Written Assignment #7 - GOVT 2306 - 11 week online class only

Attorney General Greg Abbott has announced that he is running for governor. Media reports indicate he has already a substantive campaign war chest. This suggests that he has a huge advantage over his potential opponents, but it also suggests whose interests he is most attuned to.

The link above gives you an idea who has donated to his campaign so far. Here's additional data:

- Project Vote Smart.
- Ballotpedia.
- Capital Tonight.
- Influence Explorer.

There are more places to get information so surf around.

Abbott has already staked out his positions on different issues - which he has already developed over time as Attorney General. For this week's writing assignment I want you consider what influence campaign contributions might have on either the positions he has taken, or on the fact that Abbott has received these contributions rather than someone else.

To what degree are the issues on the agenda in the state of Texas influenced by the money that flows through the process? Can you offer proof that it does, or evidence that it does not?

You know the rules.

Written Assignment #7 - GOVT 2305 - 11 week online class only

A jury in the state of Florida acquitted George Zimmerman of charges of murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin - in case you've been living under a rock - but this may not be the end of the story.

Which give us an opportunity to tie recent subject matter - civil rights - to this case.

The NYT reports that the U.S. Justice Department is considering filing federal hate crimes charges against Zimmerman. The applicable law is the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (see Wikipedia entry here) which builds on federal hate crime law dating back to 1968. These laws allow the federal government to prosecute people who commit crimes based on a variety factors including a person's race.

Originally the laws only applied to those attempting to limit a "victim's attempt to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities, such as attending school, patronizing a public place/facility, applying for employment, acting as a juror in a state court or voting." The Shepard Act expanded protected categories to sexual orientation, and removed the requirement that a federally protected activity be affected.

This suggests that the shooting of Martin may fall under the scope of this law, though that is not conclusive and the Justice Department has yet to determine whether there is enough evidence to prosecute.

Your writing assignment this week is to read through existing hate crime laws mentioned, review the facts associated with the shooting of Trayvon Martin and determine whether there is enough evidence to warrant a federal charge. What makes this a civil rights issue - or not? Consider both sides of the argument, be objective.

You know the requirements.

Perceptions of poverty

I thought a segment of the article linked to in the previous post was worth a separate post. When the public thinks of the poor, does it have an accurate picture of who the poor really are? The authors of a study titled "How the Poor Became Black" trace how over time media coverage of poverty over time began to portray poverty increasingly as an African-American phenomenon, ignoring the fact that 2/3rds of those in poverty are not African-American.

This meant that when people - anglos anyway - thought about poverty, they thought of it in terms of race. This may have contributed to increased animosity towards the program.

The 1960s saw a rise in poverty and children born out of wedlock, particularly in urban communities. Sensational media stories about families "abusing" welfare -- especially when the putative abusers were portrayed as African-American -- helped cement opposition to public assistance. One study found that in the early 1970s, nearly three-quarters of magazine stories about welfare or poverty featured images of African-Americans, even though African Americans comprised only about a third of welfare recipients.

"I do think that racial divisions are an important factor here -- the sense among many people that universal benefits will take from 'us' and give to 'them' -- to a part of society that is seen as different, less deserving, imagined as racially different," Cook, from Brown University, said. "I think that many middle-class Americans favor social benefits for what they see as 'deserving' people who have worked and earned them -- so Medicare is good -- but universal health care would provide benefits for people who are imagined as not deserving."

In a 1976 speech, Ronald Reagan made mention of supposed "welfare queens" who make six-figure salaries while drawing government funds, stoking a sense of outrage over perceived waste in public assistance. (It was later shown that he used an exaggerated anecdote). Arguing that social insurance dis-incentivized work, and prioritizing markets and individual liberty, the growing new conservative movement eventually joined together businesses and working-class voters in pushing for cuts in government programs.

The Anti - US

At least among western democracies, Finland seems to be everything the United States isn't. Staunchly egalitarian most of all. And their educational system is among the best in the world.

What gives?

Over time, Finland was able to create its "cake" -- and give everyone a slice -- in large part because its investments in human capital and education paid off. In a sense, welfare worked for Finland, and they've never looked back.

"In the Finnish case, this has really been a part of our success story when it comes to economic growth and prosperity," said Susanna Fellman, a Finn who is now a professor of economic history at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. "The free daycare and health-care has made it possible for two breadwinners -- women can make careers even if they have children. This is also something that promotes growth."

With this setup, Finns have incredible equality and very little poverty -- but they don't get to buy as much stuff.

The Great Wall of Texas

Here's a provocative piece. Something that fits one of the themes touched on occasionally in class: how is a republic best preserved? Or, what are the principle dangers faced by republics?

The author points out that the decline of great civilizations and/or nations is sometimes accompanied by an effort to wall itself off from the world. Is this what the US might be doing in not only building a border fence, but in restricting free trade pacts?

