What a Mess: The Texas gay bar raid

An investigation shows that a raid on a Fort Worth gay bar on the 49th anniversary of Stonewall was, indeed, a complete mess and violated the state alcohol commission's own policies.

What really happened in the caucuses?

By Diane Silver

Did bands of unruly kids act as thugs for Obama in the Texas caucuses? Does Obama win caucuses in general because his supporters threaten defenseless, cowering Clintonites? That is the accusation included in comments on a post by my co-blogger Nancy Jane Moore.

Nancy has already responded once, noting that her experience in a caucus in Austin wasn't anything like that described by "K." She hasn't had a chance to respond yet to "JamesK." (The same person as K? There's no way to tell. Neither K nor JamesK posted a profile.)

I can only speak for my experience in Kansas. I went to a caucus in Lawrence that drew 2,200 people, far more than the handful of folks who usually attend. I live near the University of Kansas, and this caucus site was filled with college students. There were also many folks my age and older. (I'm 55.) I didn't see anyone intimidating anyone. We milled around for several hours, got tired, foot sore and hungry. We laughed and discussed politics, but no hoards of students were doing anything to Clinton supporters. I didn't even seen any individuals being impolite to anyone.

Hillary Clinton's supporters did seem miserable, though. There were barely enough of them to make up the 15 percent required for their candidate to be counted in the caucus. They sat quietly in one corner, looking rather stunned.

But this accusation of thuggery intrigued me, so I looked farther into what happened in Texas. I searched Google News, using the keywords Texas, caucus, police.

What I found were complaints about overwhelmed caucus sites and some concern about the large crowds getting out of hand. I found one incident where an Obama backer may have mishandled things and one or possibly two incidents where a Clinton backer mishandled things. For that last incident, involving former Dallas City Council member Sandra Crenshaw, even the local newspaper seemed to waffle over time about what happened and who was to blame.

So far, I haven't found any evidence of Obama's young supporters -- or any of his supporters -- engaging in wholesale intimidation.

Working backwards through time, this is what I found.

Dallas Morning News editorial
March 12

And if party leaders had any lingering uncertainty about the urgent need to simplify this process, the almost-too-strange-to-be-true Sandra Crenshaw saga should convince them to start rewriting their rules. The former Dallas City Council member ran a caucus that nearly turned violent and eventually ended in a standoff at a police substation after Ms. Crenshaw told Obama supporters that she planned to alter voting totals to bolster Mrs. Clinton.

Associated Press
March 11

In Hidalgo County, a border stronghold for Clinton, the count has been stymied because Democratic chairman Juan Maldonado changed his cell phone number after losing re-election and wasn't available for several days at his business, a bail-bond office that also offers state teacher certification.

Associated Press
March 6

Tempers flared among emotional supporters of Clinton and Obama. Birnberg said Houston police were dispatched to a half-dozen locations to keep matters under control.

"Someone walking into a room with a blue uniform on has a very calming effect," he said.

Dallas Morning News
March 6

Among the major complaints being investigated in Dallas County on Wednesday were reports that an Oak Cliff precinct chairwoman, former Dallas City Council member Sandra Crenshaw, was tailed to a Dallas police station by election volunteers. They say she said she was taking sign-in sheets home to "correct" them.

In another incident, an Obama backer from New York took over a caucus at Florence Middle School in southeast Dallas, and somehow lost all of the sign-in sheets dedicated to Mrs. Clinton.

"We're collecting information and we're forwarding it to the state" Democratic Party, Ms. Ewing said. "We're trying to weed out what's real from what's not."

Dallas Morning News
March 5

Election volunteers trailed former Dallas City Council member Sandra Crenshaw, who was serving as a precinct chairwoman, through Oak Cliff late Tuesday. They allege that she sent away hundreds of angry convention-goers and told them she was taking sign-in documents favoring Barack Obama home to "correct them."

Ms. Crenshaw, who supports Hillary Rodham Clinton, paints a different picture – of a mob of Obama supporters from other states who were so unruly that she had to seek refuge at a police substation.

Meanwhile, Salon posted an account of a caucus in San Antonio. Here are other reports from CBS News, The Washington Post, and the Austin American-Statesmen. The Washington Post and Austin American-Statesmen have the most in-depth review of problems in the Texas caucuses.

This just in: Obama won Texas

By Nancy Jane Moore

NPR reported tonight what I suspected all along: unofficial results show that Barack Obama has a substantial delegate lead in the Texas caucuses.

I added up the partial delegate totals on the Texas Democrats website and figured out that if the current ratios hold up, Obama is likely to end up with 37 delegates to Hillary Clinton's 30. Add that to the projected totals from the primary (Obama 61, Clinton 65) and you get the actual outcome of the race: Obama 98; Clinton 95.

