Category: Elections

Also in last Tuesday’s Republican ballots were a series of “propositions” — basically, a way for the Texas Republican Party to gauge the feelings of their supporters for ideas that should be considered for inclusion as planks in their party platform in future elections.  They make for interesting reading (with my vote + reasons):

Proposition 1:
Texas property taxes should be assessed at the purchase price and phased out entirely over the next six years through spending reductions. — Yes (government should get only one bite at the cherry, not an annual one;  if they need more money, let them beg for it at election time, or sell bonds)

Proposition 2:
Texas should require any local government budget that raises property taxes to be approved by voters at a November general election. — Yes (one of my buddies recently moved to a “growing” area, and was presented with a 40% increase in his property tax for next year;  municipalities should never think they have an open checkbook)

Proposition 3:
Texas should prohibit denial of healthcare or any medical service based solely on the patient’s vaccination status. — Yes (screw those Covid-type excrescences)

Proposition 4:
Texas should require its public schools to teach that life begins at fertilization. — Yes (although I have some reservations about this, I can see why it’s been suggested)

Proposition 5:
Texas should ban gender, sexuality, and reproductive clinics and services in K-12 schools. — Yes (if the kids feel they need any of those, they can do it with their parents, outside school)

Proposition 6:
Texas should enact term limits on all elected officials. — Yes (although I sometimes like it when we get a good ‘un, I don’t like any politician to get too comfortable in a sinecure)

Proposition 7:
Texas should ban the large-scale export or sale of our groundwater and surface water to any single private or public entity. — Yes (we don’t have a lot of water in the Lone Star State, and we need to guard it jealously)

Proposition 8:
The Texas Legislature should reduce the burden of illegal immigration on taxpayers by ending public services for illegal aliens. — Yes (especially education, which has stuck in my craw for decades)

Proposition 9:
The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature should stop awarding leadership positions, including committee and subcommittee chairmanships and vice chairmanships, to Democrats. — Yes (because Democrats are not to be trusted with any levers of power)

Proposition 10:
Texas should prohibit Sharia Law. — Yes (to address any First Amendment qualms on this issue, see what’s happened in Britishland)

I’ll be interested to see how this all plays out.

Before we get dragged into another pointless argument with the Usual Suspects, let us remind ourselves what the three purposes of a secure Voter ID card are, namely that you are:

• a U.S. citizen, and therefore entitled to vote
• alive, and
• can only vote once.

It’s really that simple.  Now ask yourself the simple question:  who would be against such a simple concept, and why?

The next step is a lot more, shall we say, punitive.  Considering that the above constitutes one of the principle freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution (i.e. that citizens are entitled to vote), then I would suggest one final step:

Any U.S. House Representative or Senator who votes against this measure should be immediately removed from their position because they have betrayed their oath of office, and must be subject to a recall vote in their state or district.

Frankly, I’m sick of fucking around with this nonsense — fraudulent votes, stolen elections, voter negation and all the rest — and it’s time we put an end to it.  Immediately.

We’re all familiar with the “slippery slide’ argument when it comes to laws and social policies (a.k.a. the “camel’s nose under the tent” expression).

Yesterday in Texas we went to the polls to vote on a series of propositions that either change or underline the Texas constitution.

The one proposition was that in order to vote in the state of Texas, you have to be a U.S. citizen.  Now one might think that that is understood to be the case — except of course when shit-holes like Boston or San Francisco allow non-citizens to vote on “local “matters.

Well, that ain’t gonna happen in the Lone Star State, should our local shit-holes (like Austin) start getting any ideas.  Best of all, of course, is that by making it a constitutional issue, Texas has the right to demand that voters show proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote.  (With my very non-Texas accent, I always take my passport with me to the polls, just in case.  Of course, I do have my voter’s card and driver’s license, and I’m on the voting roll anyway, but I have absolutely no problem with producing my U.S. passport if anyone wants to see it.)  This is not an issue to mess around with, and I’m glad we’re going all hardass on the topic. [Update:  it passed, 75-%25%.]

All the other propositions / amendments had to do with taxes, and when doing my research on each of them, I grinned broadly because they seemed to fall into two camps:  “This tax is bullshit and it needs to be whacked” — e.g. that farmers have to pay a tax on animal feed.  There were a few like that.

The other group of propositions are all preventative in nature, because unlike the U.S. Constitution, a product of the Enlightenment, the Texas constitution is very much proscriptive as well, i.e. we’re not going to trust the government to abide by goodwill alone:  the damn government isn’t allowed to do this or that specific thing — in fact, a whole lot of specific things.

My favorite?  The one that bans any kind of estate tax — okay, a “death” tax.

“But Kim… Texas doesn’t have a death tax.”

Quite right.  And now that it’s expressly forbidden by our state constitution, there’s never going to be a death tax in Texas.

I voted in favor of all the propositions.

And by the way, I thought that the polls weren’t going to be too busy.  In fact, the line of waiting voters was well over 200 yards long, and it never fell below that in all the time I was there.  [Update:  all the results are here.  The margins are about what you expect.]

We take this “restricting government” thing very seriously here, deep in the heart of