I found this part especially interesting:

The psychological impulse to protect a nation's wealth and culture from foreign contamination is an example of what behavioral economists call "loss aversion" - the idea that people are more concerned about what they might forfeit than gain from change. History tells us that with great power comes great loss aversion.

Take the fate of Ming China, the world's most fabulously wealthy civilization in the 15th century. The empire cut itself off from foreign trade after the 1430s, an action urged by Mandarin bureaucrats in order to clip the power of the merchant class, their rivals at court. Court intrigue is also revealed by the extension of China's Great Wall, and the abrupt termination of the voyages of Admiral Zheng He, both reflecting the Confucian attitude that foreign barbarians offered nothing of value. The following centuries saw China transform into a weak and isolated time capsule.

Are forces in American politics driven more by fear of losing current benefits than the promise of future gains? Will these lead to a static society and, ironically, future loss?

The author ties a similar episode Britain faced a couple centuries back with American independence:

Britain itself is a particularly interesting frontrunner to the U.S., but not because of its reputation as the birthplace of free market economics. During the peak years of empire, Britain's Parliament neglected to extend citizenship to its colonial subjects not once, but twice. The first time it fumbled a continent full of human capital was in North America in the 1770s. The second time was in the 1880s, when a fear of declinism stymied progress.
Prime Minister William Pitt (the elder), who led Britain during the 18th century, recorded his own expansive dream of a Greater Britain in his personal papers. Pitt's "scheme for better uniting" proposed that there be four members of Parliament to represent Virginia, four for Pennsylvania, four for Massachusetts, three for Jamaica, three for New York, two for Canada, and so on. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations made the same appeal. And yet it never came to pass. In 1707, the English Parliament added Scotland's representatives to its chamber. Northern Ireland was given direct representation in 1800. Conspicuously absent was an offer to the Americas during the decades in between, or the Indians later.
Later, at the dawn of the 20th century, the British Empire was fading relative to other European nations. British economic power was roughly double that of France and triple that of Germany in 1820, a lead that eroded over the following century. Leaders in Parliament were puzzled by the relative decline, and began to question their historical "laissez faire" policies. Rather than reform its colonial structures, as Cambridge professor John Seeley called for, prime ministers debated which trade barriers to erect and how high. Decline followed.

A quick heads up - road trip looming

In a week I'm heading out on a road trip and wont be back until August 2nd. I'll have lap top with me so I should be able to stay in touch regularly, but communication will be a bit slower than normal. I'll have as much as possible open prior to me leaving, but expect that I will a bit more out of pocket than usual during that period.

More details to follow.

The 5 Republican Parties

One of the small handful of points I try to hammer on in class is that the two major parties in the US are best thought of as coalitions of factions that feel enough in common to fit under the same party category. Determining just what those factions are can be a bit of an art.

Here is Norm Ornstein's take on the current factions within the Republican Party and the impact each has on the governing process, as well as the future competitiveness of the party:

. . . I see at least five Republican parties out there, with a lot of overlap, but with enough distinct differences that the task is harder than usual. There is a House party, a Senate party, and a presidential party, of course. But there is also a Southern party and a non-Southern one. The two driving forces dominating today's GOP are the House party and the Southern one -- and they will not be moved or shaped by another presidential loss. If anything, they might double down on their worldviews and strategies.

He argues that the increased influence of the South on the party will help it retain power in the House, but make it less competitive in Senate and presidential elections in the near future:

The South has gone from being a trace element of the Republican Party in the 1950s and 1960s to becoming the solid base and largest element of today's GOP -- and its driving force on social and economic issues. And while some Southern Republicans such as Lindsey Graham remain fierce internationalists, the South, and the House, have become the epicenter of anti-defense and anti-diplomacy isolationism typified now by border Senator Rand Paul.

So here's the Republican dilemma: The House and Southern Republican parties are more concerned with ideological purity and tribal politics than they are with building a durable, competitive national party base to win presidential and Senate majorities. In most cases, they are in no danger of losing their House seats or their hegemony in their states. They will be resistant to changes in social policy that reflect broad national opinion; resistant to any policies or rhetoric, including but not limited to immigration, that would appeal to Hispanics, African-Americans, or Asian-Americans; and resistant to policies like Medicaid expansion or Head Start that would ameliorate the plight of the poor. They also will be more inclined to use voter-suppression methods to reduce the share of votes cast by those population groups than to find ways to appeal to them. I see little or nothing, including a potential loss in 2016, that will change this set of dynamics anytime soon.

While a minority might be powerless in the US House of Representatives, it is not in the US Senate

A useful reminder by James Fallows.

In the House, a minority is indeed "largely powerless." Just ask Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, et al about how life has changed since 2010.

In the Senate, it's very different. There a minority is extremely powerful. Just ask Mitch McConnell, who has made 60 votes -- not a simple majority of 51 -- the de-facto minimum for getting either nominees or legislation approved.

