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SirKibbles posted:Hell I was trying to positive the districts are gerrymandered to hell so there's pretty much no chance for a D gov for awhile. Governor votes in most states (Texas included) are at large, not by district.
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Jun 17, 2014 23:08
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Everything that can be described as "uniquely Texan" would be whatever is in the Texas Triangle (Houston, Dallas, Austin/San Antonio). Everything to the South/West of it is more Mexican, everything to the North/West of it is Mid-Western/Plains State, and everything East of it is Southern.
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Jun 18, 2014 04:16
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Accretionist posted:Think local politics are amenable to an attack from the left? Socialist Alternative indicates they have a new branch in Austin. Juicing them up with money and volunteers could help light a fire under the Democrats. It would also mean juicing up Texan Socialists. Win-win! You would probably have better luck if you actually galvanized the Hispanics in the Valley, even if you had them go to your Socialists rather than Democrats.
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Jun 18, 2014 04:35
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So I tried to find out if anyone's actually running for Congress in my district other than the incumbent (there were no Democratic challengers in 2012). There is a list of candidates on the Texas Democrats' page but my guy just has a Facebook and a Twitter link. The Facebook link redirects to your home page, and the Twitter link goes to a profile that is not public. So it feels about as organized as 2012.
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Jun 19, 2014 14:19
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Ghetto Prince posted:To be fair, it's kind of hard to organize with people who may be three hundred to five hundred miles away from you. The vast majority of people (like 75%) live within the triangle formed by Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, which are maybe 300 miles away from each other (Houston -San Antonio is 200 miles). Everyone else are partisan enough (either R in the rest of the state or D in the Valley) so that you don't need to worry about them.
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Jun 19, 2014 14:32
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Yeah I imagine their ideal of the top 10% rule is to find the top 10% of students statewide and admit them. Of course this would require a state-wide examination that wasn't a complete joke, so we're safe there.
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Jun 20, 2014 01:09
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ReidRansom posted:I just got back from doing some phone banking, and I think the youngest person that came across my screen was like 47. The majority were probably in their 60s and 70s, and there were probably as many in their 80s and 90s as there were below 55. Maybe it's just the community I live in, college town, all the young people are registered elsewhere or whatever, I dunno, but it feels like a bit of a problem. I honestly doubt most of the students would be registered at all. I actually wanted to make a voting registration organization on campus because it makes people more engaged and you don't really have to do that much.
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Jun 27, 2014 03:33
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thefncrow posted:So is this rating something like golf, where lower scores are better? That's the idea, yes. It's cost/unit (because they literally treat education like a factory setting). I haven't actually heard about the phrase "Seven Solutions" before (although I had heard about some of them in passing like tying teacher compensation to student reviews), but the "school as factory" idea is very prevalent at A&M, to the chagrin of students and faculty alike (just google 25x25 and remember that this idea literally did not exist 1 year ago). computer parts fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 01:59
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Jiro posted:Deep south Texas goon reporting in, McAllen, what with all the convenient national attention The Valley has been receiving due to a massive influx of women and children being caught crossing the river and in stash houses in and around the area, have Wendy Davis or Van de Putte made public statements about this? All I've been seeing and reading is Gov. Good Hair's pissing contest with Obama. And for those not in the know down here a lot of "militia" have been spotted from as far as Laredo and have offered their services to the Hidalgo Sheriff's Dept here. Nice to see a Texas Politics thread. Davis said something a few weeks ago but it doesn't seem like it was publicized that much.
