Posted on 06/09/2002 6:00:00 PM PDT by PetroniDE
The Texas State GOP Convention was held in Dallas, Texas on June 7-8, 2002. The following are personal observations and activities from a Freeper's first time attendance as a delegate at this convention.
Thursday, 6 June 2002
I drove up from Houston with two other H.A.T. Freepers (Humblegunner and Flyer, they were my guests). Since the schedules would vary between delegates and non-delegates, we drove in separate vechiles, forming a two-car convoy. The drive took about 3-1/2 hours and we checked into the hotel ahead of schedule.
This was set-up day for the convention exhibits. The FR booth was already set-up and the three of us assisted in manning the booth. Even though the convention started on Friday, there were several committees in session (committee sessions started on Tuesday) and significant number of people in attendance. The only bad thing that happened was that some of the freep photos had not yet arrived. Eight freepers met for a nice BBQ dinner in the West End area.
Friday, 7 June 2002
The missing FR booth pictures arrived. They were set-up in the FR booth in addition to the FR Inaugural Ball Video. During the morning, I helped man the FR booth and talked to several people about FR.
The First General Session Convened at 1:00 pm. Mostly speeches, but a nice salute to all members/former members of the armed service branches (complete with their respective fight songs).
The First SD (Senate District) Caucus Session Convened at 5:00 pm. (Note: I am in SD17). Speeches by local candidates, and election of Permanent Caucus Chairman, Permanent Secretary, and Chairman of Credentials, Rules, Platform/Resolutions, Permanent Organization, and Nomination Committees. One of the speakers had noted that hearing are scheduled this summer in Austin, TX regarding textbook content of Texas History (I do not recall which person stated this). Fifteen freepers met for dinner at the Y.O. Ranch (west end). Good food (steak) but a little pricy.
Saturday, 8 June 2002
The Second SD (Senate District) Caucus Session Convened at 9:00 am. More speeches by local candidates. Election of SREC Commiteeman and Committeewoman. In my SD, both elections had multple candidates. Nominations regarding chairman and vice-chairman, Republican party of Texas were also held. After the caucus, I manned the booth for about an hour (giving MAF and others some needed relief) before the final general session.
The Second General Session Convened at 1:00 pm. Party Rules and Platform were approved. Heated debate occurred on several rule modifications. Three rules involved removal of term limits for National Committeeman/woman, State Party Chairman/Vice-Chairman, and SREC. I made a motion (eventually passed) that resulted in all three rules being adopted/not adopted in a single vote. As this was my first state convention, I did not plan on making a lot of motions, points of order, or debate speeches. However, after consultation with my SREC, conclusion was made that this was a good motion to make. Three of the H.A.T. FR members investigated Dallas pizza after the convention.
English IS our language, and the sooner these immigrants figure that out, the better off they'll be. If they can't, well, the border works both ways.
1)Getting rid of the state lottery - It's great and all, and I support that, *BUT* unless you provide a real solution to making up that revenue, that doesn't involve new taxes, there is no point. This also plays into the state income tax crowd
The pro-income tax crowd loves the state lottery. It would not be in-place of but an addition to. Lotteries are a terrible way to fund education (btw it doesn't even do that). There is a real solution, it is called installation of competition (i.e. private school, home school, charter school, parental choice of public school, etc.) that doesn't cost $$. I am very anti-lottery and discourage anyone who will listen from playing it.
2)Getting rid of bilingual education : Sounds great, english only, etc. but just in the Austin area alone, we have a 100,000 people that can't speak english. If the kids of those 100,000 people in my area (and I know it's much much higher in south Texas and the Houston area) don't have a good way of learning english, they'll not make it through school, and will end up dropping out and end up getting on some sort of public assistance, which means my taxes will go up in some way, shape, or form.
The univeral language of business is ENGLISH. I work with Italian pressure vessel fabricators and all business correspondence is in ENGLISH (even between them and their foreign customers). If any person goes to another country, they need to learn the native tongue. Sounds cruel but that's life. Move to France, they DEMAND you speak French. Move to Mexico (except in vacation hot spots) and they DEMAND you speak Spanish.
Yeah, yeah, I'm cold-hearted and care only about keeping my taxes down. I support much of what the platform calls for, but some of these planks were either crafted with no thought in the end-results, or the people crafting them aren't from Texas, or haven't lived here long and are from the north.
