Both parties -- perpetually incumbent office-holders and
their consultant/pimps -- have collaborated in radical changes to election law,
logistics, and technology. These changes invert the very nature of elections.
Elections are properly and traditionally conducted by the people as a sovereign
"check" -- not a "balance" -- on government. In fact,
elections are the last line of defense for things like Article I -- Bill of
Rights -- in the Texas Constitution. After people lose confidence in
elections and what are supposed to be competitive, not collaborative, political
parties, there is only civil war.

However, we now have a Texas "elections"
bureaucracy, profession, industry, and, of course, bar. That would be bar in
the sense of mumbo-jumbo lawyers with a vested interest in political
obscurity as well as The Star Bar in Austin where the Democratic Party
hangers-on hang-out.

These bi-partisan concession-tenders have made elections an
adversarial process -- the government against the people -- which the people
cannot win and therefore boycott. That results in the lowest political
participation rate in the nation. Duh!

This low rate favors the GOP.

Still, Vichy Democrats helped the GOP gain power in Texas
through these changes and secure their position in exchange for protection of
their personal perquisites and incumbency or just comfortable retirements. Now,
the cringing liberal sycophants who run the Texas Democratic Party blabber
about "winning elections" but play along with this self-destruction
uncritically and ineffectually:

Harris County is the GOP's national proving ground for
vote-suppression, intimidation, and disenfranchisement, but the Democratic
office-squatters on Commissioners' Court in Houston and at City actually pay for
the whole thing. They are uncritical and indiligent. And, the County Chairman
does nothing but protect them and their consultant/pimps from public criticism
or electoral accountability.

Everything will be "fine, just fine" when the
Demography Faerie delivers the Courthouse or the State to a Democratic
majority, the Democratic passivists say. But, of course, that is the cart
before the horse. In fact, the Democratic majority on City Council in Houston
are nothing but doormats for the GOP machine in Harris County despite the
superiority of a Home Rule City in Texas law. So, why should anybody vote to
extend the scope of Vichy Democracy to Commissioners' Court?

Oh, well, we now have Jim Crow w/ Affirmative Action. That
is a cosmetically enhanced version of the old "property-qualified"
ballot updated, now, with computers!

But, Democrats will never be the dominant Jim Crow Party in
Texas again. The GOP "owns" that "space" now. But, it Jim
Crow is all the cornpone party establishment knows and they cling to the last
vestiges of it.

Travis County is the Headquarters of Hart InterCivics, for
instance: Since Poll Tax days, it has been the Democrats favorite vendor of Jim
Crow brick-a-brack. It now has a near monopoly on the voting machines sold in
Texas and an actual monopoly on the election day vote consolidation and
reporting software. Privatizing overpriced election "supplies", now
called "technology", like those tiny rubber stamps for marking party
affiliation on the Poll Tax Receipt, um, Voter Registration Certificate,
generates marvelous marketing collateral for "professional" election
workers.

So, now, Hart is owned by a Bush "Pioneer" and has
become the local retailer and "systems integrator" for the Republican
Congress. Still, Hart is "Name You Know!" for Democratic hangers-on
and the darling of the cornpone party establishment in Austin.

Of course, there is a Democratic House in Washington now,
but that does not make a difference. The "Hold Harmless!" Congress
just keeps the federal money trickling down the the Abramoff-type, HAVA-derived
"public/private partnerships" and "state/federal/local"
patronage-chains, Astro-turf "disablity" lobbies, and rotten Election
Assistance Commission that the GOP set up and the restored Democratic Committee
Barons have now perpetuated.

"Jes' He'p Ever'body!"

Perpetually incumbent Vichy Democrat Dana Debouvoir in
Travis County now customizes and euphemizes whatever the Secretary of State is
pushing on behalf of Governor Perry and provides cover for GOP County Clerk
Beverly Kaufman. She is on the Jim Crow TEAM and brags incessantly about her
GOP credentials.

This pseudo-competition between partisan Republicans and
bi-partisan Democrats is not competition at all. It is pure-d appeasement and
collaboration, especially when it is simply dishonest and utterly unprincipled.

TEAM is the Texas Elections Administration Management
component (with TDEx) of the Total Information Awareness "panoptical
database" facility for indirect or regressive tax collections and
political surveillance very generally.

It is far more dangerous, along with its "Real ID"
and "VUID" manifestations than the post-Florida direct-recording
electronic voting-machines promoted by Joe LIEBERMAN nationally and his allies
in the Texas Democratic Party locally. But, TEAM, like HAVA, is annointed by the
Texas Democratic Party.

We persist in ineffectual, ritual hand-wringing over racial
bias on the margin of today's computerized version of Jim Crow. But, Democratic
office-squatters are complicit in the system of economic discrimination that
such young, poor, non-white bias is just one aspect of.

Again bi-partisan concession-tending is all Democratic
consultant/pimps know of government. Here is href="http://crookedtimber.org/2007/05/06/the-two-party-system">Crooked Timber
on that.

This unilateral bi-partisanship results in a Democratic
commitment to pervasive economic discrimination that is the greatest thing the
GOP has going for them since they are, indeed, not usually as perversely
"competent" as our hardworking incumbent office-squatters.

Oh, and the Texas Democratic Party's trumpeted lawsuit over
machine-related voting irregularities in Madison County?

Hart was dropped as a defendant, there was no discovery, the
scope was narrowed to almost nothing in negotiations with the Secretary of State's
Office, no scientific experts or experienced party officials were consulted. It
is just a stunt designed to fool party activists and protect the Vichy
Democrats.    

A "Blue Wave" may yet wash over Texas and swamp
the Jim Crow technologies and logistical barries the Democratic Party
establishment built up through 2002 and have since helped the GOP maintain.

Of course, in the long run this now nearly East German
police-state apparatus and Jim Crow system of one-party rule will collapse.
But, meanwhile, grass-roots and net-roots Democrats better deal with their own
cowardly and corrupt party establishment. Here is one more reason to do than
now, besides the obvious thing about the cart and the horse:

The GOP "base" -- that would be extremists today --
are no less suspicious of the bi-partisan concession-tending. They are actually
driven nuts by the economic discrimination they are denialist victims of no
less, maybe more, than those poor, pitiful people of color our cringing
liberal, white, male, smug lawyers are always moaning about. 

The GOP "base" know an East German elections
estabilishment can fix elections. They recognize perhaps better than most
Democrats that the "VUID" and "Real_ID" are the "Mark
of the Beast" and a communist-style system of internal passports. They
will overturn all this, if we do not. But, what will they put in its place. I
do not want to know.

That is the danger of our Weimar-type Democratic Party
establishment run by clueless, elitist, self-serving sycophants and
unregulated, unsanitary consultant/pimps.

::JRBehrman