Here's one way to think about it: in both the Senate and the House, the minority party has about the same proportional strength. The Republicans now have 46 Senate seats, obviously 46% of the total. And the 201 Democrats in the House are just over 46% of its makeup.

But in the House, those 46% might as well be 0%, since everything is run by majority vote. While in the Senate, 46% is a fully empowered blocking minority -- which can keep judgeships vacant, legislation from being approved, and essentially anything else from being done. That is, as long as they vote as a bloc, as they usually have; and are committed to making the filibuster not an emergency matter but a daily routine, as under McConnell they have done.

Some history of the farm bill and US agriculture policy

Hopefully the links below provide some context for the current controversy over the farm bill. Agriculture policy of some sort has been a major component of national public policy since the early years of the republic - manifest destiny was in many ways an effort to provide farm land for the property-less folks out east who would also help settle the new territory.

Farm policy took a new form during the Great Depression beginning with the passage of the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933, but codified in related legislation in 1938 which contained a requirement that the bill be updated every five years. It also contained a provision that allowed for the creation of a nutrition program, which would later become food stamps - then SNAP.

What this means is that the farm bill contains two separate, though related items: subsidies for farmers, and food for the poor. This has created broad support for the bill over time, but has led to the current conflict. Republicans have pushed for limits on food stamps and removing them from the farm bill while retaining the subsidies. So the farm bill can be though of in the broader context of the New Deal, and the battle against it - or at least the part that created nutrition programs.

Here are some links with further historical information:

- Wikipedia: Agriculture policy of the United States, and History of Agriculture in the United States.

- Wikipedia: United States Farm Bill. This provides a good, brief look at the history of these bills and a list of the major agriculture legislation passed since the late 19th Century.

- Infographic might provide the most efficient way to get an idea of the history of the farm bill.

- For - what seems to me to be - the most comprehensive list of farm bills and supporting information related to them dating back to 1935, click on the National Agriculture Law Center here.

- Snap to Health has FAQ's about the farm bill. 

- NPR: The Farm Bill: From Charitable Start to Prime Budget Target. This provides a good look at the impact the farm bill has on agriculture policy in the US. Click here for similar detail.

- USDA National Agriculture Library: Farm Bill.

Next year's midterm contests expected to cost around $3.5 billion

Required reading from the National Journal:

A decade after Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold spearheaded sweeping legislation to reform the campaign-finance system, a series of judicial and legislative setbacks have derailed any hopes its original sponsors had of curbing the influence and amount of money spent on politics.

Instead, the incredible explosion of money in federal elections demonstrates that McCain-Feingold was a speed bump, at best, on the way to a dramatic growth curve that suggests next year's contests will cost nearly $3.5 billion.

All told, candidates running for a seat in the House of Representatives spent more than $923 million in 2012, while candidates running for Senate seats dished out $587 million, according to new data compiled for the new edition of Vital Statistics on Congress, a joint publication of the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. That's more than eight times the amount House and Senate candidates spent in 1980. Senate candidates spent twice what they did a decade ago, in 2002.

Life expectancy in the US slips - comparatively

From the National Journal, which reports on a study released by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

In absolute terms, life expectancy has increased, but we've slipped in comparative terms:

Compared with the rest of the industrialized world (OECD countries), America is falling behind. "These improvements are much less than what countries of similar income per capita have seen," the report states. The U.S. now ranks 39th and 40th out of 187 countries for life expectancy for males and females respectively.

And life expectancy is uneven across the nation:

The United States isn't uniformly underperforming in life expectancy. The county with the highest life-expectancy in the U.S. for males is Fairfax County, Va., where males live 81.67 years. That's better than the life expectancy of Japan and Switzerland, which are atop the list for worldwide longevity.

This is the second troubling aspect of the report: There's a huge disparity between the country's highest- and lowest-performing areas. For men, the difference in longevity in the top and lowest counties is 17.77 years. For women, that number is 12.37 years. Progress in national longevity can be attributed to increases in the highest-performing counties (and mainly among men). "Many counties have made no progress," the report states, "or for the period 1993 to 2002, there have been declines for females in several hundred counties."

The life expectancy of the U.S.'s poorest-performing counties is similar to the mortality rates of some of the world's poorer nations.

From a public policy perspective, the proper question is whether this report is likely to place life expectancy on the policy agenda. Given what we know about what factors drive items to the top of the agenda, this will happen only if life expectancy dips in areas of the country - and among constituencies - with political power. I have a hunch that is not the case.

The Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013

One of this week's major political stories was the narrow passage in the House of a farm bill which retained farm subsidies, but cut funding for food stamps. The Senate will not pass a similar bill, nor will the president sign it, so it won't go anywhere. But it has led to a broad range of commentary you - 2305 students anyway - might find applicable to the class.

- House Committee on Agriculture, Farm Bill.
- CBO cost estimate of HR 2624.
- The vote on the bill.
- From Thomas: Bill summary and status.

