#the sleaze brothers Abbott n Paxton

[macwantspeace]

Sorry. This is long. I would post snippets and then a link, but Electoral-Vote rotates everything thru the front page. Sort of like Hare today, Goon tomorrow. [I wish you could have been there when Wally {nee Karen} told that story. See, there was a hare with a bad attitude. Wandered thru the woods Bopping the other critters. In poofs the Woodland Fairy to say, "stop that shit or I'll turn you into a goon". "Ha and Ha", says the hare while doing some more Bopping. Poof! Zap! Goon! Hence the moral: hare today, goon tomorrow.] Texas Hates Democracy {here it comes. brace yourselves} In a just world, someone would arrest, convict, and imprison Gov. Greg Abbott and AG Ken Paxton (both R-TX) and then would throw away the key. They are the most anti-democratic, corrupt, power-abusing, self-interested one-two punch in state politics right now. In fact, they might be the worst one-two punch in state politics in the last half-century (go back further than that, and you run into the segregationists, who were also really bad).

Every reader of this site knows that Texas has allegedly been on the cusp of turning purple for at least a decade, if not more. It hasn't actually happened, but that doesn't mean that the thought doesn't keep Texas Republicans up at night. And they go into full freak-out mode when they see a poll like this one from Public Policy Polling, which has Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris by just three points, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) {hiss, boo, I add} leading Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) by just two. It's almost certainly an outlier, but it's also a reminder that Texas' status as a one-party state could be in jeopardy.

One solution to this problem would be to pursue ideas and programs that will curry public support. You know, that thing called "politics"? The preferred approach of Abbott and Paxton, however, is to abuse their positions of power to disenfranchise Democratic voters. To that end, the Texas state government, with Paxton taking the lead, has booted 1 million people off the voter rolls since the last presidential election. Roughly half of those individuals have died or left Texas. The other half, however, simply failed to respond to inquiries from the state demanding that they confirm their voting status. "Coincidentally," the folks removed from the rolls are disproportionately people of color and/or disabled, which means they are also disproportionately Democrats.

And it gets even sleazier. Abbott and Paxton are all-in on the fantasy that vast numbers of undocumented immigrants are casting votes in Texas elections. In order to fight this "problem," Paxton recently executed search warrants {squads of cops with guns drawn} on a bunch of homes in Texas. No undocumented voters, and no evidence of votes by undocumented Texas, were found. By pure chance, however, the homes all belonged to Democratic activists, particularly members of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

This week, Paxton is still busy. Harris and Bexar counties (home to Houston and San Antonio, respectively) were busy at work on plans to allow people to register to vote via mail. On Monday, the AG sent letters to officials in both counties telling them they better not try it, and that he would sue them if they did. {ha and ha, I add, they done did it Tuesday} Paxton claims that the program would "confuse" noncitizens and "induce" them to register fraudulently. Those just so happen to be among the most heavily Latino counties in the state. Paxton probably didn't even know that, though, right?

At the start of this item, we proposed that Abbott and Paxton are as bad as the segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s. Now that we think about it, is there even a distinction? Whether it's Ken Paxton or George Wallace, they're doing everything they can to keep Black and brown people from voting. ~~~~~ The request for voter registration form is a fillable pdf on the Sec State webpage. Just gots to mail it.