Lone Star Democracy Builders Association

Dean spawned Democracy for America. The National Field Director for Kucinich created PDA (Progressive Democrats of America) last summer.

Dean spoke at their national convention, along with Zogby, Rep John Conyers, Rep. Barbara Lee, and the K-man.

The partner list includes Ed Asner. As for partner organizations, the one with the name I like the best is The Backbone Campaign.

As far as Texas goes, they're hooked into the Texas Populists, which have members/activity in Houston, DFW, and Corpus Christi.

Posted by GlennM at 8:29 PM in Who Are The Democrats? | Permalink

From Gary Chapman's piece in the Statesman "Bush will lead a nation still bitterly divided":

Social Security reform to make us all "pro-business Republicans for life."

The battle over Social Security is not about fiscal responsibility, it's about politics. Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader on the right, advocates an end to Social Security so that younger voters will become reliable Republican supporters of a radical corporate agenda. Norquist argues that if people are dependent on the stock market for their retirement, they will "naturally" oppose any constraints on corporate profits, and thus become supporters of deregulation, union-busting, environmental rollbacks, tort reform, etc. — in short, they'll become pro-business Republicans for life, because otherwise they may jeopardize the value of their retirement accounts. This is meant to ensure GOP dominance for another half-century or more.

Posted by GlennM at 8:25 AM in Who Are The Republicans? | Permalink

Ooops. They're a 527 org, so they're "independent."

They're the ones that put on DemocracyFest last year, and will be organizing DemocracyFest in Austin this summer.

My Voice is My Vote Main Page
FAQ
DemFest 2005

Posted by GlennM at 8:28 AM in Who Are The Democrats? | Permalink

From the NYT Sunday magazine article on taxes:

Within Republican circles, Norquist's job is to organize other organizations, making sure the different branches of conservatism are moving in the same direction, at the same time, to the greatest extent possible. His particular genius is for persuading one organization to reach beyond its own agenda to help out another -- for getting, say, the cultural traditionalists at the Eagle Forum to join the business libertarians at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in opposing fuel-economy standards for automobiles by convincing the traditionalists that, as Norquist once explained to me, "it's backdoor family planning. You can't have nine kids in the little teeny cars. And what are you going to do when you go on a family vacation?"

Posted by GlennM at 10:26 PM in Who Are The Republicans? | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's a long (9 web pages) article in the last NYT Sunday Magazine about social security.

Summary: crisis, what crisis?

Notes:

Much of the current push is ideological: "from an entitlement society to an ownership society."

The agency's best guess, labeled its "intermediate" case, is that the system will exhaust its reserves in 2042 ... there is a strong case to be made that the agency is erring on the side of being overly pessimistic. If its more optimistic projection turns out to be correct, then there will be no need for any benefit cuts or payroll-tax increases over the full 75 years.

Cato, a libertarian policy center founded in the late 1970's, has been arguing for 25 years that Social Security is on the verge of crisis.

... there is a serious issue at the heart of what worries critics. It isn't that the trust fund is broken; it's that the existence of the fund is seducing the government to spend more than it otherwise would, thus brooking larger deficits in the future.

Reagan began speaking out against Social Security in the late 50's ... Warm and folksy even as he envisioned a bleak Orwellian future, Reagan said that Big Brother could start with health care, "and pretty soon your son won't decide when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him.

Once Reagan was in the Oval Office, he allowed his budget director, David Stockman, to handle the crisis [Note: trust fund about to run out of $ in 1983 -- Glenn]. Stockman, who was waging a war on government spending, tried to exploit the moment to curtail Social Security sharply. ... By proposing cuts for people on the verge of retirement, he triggered vehement protests. Members of the Republican-controlled Senate showed their instinct for self-preservation by voting 96-0 for a resolution intended to distance themselves from Stockman. ... In the end, they compromised on a combination of benefit cuts and tax hikes.

According to an agency publication, "Income of the Population 55 or Older: 2000," 8 percent of elderly beneficiaries were poor, but a startling 48 percent would have been below the poverty line had they not been receiving Social Security. Charles Blahous, the White House point man on Social Security, publicly criticized this calculation as "mindless," and the Social Security agency no longer computes the figure. Conservative economists say the figure is irrelevant: if Social Security didn't exist, people would save more. This may be true of economists, but what about the rest of us?

Last year, Tanner of the Cato Institute wrote that "over the worst 20-year period of market performance in U.S. history . . . the stock market produced a positive real return of more than 3 percent." Actually, the market has done worse than 3 percent per annum in nine different 20-year periods.

... pooling the investment pools the risk, and thus reduces the danger of retiring at the wrong time. In a system of personal accounts, someone who retired after a market crash would be out of luck.

And though future generations of workers will have to support more retirees, they will also be having fewer children. In fact, according to the Social Security actuaries, the total "dependency" burden (that is, the number of nonworking seniors and kids that each working-age adult will have to support) will remain lower than at its baby-boom peak. "In a grand social sense, ... we can support more seniors where there are fewer people in day care."

Enter now Ball's little accommodation to uncertainty. It is that Congress simply resolve now to impose, 50 years hence, a payroll tax increase sufficient to close whatever gap exists over the ensuing quarter-century. This could not be enforced now, of course, but that is Ball's point. He wants to free the Congress, and the rest of us, from the annual game of insisting on an exact and illusory far-off balance; to diminish the perception that we must urgently adjust to economic and demographic developments too distant to be forecast.

Posted by GlennM at 9:54 PM in Economy | Permalink

More via Texans for Texas, the Lone Star Report's list of the top republican Legislative priorities.

Lone Star Report

Under the general topics I've pulled out interesting quotes about the republican base. For the complete article, follow the link above.