Here's a sampling of stories about the bill, more to come:

- Background from the NYT:

By splitting farm policy from food stamps, the House effectively ended the decades-old political marriage between urban interests concerned about nutrition and rural areas who depend on farm subsidies.

- And from the Wall Street Journal:

The assertive rank-and-file Republicans in the House, though, sank a bipartisan farm bill by amending it to cut $20 billion from food stamps over 10 years. This week, House leaders stripped food stamps from the bill altogether, stunning the farm lobby. With a lot of arm twisting and derisive commentary from Democrats, leaders squeezed a bill through the House 216-208 (with six Republicans and five Democrats not voting.) All the Democratic votes were no.

No one’s quite sure what happens next. House Ag Chairman Frank Lucas (R., Okla.) promised a separate food stamp bill as soon as he can achieve consensus. Mr. Lucas and House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), who wants to enact a farm bill, probably will try to get some food stamp bill through the House so they can get to a Senate-House conference and return with a compromise that will draw enough Democratic votes to offset Republican rank-and-file opposition.

But the House vote underscored a fundamental political reality in the House: A substantial bloc of Republicans, many of them relative newcomers, are determined to force confrontations as they press for sweeping changes to the food stamp program and other federal benefit programs long cherished by Democrats as opposed to pressing hard and then settling for compromises that pull policy slightly to the right. (One aside: As both conservative and liberal think tanks observed this week, details of the farm bill suggest that House Republican vows to cut government spending exempt farm subsidies.)

- The Cato Institute is critical of the bill:

But in passing the farm bill, Republicans demonstrated that they are just fine with bloated welfare programs as long as those welfare payments go to well-healed special interests.

In 2011, the last year for which full data is available, the average farm household had an income of $87,289, 25 percent higher than the average for all U.S. households. And about a third of the farm subsidies go to the largest four percent of farm operators. If you want to see real “welfare queens,” look no further than Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyler Farms, and Riceland Foods.

“coming to Washington to do good and staying to do well”

I can't give a great deal of advice - based on my experience - to student interested in getting involved in politics or government, but you could do worse than find a job in DC and begin making contacts and a degree of expertise in a given field.

But mostly contacts.

If you are good at this you can cash in at some point. Here's a cynical take on the process based on a recently published book: This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral—Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!—in America’s Gilded Capital.

The larger message of This Town is the sad-eyed truth that, ultimately, everyone sells out. The money quote for Leibovich is former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s honest explanation, “Washington is where the money is. That’s generally what keeps people here.” That comment meshes with my favorite aphorism about dewy-eyed young aides “coming to Washington to do good and staying to do well.”
Everyone’s convictions and contacts can be bought or, at least, rented. Leibovich quotes former AFL-CIO president John Sweeney calling former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt “a powerful voice for working families.” But Leibovich archly notes that after giving up his House seat in 2005 to become a lobbyist, “Gephardt has become a powerful force for Dick Gephardt on issue after issue.” Ditto for former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd who disdained the idea of lobbying until he was offered a $1.2 million job as the head of the Motion Picture Association. Then there’s Jeff Birnbaum who was an ace reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post covering the lobbying beat until he became (wait for it) a high-priced lobbyist. As Leibovich puts it, “Birnbaum joining a lobbying firm was an extraordinary passage, akin to Bob Woodward joining a White House staff.”

. . .
The nation’s capital has always been a prized destination for young men and women with middle-aged dreams. If you pick the right friends and gamble on the right campaigns, you can find yourself with an exalted position on the White House staff in your late twenties or early thirties. As a former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, I recall the heady master-of-the-West-Wing euphoria of being close to the person who is close to the person who is close to the Leader of the Free World.
That is why the most affecting and disturbing chapter in This Town is Leibovich’s portrayal of Kurt Bardella, a nakedly striving yet guileless 27-year-old press secretary to Darrell Issa, the Inspector Javert of the House Republicans. Bardella, who never graduated from college, is torn between two ambitions: White House press secretary someday (all that TV time) and quickly being able to “monetize his government service” (all that money). But before he can achieve either dream, Bardella is fired by Issa for leaking to Leibovich large chunks of the staffer’s daily emails from reporters and Capitol Hill Republicans. But this is Washington where only overly sensitive losers feel disgrace—within weeks Bardella was writing columns for the Daily Caller, negotiating with cable TV bookers and soon winning back a Capitol Hill job with Issa.

Looks like a fun read. Here's more on it:

- Is This Town right about Washington?
- The Preening Egos of This Town.

Partisan differences in attitudes about satisfaction with the federal government

The Gallup Poll released one of its periodic measures of how satisfied people are with the performance of the federal government along about 20 categories. They broke the results down by party identification and found an unsurprising result. Democratic identifiers are more satisfied with the federal government now than Republicans, but when the same questions were asked in 2005, the reverse was true.

