Thanks For The
Posted on 07/19/2017 8:40:11 PM PDT by Morgana
A Special Session of the Texas Legislature called by our Governor Greg Abbott is underway - and we need your activism to ensure the privacy, safety and dignity of Texans is protected.
In the regular session that ended May 29, House Speaker Joe Straus kept the Texas Privacy Act and other related legislation from even receiving a vote in the Texas House, even though a majority of the House supported privacy legislation. This is in stark contrast to the Texas Senate where, under the leadership of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Texas Privacy Act passed early in the regular session.
If state leaders do not act this special session this issue will continue to be fought from city to city, from county to county, from school board to school board - resulting in thousands of time-consuming, costly, and repetitive conflicts, and a continued lack of transparency by local governments.
If we don't pass strong privacy legislation, thousands of Texas schoolchildren will return to class this fall uncertain of how their schools will respond, and be subject to a patch work of policy by liberal pressure groups.
Texas must not give into the radical LGBT lobby's agenda that would endanger our children at school and force every private business in Texas to allow men into girls' bathrooms, locker rooms, and other intimate facilities. Efforts to protect privacy do not impact private businesses, they only create consistent policy for government buildings and public schools.
Texans overwhelmingly support common sense privacy legislation and polls continue to show that a strong majority of Texas voters agree that use of public restrooms should based on biological sex.
This special session's privacy legislation will defend business freedom, the dignity of our school children, and preserve "safe spaces" for our most vulnerable. Please take immediate action today by contacting your state legislators.
TAKE ACTION: Contact your State Representative and Senator and ask him/her to PROTECT PRIVACY in state law and ensure that strong privacy legislation passes this special session to keep men and boys out of girls' bathrooms, shower rooms and locker rooms. [-] less
Who here are Texas FReepers?? This needs to get out now!!
arth ping this concerns public schools.
Thanks For The
My pleasure.
I’m a Texan. I’m not sure that this will make it through in the special session. Of course I will pass this along but ... call me an Eeyore. The special sessions here are very carefully controlled while giving the appearance of taking up numerous issues.
Thanks!
LUV, please ping your TX list. ;-)
My pleasure
Just sure hope Texans show up and say we’re not putting up with this crap! Protect your women/girls!
Thanks TF for the mass ping!
On a somewhat related note... This votervoice.net service they are using is pretty neat. $5k a year seems killer for grassroots organizations or those with a small but devoted number of followers.
Surely there are clever coders out there capable of doing this at a much cheaper price point for those of us organizing locally.
Roger that....and duly pinging the list......
Better be getting some stuff done and not just wasting our tax dollars!
There’s a big ol’ swamp in Austin, just like in D.C.
Got that right! Disgusting!
Speaker Joe Strauss is the ruler of the swamp.
#TEXIT
” This votervoice.net service they are using is pretty neat. $5k a year seems killer for grassroots organizations or those with a small but devoted number of followers.
Surely there are clever coders out there capable of doing this at a much cheaper price point for those of us organizing locally.”
Don’t know anything about them. This was passed to me on FB tonight and am passing it on to you all.
It’s often said here that the Governorship in Texas is a relatively weak position, and that the real power is concentrated in the hands of the Lt. Governor (who is excellent here), and the House Speaker (who might as well be a Democrat, even though, at times recently, the House was more than 2/3’s Republican).
But Special Sessions are different. Only the Governor can call them. But when he does, it can be very disruptive to the lives of individual legislators, as they are paid $7200 per year, plus $190/day when the legislature is in session (including Special Sessions)...or about $41,000 for 2 years (which includes a 5 month regular session every 2 years). Certainly not enough to live on, particularly for a Swamp Creature.
So our legislators have day jobs. Some (maybe most) are lawyers, others may be doctors, accountants, while others may work for big companies. Some of the larger companies will make up the pay loss if an employee who normally makes, say, $125k has to be in Austin making a pay rate of only around $60,000 (annually). But for the people running their own businesses, such as lawyers, they’re out of luck - if they want to be in the legislature, they lose billing hours and thus income - and on top of that, they’re also not available to their clients.
This becomes important here because Special Sessions are unpredictable and unlimited. When Rick Perry finally decided to start acting a bit like a Republican and pushing for Voter ID (or something similar - requiring our Republicans to vote the way they preach to us), our legislature told him to shove it (that was before we got our excellent Lt. Governor). So Perry called a Special Session...and got the same result So he called a second session...same result. So he called a third session...guess what, it passed! It took 3 times, but with each session being about a month, he simply wore down the legislators...until enough of them told their left-wing leaders that they needed to get back to their day jobs.
So the bottom line is that if Governor Abbott wants legislation bad enough...or at least if he wants a vote on particular legislation, he has the power to pretty much force the issue...simply by making those people stay in Austin and try to live off their (relatively) crappy per-diem pay - as eventually, the legislators will buckle and at least vote on issues.
In our case, 2 big issues are bathroom privacy and bringing some control over property tax increases - two issues our House Speaker won’t even bother bringing to a vote. For bathrooms, the mindset thinking that there’s no issue in forcing girls to shower in locker rooms where boys have free access totally escapes me, at least for Republican legislators. For property taxes we have VERY POWERFUL lobbying groups, which include cities, counties, school districts, and lots of other taxing entities. They get HUGE TAX INCREASES without even having to vote on them with the current system (something like 10% per year)...they want nothing changed and the Republicans in the House don’t mind doing their dirty work and protecting their scams.
But things can get fun as the summer drags into autumn and many, if not most, of our legislators find themselves stuck in Austin, unable to work their day jobs...simply because they refuse to behave as Republicans.
There’s a big ol’ swamp in Austin, just like in D.C.
**************************************
And Speaker Joe Straus is the plug in the drain!
I’ve never understood how he has been able to keep that powerful position for years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
