David Van Os: There Is No Such Thing As 2008

I participated in a bloggers conference call with Attorney General candidate David Van Os tonight and I came out of it feeling VERY optimistic. David kept telling us that we CAN win and we WILL win. Why? For one thing, there are good things happening out in the rural areas of our state. There are more small towns in rural Texas than there are in other entire states. David has been to many of these towns on his courthouse tours and he has found voters who are angry - madder than hell - at the way things Republicans are running (ruining) things. He has stories about people who have been voting Republican for 20 years who have told him point blank they are not voting Republican this year. They are sick and tired of the corruption and the way Republicans are using the executive branch of government to override the system of checks and balances that are supposed to be in place with the three branches of government. So, he is saying, throw out the Gregorian calendar. Pretend there is no 2008. We need a victory NOW. We are in a crisis and we will win in 2006. It was great to get some deeper insights into David's plans for what he will do as Attorney General. If you have ever heard David speak, you have heard the basics. And, he is a GREAT speaker! Some highlights from the call: The Trans Texas Corridor - grassroots Republicans are VERY mad at the current legislators and the Perry administration over this. This can be repealed if voters oust Perry and his executive team. Greg Abbott - oh, boy. There is plenty to talk about here. Abbott getting involved in the DeLay ballot case is just the latest in his never ending stream of self-promoting, carrying water for the Republican establishment activities. The very curious thing here is the blunder he made by outright lying about Sparks' ruling. Sparks did not declare Texas election law unconstitutional, he said the U.S. consititution trumps Texas election law. Another example of Abbott's brazen partisanship is his redistricting map proposal. It is obviously an attempt to get rid of Lloyd Doggett by pitting him against Lamar Smith. What is the first thing Van Os would do as AG? He would set up task forces of assistant AGs to investigate oil companies and the insurance carriers for anti-trust violations. His intermediate plans would be to consolidate the languishing consumer protection and anti-trust divisions of the attorney generals office into a pro-active people's watchdog for consumer issues. Child support also needs to be addressed both to protect the custodial parent and non-cusodial parent (who, believe or not are often gone after even if they are up to date on their payments - that's how much in disarray this office is.) David can fix the voter verifiable paper trail problem very quickly as Attorney General. Any county clerk can send him an opinion request on this and he will issue a ruling that the Texas Constitution requires a paper trail based on Article 6, Section 4 which guarantees that the purity of the ballot box is protected. Again, believe that we can win in 2006! There are already several other posts up about this call. Check out Houston Democrats. Also, Bay Area Houston. Vince at Capitol Annex has his post up with lots of quotes from the call! Also, read the Half Empty version of the call.