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April 11th, 2013:

The remaining holdouts on marriage equality

Last week, we talked about the Democratic members of the Legislature that had voted for the anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment of 2005, and where they stood now. Along those lines, The Hill checks on the situation in Congress.

Eleven House Democrats are on record as opposing gay marriage, even as support within their party for the issue builds.

Another nine haven’t taken definitive positions in support of or against gay marriage.

[…]

Nine Democrats who voted in 2011 to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to gay couples haven’t publicly changed their positions: Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Sanford Bishop (Ga.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Gene Green (Texas), Dan Lipinski (Ill.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Nick Rahall (W.Va.).

Another two freshmen Democrats voiced opposition to same-sex marriage during their 2012 campaigns: Reps. Bill Enyart (Ill.) and Pete Gallego (Texas).

The nine Democrats who haven’t taken a definitive position on gay marriage are Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Ron Kind (Wis.), Cedric Richmond (La.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.), David Scott (Ga.), Terry Sewell (Ala.), Bennie Thompson (Miss.), Pete Visclosky (Ind.) and freshman Filemon Vela (Texas).

Five of these Democrats hail from districts that voted for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, and they are perennial GOP targets: Barrow, Matheson, McIntyre, Peterson and Rahall. Obama narrowly carried Enyart’s district.

[…]

The Hill contacted all 20 offices this week as the Supreme Court considered two gay marriage cases and several Democratic senators made headlines by announcing their support for gay marriage.

Matheson, Rahall, and Gallego’s offices said they continue to oppose legalizing gay marriage.

Green said the choice should be left to the individual states but didn’t address DOMA, which he’d voted to uphold, or say whether he personally supported gay marriage.

It should be noted that Romney carried Rep. Gallego’s district, which makes his stance unsurprising, but still disappointing. I discussed the issue with Rep. Green when I interviewed him last year; he said he was thinking about it but “wasn’t there yet”. As for Rep. Cuellar, well, this is another example of why so many of us are regularly frustrated by him. There’s no political reason for him to maintain this stance. I hope someone follows up with Rep. Vela on this – his lightly-used official Facebook page is here if you’re interested – because you don’t get to not have an answer. Favoring marriage equality is now the almost unanimous position among Democratic Senators, some of whom represent pretty red states. My sincere advice to Reps. Gallego, Green, Cuellar, and Vela is not to be the last Democrat to get right on this. History only waits so long. Link via Texpatriate.

More on the potential Coushatta casino

The Houston Press cover story from last week is about the Alabama-Coushatta tribe’s efforts to get a casino again. It covers a lot of the same ground as that Chron story I blogged about on Sunday, but it also reminds us of a very sordid aspect of the original casino and why it was closed.

A federal court had ruled that the Alabama-Coushatta had violated the terms of their recognition, which, as argued by then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, stated that all gaming prohibited by the state of Texas was “hereby prohibited on the reservation and on lands of the tribe.” The challenge came with the full-throated ­support of Texas’s evangelical population, spurred on by a now-­notorious lobbyist named Jack Abramoff. (Ironically, the Alabama-Coushatta remain a heavily Christian community and even forbade alcohol at their former entertainment center.)

“We already knew that when we opened, we were going to be in litigation,” Williams continues. “We were prepared for that.” The ­Louisiana-­Coushatta, a related tribe just one state over, had been concerned about consumers opting for their Texas cousins and ended up enlisting the aid of Abramoff, the fedora-topped lobbyist later sentenced to nearly six years for conspiracy and tax evasion in 2006.

While secretly disparaging the Native Americans as “stupid mofos,” “monkeys” and “fucking troglodytes,” Abramoff used Christian connections in Texas to mobilize anti-casino forces. Through shell corporations and blatant corruption — Abramoff and his partner are believed to have received a total of $85 million from their Indian clients — the lobbyist managed to muster enough opposition to shutter the casinos of both the Alabama-Coushatta and El Paso’s Tigua tribe in 2002. Less than a year in, the Alabama-Coushatta’s best modern opportunity for self-sustenance collapsed.

With equal parts gall and venality, Abramoff then approached the Alabama-Coushatta with an offer to restore their casino but was found out before he could swindle more Native-American money.

“It was devastating,” Williams says, his voice moving slowly through the subsequent drop-off. “Everyone could see what was possible — at the time, when we were open, we were one of the highest-paying employers here in the surrounding area.”