The only real difference between now and then was the party membership of the president.

This confirms a point many make about party identification, it provides a lense through which people make evaluations about questions regarding things like the performance of governing institutions. When a Republican is president, Republican outlets say nice and positive things which are accepted by Republican identifiers while they ignore contrary messages by Democratic outlets. And the opposite is true when a Democrat is in the White House.

Here are two tables with Gallup's data. Note the differences between the two as well as the places where there has been a complete flip in attitudes about performance. Has policy really changed that much in each of these policy arenas to justify the shift?

From 2013:


From 2005:

Houston is so cheap / humid / populated / ugly

Those are the results of a fun off the cuff study of stereotypes of the largest cities in the US.

Cities v Walmart

A battle in DC over how much Walmart must pay its workers in order to open stores in the city led this author to look at similar conflicts between Walmart and other cities. Who has leverage? The retailer or the cities?

- Click here for detail on the controversy.

Walmart has done a good job getting subsidies - public money - from cities to build. Walmart Subsidy Watch has background on all of it.

They report 29 deals in Texas which provided $90.8 million in funding.

The demographic consequences of gerrymandering

Here's visual evidence that gerrymandering has led to substantive differences in the racial composition of Democratic and Republican congressional districts. The typical Democratic district has twice as many Hispanics, Blacks and Asians and about 1/3rd fewer Whites. This helps explain what drives differences between the parties in the House of Representatives. They represent substantively "slices of the country."

What's more, the votes they cast are subject to review by primary voters in their districts. Since primary voters are more extreme ideologically than general elections voters, representatives must placate those voters if they want to stay in office. The Dish argues that this points out that gerrymandering incentivises members of Congress to polarize.

Written Assignment #6 - GOVT 2306 - 11 week online class only

The big news from Texas this past week is that Rick Perry has opted not to be governor for life. He will not run again in 2014, which has fueled speculation that he might run for the presidency in 2016, as well as who will replace him.

In his 12 years as governor he seems to have transformed what had been a weak office into one with real power. The traditional story told in Texas politics is that real power lies with the Lieutenant Governor, mostly because of the control that office has over the Texas Senate. But few people would argue that Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst is more powerful than Governor Perry.

I want you to address whether in fact Governor Perry has strengthened the governor's office, and if so, how. What are the factors that make the Texas governor powerful? What factors limit it? Be sure to address whether Perry's strength is mostly due to his longevity in office.

Use this post below as a starting point, but do your own research to answer the question.

150 words at a minimum - thanks.

Written Assignment #6 - GOVT 2305 - 11 week online class only

The use of the filibuster in the US Senate has increased greatly over the past few years, so much so that critics wonder whether it does more harm than good. Normally filibusters have been used sparingly by a minority in the Senate to stop bill they find objectionable, but more recently it has been used to place broad limits on the ability of government to operate at all. For example, executive and judicial positions remain unstaffed because Senate Republicans have enough votes to prevent the votes from getting to the Senate floor.

Senate Democrats are considering whether to change the rules that allow filibusters to happen - there is nothing in the Constitution about filibusters. They happen because of the process that evolved in the Senate over time. but these processes can be changed. That doesn't means its a good idea to do so, or that the change might not have consequences.

I want you to read up on this controversy and weigh in on it. What would the consequences of filibuster reform be on the the Senate? Is reform a good or bad idea?

150 words at a minimum.

Some links:
- Wikipedia: Filibuster in the US Senate.
- An Accident of History?
- US Senate: Filibuster and Cloture.
- Wikipedia: Rule XXII.
- Save the filibuster, Harry Reid.
- Democrats poised to limit filibusters, angering GOP.

From The Fiscal Times: The Outrageous Cost of Getting Elected to Congress

The Fiscal Times highlights findings from Vital Statistics on Congress related to the costs of running for office - among other things.

$1.3 million: Average spent by 256 incumbents among 2012 winners who won re-election in safe districts (where they won with 60 percent of the vote or more)

$156,000: Amount spent by their long-shot challengers, on average

$2.3 million: Average spending by 100 swing-state incumbents in 2012 who held onto their seats with less than 60 percent of the vote

$93,000: Amount spent by their challengers' campaigns, on average

103: House members from "swing" districts in 1992 (defined as districts where the presidential race was within five percentage points of the national result)

35: House members from "swing" districts in 2012 (the most prominent reason for the change is post-Census redistricting, which governing parties have used to draw lines favoring their side)

From the Brookings Institute: Vital Statistics on Congress

The latest edition of an ongoing project. I'm tempted to create a separate section in class just on this material.

Can Democrats rebuild a state party in Texas?

This question has been asked a lot recently since some national and state party leaders see opportunity. They haven't since 1994, but demographic changes may make open things up.

Here are the latest thoughts on the future:

It has been nearly two decades since a Democrat was elected to statewide office and nearly 40 since the party carried Texas in a presidential race; White House hopefuls stopped trying to win here a long time ago.