Now that's not a concrete number yet. For one thing, all the caucus results haven't been totaled up yet. (Don't ask me why. The process isn't that complicated.) For another, what we're calling caucuses are actually precinct conventions, which elect delegates to the county conventions, which elect delegates to the state convention, which elects delegates to the national convention. It's conceivable that some odd things can happen in all that process.

But still, it seems very likely that Obama took more delegates than Clinton in Texas. Since getting delegates is the purpose of the process, it should be clear that whichever person ends up with the most delegates wins. Winning the popular vote in the Texas primary was good for Clinton's momentum and it got her very close on delegates, but she didn't win Texas.

I know some people are now complaining about the process. But the system wasn't invented to help Obama. It's been in place for awhile. It was designed to give heavily Democratic districts a stronger voice in selecting the Democratic nominee. And that's what it did. Those who are objecting to it now should have argued for different rules back when it was set up.

Obama's success in caucus states makes one thing very clear: His campaign knows how to do grass roots organizing. The people who ran my precinct convention weren't political insiders; they were enthusiastic people who showed up and brought their friends.

The Democratic Party has been weak in this area for a long time -- a real shortcoming in a party that should represent the interests of the working class. Obama is showing how it's done. The rest of the party should be paying attention.

Texas marches backwards yet again

By Nancy Jane Moore

A few years ago, I was working on a novel in which a biologist testified against "intelligent" design before a hostile committee of the Texas Legislature. But then Federal Judge John Jones issued his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (PDF file), thoroughly discrediting the anti-evolution forces. Things even began to change in Kansas, as thoroughly documented here on In This Moment. So I put the novel aside.

Obviously I gave up too soon. The Texas Education Agency just fired its director of science for forwarding an email announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest, one of the witnesses who helped defeat the creationist forces in the Dover case. According to The New York Times, Christine Castillo Comer was fired in part for siding against creationism. Apparently she was also fired for insubordination.

While Comer, who spent 27 years teaching science before taking up her job at the TEA, certainly accepts the scientific theory of evolution and rejects creationism -- that's obvious in her interview on Talk of the Nation Science Friday -- all she did was forward an email about a speech. While dealing with idiots who are apparently committed to ensuring that Texas students are ill-prepared in biology must have been frustrating, I assume Comer figured she would be more effective working to combat the anti-evolution forces on the inside. Besides, she probably needed her job.

This would be laughable if it wasn't so important. Given global warming and the high tech nature of our economy, solid grounding in the sciences is not just an educational perk, it's a necessity. The Times reports that the Texas State Board of Education is about to review the standards for teaching evolution beginning in February.

In Texas, state education money can only be used to buy books approved by the Education board, so if they approve books that are even wishy-washy about evolution -- much less books touting "intelligent" design -- those books will be used by most schools. Texas is a huge textbook market, so publishers will make revisions to their books to get them approved for the state.

I'm in the process of moving back to Texas after many years in Washington, D.C., so I'm watching this struggle with a combination of amusement and horror. I can't deny that it's fun to watch this sort of thing -- here's a piece I just stumbled on in The Times from back in February about a Texas state legislator who managed to offend most of the Jews in the state by sending out a memo claiming evolution comes from the Kabbalah. (You can't make this stuff up.)

But the stakes are just too high to let these foolish people promote their agenda for our amusement. We need to educate our children, not indoctrinate them.

Most of the states have more tax money than they expected. What should they do about it?

By Nancy Jane Moore

The New York Times reports this morning that over 40 states found themselves with a budget surplus this year.

The article makes it sound like it is the state itself that has the budget surplus, but given that in many cases the surplus comes from property taxes, the reporter appears have lumped in local government fat as well. An increase in property tax revenue is not a big surprise in jurisdictions that prospered during the housing boom.

The state with the most fat, according to The Times, is Texas, which has $7 billion more than they expected -- close to triple second-place California's $2.7 billion. Apparently they're going to give a lot of it back in the form of property tax cuts. (Since Texas doesn't have an income tax, the money comes from property taxes and sales taxes, plus a smidgen from corporate taxes.)

Now I know the boom in taxes that went along with the boom in house prices hit some people hard, so it's reasonable to adjust the property taxes somewhat -- especially for working and middle class homeowners in neighborhoods that boomed unexpectedly. But there are a lot of other things Texas needs to spend its money on. The state is notorious for lousy social services and mediocre schools, just to mention basic services. And second-place California cut a lot of services a few years back when it hit fiscal crisis, as did most of the other states.

So putting a priority on restoring services comes to mind as an important thing to do. I note that The Times says one reason for the surplus is a drop in Medicaid expenditures.

Given that every report on poverty in the US points out that the percentage of really poor people stays about the same -- 37 million people or 12 percent of the population according to the last report I saw -- I don't think the drop in Medicaid spending was due to a lack of need, but rather to a drop in providing necessary medical services to the truly poor.

It's pretty obvious who suffered to give those states their nice flush bank accounts. Why is it that I suspect the people who benefit from the surplus won't be those who suffered from the deficits?