Texas Liberal Meets With Democracy For America Chair Jim Dean

 

Your favorite blogger, Texas Liberal, had lunch today with Democracy for America Chair Jim Dean and DFA Executive Director Tom Hughes here in Houston.

Also with us were two other locals who knew what they were talking about. They counterbalanced whatever I had to say. 

Tom and I once took a campaign management class together in Washington. He is a political genius.

Jim and Tom are touring the nation giving the top-rate Democracy for America grassroots training course. They are also meeting with locals to assess the political situation around our great nation.

I told Jim and Tom that I felt local Democratic officials in Houston and Harris County have been slow to support my U.S. out of North America initiative. I also suggested that Texas was in fact an independent nation and that the federal income tax is legalized theft.

By their silent nodding, I felt Jim and Tom were in full agreement with all my assertions.

Though I’m not sure why they kept glancing at each other while I talked.

Based in Vermont, Democracy for America was founded by Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean. Click here to see what they do, donate some money and find a local chapter.  

    

Sputnik Reminds Us We Are On The Earth As Brothers & Sisters

 

 Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik.

To mark the day, I’m running a big picture of the Earth.

The Earth is where you and I and all our brothers and sisters live.

The Earth is all we have. No transporter beam or stargate is going to take you anywhere else. If you believe in some sort of afterlife, that’s great. But as far as I know, the Earth is all we’ve got. 

The big problems we have today— climate change, global economics and living standards, and issues of war and peace— are problems that transcend borders.

We need to get our imaginations around the fact that we are dependent on others. We need to work with other nations and other people far away from what we narrowly define as our homes.

Sputnik was an act of the Cold War. Yet our imaginations allow us to see Sputnik as a first step in calling our attention to the fact we all share this planet and we must live in a way that respects the value of all people.     

That is the power of imagination. Politics is at core an act of imagination.

Please click here to see the most recent posts on Texas Liberal.

Mickey Leland In The Texas Observer On Party Loyalty

Though I am of the left, I believe in a big tent Democratic party. In America we have two main parties for 300 million people and people will differ and disagree. In Texas, we have over 23 million people and again, people will differ and disagree.  

A workable standard for party loyalty was well-established 26 years ago by late Houston Congressman Mickey Leland.

Mr. Leland wrote an article for The Texas Observer in 1981 called The Tumor in the Texas Democratic Party. The article is reprinted in the book Fifty Years of the Texas Observer. 

Mr. Leland wrote about Texas Congressional turncoats such as Phil Gramm and Kent Hance who helped sponsor the poor-bashing tax cuts and budgets offered by Ronald Reagan.

Here is what Leland said—

Now, I want to carefully distinguish between those members of Congress who have or who will vote contrary to the Democratic position either out of personal belief or because their districts demand it….and those few members who go far beyond a vote and undertake a leadership role in sponsoring and working for the Republican program.

Mr. Leland got it exactly right. You don’t have to vote with the majority of Democrats every time, but you do have to have a good reason to bolt the party. If you vote the other way out of conviction or for survival, we can still work together at the end of the day.

If you’re selling out your colleagues for personal political gain or you’ve moved impossibly far away from the positions of your party, then you’re no longer welcome.