But after a generation's worth of Democratic failure, many are convinced the state is on the cusp of competitiveness, thanks to the rapid growth of Texas' minority population, especially Latinos, and a slow rebuilding of the party from the ground level — city, county, legislative offices — up.

"It's inevitable," said Matt Angle, a Democratic consultant whose Lone Star Project has chipped away at Republican dominance over the last several elections. "But only with a lot of hard work."

Among those drawn by the prospect are some of the data-driven strategists of President Obama's campaigns, whose targeting and mobilization boosted black and Latino turnout and twice helped win such battlegrounds as Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. They have dispatched field teams throughout the state, hoping to apply their organizing techniques to Texas, where millions of eligible minority voters have either failed to register or haven't bothered voting.

After two decades, the permanent party organization has withered and needs to be rebuilt, which takes time.

. . . one of the higher hurdles facing Democrats in Texas [is] the lack of viable statewide candidates. When Gov. Rick Perry said Monday he would not run again in 2014, the odds-on favorite to replace him, Republican Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, already had more than $18 million in the bank. Democrats, meantime, are struggling to find a single plausible contender.

Building a campaign infrastructure, something Texas Democrats sorely lack, is vital. But "you also need to create some organic reason for people to want to vote for you and identify with you," said James Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas in Austin. That, he and others suggested, requires a compelling — or at least viable — slate of statewide candidates.

Democrats talk up the prospects of San Antonio's mayor, 38-year-old Julian Castro, and his twin brother, Joaquin, a congressman from the city. Neither, however, is expected to run for higher office any time soon.

Davis, 50, was touted as a possible gubernatorial candidate even before her attention-grabbing filibuster, which blocked — at least temporarily — Republican passage of sweeping antiabortion legislation. But although the Fort Worth Democrat has expressed a desire to run statewide, she also knows of the challenges she would face in 2014.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio lawmaker and head of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said Democrats were wise to rebuild their party from the bottom up, rather than counting on a candidate to do it from the top down. That's been tried, he said, "and when the campaign folded, so did the computer that had all the data."

From Pro-Publica: Redistricting, a Devil’s Dictionary

A great look at the gory details of gerrymandering. Complete with examples.

The article's subtitle says it all:

Redistricting: How Powerful Interests Are Drawing You Out of a Vote

Is the South - state legislatures specifically - resegregating?

Here is an argument that is has.

The percentage of black legislators in positions of power in southern state legislatures is the lowest it has been since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The ability to draw legislative districts has been a key instrument in accomplishing this.

Here's a take on the strategy:

Republicans in control of redistricting have two goals: the defeat of white Democrats, and the creation of safe districts for Republicans. They have achieved both of these goals by increasing the number of districts likely to elect an African-American. Black voters are gerrymandered out of districts represented by whites of both parties, making the Democratic incumbent weaker and the Republican incumbent stronger.

Take Mississippi. In the state’s 2012 redistricting, all of the decisively black legislative districts – where 60 percent or more of the voters are African-American – have been preserved, and four new majority-black districts have been created. This, in turn, has allowed Republicans to reduce the percentage of blacks in districts where Republican incumbents had close contests in Mississippi’s 2011 off-year elections.

While increasing the number of blacks elected to state legislatures, Republicans have been effectively implementing their long-range goal of decimating the number of white Democrats. Depending on local demographics, this has been achieved in two ways.

Where possible, Republican redistricting strategists have reduced the number of blacks in white Democratic legislative districts in order to render the incumbent vulnerable to Republican challenge. In other areas of the state, where it has not been not possible to “bleach” a district, Republicans have sharply increased the percentage of blacks to over 50 percent in order to encourage a successful black challenge to the white Democratic incumbent.

In private discussions, Republicans in the South talk explicitly about their goal of turning the Democratic Party into a black party, and in many Southern states they have succeeded. African-American legislators make up the majority of state House and Senate Democratic caucuses in most of the Southern states.

The growing Hispanic population in Texas

Click here for Texas Tribunes' interactive graphic displaying the greater number of Hispanics aged 0-4 than the rest of the population. This provides visual confirmation of looming changes in party competition in the state.

The understaffed federal judiciary in a handful of charts

This is one of the factors driving possible filibuster reform.

From WonkBlog, some charts detailing the factors leading to an understaffed - and possibly weakened - federal judiciary.

One of the featured charts:

From Bruce Ackerman: To Save Egypt, Drop the Presidency

I probably don't spend enough time in class pointing out the difference between presidential and parliamentary governing systems - I usually only refer to them when we talk about the winner take all elections systems we hold versus the proportional representational systems common to parliamentary elections.

But most democracies are parliamentary, not presidential. Proponents of the former argue that they are better suited to include all the various interests in a society.

