Democratic Candidate Meet-And-Greet On July 25

The Richardson/North Dallas Democratic Club will host a Democratic Candidate Meet-and-Greet at Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Richardson on Wednesday, July 25 from 5PM-7:30PM. (map)

This is a great opportunity to meet one-on-one the Democratic candidates running for local office.

Candidates will include:

• Katherine Savers McGovern, Candidate for US Congressional District 32
• Jack Ternan, Candidate for Texas Senate 8
• Rich Hancock, Candidate for House District 102
• Tonya Holt, Candidate for 5th District Court of Appeals Place 11
• Penny Phillips, Candidate for 5th District Court of Appeals Place 5
• Larry Praeger, Candidate for 5th District Court of Appeals Place 12
• David Hanshen, Candidate for 5th District Court of Appeals Place 9
• Lois Parrott, Candidate for State Board of Education, District 12

Take the opportunity for some one-on-one time with the candidates and come out to Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse! (1251 W Campbell Rd Ste 240, Richardson, Texas 75080-2973)

Please contact 469-443-8680 with any questions.

Vice President Biden Fires Up the NAACP

From The Root by Cynthia Gordy

The speechifying continued at the NAACP Annual Convention in Houston as Vice President Joe Biden took the podium on Thursday.

Biden was pitch-hitting for President Obama, who taped a brief video for the convention (and who will appear in person at the National Urban League's annual conference later this month). Despite Obama's physical absence, Biden used his speech to forcefully defend his policies that have affected African Americans. And where the president probably would have been more congenial, his VP came out swinging.

Vice President Joe Biden addresses the 103rd NAACP Annual Convention in Houston Texas

"He passed the Affordable Care Act, a goal strived for by presidents starting with Teddy Roosevelt," he said to applause from the audience -- a sharp contrast to their loud, sustained disapproval over Mitt Romney's vow to them on Wednesday to repeal the health care law.

"He cut $100 billion from the federal debt over the next 10 years, providing access to affordable health care to 30 million Americans, 8 million black Americans who would never have had insurance."

On the notion of putting convictions before politics, Biden touted the president's stimulus bill and auto-industry bailout as tough decisions from the president that were unpopular but right. "He was right, saving a million jobs and creating 200,000 jobs in the automobile industry," he said. "General Motors now leads the world again, and Chrysler is the fastest-growing company in America."

... Biden closed his remarks by outlining the president's views on civil rights. In a hushed, sober tone, he asked the NAACP audience to reflect on their organization's history.

"Remember what this at its core was all about. It was about the franchise," he said before raising his voice to a shout. "It was about the right to vote! Because when you have the right to vote, you have the right to change things! And we -- the president and I, and Eric [Holder] and all of us -- we see a future where those rights are expanded, not diminished! Where racial profiling is a thing of the past! Where access to the ballot is expanded and unencumbered! Where there are no distinctions made on the basis of race and gender in access to housing and lending!"

He argued that Romney, who has, for example, supported voter-ID laws, sees a future in which voting is made harder -- and asked the crowd to imagine what a Romney Justice Department would look like.

"Imagine the recommendation for who is likely to be picked as attorney general or the head of the civil rights division, or those other incredibly important positions at Justice," he said. "Imagine what the Supreme Court will look like after four years of a Romney presidency. Folks, this election, in my view, is a fight for the heart and soul of America."

Read the full story @ The Root.

Obamacare Is No Longer So Unpopular

Yesterday, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilbero Hinojosa said,

Two days after Rick Perry said he would turn down billions of federal dollars that would boost our economy and help insure millions of Texans, Congressional Republicans have scheduled their thirty first vote to repeal your health care rights.

Today Republicans like Quico Canseco and Pete Sessions are voting to give lifetime guaranteed government health care to other Members of Congress while they take away health care rights from their constituents. They should be ashamed!

Republicans propose to further hurt sick people by going back to the days when people with pre-existing conditions couldn’t get health care at any price. They propose to hurt our seniors by re-cutting the donut hole in Medicare part D and forcing them to pay more for their prescriptions.

They propose to hurt young people by shoving young adults off their parents’ policies. They care about no one but themselves. They propose to hurt millions of Texans and Americans by reinstating lifetime caps on health benefits—which pretty much assure that a catastrophic disease means you die bankrupt.

