubenberg)

State Senate

• District 8 (Shapiro)

Federal

• US Congress 3rd Congressional Dist. (Johnson) - info
  
• US Congress 4th Congressional Dist. (Hall) - info
  
• US Senate (Hutchison) possible resignation triggering a special election - info
  

Party Offices

• County Chair
• Al1 Precinct Chairs
• And County and State Convention after the primaries.
  • State Chair
  • DNC Reps
  • SDEC Committee members

The filing period to have your name placed on the primary ballot runs from December 2009 to January 2010. The Democratic and Republican primary winners of each elected office position appearing on the primary ballot will then face each other in the November 2010 General Election.

The following "non-partisan" local city and school board trustee elected office positions will appear on election ballot for the May 2010 city and school election.

• CCCCD Trustees( non-partisan)
• City Council races (non-partisan)
• School Board races (non-partisan)

Republicans Out-Tweet Democrats

While progressive blogs, with the encouragement of DNC Chairman Howard Dean, help power Democratic electoral wins in 2006 and 2008, many in the Democratic party have been reticent about, and towards, its blogosphere echo chamber.

And now it seems that reticence has carried over into the use of Twitter.

Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats have accounts on the social networking platform Twitter (101 compared with 57), and the GOP dominates Twitter usage by an even wider margin, according to a report released this week by the Congressional Research Service that analyzed two weeklong periods in July and August. During those spans, congressional Republicans posted 932 messages — or tweets — compared with 255 for Democrats, CRS analysts found.

Twitter allows users to text short messages of 140 characters or fewer from their phones, BlackBerrys or computers to their profile pages and their followers’ phones and computers. And though some experts question the effectiveness of Twitter as a political communication tool and more than a few lawmakers have already experienced the downside of the unfiltered communication it offers, Republican communications staffers have actively encouraged their lawmakers to tweet away. And so they have.

Democrats seem all too willing to let it all slip away by not leveraging the new media approach to political campaigning.

Conservatives Ask - What Recession? What Health Care Crisis?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, declaring last week that Texas is recession proof said, "... someone had put a report out that the first state that's coming out of the recession is going to be the state of Texas ... I said, 'We're in one?'" (video left)

Paul Burka of the Texas Monthly: "This gaffe is going to stick. ... You cannot be callous and cavalier when people are losing their jobs, [their health insurance] and their homes. I don't care how ideological the Republican base is. ... Everybody knows someone who is suffering in these times."

The Labor Department reported last week that 42 states lost jobs in August, up from 29 in July, with the biggest net payroll cuts coming in Texas, Michigan, Georgia and Ohio.

Texas lost 62,200 jobs as its unemployment rate rose to 8% in August for the first time in 22 years. The state's leisure, construction and manufacturing industries were hardest hit, losing 35,500 jobs.

The Labor Department report shows jobs remain scarce even as most analysts believe the economy is pulling out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said earlier this week that the recovery isn't likely to be rapid enough to reduce unemployment for some time. The jobless rate nationwide is expected to peak above 10% next year, from its current 9.7%.

Back in late July we posted that Gov. Perry, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senator John Cornyn, Congressman Sam Johnson and every Republican elected official in Texas made headlines for months pronouncing that President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) economic stimulus plan was unneeded and unwelcome in Texas.

Gov. Perry, the top Republican in Texas, proclaimed that federal money from Washington is so onerous to "all" Texans that Texans might rise up in revolt and secede from the United States, by invoking the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, rather than accept "Washington money."

In March, Gov. Perry rejected $555 million in federal stimulus funds to fund unemployment benefits. By July, Perry was forced to ask the federal government for a $170 million loan to cover unemployment insurance. The state is expected to request a total of $650 million to fund unemployment insurance, around $100 million more than Perry originally rejected.

In Texas, the ARRA stimulas is expected to save or create 269,000 jobs over the next two years. The plan also includes provisions to help both employed and unemployed Texans. Nearly 8.2 million workers will receive the Making Work Pay tax cut of up to $1,000, and 677,000 unemployed workers will receive an additional $100 in unemployment benefits per month. In addition, the plan includes funding to help unemployed workers pay for COBRA coverage. [Monster.com]

On the issue of health insurance reform Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) also threatens 10th Amendment secession. [Star-Telegram] Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senator John Cornyn, Congressman Sam Johnson and every Republican elected official in Texas have again lined up with Gov. Perry to reject the idea that Texans need health insurance reform.

According to facts given in a The Dallas Morning News article, Texas may need health insurance reform more than any other state:

"[Even after removing illegal immigrants from the numbers] Texas virtually leads the nation in percentage of residents without health insurance, according to both conservative and liberal researchers.