Get a copy of the final resolutions and study them. Next election cycle, prepare the changes you want. Make noise to your SREC and get on committees. Get involved and don't get discouraged if/when obstacles appear.
Putting aside results/solutions, let's look at elections. A part of the Texas GOP really seemed anti-Hispanic. Those people could hurt Conservatives in Texas for years to come. Yeah, I'm being cold-hearted and just seeing Hispanics as numbers at the polls now, but let's face it - GWB was able to win, in part, to wooing Hispanic voters. Maybe they weren't that large of a chunk of voters, but they helped. If those Hispanics that share the same Conservative/religious values that the rest of us share, feel like we see no place for them on the right side, they'll vote for the dems, and that just means more votes will have to be made up elsewhere, and that will especially impact local districts.
Which part are you referring to? Probably need more specifics to comment properly, but I have suspicion you are falling for the democrats lies on this.
We agree much more than we disagree I'm sure and we WILL find a solution to the RINO problem!
Hmm, maybe the caucuses were just that different. There were, after all, geographical patterns to 43 and the unaddressed 44. I heard that many rural delegates felt that the problem was an urban one and that closed primaries (44) would destroy fledgling parties in some of the small yellow dog counties.
Susan's record is not as clear for increasing the influence of the grassroots, but she has a bit more responsibility in keeping the party together and financed. We could definitely be much worse off with someone else.
We can either make it easier for them to get information or continue with the same results. Why not have a centralized location to view this information, such as on the party website. We can also expose the opponents record or positions there as well to give the voter a clear choice.
I asked her if she noticed the FreeRepublic.com booth and she said everytime she passed by the booth there were always people there. Both visiting the booth and being staffed by Freepers.
THUMBS UP!
I understand both you and Pertonide's views on this, but right now, we have a serious problem. We have a lot of kids that don't speak English, or are going to grow up in non-English speaking homes, speaking Spanish (or Russian, or Italian, or French, or whatever). These kids were born here, just as many of us were born here, but had parents or grandparents or great-grandparents that didn't exactly have a grasp of the English language. The non-English speaking parents are obviously going to be of no help, and so it's going to fall upon the public school system. My wife has worked both in public and private schools, and has dealt with ESL and bilingual kids. They can't learn English overnight, but many of them can and do learn it by high-school, if they start out early enough.
You can't take a non-English speaking kid and throw them in with the rest of the English speaking kids for two reasons :
1)They don't learn as much, and they will get frustrated when they can't understand what is being done.
2)They will drag down the TAAS (and it's replacement) scores of their schools and their classes if it's English-only, which means there will be hell to pay.
There has to be a mechanism in place to teach them English. I will read the platform more, but I'm hearing people say get rid of it entirely, with no replacement. It's not going to work, unless you want these kids dropping out and ending up pregnant, on drugs, on welfare, etc. (I'm probably a racist now ;-) ). Something has to be done. Like it or not, they are technically (and legally) American citizens. If they don't learn English, chances are their kids won't learn English, and we'll veer away from a melting pot and turn into the type of divided nation the dems would like us to believe exists.
Imagine for a moment that you were forced to move to Montreal, Quebec, and didn't know a word of French. In that province, and Montreal/Quebec City in particular, French is the dominant language, and English is rarely spoken. Some municipalities have ordiances PROHIBITING bi-lingual signs (i.e. signs are in French only). What do you do then, learn the language.
I know of a professional colleague who was sent to Turkey recently on an assignment. He took a three week cram course in Turkish and while not fluent, obtained working knowledge of the language. American go overseas all the time, and they are expected to obtain at least some knowledge of the native tongue. Why should we lower our standards for everyone else?
The families where no English is spoken is a result of our welfare system. People NEVER get off the crutches. Sounds cruel, but I would rather give them English language cassette tapes than continue to spoon feed them. Soon we will have to spoon feed in Italian, Arabic, German, Hebrew, Russian, Creole, Swahili, and Ebonics (don't laugh, there was a recent lawsuit in Oakland, CA regarding Ebonics).
These ESL programs should be used by students on a short term basis, they are being used on a permanent basis for too long in the public schools. Regarding the TAAS test, they have watered it down to a point where soon it will resemble a college football factory test (29/60 correct passes). Sign your name correctly and you will pass.
TX Liberty Lady spent time in the platform committee listening to the proceedings. I am sure she will tell you that we did the job we were called to do.
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