Controlling Parties Hate Non-Partisan Elections

Christopher Paxton slams Texas Democratic politicians for doing the only thing they can do to influence Texas politics in his blog, The Non-Partisan Blues. That is by running in non-partisan elections. Democrats are hard pressed to win statewide office anytime soon. So they are reduced to running for positions like city council. I commend Paxton's effort to raise awareness amongst conservative Republicans. It is the Republican party's fault if they allow the Democrats to win these seats anyways. They are the current party in power, and allowing Democrats to run unopposed or under the 'guise as “conservative” shows a negligence in the party's effort to fight for these positions. Voting along party lines doesn't guarantee the best candidate to represent the voters that put them in office. So the concept of non-partisan elections sort of levels the playing field for the candidates. Paxton does make a point that understanding the candidates' political affiliation does reveal their ideology. The point being that a Democrat could label themselves as conservative because they didn't vote for any tax increases. However, this falls short of a conservative Republican that votes to reduce/eliminate wasteful spending, giving way to the possibility of reducing taxes. Unfortunately, these races yield little voter turnout, so not much work is done to vet the candidates for the voters.


Paxton tries to demonize the “radical” liberal agenda by bringing up the plastic bag “bag-bans” and “tree-protection” ordinances that have been passed by liberal city councils. Those don't necessarily sound like bad legislation, just annoying if you forget to bring your bags to the store, or want to cut down a tree in your yard to put in a pool or something. They do limit the freedom of businesses providing plastic bags if they want to, as well as limiting what people can do with their own property. But those limitations on freedom are often overlooked when people think of overflowing landfills and rampant deforestation. He even goes after anti-free enterprise policies such as rent controls, and “living-wage” laws as part of the liberal agenda. He is right about this, but doesn't explain the negative economical impacts that rent control and living-wages can have. This is due to his target audience being conservative Republicans that will agree with him regardless of whether they understand the argument as to why these liberal policies are bad. Paxton illustrates this perfectly by instructing all Midland voters to defeat John James on November 5^th. Hopefully the voters that turn out will be casting an educated vote, regardless of whom they vote for.


The Non-Partisan Blues was published on Empower Texans on October 19, 2013.


Real quick, this expands on why rent control and living wage laws could be bad, so any counter-arguments are not covered. Rent controls restrict the free-market exercise of leasers to adjust their pricing to account for any increase in cost such as: increased taxes, inflation, and overhead. This would most likely result in cutting overhead costs such as maintenance, services, and staff. “Living-wage” laws increase wages for workers in jobs that don't pay enough for them to live on. The point that's overlooked is where the money comes from to pay the employees. A wage increase costs a business the additional wage as well as any payroll taxes that come with the wage increase. There are several ways a business could accommodate the increase in cost per employee. They could raise the cost of their goods and services, which would drive down sales, but may or may not increase revenue. They could fire employees, but that would result in those going from low wage to no-wage, and possibly increase the workload of the remaining employees. They could cut upper-management salaries and benefits/perks, which could result in these individuals seeking employment anywhere that pays more. This would leave these positions to be filled by people willing to work for less than market value. Probably wouldn't be as qualified as their predecessors, but hey, what could go wrong?

Voter ID: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

The editorial Shakedown for silly voter ID law argues against the Texas voter ID mandate, as the title may suggest. The argument centers around the notion of discrimination and the lack of evidence of voter fraud. The discrimination argument focuses on “unfair hardship on poor people and hourly workers, some of whom face a 250-mile round trip to reach a driver’s license office.” The fraud focuses on claims of “rampant election-day voter impersonation.”


The writer neglects to reflect on how much time has passed since the voter ID law was enacted in 2011. Texas is going out of its way now to deploy mobile stations and extending driver’s license offices to include Saturdays in order for people to acquire the proper ID. Some may say this is too late for the constitutional amendment vote. How about arguing that it's early for the next congressional election a year from now? Unless Texas officials were physically stopping people from acquiring proper identification, I don't see how people that do vote couldn't comply with the law. People have had two years. Being a new resident of the Lone Star State, I was able to get my state drivers license literally as soon as I pursued getting it. Instead of the writer whining about the mandate, I would like to hear from them what actions people have taken to help others comply with the two year old law. Surely the droves of ID-less individuals are being helped by political campaigns or grass root volunteers. Some fund raising must have occurred to pay for buses to commute them to the nearest driver's license office or the like. Or is it possible that the writer is just blowing the issue out of proportion?


What makes the article worse is the tone the writer choses to use to demean and ridicule the voter ID law and the Texas legislature, instead of offering a logical argument against the law. Calling the voter ID law “the nastiest, most politically divisive debates in years” gives no merit to an argument. Regardless of how the law came to be, it is still the law. If people don't want to comply with it, they understand the consequences. Also, claiming that county-issued voter registration cards are “tried-and-true” does not make it so. Voter fraud is hard to detect, let alone prove. Unfortunately, the writer diminishes the value of their argument with all the unnecessary adjectives that distract rather than inform.

Shakedown for silly voter ID law article was published on the Dallas Morning News site on September 25, 2013.