52 Democrats Walk Out of Senate -- Speaker orders Arrest

I am okay with that because that's the rule of law. It's the way the thing works.

When I was growing up and districts were designed to ensure as few Republicans were elected as possible, Republicans were told that those were the breaks. If you want to change it, get elected.

Now that Republicans have gotten themselves elected, the cry is "How dare you! You should put aside partisanship and be fair."

 

Give 'em hell, boys!

 

Republicans should all be lined up against a wall somewhere. I'm not going to say what we should do to them once we get them against the wall, but you it shouldn't take a great leap of logic to figure out what I mean. I'm so sick of these ****ing r****ds.


Austin is the most liberal city in Texas, and they want to make our vote not matter. I know our votes already don't matter and that the democrats are just going to a different layer of hell than republicans, but dividing a metropolitan area to prevent representation is bull****.

 

Just think, the Republican takeover would've been much, much sooner if you had held the Democrats to the same standard when they were in power and doing the same thing.

Until 2002, I know the city of Amarillo was split in half with Amarillo not having a majority of the voters in either district. It was done specifically to prevent the Conservative Panhandle from voting in a Republican, and it worked for years.

And we sure appreciated your very public outrage back then, too.

 

Why do the Democrats even have a 17-15 majority? Probably because they were in power during the last redistricting. It's obvious the Republicans are the majority party in Texas.

 

No. no. no. They were being fair. They could never have even thought about redistricting in a way to do their best to ensure Democrats got elected. They are completely pure of heart and don't stoop to the level of those dirty Republicans who should, apparently, be lined up and shot because they are r****ded.

 

no..not having a bad day...i didn't mean to come across harsh or as a jerk..i'm sorry if that's the way it came off.

 

Just like the procedural move in the US Senate this is a good move by the Democrates, and very good for Austin.

 

The entire constitution for the state of Texas is about 300 pages of garbage and counting anyways. It's one of the most poorly written governing documents in this country. We should really work on replacing that. Our political process in this state is garbage.

 

I had no idea that Democrats were so opposed to voting.

Remember, though, that the chickens do come home to roost. So you'd better agree that these procedural delays and twarting of democracy are good things when Republicans do it when the Dems are in charge. (EDIT: And, for the record, I do remember when I was in High School, the Republicans not showing up en masse in order to prevent a quorom. And the Democratic leadership also ordered arrests then.)

Of course, that won't happen, just like none of you were outraged when the Democrats were Gerrymandering when they were in charge.

I guess it's only good when it's your side doing it. Otherwise, it's an outrage!

 

Why aren't districts just a damn set square grid pattern? WTF?

I've had enough of these damn gerrymandered Rorscach splotch looking "districts."

Nice even square grids everywhere - come what may.

 

Because they do have to be based on population.

And they can't be designed in a way where racial minorities are so divided so as to dillute their voting power (doing so for political reasons is kosher, though).

 

That would be nice, but unfortunately, the problem comes in because different areas have different populations, so the key is to try to draw even districts based on populations. Otherwise, you would have districts in West Texas with a population of 20 vs. a district in west Houston with a population 50,000.

 

It seems the fastest growing minority in this state is people with an iq above 85.

 

Man, I just love Texas politics.

Redistricting has always been a tremendously contentious issue. Every year there are lawsuits. The GOP and Dems have each staged elaborate plans to block various forms of redistricting in their favor and then they are aghast when the other party decides to do it saying how shameful it is. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.

Texas has a long history of stuff like this. The political term "horse trading" was actually invented to describe the actual practice of members of the Texas house trading horses for votes on the floor of the senate in the early 1900's.

I swear, I think that gerrymandering was invented by a Texan. Sadly, it is also probably the reason why so many Texans (from both parties) have been successful in Washington and why politics will NEVER solve any real problems.

 

Except that when they did get elected, they didn't fix the problem, they just turned the weapon around. If the Republicans thought it wasn't right, they should have fixed the problem instead of using the opportunity for payback.

Props to RocketBurrito for trying to propose a solution, which is better than most posters here and apparently everyone in the State Legislature. Unfortunately, the criticism of the grid is legit in that reps are representing people, not land. However, I think that's a good start for an idea; it just needs to be amended to fit the goals. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest we'd start a reform by adding the rule that the geographical shape of a district can have no more than, say, 5 angles; maybe only 4 angles.

 

This is the thing that bothers me most about <i>some</i> of our liberal friends on the board (and, I suppose, some of our concervative friends as well). They are not objective, although they might claim to be. They are really cheerleaders for their team. At one point in life they joined a "team" and, now, they will spend the rest of their life rationalizing their decision. So, when <i>we</i> do it, it's politics. When <i>they</i> do it, it's an outrage. I just wish people were more even handed (including myself!)

 

What if someone just wrote a computer program that would take into account the population of the state and randomly draw district lines to have even population districts? The randomness (assuming no one tampers with the program) would ensure fairness and you wouldn't have uneven populations from district to district. But I suppose something like that is way too simple a solution for politicians.

 

Raven, simple things are harder to use to your advantage. Politicians aren't in favor of anything that is easy for voters to understand.

 

Yeah, that's why I generally try to stay out of political threads. It all usually just comes down to the acknowledgement by boths sides that most politicians are assholes and nothing worthwhile ever gets done.