The Atlantic: Obamacare Is No Longer So Unpopular:

One of the most accurate polling outfits in the country found this week that President Obama's signature achievement is no longer unpopular with the majority of the country.

The Affordable Care Act, according to a Washington Post/ABC News survey, is now backed by 47 percent of Americans, up from 39 percent in April 2012. Opposition to the law in the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding it is also down, from 53 to 47 percent.

As well, "just one-third of all Americans favor repealing the legislation in its entirety or in part," a number that's been pretty consistent in these polls since 2010. The Republican-controlled U.S. House yesterday made its 33rd failed attempt to repeal part or all of the law.

Romney has made "repeal and replace" into a campaign mantra, promising to undo the law. But that vow is a promise to his base voters and to partisans rather than an appeal to the majority of the country: "Thirty-eight percent of Americans consider Romney's support for repeal a major reason to vote for him, compared with 29 percent who say it is a major reason to vote against him."

The top-line conclusion The Post put out is that opinion on the law remains deadlocked, which is very much the case. But another way of looking at it is that support or opposition to the law is increasingly partisan, which is what pretty much every survey shows, including the Post's most recent poll.

One of the first bills brought to the floor for a vote after Republicans took over control of the House of Representatives in January 2011 was the repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care (Obamacare) Act of 2010.

When the DBN wrote about that January 19, 2011 vote to repeal Obamacare we included a partial list of health insurance industry reforms that Republicans want to repeal. The list is given here, again, after the "more" jump.

Texas’ Decades Long Fight Against Voting Rights

From Color Lines, by Brentin Mock

Earlier this week, Attorney General Eric Holder declared in his address to the NAACP national convention in Houston what many voting rights advocates had been saying for months: That the photo voter ID law passed in Texas is a poll tax. Determining whether voter ID laws are as unconstitutional as poll taxes won’t be up to him, though. That honor goes to the U.S. Supreme Court justices who lately have been signaling they may be ready to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

What this means is that a legal challenge to a voter ID law in Texas could be the trigger for the demise of the constitutional act that made it possible for people of color to vote in much of the country. Rightwing pundits have all but conceded this week’s US District Court hearing over Texas’s voter ID law to the Department of Justice.

When the Voting Rights Act finally passed in 1965, made possible by the Smith v Allwright SCOTUS decision 20 years earlier, it once and for all banned any instrument, law or policy that would prevent anyone from voting based on race or color. Texas has been fighting back ever since.

When Texas was designated as a Section 5 state due to discrimination against Latinos, it grew increasingly defiant of the Voting Rights Act. According to a report by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, “Voting Rights in Texas 1982-2006,” only one state challenged Section 5 in court more than the Texas in that time period—and that’s Mississippi. From 1982 to 2006, Texas registered at least 107 Section 5 objections. Meanwhile, during that same time period, Texas lead the nation in several categories of voting discrimination, including Section 5 violations. Further, from the MALDEF report:

“Texas had far more Section 5 withdrawals, following the DOJ’s request for information to clarify the impact of a proposed voting change, than any other jurisdiction during the 1982-2005 time period. These withdrawals include at least 54 instances in which the state eliminated discriminatory voting changes after it became evident they would not be precleared by the DOJ.”

In other words, at least 54 times in 25 years, Texas had to back down from an effort to restrict the vote—thanks to the power granted the federal government under the Voting Rights Act. That power may soon be removed by the Roberts court.

The VRA enforcement represents an imposition of the federal government on state sovereignty, according to many Texas state officials today. Gov. Rick Perry said that DOJ’s enforcement of VRA in South Carolina, for instance, represented a “war” on states rights. The current state attorney general, Greg Abbott, has sued the federal government 24 times since he took office in 2004 over a number of federal law enforcement measures, not limited to voting rights.

But the same fear of expanding the electorate to people of color that existed in the years after Smith v Allwright seems to have spurred Texas state legislators to create the voter ID law currently challenged in court. During this week’s district court hearing, voting rights and race expert Morgan Kousser, of California Institute of Technology, testified that “there was considerable concern” among white state legislators about “losing control” of the legislature. “There is such a correlation between partisanship and race that any bill that has partisan effects would have racial effects,” said Kousser.

Read the full story @ Color Lines.

More:

• Voting Rights Act: The State of Section 5 – ProPublica
• Texas voter ID law can’t take effect - SCOTUSBlog