A Yale Law professor argues that makes it better suited to Egypt:

AS violence escalates, Egypt’s military is trying to bridge a widening political gap by promising a rapid return to civilian rule. But its gesture of accommodation does not get to the heart of the problem: the presidential system, inherited from the Mubarak era, virtually guarantees a repetition of the tragic events of the past year. A democratic breakthrough requires a more fundamental constitutional redesign, in which the contending sides compete for power in a European-style parliamentary system.

If Egypt had made that switch in the interim Constitution adopted two years ago, or in the revisions that Mohamed Morsi, as president, rammed through last year, it could well have avoided the current upheaval and bloodshed in the first place.

The presidency is a winner-take-all office. This may be acceptable in countries like the United States, where well-organized parties contend for the prize. But it is a recipe for tyranny in places like Egypt, where Islamists have powerful organizational advantages in delivering the vote.

Because their opponents will have great difficulties uniting behind a single candidate, Islamists could probably parlay their strong minority support into another presidential victory. To prevent that result, it is predictable that the military will suppress the political efforts of the Muslim Brotherhood and similar groups — transforming the next election into a democratic farce. The next president would not only emerge with an illegitimate mandate. His victory would convert the Islamists into undying opponents of the regime.

Only a parliamentary system provides a realistic path to a more stable, inclusive future. Even if Islamist parties won a substantial share of the vote, they would not be able to monopolize power.

Mark Jones: Red State, Purple Legislation

The Rice professor explains how a cohesive Democratic Party in the Texas Legislature has been able to force concessions on legislation which has denied more conservative Republicans the opportunity to dominate the legislative process. They did better this spring than they did in the November 2012 elections.

In the state Capitol’s west wing, House Democrats brokered a tacit alliance with the GOP’s moderate/centrist conservative bloc, led by Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio. Liberal-Conservative Scores were calculated for legislators using their regular session roll call vote behavior (final 2013 House and Senate ideological scores and rankings will be published following the end of this summer’s special session or sessions). These scores indicate that virtually all of the most prominent Republicans on the speaker’s leadership team either were located in the GOP’s moderate conservative wing (i.e., representatives with Lib-Con Scores significantly less conservative than those of more than one-half of their Republican colleagues) or, and less commonly, in its centrist conservative wing (i.e., representatives with Lib-Con Scores neither significantly more conservative or less conservative than over one-half of their fellow Republicans).

This alliance allowed a relatively cohesive and disciplined Democratic delegation to block the passage of most legislation opposed by its members. In a similar vein, the moderate conservative Republicans prevented the passage of almost all legislation they objected to either on pure policy grounds and/or because they believed it would damage the Texas GOP brand and in doing so undermine their long-term goal of maintaining the party’s grip on power in the state. Finally, this informal alliance pushed through bills that addressed several, though certainly not all, of these legislators’ most pressing policy concerns in areas ranging from public education to water infrastructure.

There were enough moderate Republicans that had more in common with Democrats then their more conservative party members to win votes. This graph shows the "win rate" for members of the House. Democrats doid better than conservative winds of the Republican Party.

The figures reveal the informal alliance that existed during the regular session between Democrats and the moderate conservative and, to a somewhat lesser extent, centrist conservative wings of the Republican Party. This alliance produced predominantly purple legislation that was frequently opposed by the House and Senate’s more conservative Republicans. The end result was legislation that on average was closer to the policy preferences of the median Texas voter than to those of the median Texas Republican Party primary voter, an outcome viewed as positive by a majority of the 181 legislators, the editorial boards of the state’s leading newspapers and the Austin lobby, but perhaps not by a majority of the 1 to 1.5 million Texans who regularly participate in the GOP primaries.

Ross Ramsey: A Weak Governor System, With a Strong Governor

The Texas Tribune writer points out that longevity and the cultivation of loyalists that he has placed throughout state government has given Perry far more power than is typical in the office. Its unlikely his successor will enjoy the same clout he developed, but he transformed the office while he held it:

Before Perry, half the stories about the doings in the state Capitol were either about the inherent weakness of the governor’s office or the ancient lore about how the lieutenant governor holds the state’s most powerful office.

The governor has no cabinet. He or she can appoint the people who populate the various boards and commissions, but only a third of them come up for appointment every two years, and the governor doesn’t have direct control over them once they’ve been posted. They can’t be fired — they can be made pretty uncomfortable, but that takes a lot of work — and they often behave as if they have their own brains and their own goals and ways of doing things.

That means that most of the people who head the executive branch of Texas government have never had full control over it. Other elected officials head some of the major agencies, and a powerful legislative branch can, with strong personalities in charge, control the agencies to some extent by controlling their budgets.

. . . After six years of Perry being in the governor’s office, virtually every appointee had him to thank for their post. And over his first decade in office, the governor seeded the executive branch with his former aides and their like-minded peers. They’re all over the place, with titles like executive director, general counsel, communications director and so on.

