Mark Your Calender
Save Texas Reps ? Sylvester Turner to Convert on Fox?
Monday, April 25th ... Sly to follow Al Edwards onto a Fox News show (Al having served as the resident laughingstock defending his anti-gyration bill on O'Reilly). If Sly switches, he's done as a State Rep ... is the GOP offering him a RR Commish gig? ... a judicial appointment?
Wait & see ...
UPDATE: The record clears up (via email) ...
St. Rep. Sylvester Turner will appear on "Hannity and Colmes" Monday to discuss HB 1093. It would release seriously-ill bed-ridden sex offenders from prison into strict medical supervision. Just one of these people cost the state $1.5 million for medical care in 2004. The bill has widespread support and is expected to easily win passage in the House early next week.To quote from Friday?s Austin American Statesman: (the entire story is attached)
"In 2003, inmates serving time for sex crimes were barred from a program that allows some convicts who are critically or terminally ill to be paroled to a nursing home, hospice or other approved location. That change affected six of the 20 convicts who had the highest medical bills that year, racking up a total of more than $7.4 million, and six of the top 20 in 2004, records show.
"A study last year by the Legislative Budget Board estimated that the state could save more than $3 million over the next five years by paroling convicts like the Million Dollar Man to facilities where they can draw federal Medicaid money to cover their medical expenses. While they are in prison, they are not eligible for Medicaid."
I'm not sure we saw the same O'Reilly Factor. Al was solid, and everyone I talk to knew exactly what the meant.
Don't you think its a little childish to contend that they are just 'becoming Republicans'? I would expect this kind of thing from Nathan Wilcox, because he has to make trouble in order to get himself hired to work on losing campaigns. But Greg, you've always been Mr. Rational.
Disagree with him, but I don't understand why we all say we need more Democrats who aren't raving leftists, want to work wihin the system, and take stands on moral issues - unless they're black.
Ya know, at some point, the votes mean something. You cannot stand up and talk the talk without backing it up with actual live votes at some point. Any Democrat that stands up and says "this is what I am" and wins, has earned the right to go and vote that way. Patrick Rose and Jim McReynolds run as moderate-to-conservative Democrats. Todd Baxter and Toby Goodman run as moderate-to-conservative Republicans. Whether the district is in the same range of ideology as they are, that's not the issue ... they're being consistent with the way they ran.
Sylvester Turner gets indignant that a missed vote would dare be interpretted as being against teachers' health insurance, yet the very next vote (which he made a timely return for) was the vote to commit that would have made Turner's own "correction" more binding. He voted against doing that. Being "for" something eventually means "doing" somthing on behalf of that view.
So there's nothing irrational about suggesting that one's vote is just meaningless when you're one of 150 and you were elected to put the views you express into action. Sly fails on that. Edwards fails on that. And a handful of others fail at that as well. They deserve to be called onto the carpet for their actions ... or inactions ... or contradictary/unbelievable explanations about either of the above. I think it's perfectly rational to look at a candidate that ran supportive of Democratic issues and now cannot bring his or her own actions in line with that.
By way of comparison on a national level ...
Tom Harkin runs for US Senate in a moderate state of Iowa ... he lays his cards on the table for what his beliefs are and he votes that way.
Gene Taylor runs for US Representative in a flat-out conservative district. On most cultural issues, he's right in line with that. On most economic issues, he's to the left of his district. But he runs on the views he expresses and votes the way he suggests when he runs.
Joe Lieberman runs in a moderate-to-liberal state of Connecticut as a moderate hawk. Not necessarily a view on Iraq that's going to win a straight-up vote ... but he votes the way he ran and he lives up to the promises he kept.
Those types of examples are nowhere what you see in some of the State Reps mentioned here. I don't claim they've "become Republican" (Turner's publicist has offered up a preemptive explanation ... I have no reason to disbelieve it - Turner's also carried a bill to ban credit scoring for utilities; something that's to his credit). But the convenient absences, no-votes, statues, carrying a bill they didn't write and claim to vehemently disagree with ... I mean, sheesh, something's gotta give.
And this is the bottom line ... these guys aren't out to protect anything, they're not out to keep a bad bill from being worse ... they're out for power for the sake of power alone. At least as far as I can tell based on anything that's available. I'm well on record as to where my views are on that matter. If there's anything to suggest that that isn't the case, then it's a case that each individual involved in this story has an increasingly difficult time making with each passing day of the lege. It's also a case they can easily make themselves ... provided they have the argument to back it up with.