Replies

"Ah, so you’re naive about the workings of the “Lege” and politics in general." Ah, the "naive" accusation. When decided to enter politics, my mother told me that "they" would say bad things about me but not to worry or even respond because she and everybody who knew me would know that it was not true. I guess "naive" is not exactly an attack, (it's not like you said I was stupid), but it's close. I may be "inexperienced" in that I have never held elective politics, but I am not naive. No more so than David Simpson or Rand Paul were when they got elected. Marginalizing good people because they are not part of the "club" is what got us where we are, and people are sick of it, that I can tell you for sure from my own experience.

"And I thought the Libertarians were against border control." That's an error but I can see why you might think that. Our Texas state platform is for secure borders (national is different but we can't control that). I was elected our nominee with 77% of the delegate vote on a strong platform to secure the border with our State Guard. Of the five candidates for the Libertarian nomination, NO ONE ran against secure borders, and no active nominee in the general election did so either. In our first debate (we had five), Bill White tried to pin that taint on me, but I handed him his head.

"The Texas Border Volunteers were in our town this month and couldn’t say enough about the hard work, tenacity and good results from the Rangers and DPS." Nothing against these folks and their efforts, but anyone who says we have had good results in securing the border is not being accurate.

"There are 181 people (more, if you count the Legislative Council, and I would) that you have to talk into any bill. You can’t go ‘round castrating them and expect anything to happen." The governor of Texas has enormous power if he/she wants to use it. He/she is the Commander in Chief of our Texas military and can send the State Guard done to the border without any co-operation from the legislature or anyone. That's why I can say without qualification or contradiction that if I had been elected governor, our border would be secure now.

"Please see the history of CD 22, in DC, when Sekula-Gibbs’ staff quit. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1739784/posts."" That sounded "arranged" to me -- like when Newt's staff quit and went to work for none other than Rick Perry. It had Rick Perry's MO written all over it. But as I have said, if you are governor, you need NO ONE ELSE to get the border secure. You have the Texas and American people totally on your side, and that's all you need. If the troublemakers want to quit, then that's all to the good. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. As to castration, you can't remove what's not there to begin with.

"First, you’d need at least a good number of Libertarian House members and the cooperation of the Speaker and 16 of the Senators." No, see above. One riot, one ranger. One border, one State Guard, one governor. If people wanted to oppose me, they expose themselves and will be defeated in the next election. So, it's all good.

"The line item veto power is very limited. The Governor may delete the large blocks of the budget, but he can’t reassign any moneys. He can say not here, not there or even how. See Talmidge Hefflin’s review - http://www.texaspolicy.com/pdf/2006-04-PP-GovBudget-II-th.pdf. “”The Texas Constitution gives the governor sole line item veto discretion to prevent widespread redistribution within the state due to political power within the Legislature. Under the current budget pattern the governor is nearly powerless to prevent wasteful spending once the funds are committed in an appropriations bill.””" I disagree -- it's not difficult IF you have no masters to answer to and you really don't care about your political future, as I do not.

"It’s also unwise to spend the money and political clout that is required to hold a special session. Were you in Austin Friday June 24th or Monday the 27th? Admittedly, there were whiners who complained of being tired, but the real purpose was to stop bills they didn’t want to vote on." Special sessions are necessary to correct decades of bad laws and constant overreaches by the federal government. Once the legislature comes to understand that they will be in detention hall unless they get their school work done during school hours, they will get down to work. Those whiners about spoke about knew that Rick Perry is not serious about things like nullifying TSA gropes and so why should they be? That special session was just a kabuki(sp?)dance to try to fool the voters. Rick Perry could only go through one special session because he had to get out on the campaign trail. With a different leader, the result would be totally different.

I have to run now, so if you post more insightful questions, I will have to answer some other time.