. . . Perry’s transformation of the office might be permanent. The agencies might naturally turn their ears to a governor for guidance after all these years out of habit.

It will take six years to replace all the appointees who owe their jobs to Perry, a third of the jobs turning over every two years. The people at the tops of all of those agency organization charts will linger until retirement — Perry’s legacy —and while they may be helpful to a new governor, they will not be indebted like they are to the old boss.

. . . Perry, because of his tenure and the methodical placement of former staffers throughout the government, changed all that, turning a weak office into a powerful one. It’s hard to remember how it used to be.

14 is enough - Perry will not run for re-election

The Texas Tribune reports:

Gov. Rick Perry announced Monday that he will not run for re-election next year, creating the first open race for Texas governor since 1990 and making Attorney General Greg Abbott the instant favorite to replace him.

"I remain excited about the future and the challenges ahead, but the time has come to pass on the mantle of leadership," Perry said. "Today I am announcing I will not seek re-election as governor of Texas. I will spend the next 18 months working to create more jobs, opportunity and innovation. I will actively lead this great state."

. . . Perry made Monday’s announcement at Holt Cat, one of the largest Caterpillar equipment dealers in the United States. The CEO of the company, Peter Holt, owns the San Antonio Spurs basketball team and is a major donor (nearly $600,000 since 2000) to Perry. He’s given $95,000 to Abbott since 2002, records show.

A huge throng of media was on hand for the announcement. Perry kept a tight grip on his plans, ratcheting up the speculation to a feverish pitch. Reporters were left guessing and parsing the words sent out in a “save the date” email that indicated he would reveal some “exciting future plans.”

Perry has 18 months left in his current term, so he’ll still have a huge political megaphone, appointment power and the ability to call a 30-day special session on any topic at any time. No one watching politics in Texas will be surprised if Perry makes full use of his authority and then some during his remaining time in office.

. . . Perry, who will have been in office for more than 14 years when he departs in January 2015, leaves behind a long and colorful legacy at the helm of state government and the GOP political establishment. A former Texas House member and state agriculture commissioner, Perry was elected lieutenant governor in 1998. He became governor on Dec. 21, 2000, when George W. Bush resigned to become president. Perry is now the longest continuously serving governor in the United States and the longest-serving governor in Texas history by far.

Written Assignment #5 - GOVT 2306 - 11 week online class only

Texas Republicans apparently are a bit upset with how Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has been doing his job. Many argue that he was responsible for the sucessful filibuster against the abortion bill that led to the need to call a second special session.

The Texas Tribune reports that area Senator Dan Patrick will run against Dewhurst for Lieutenant Governor in 2014 partly due tto his ineffectiveness in the office.

For this week's assignment I want you to research the precise criticisms made of Dewhurst's performance. Why is he argued to be an ineffective Lieutenant Governor? Might he be damaging the office?

Written Assignment #5 - GOVT 2305 - 11 week online class only

So Egypt seems to have trouble sticking to its constitution. After recently electing a president for the first time in its history, he was deposed with the apparent help of the army, which has also replaced him.

Despite the fact that the constitutional order was clearly violated, there are those that support what was done because the previous president - it was feared - intended to prevent a democratic system from evolving at all and perhaps send Egypt down the road to becoming an Islamic Republic. The constitution had to be violated in order to preserve the constitution - so to speak.

I want you to read through the facts and commentary about what's going on and comment on it. Specically I want to you to give me your thoughts on this question: Was the ousting of the Egyptian president the right thing to do? Why or why not?

Review for the Summer One 2013 Final

Summer One finals are in class on Tuesday, July 9.

Bring a Scantron and a #2 pencil, and be prepared to answer 100 multiple choice questions.

Some hints for the review can be found here:

- GOVT 2305
- GOVT 2306

Remember to review the assessment question carefully, and to send in you papers through Blackboard.

Written Assignment #5 - GOVT 2306 - 11 week online class only

As you probably know, the first special session of the 83rd legislature ended with a dramatic filibuster.

Now the whole process starts again in the session starting today.

I want you to use this to get familiar with the actual bill making process in the state. Click to here to get specific information about the steps SB 5 took through the legislature. Condense these steps into a quick summary. Try to get into the steps used to both prolong and stop the filibuster.

Its a good look at Texas politics.

Written Assignment #5 - GOVT 2305 - 11 week online class only

Last week the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 - but not Section 5 - of the Voting Rights Act. This means that while pre-clearance is OK, the map used to determine which states and local jurisdictions are subject to pre-clearance is not.

It also means that Congress has to redo the map, if there is to be any federal oversight of state election laws. Here's where things get tricky. No new map, no more pre-clearance, and not everyone in Congress has an incentive to redo the map. Some do however, and many members of Congress have promised to support a revised map.

I want you to write about the likelihood that this Congress, as dysfunctional as it is, can create a new map replacing the one used since the 1960s to guide the preclearance process.

Give at least at least 150 words - as you know