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Jul 10, 2014 06:06
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zoux posted:The bigger "problem" with admission to UT is the top 10% rule, which guarantees admission into any state university if you graduate in the top 10% of your class. But everyone pretty much picks UT. They eventually indexed it so that admissions cap out at a percentage of the incoming class (I think it's 75%) but before that something like 95% of an incoming freshman class at UT was admitted under top ten. So basically admissions officials have to figure out how to meet diversity standards with only five percent of the incoming class. They actually made an exception for UT (at least the main campus) where it's only the top 7.5% get automatic admission, and yeah it's about 75% of the class (at least as of when I applied which was a few years ago) are admitted under the policy. Of course people still bitch and moan because
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Jul 16, 2014 15:46
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zoux posted:It was implemented to specifically increase diversity at state universities but I'm not sure there's any good data showing it was effective. I'm not sure why a blanket top ten rule would benefit black and Hispanic students over white students, I'd think that diversity measures would need to be more targeted than that. There's a study claiming that it wasn't effective but it's behind a paywall so I'm unable to really comment about it.
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Jul 16, 2014 15:54
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computer parts posted:There's a study claiming that it wasn't effective but it's behind a paywall so I'm unable to really comment about it. Actually I remembered that I'm a student at a university so I was able to look it over.  The basic gist of the paper is that while the top 10% rule is definitely not as good as earlier AA policies it's still substantially better than the "no policy" interlude that happened between Hopwood v Texas and the top 10% rule getting passed. e: It probably should be mentioned that this is assuming a constant admission rate, while the actual rate fell a lot after the AA policies were overturned and went back up to near the same amount after the top 10% rule was put in (at least in UT). Also the data for the top 10% era is from 1998 to 2003 so it's not entirely up to date. computer parts fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 16:09
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I'm at Texas A&M right now because UT-Austin wouldn't have me and I'm getting out now before 25x25 shits on everything.
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Jul 16, 2014 16:30
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zoux posted:What's 25x25? http://engineering.tamu.edu/25by25 Some Engineering dean had the cool idea of raising the amount of engineers to 25,000 by 2025. Now, for those of you who don't know A&M's demographics, Engineers currently make up ~12,000 of the student body, or about 25% of the campus. This means that (ignoring all other growth) they're planning on increasing the size of the student body by 25% in 10 years. Of course this idea literally did not exist a year and a half ago, so there's going to have to be some major changes. For example, there will only be two models of laptops you can buy as an engineer, and they're more expensive than the retail versions (granted that's with an additional warranty but it's a $1600 tax on being an engineer). What about the most important part of the university, the http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/article_605d0137-3880-5ffb-ac79-51792d1f6144.html quote:"In my personal opinion MOOC's are like new books," Watson told the group. "Somebody could go to the library and educate themselves phenomenally well -- it's just not as entertaining, but they could. Somebody can sign up for a MOOC and if they're dedicated and they're disciplined they can get a whole lot out of a really great experience, and I'm for that. I just don't think it needs to be a core part of what we are doing." On a personal level, this has even effected me beyond just my major (which I don't worry about because like I said, I'll be gone before most of this poo poo really goes into effect). I currently work in the chemistry building helping set up labs and stuff. The building is 40 years old so sometimes we have to improvise with new policies. As it stands right now the students have about 12 labs, where about 2-3 of them are "dry" (don't actually use chemicals so you don't need goggles and stuff, also really easy to clean up!). Because of these new requirements they're cutting all of the dry labs, and (if the rumors I hear are true) are essentially doubling the number of classes while halving the number of labs. In other words, what's going to happen is that students come in for one week and then are off the next week. This makes my life hard because I have to reset the same lab two weeks in a row and it's hard on the students because now they have to remember if they actually show up for lab this week or not. This could be averted by building new infrastructure but apparently this wide ranging plan had to be It is a mess. Oh and this isn't even going into how everyone and their mother is building apartments to support 12000 new people so we're effectively creating our own mini housing bubble. On the plus side in 20 years there's going to be a lot of cheap housing for people here! quote:I will say this about A&M, if you are a college football fan, you should see at least one game at Kyle Field. It's surreal. It'll be doubly impressive now that we actually have a bowl and the Largest Screen in College Football.™ And all it cost was $450 million. computer parts fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 16:44
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:I was salutatorian at my high school (public, semi-suburban, mostly Hispanic) and between merit and need-based aid it actually ended up much cheaper for me to go to a higher-ranked (although I suppose you really shouldn't put much weight on rankings There's a certain type of person (and it's not just Asians) who are competitive for the sake of being competitive. I know a girl who got into Columbia University and is by all measures much happier in NYC than in Texas and she still freaked the gently caress out about not qualifying for automatic admission into UT Austin.