Only 49.5 percent of [Texas] residents were covered by employer-sponsored insurance, in a two-year average ending in 2008, compared with 58.5 percent nationwide, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated this month. Between 1996 and 2006, the cost of family coverage for private sector workers in Texas increased 86 percent, while incomes increased by less than 9 percent, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which finances health care research and supports universal health coverage.

Compared with the rest of the nation, the Texas economy relies heavily on small businesses and relatively low wages. So although most of the state's uninsured live in households with people who work, fewer employers offer coverage, and fewer employees can afford it.

For an average family of four in Dallas, medical care and health insurance this year will cost nearly $17,000. Of that, 41 percent – almost $7,000 – will be paid by the employee, MHBT found in a survey of 139 local businesses. "

Texas has the highest percentage of those without health insurance in the entire country. A Families USA report released in March found that the number of uninsured in Texas throughout 2007 and 2008 is around 9.3 million:

The report went further to say that 7.5 million Texans were uninsured for six months or more during that same time period and about 82.6 percent, were in working families, either working full or part-time.

An estimated 5,550 Texans are losing their health coverage each week, Families USA says in another report out in July 2009. “Rising like a deadly tide, escalating health care costs will have caused 866,580 Texans to lose their health coverage between January 2008 and December 2010,” the organization says.

The average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2009 Employer Benefits Survey. Over the past decade, premiums have increased by 138 percent. And if the trend continues, by 2019 the average family plan will cost $30,083.

About 160 million Americans receive health coverage through their employers. In general, the employer picks up 73 percent of the tab. This seems like a good deal. In reality, that money comes out of wages.

As Ezekiel Emanuel, who advises Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag on health-care policy, has pointed out, health-care premiums have risen by 300 percent over the past 30 years (and that's after adjusting for inflation). Corporate profit per employee has soared by 200 percent. Hourly earnings for workers, adjusted for inflation, have fallen. The wage increases have been consumed by health-care costs.

In a new study, "Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults," published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health, Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993. The researchers estimate that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually which are hight than previous estimate of 18,000 annual deaths published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

“I can’t imagine that anyone from Texas who cares about this state would vote for Obama Care. I don’t care whether you’re Democrat or Republican,” Perry has said. Gov. Perry has no need to worry - Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senator John Cornyn, Congressman Sam Johnson and every conservative Republican elected official in Texas stand united in their support of giving the private insurance industry a free hand to increase fees annually for increasingly reduced health coverage insurance policies sold to only those most likely to not get sick.

Though luck if you are unemployed and without health insurance. If you are employed, though luck, if neither you nor your employer can afford to buy health insurance coverage. Though luck, if you have insurance, but your insurance company cancels your policy as soon as are diagnosed with cancer or some other expensive to treat disease. Though luck trying to buy insurance, if you have a pre-exisiting health condition. And, tough luck, if your big corporate employer moves your job to China or India, where the government provides health coverage, to cut its overhead cost of U.S. employee private health insurance.

Rachel Maddow: From Fear To Eternity
On Health Reform - 09/21/09

527 Restrictions Lifted - Federal Appeals Court Overturns Campaign Finance Reform Law

A federal appeals court overturned campaign finance reform law regulations in a ruling on Friday that, if not reversed on appeal, will make it easier for independent "527" political groups to raise and spend money to influence elections.

The ruling frees political action groups to accept unlimited contributions and to spend unlimited funds independently supporting or opposing federal candidates.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit came in a lawsuit brought by Emily's List, a nonprofit political organization that backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights.

The group challenged several Federal Election Commission regulations, arguing that the rules violated its First Amendment rights by limiting its ability to spend and raise money to influence elections. Circuit judges Brett M. Kavanaugh and Karen LeCraft Henderson agreed that the regulations violate free speech rights. A third judge, Janice Rogers Brown, said the regulations were invalid for other reasons.

"The First Amendment, as the Court has construed it, safeguards the right of citizens to band together and pool their resources . . . to express their views about policy issues and candidates for public office," Kavanaugh wrote in his 44-page opinion.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) spokeswoman, Judith Ingram, said commission officials will review the opinion for a possible appeal to the full slate of appellate court judges or to the Supreme court.

The FEC's 2005 regulations, now repelled by the DC Circuit Court, prevented political groups such as Emily's List from raising unlimited amounts of "soft money," donations by unions, corporations and individuals, for activities such as voter registration drives and issue advertising. Soft money could not be donated to candidates or used to advocate the election of a candidate.

During the 2004 campaign, political groups, known as 527s, aggressively raised and spent soft money to run advertisements that attacked and supported candidates. The 2005 rules were designed to rein in such behavior by requiring groups to rely more on "hard money," strictly limited donations by individuals or political action committees.

