Texas Governor Rick Perry will be adding so-called sanctuary city legislation to the ongoing special session of the Texas legislature.
"Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday added a ban on "sanctuary cities" to the agenda of the special session..despite opposition from outnumbered Democrats concerned about issues including racial profiling. As approved in the recently ended regular session by the Texas House, which has a GOP supermajority, the legislation would bar local governments from preventing law enforcement officers from inquiring into the immigration status of people they detain. The proposal stalled in the Senate because of a rule that generally requires a two-thirds vote of senators to consider a proposal. ...The rule, however, is not in place for the special session...Police chiefs and sheriffs who have come to the Capitol to oppose the idea have said it would burden already-stretched local officers with enforcing federal immigration laws and hamper community policing efforts that rely on building trust to encourage people to report crimes."
Will this bill go after Texas business owners who hire undocumented persons? What penalty will there be for average Texans who have taken advantage of the cheap labor and services offered by undocumented persons?
There will be none of that you can wager.
What we will have instead is the bullying of the weakest amongst us that seems an essential part of the character of the Texas conservative.
This legislative session has been all about diminishing the lives of Texas children and of the poor in Texas.
What we now have as well is the expansion of police state powers with Americans citizens subject to questioning on the basis of skin color.
Such an expansion of the powers of the State of Texas would be consistent with the recent enactment of the forced sonogram bill. The forced sonogram bill mandates that women getting a legal abortion in Texas must also receive a sonogram and, also, be forced to listen to details of the results of the sonogram.
In Texas it will soon be okay for the state to force unwanted medical procedures on free citizens.
Just imagine the libertarian and right-wing screaming if Democrats forced unwanted medical procedures on American citizens.
After passage of a sanctuary city bill, it may well become legal for the state to demand the papers of American citizens for no more reason than a hunch or a guess.
This sure is some small government for you.
It seems that any public policy, no matter how intrusive, is okay if it suits the ideological extremism of Governor Perry and the Texas Republican Party.
(Top Texas politcal blogger Charles Kuffner has also written on this subject.)
“The patience of the oppressed has always been the most inexplicable, as well as probably the most important, fact in all history.” - Author Amos Elon from The Pity of it All
I suspect that the electorate, back when you and I were younger, was more informed and more involved. After all, many of those people came through the Greast Depression and WWII. Being involved and knowing what was going on was damned important. I remember my parents, and my family, used to watch BOTH party conventioNS, EVERY NIGHT.
Now many people "appear" stupid, sometimes ignorant, and other times naieve to the world around them and, accordingly, the actions or inactions of their elected officials. I feel the old saying, "You can fool all of the people some of the time and you can fool some of the people all of the time.." has become the motto of the new republican party. The motto of the new democratic party seems to be "Huh?"
Carguy, I really don't know. The only thing in my lifetime that has really worked (Viet Nam war, Watergate, and, currently in Wisconsin and in a very few other states) is political activism and protest in the streets. However, it is extremely difficult to get people to actively complain when they are too ignorant to understand who and what harms them. How can someone complain when they believe the people who are harming them? All I know is that government is not "working" in lots of different areas. I understand that was the agenda - that if it doesn't work it is easier to dismantle - but - how do you get people to insist that it "work" if they believe that government "working" is "bad"? We are being played by both sides. I guess you get the democracy you deserve.
I really wish sometimes that the Perry-ites/Palin-ites WOULD secede. Then, we could all have a clear choice. You want to live like Pakistan - live in Perry/Palin-land. You want democracy, efficient and intelligently run government you live in the U.S.
It is indeed regrettable what Perry and his band of merry men continue to do TO our beloved state. But, they are duly elected ignorant SOB's. Shy of puttin' a banana in his tailpipe, what do you propose?
Putting women and children "in their place" has always been a far right meme - part of their "we want our country back" - back to when it was okay to abandon your children or beat your wife (it was, after all, your own "private" business).
Texas' non collection of past due child support is rising five times faster than the national average of 11% annually! Evidently people in this state are too cowed to object.
I have a case I have been pursuing and am about to take to the Supreme Court -- pro se -- because there isn't anyone in the state of Texas that cares about child support collections. I went to the Texas OAG (official, federally mandated child support enforcement office) for help to collect on the thousands of dollars of unpaid child support and the OAG's office ACTIVELY did everything in its power to see that the child support would not be collected - even arguing in court that it "wouldn't be fair" to force my ex to pay what he owed! (Even though there is precedence that the State can only perform those functions the lege has given them, the 14th COA says that I should have "preserved the error". What woman, trying to collect her past due child support knows how to do that? So, under Gregg Abbott and Rick Perry, it is far, far more insidious than most people realize.) BTW, the feds don't care either. I can't even get them to return phone calls or emails and they are charged with "oversight"!
Rick Perry is obviously pandering to the far right for what he thinks will be political gain.
And good men continue to do nothing.