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Jul 16, 2014 22:51
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Something I think I should mention: Early voting goes from Monday, October 20, 2014 to Friday, October 31, 2014 (courtesy of http://votetexas.gov/voting/when/ ) This means you have from the 15th day before election day to the 4th day before election day to vote. I'm probably the person who should care about this the least since I think half of the Republicans I can vote for are going unopposed but for those of you who actually care about voting this could be important!
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Aug 13, 2014 02:16
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Badger of Basra posted:Perry's been indicted by a grand jury for abuse of power over his veto for Public Integrity Unit funding i guess we know why he didn't run again.
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Aug 16, 2014 00:18
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e: nm
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Sep 3, 2014 02:28
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Here's a cool map about migration for various areas. There's some California migration but the vast majority to Austin is from elsewhere in Texas (albeit not DFW or Houston specifically).
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Sep 11, 2014 21:13
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Austin is a clear example of a place that was exaggerated in stories and then had people come from afar to try to make it real. When in reality, it's been troubling/racist/etc for a while now.
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Sep 12, 2014 16:49
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blackguy32 posted:I remember I got really pissed at my Hispanic ex girlfriend from McAllen, because she kept referring to "White Mexicans" and how she didn't like them. I was seriously puzzled about it, but now that I am a bit older, I think I can see where she is coming from. I'm in a class about Tejano history since the breakaway of Texas and Spanish-style racism is wayyyy crazier than the equivalent system in the British colonies at the time. It's actually fairly similar to the system in the US today, to be honest (There are some established racial hierarchies but you can be "one of the good ones" if you have land/money, or vice versa if you don't). e: Actually it's kind of interesting because white supremacists totally tried the "we'll make you honorary white people if you hold down the black people" tactic back in Reconstruction. It didn't work. computer parts fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 17, 2014 12:09
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blackguy32 posted:David Montejano has a pretty good book with a marxist take on the forming of Texas. It is worth a read, and explains how Whites and Mexicans formed certain alliances to achieve wealth. But basically, it gets downright confusing as hell. Huh, I thought he sounded familiar; I'm reading one of his books for that class later on (It's not that one though but Quixote's Soldiers). I'll check that out if I like how he writes.
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Sep 17, 2014 23:43
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zoux posted:I think AG would've been a better slot for her, her money would've made a real difference there. Also name the republican GOP AG candidate! I can, but I bet 90% of people have never heard of him. I think that's part of the issue with VDP though - no one's heard of her. There's 20% undecided in that poll you posted as is.
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Oct 2, 2014 14:54
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Alkydere posted:Pretty much. All the Republican legislators end up spending so much time in the liberal hell-hole (to them) that is Austin that they just start doing their best out of spite to dick over any attempts Austin has of not being a lovely distopian hell-hole of a city (more than the traffic problems already cause of course). And then they kick it up to a comically evil 11 because they know "sticking it to the lie-beruls" will play wonderfully back home. Most people don't know who their state senator is and even if they do they're not going to care about what amounts to local ordinances in a city they don't live in.
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Oct 5, 2014 16:24
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VitalSigns posted:For people who don't care about other cities' local ordinances, the texas legislature sure has a curious number of bills targeting things like Austin's plastic bag ban. I've literally never heard of any of them and I'm in the center of conservatism. Are legislators trying to dick around Austin? Yeah, probably. Is it to win votes back home? No, probably not. It's because they're shitheads.
