You know what’s whiny? complaining to media that you can’t get to really important stuff because Dems won’t let you have your shiny voter suppression bill.
Your Whining May Vary.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Taylor Says Dems Are “Whiny Kids”
As tonight's midnight deadline for the House to tentatively pass Senate bills approaches, a compromise on how to address the Voter ID has remained beyond the representatives' grasp. And so, the chubbing continues. This morning, Laredo Democrat Rep. Richard Raymond committed to chubbing every bill until he was sure Voter ID was dead. Subsequently, frustration on both sides has been mounting.
Yesterday, Speaker Joe Straus called Democrats "obstructionists." Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam insinuated that the current crisis was "engineered" by Republicans. Today, Republican Caucus Chairman Larry Taylor (pictured) is jumping into the fray, calling Democrats "whiny kids."
Taylor was clear to point out that, though they may be whiny, Democrats are neither "terrorists" nor are they "kidnappers." The clarification came after he explained why Republicans couldn't give in to the Democrats' demands to take up bills out of the order they were set on the calendar. "Basically, they keep coming to us with the offer – if you meet our demands, we’ll be nice and we’ll go back to normal," said Taylor. "You can’t deal with that kind of situation at a higher level. You don’t deal with kidnappers and terrorists, because, if you do that, then you'll do it over and over again."
Taylor insisted that he wasn't name-calling, but merely drawing an analogy. "I’m just saying, in that same vein, if we give in to their demands this go round we‘re gonna have to deal with this everytime there’s an issue they don’t want to talk about," he said.
"You have to follow the calendar," Taylor argued.
Taylor stumbled upon the comparison he approved of when he rhetorically asked, "We should give into their demands and then they’ll act right? Does that sound like something you’d do with your kids? When you have a kid on throwing their foot on the floor, do you give in to what they’re asking or do you make the kid shape up get back in line and do what they’re supposed to be doing?"
Of course, in this case, it seems that the Republican leadership is unable to force the Dems to "shape up" and move the calendar along, because the Democrats are operating within the rules. "Dems right now are controlling pace. We’re here to work," Taylor said. "They’re using the rules to do what they want to do which is not get to Voter ID. I can’t stop that."
Though adamantly opposed to compromising with misbehaving children, Taylor also expressed dissatisfaction with the compromises he has been presented, which, he says, are entirely procedural in nature and not at all concerned with "what are the details of the bill."
Taylor noted that, at this pace, all the bills on the calendar - including insurance reform, windstorm insurance, healthcare programs, and CHIP programs (but besides those on the Local and Consent calendar, which don't have to be passed until tomorrow) - are dead, and all the work that went into them has "gone out the window." A bill that provides tax breaks for disabled veterans that Democrats were trying to bring up ahead of Voter ID has been amended onto another bill in the Senate and will survive the slaughter.
Gov. Rick Perry has already threatened a special session if the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association bill is not addressed - and it almost certainly will not be.
"I think there’s some opportunity for a special session," Taylor said, "but that’s the Governor’s call."
Taylor, an insurance salesman, is blaming the democrats for the slowdown when he actually doesnt want to take up the insurance reform bill.
The republicans will do anything for their insurance buddies.
The insurance industry and the home builders, among other Republican-slanted lobbies, will be happy if no further business is tranacted, I assume.
Anybody else benefit greatly from the Republican-engineered log jamb?
“Anybody else benefit greatly from the Republican-engineered log jamb?”
Certainly not the 200,000 unemployed Texans who saw the UEI bill die.
Now we can listen to the Republicans and their friends on the Right complain how all the money paid in Federal Taxes never comes back to Texas. It doesn’t help very much when the Feds try to give us a half a Billion and we reject it out of our high minded principles.
Here in the land of personal responsibility, our unemployed would prefer to starve so our small business people aren’t unduly burdened. Besides, the straight shooters at the Texas Association of Businesses says it will make our workers lazy and dependent on Government handouts. As one of our illustrious Republicans pointed out we certainly don’t want to be paying people to sit around at home and smoke dope.
Coming to a Texas highway near you: License plate readers
Deep in the Senate's version of the massive TXDoT bill is a provision that, if not stripped out in conference committee, will allow local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to install license plate reading cameras on Texas highways. The technology - already in widespread use in surveillance-crazy Britain - is very powerful, enabling the government to automatically photograph the license plates of moving vehicles and check the information against databases. If the system finds a "match," officers can be alerted.
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Senate Bill 690: Trimming the Grassroots
Karen Hall’s knees still haven’t recovered from gathering signatures door-to-door for an amendment to Bryan’s city charter. “Democracy is a messy business,” she says, “but we like it.”
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Women to Watch: Rep. Kristi Thibaut, D-Houston
After she lost her first campaign for a House seat from Houston in 2006, Kristi Thibaut showed up in Austin anyway. What she encountered, as she lobbied unsuccessfully for lower utility rates with fellow ACORN activists, was almost enough to make her wonder why she'd wanted that seat in the first place.
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One Weekend a Month, Two Weeks a Year, Five Years in Jail
Sometimes our legislators don't even know what's in their own bills. This morning, Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van) discussed his House Bill 1165 before the Defense & Veterans Affairs Committee and it was evident that he hadn't read - or maybe didn't understand - what all was in it.
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