A visitor asks Williams about Abramoff, but the chairman claims the name provokes no reaction on the reservation. Nobody brings him up. No one thinks about him. But it’s Abramoff’s work — his choice to blinker both Texas legislators and tribes — that ended the only casino the Alabama-Coushatta have ever known. It was Abramoff’s slimeball politics that forced the Alabama-Coushatta to revert once more to smoke shops and land cultivation as their sole, and depreciating, sources of income. It was Abramoff’s grease-stained fingerprints, his choice to skim the profits and to try to lobby both for and against the tribe’s casino, that directed Williams and his people back onto Washington’s dole.

That was more than a decade ago. In the interim, the tribe, which sued Abramoff and settled out of court in 2007, has sunk nearly $3 million into attempting to change the federal language prohibiting its casino.

See here, here, and here for more on that story. One person that was prominently involved in screwing the Alabama-Coushatte tribe but who wasn’t mentioned in the Press piece is longtime religious right mouthpiece Ralph Reed. Reed has maintained a fairly low profile in recent years, but lowlifes like him never truly go away. It’s important to remember just how awful a person he and his cronies are and were. Be that as it may, between the Congressional action and the better-than-I’d-have-thought prospects in the Lege, this could finally be the year the Alabama-Coushatta get the opportunity that had been denied them. I remain ambivalent about gambling, but I do wish them the best of luck.

Patrick has his voucher hearing

It went about as you’d expect.

State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, delivered an impassioned plea in support of what threatens to become a beleaguered tax credit scholarship plan during a Tuesday morning hearing on his legislation.

“We are great enough in this state to do this thing if we just knock down some barriers of people who are against opportunity and competition because they always have been,” he said.

Currently, those barriers likely include the Texas House, where lawmakers recently made their opposition to the issue clear when they overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the state budget aimed at banning private school vouchers — which nine out of 10 members of the lower chamber’s education committee voted for — and possibly members of Patrick’s own party in the Senate.

“I may go down fighting on this issue, but I will never apologize for trying to reach out and help families who are desperate for their children to have chance they never had,” Patrick said Tuesday morning.

Nor will he ever apologize for doing nothing to help families who are desperate for their children to have access to health care. No, I’m not going to stop harping on this.

For much of the morning’s testimony, questions primarily came from Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, who does not sit on the panel, but articulated many concerns of the legislation’s opponents, including whether private schools accepting students under the scholarships would be subject to the state’s accountability standards.

Patrick told the panel that the tax credit legislation had brought together “Catholics, Jews, Christians” and members of the business community to help low-income families secure the best educational opportunities for their children.

“I’ve taken a lot of criticism for this bill, but I’m okay with that,” he said. “And I’m okay with that even if we are not victorious because this a noble cause.”

Some of that criticism came from former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, who now works for the education advocacy and research group Raise Your Hand Texas, which does not support Patrick’s legislation. Ratliff noted that he carried the state’s first charter school legislation while in the Senate in 1995.

The Observer also covered the hearing and noted the exchanges with Sen. Davis and former Lt. Gov. Ratliff, but this was my favorite part:

Testifying this morning at his invitation: Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, Bishop Placido Rodriguez of Lubbock, Bishop Patrick Zurek of Amarillo, Rabbi Eliezer Langer of Austin and Cornerstone Christian Schools Superintendent Jerry Echelin.

Rodriguez reminded lawmakers that the Catholic Church runs the country’s biggest private school network, with more than two million students. All the invited speakers were enthusiastic about the possibility of a major new revenue source. The unspoken subtext is that the rise of charter schools—another side of school choice movement—has been especially rough on Catholic schools.

None said they were concerned about being accountable and transparent, if that’s what it took to get the scholarships, though they stopped short of volunteering to give STAAR tests or submit to open records laws. “In itself,” DiNardo said, “accountability is always good. I don’t know what all the ins and outs would be in terms of accountability.”

Zurek recalled the Catholic Church’s proud history of openness and transparency. ”We have never hidden any records,” he said, “in any diocese that I have been in.”

Yeah, I can’t think of a more open and transparent institution in the world than the Catholic Church, either. They’re always up front about what’s going on with them. On a tangential note, see here for more about that decline in private school enrollment and the connection with charters. Puts this debate in a new light yet again, doesn’t it?

Anyway. As the DMN notes, Patrick’s bill SB 23 and the other Senate and House bills that were discussed in this and the concurrent lower chamber hearing were left pending, which is usually how these things go. Given that Patrick chairs the Senate Education Committee, I’d say it’s a safe bet his bill comes up for a vote in committee unless it’s clear to him that he doesn’t have the votes. If it does pass out of committee, I think it’s unlikely to get to the Senate floor for a vote. But at least he had his hearing. The Statesman, Hair Balls, Burka, and the TSTA have more.

Texas blog roundup for the week of April 8

The Texas Progressive Alliance has seen what Battleground Texas wants to do and is ready to do its part as it brings you this week’s roundup.

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