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Oct 5, 2014 17:09
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Oh speaking of things people vote on, I found some fun facts about ballot measures in Texas, from Ballotpedia:quote:
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Oct 10, 2014 15:42
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Just got back from voting. I counted 10 positions where the Republican candidate ran completely unopposed and another 3 or 4 where there was a Green Party member running but no Democratic candidate (a few also were just Republican and Libertarian, and aside from those 10 unopposed spots there was a Libertarian for every office). Good job Texas Dems, good job.
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Oct 27, 2014 16:54
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zoux posted:Do people honestly sit around and worry about the border? Like what are they afraid of? I honestly never think about border security ever, and it's these people's no. 1 campaign issue. If nothing else it's been featured in all of the Republican ads I've seen this cycle. I think it's a mix of factors including the usual racism, "terrorism"/Ebola, and the deluded hope that they can keep people from taking their jobs/having jobs be sent south (NAFTA et all).
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Oct 27, 2014 21:44
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Nonsense posted:Obummer is loving hilarious, and I will never tire of reading it on the comment section of Texas Tribune. Although I'm rather scared of those RED STATE FOREVER types there, they sound kinda serious. Unless they're young men you probably have nothing to worry about, in that they'll be dead soon and they don't have the means to actually go out and lynch people like they did 40+ years ago.
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Oct 30, 2014 13:16
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Shear Modulus posted:Leaving aside how incredibly offensive everything about it is, why is Davis in a wheelchair? Did the cartoonist get confused as to which candidate is the one who can't walk? I think the implication is that she's being carted out of a hospital.
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Oct 30, 2014 19:36
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Maybe running a bland white person in a minority-majority state is not the best strategy!
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Nov 5, 2014 04:51
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Xen Tricks posted:How does a state with a ballooning hispanic population overwhelmingly elect a racist and whatever Abbot is? computer parts posted:Maybe running a bland white person in a minority-majority state is not the best strategy!
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Nov 5, 2014 06:00
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Xen Tricks posted:Even if they don't tend more liberal you'd think voting trends would have been nearly 100% against Patrick, I can't imagine any significant portion of the block voting for someone who's signs were a white picket fence with a padlock saying "Secure Our Border" In fairness, historically Mexican-Americans were very ardent supporters of the border (A Hispanic Congressman from El Paso was one of the first to build a fence). This was back when not being white meant that you couldn't be a citizen though, so a lot of them tried to fit in as best they could.
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Nov 5, 2014 06:10
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Xen Tricks posted:Also back when talk of border security wasn't intimately intertwined with anti-immigration and general racist opinions Oh no, it was definitely intertwined with anti-immigration and (by extension) general racist opinions. Mexican Americans just believed that they could prove they were "the good ones" as opposed to dirty Mexican immigrants. It didn't work.
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Nov 5, 2014 06:28
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1stGear posted:"Hey, Austin is the fastest growing city in the country. What should we do about that?" It's literally the same line of thought as the "maybe if we don't fund roads then everyone will abandon cars" one.
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Nov 5, 2014 13:18
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e_angst posted:Everyone knew she was going to lose. The fact that she did worse than Bill White in 2010 means that all the Battleground Texas efforts were completely worthless. Texas isn't going to turn purple for another generation, if then. Or maybe it's an indication that Davis was an exceptionally lovely candidate. I mean, she almost lost the 18-29 vote. That doesn't happen.
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Nov 5, 2014 17:29
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Another reminder that Wendy Davis lost half of the 18-29 vote.
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Nov 7, 2014 00:04
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Dante Logos posted:So the memos confirm what we already knew? It seems to indicate that the Latino vote did not magically switch over to Republicans. So yes.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:39
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Badger of Basra posted:
I guess we know who's getting in the playoffs next year.
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Dec 13, 2014 07:47
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Randandal posted:If East Austin is so tired of being poo poo on why doesn't it just secede and form its' own municipality? I don't think you can do that, and even if you could there's not really much incentive to keep any high paying jobs in that municipality.
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Dec 18, 2014 06:50
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