Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Inch by inch

"You don't lose your freedom a mile at a time, you lose it an inch at a time."

- State Rep. Harold Dutton, speaking today from the Texas House floor
Posted by Gritsforbreakfast at 4:39 PM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And the Texas lege is doing its part to trim our rights liberties and freedoms.

5/16/2013 07:01:00 AM
benbshaw said...

The Texas legislature has been home to parochial interests forever that have always favored selling out the interests of the people to corporations who rule by the practice of divide and conquer. V.O. Key, who was from Texas, wrote Southern Politics in 1949 where he documented political strategy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._O._Key,_Jr.

The divide and conquer strategy is easier to pull off in a one party system, which Texas has had first with the Democrats and now with the Republican party. Both parties are hoping to see the continuation of 1-party rule depending on how they think they can take advantage of the rise of the Latino voter who will determine whether Texas will become 1-party Democratic or 1-party Republican.

The essence of divide and conquer is the use of wedge issues to divide potential opponents to the business interests that have always controlled the state from coalescing to change the economic policies of the state that favor the wealthy. The traditional wedge issues has been race which was used to break up the old Populist party. Other wedge issues have been abortion, school busing, demonizing anti-war protestors, accusing proponents of civil liberties as being soft on crime, appealing to anti-communism fervor, and now fear of immigrants.

In Texas, the ruling elites have always seen the Bill of Rights, democracy, equal rights, and voting rights as expendable commodities that can be spent to maintain the status quo and the economic privileges of the few at the expense of the many.

5/16/2013 10:17:00 AM
Anonymous said...

This is a little off topic, but, Its always interesting to peak over at the TDCAA forum. Apparently, prosecutors do not have enough work to do. I saw two discussions that make me think that. First, one was asking about charging a guy who used a nearby bulldozer to pull his truck out of the mud with UUMV. I mean, is that really worth prosecuting? Furthermore, is it really worth sticking a felony on somebody. Just tell the guy to pay the owner a little money for the rental of the thing. As long as he didn't damage it, who cares? The other was about whether roosters can be considered "exotic fowl." This prosecutor was looking for a way to boost a case of chicken theft to a felony. I think we might be able to save some tax dollars by eliminating some prosecutor positions if these guys have this much time on their hands.

5/16/2013 04:38:00 PM

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