The FEC regulation required political committees to use hard money for at least 50 percent of their generic get-out-the-vote efforts and voter registration drives. It also compelled the organizations to use hard-money accounts to pay all costs of advertisements that referred to a federal candidate. If a group's solicitations mentioned a specific candidate, the regulations required them to treat the donation as hard money.

Judge Kavanaugh wrote that such campaign finance restrictions were unconstitutional because they limited speech by political groups such as Emily's List. The rules "do not pass muster," he wrote, adding that they did not serve an anti-corruption purpose and had been enacted to "better equalize the voices of citizens and groups who participate in the political process."

The challenge by Emily's List is just one of several assaults on campaign finance laws and regulations in the courts. Last week, in a case with high stakes for campaign finance advocates, the Supreme Court heard arguments in an appeal that seeks to strip decades of restrictions on corporate support of candidates. [LATimes, RawStory]

New Texas Law Authorizes Bible "Literacy" In Public Schools

You may have recently heard news accounts of a new Texas law that authorizes Bible literacy studies in public schools. The law, which went into effect at the start of the 2009-2010 school year, was passed by the Texas Legislature in 2007 and allows Texas public schools to teach from the Bible as literature or as cultural context to history.

The ACLU has posted a notice about this law on its website and published a "Know Your Rights" document (PDF) for students and teachers. Here's an excerpt from the email they recently distributed:

My fellow Texan,

You may have recently heard news accounts of a law that deals with teaching Bible literacy in our state's public schools and went into effect at the start of the 2009-2010 school year.

This law, passed by the Texas Legislature during the 2007 session, authorizes Texas pubic schools to offer a high school elective course on the Bible’s role in history and literature.

We have received numerous inquiries from parents, students, teachers and concerned citizens regarding this law. To help guide you, the ACLU of Texas has published a fact sheet, titled Know Your Rights: The Bible In Texas Public Schools (PDF) ...

Parents interested in finding out how their individual school or overall ISD plans to introduce the Bible into classroom teaching plans should contact their their local school administrator, ISD board representative, and State Board of Education (SBOE) representative.

Republican Party's Favorability Strongest In The South

Northeast: DC, ME, VT, NY, MD, PA, CT, DE, MA, NH, RI, WV, NJ South: FL, NC, SC, AL, MS, GA, VA, TN, KY, LA, AR, TX Midwest: IL, MN, MI, OH, WI, IA, MO, KS, IN, ND, SD, OK, NE West: NM, CA, OR, WA, AK, HI, MT, ID, UT, NV, AZ, WY, CO

New results from the weekly Research 2000 poll conducted for Daily Kos. Most of the results are about what we've come to expect -- President Obama's ratings are more favorable than unfavorable (55% to 38%); neither congressional caucus is popular, though Dems are more than twice as popular as Republicans (39% to 18%), and the Democratic Party has a 41% favorable rating to the GOP's 23%.

When the Republican Party favorability poll numbers are broken down by region, the GOP's favorable vs. unfavorable numbers are very weak in Northeast (7% vs. 87%), and only marginally better in the Midwest (13% vs. 78%) and West (14% vs. 75%). In the South, however, 50% have a favorable opinion of the GOP, and only 37% have an unfavorable view.

Life In A Conservative World

Last weekend, tens of thousands of right-wing protesters invaded Washington, DC for the 9/12 March. Not only were they rallying against President Obama’s plans for health care reform, but more generally against government-run services “socialism!”

A large number of the tea party protesters relied on DC’s big "socialist" government run Washington Metropolitan Transit system to get around the city. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX 8th Dist.) has written a letter to DC Transit Authority complaining that the tea baggers found the DC transit service crowded and inadequate. In his letter, Rep. Brandy demands answers for the crowded and inadequate conditions on the metro line:

By David Horsey published in The San Antonio Express News

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas [on 'socialist' built and maintained roads funded by the federal government] to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this ['socialist' DC Metro] public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of ['socialist'] transit for them.”

A large part of the reason that the DC metro has had so many problems in recent years is that its tax-based funding was cut in the years conservatives controlled congress and the White House. Conservatives such as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-TX), has said that we [congress] shouldn’t steal tax money so that we can ride on the Metro. When a bill containing $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC metro system came up this summer, Rep. Brady himself voted against such big government socalist spending.

Conservatives who protest "socialist" government services and advocate secession from our federalist form of government do not seem to stop and think about the comforts and safety they would give up in their conservative world of no federal government. The following essay says it all.

Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican by John Gray Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised. All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor. Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune. Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression. Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time. Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark) He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home. He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”.xx