Sunday, December 18, 2016

Running For Elected Office In 2018


The Tuesday, March 6th, 2018 Texas primary election to nominate candidates for the Tuesday, November 6th, 2018 general election is quickly approaching. All Republican and Democratic primary candidates must file an application with their respective party's county or state chairperson to have their name placed on the party's primary ballot.

The 2018 primary election filing period runs from Saturday, November 11, 2017 through the filing deadline date of Monday, December 11, 2017 at 6:00 PM. An application for the office of precinct chair may be filed from the 90th day before the date of the regular filing deadline - Tuesday, September 12, 2017. (Texas election code Sec. 172.023.)

It's My Earned Benefit, Not My "Entitlement"

By Rob Tornoe - You can find more of his work here.
Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled a percentage of your income before taxes. If you averaged only 30K over your 49 year working life, that’s close to $220,500.

If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you’d have $892,919.98.

If you took out only 3% per year, you would receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years, and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.

Who Will Chair The Democratic National Committee?

Democrats will elect a new Democratic National Committee Chairperson in 2017. The choice is to triple down on strategies of the past 25 years, verses a bold new vision for the future, as advocated by DNC chair candidate Rep. Keith Ellison.

The centrist 3rd way vision of the Democratic National Committee's past leadership, encapsulated by the tenure of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-Fla.) as DNC chair, led to Republicans gaining control of 71 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers and 14 governors' offices from the time Pres Obama took office through the 2016 election.

Democrats lost another net 43 seats in legislatures across the country in 2016, after previously loosing 910 seats during Obama's administration. Democrats now hold majorities in only 29 state legislative chambers. Republicans gained 2 more states' governorships in 2016, after already gaining 12 over the last 8 years, increasing its total to 33, a record high last seen in 1922.

Democrats had also lost 69 US House seats and 13 US Senate seats and barely managed to stem further losses in 2016. And now Democrats face a more challenging election map in 2018 than they faced in 2016. All that after Democrats had a 58-seat majority in the Senate, 256 seats in the House, and held 28 governorships when Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

DMN Endorses Democratic Presidential Nominee, For The First Time Since WWII

In an editorial published today, the DMN Editorial Board said: "We recommend Hillary Clinton for president -- There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot in November. We recommend Hillary Clinton."

The editorial board had endorsed the Republican nominee in every presidential election dating back to World War II, except for the 1964 election when it remained neutral between Democratic President Texan native Lyndon B. Johnson and Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. While acknowledging its past issues with Clinton's handling of "certain issues," the editorial board contrasted her "experience in actual governance" to Trump. "Resume vs. resume, judgment vs. judgment, this election is no contest," the op-ed continued, making note of the host of Republican hands backing Clinton, including Jim Glassman, the founding director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.
DMN: "We don't come to this decision easily. This newspaper has not recommended a Democrat for the nation's highest office since before World War II — if you're counting, that's more than 75 years and nearly 20 elections. The party's over-reliance on government and regulation to remedy the country's ills is at odds with our belief in private-sector ingenuity and innovation. Our values are more about individual liberty, free markets and a strong national defense."
Pronouncing Trump's values as "hostile to conservatism," the newspaper wrote that the Republican nominee "plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best." In a separate editorial the DMN editorial board pronounced, "Donald Trump is not qualified to serve as president and does not deserve your vote."

"Hillary Clinton has spent years in the trenches doing the hard work needed to prepare herself to lead our nation," the editorial board concludes. "In this race, at this time, she deserves your vote."