Public School Finance

Education Reform
Rural Republicans often oppose school choice, but many key Republicans, both inside and outside the Capitol, want vouchers.

Relations between the leadership and key Republican leaders are worth watching. It’s no secret that many key GOP leaders do not get along with the teacher groups. Their relations with the administrator and school board groups are more complex.

The Budget and Taxes
Many Republicans want to restore money to the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But others want to limit the growth of government.

Another issue likely to surface is whether to cap appraisal growth on homes and other reforms to appraisal districts. This is an issue of particular importance to Harris County Republicans but enjoys some support from Republicans in other parts of the state. There is also some key GOP opposition to appraisal caps.

Health Care
Also, Republicans will likely continue their trend toward increasing consumer-directed care in both private and public health programs, focusing on the new federal health savings accounts.

Workers Compensation

Child and Adult Protective Services Reform

Public Utility Commission Sunset

Transportation
The toll road issue has become a major political liability to many Republican House members, many of whom want to revisit this issue. But so far most of the bill filings revolve around local controversies (i.e. Don't turn a highway in my district into a toll road my constituents hate).

This is becoming a re-election issue for many members, making it much more difficult for the leadership to summarily kill a GOP-led toll road revolt.

Posted by GlennM at 10:07 PM in Who Are The Republicans? | Permalink

Ok, think about how conservatives might feel when liberals are making fun of them.

Then take a deep breath.

Then check out Texans For Texas.

As an ex-Applied History double-major (ex as in I dropped the double-major before I graduated), the first thing that kills me isn't the liberal bashing. It's the lack of footnotes in the articles.

Nobody I've talked with gives me the impression that student-teacher ratios are down to "less than 15". And I find it hard to believe that per-pupil spending is up a factor of three. I will agree that it seems like clearing out a lot of the administration would be a good thing.

Other interesting articles:
A nice survey of TX liberal organizations, some of them faith-based:

An interesting take on taxes:
The top 25% of income earners shouldered some 83% of the tax burden in 2001, and the top 1% paid 34%. In terms of sheer dollars, it is only natural (and appropriate) that tax relief is more heavily weighted toward those paying the highest shares.
[But then I actually find something I agree with:]
Some of us (including me) would prefer to see any tax relief directed toward investment and research and development, thus expanding long-range opportunities for all.

A link to another site about charity giving:
[Showing Red states giving more to charity than blue states. Data is from the IRS. They're doing some funny handling of "rankings". If you just look at raw avg income vs. avg giving, the top two states are Wyoming and Utah (14.5%, 13.6%), with New Hampshire dead last at 4.6%, and a reasonably smooth curve. So blue states do suck at giving, for whatever reason.]

Ok, some of the rest of the stuff is making me nauseous.
In this article, there's the argument that "since 1992 spending, local government spending exceeded population growth and inflation by $3.5 billion in 2002 alone". But since fed and state funding was gutted, no wonder the burden fell on the local governments.

Posted by GlennM at 11:40 PM in Who Are The Republicans? | Permalink

It's not often that I get to combine my love of politics and my love of science fiction, but I'm excited about the presentation I listened to last night by sci-fi author David Brin. David's been writing a lot of essays about the conflict between romanticism and progress, including some scathing critiques of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings stories, and this talk builds on those ideas. He talks about the 2004 election (held a few days prior to the talk), notes the urban/rural divide, and had some very good comments about how the Democratic campaigns focused on guilt and negatives, instead of pushing the progress that American society has seen under democratic rule. He also mentions debate framing, noting that both the left and the right are worried about concentrations of power; the left just fears power in corporate hands, while the right fears power from academics and bureaucrats.

More notes and commentary on his talk are posted here by Evelyn Rodriguez.

Posted by Ben at 5:55 PM in How To Communicate | Permalink

List of think tanks, conservative, progressive, libertarian, and non-partisan.

Includes liberal Twentieth Century Fund.

And the think tank sponsored by the DLC.

Under "Liberal Think Tanks" at the top, the link is stale. Here's a full list (long!) of the member organizations.

Posted by GlennM at 8:31 PM in Our Infrastructure | Permalink

From the New York Times:

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a former senior adviser in the Clinton administration, was named on Sunday as the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He replaces Matsui, who passed away earlier this month.

Posted by GlennM at 7:45 PM in Who Are The Democrats? | Permalink

Here's the current dump of active Texas political blogs that I'm following. I've got a few more in my list, but many haven't been updated in a while. Feel free to make suggestions for other ones to follow, especially blogs with differing views.

• alandwilliams.com - blogging out loud
• Burnt Orange Report
• Instant Runoff Austin
• Lasso
• Off the Kuff
• Redneck Mother
• Rick Perry vs the World
• StoutDemBlog
• Texas Law Blog

Posted by Ben at 1:20 AM in Our Infrastructure | Permalink

From Zuckerman (Editor in Chief) under "What they _should_ have said":

The press on the country's reaction to the choice between Bush and Kerry: "It was the evil of two lessers."

Posted by GlennM at 8:13 PM in Venting | Permalink

... is having their dues and nominating meeting this Friday (1/7/05).

Below is their contact info and their constitution (long)

It's time to have our January dues and nominations meeting with elections being held at the February 4th meeting (location to be determined). Here's the most important part: we will NOT be meeting on Tuesday Jan 4th (for many reasons not the least of which is some sort of National Championship football game...). We will instead be meeting on FRIDAY Jan. 7th from 6:30 to 7:30 TDP Headquarters 707 Rio Grande (here's a mapquest link).

We will accept nominations by email and will consider suspending the rules requiring that a nominee have attended four of the last six meetings if no candidates for a given office meet that criteria. Since nominations must be seconded, please have them in by Friday January 7th at 6pm so that we may second the nominations at the meeting. After the meeting, nominations will no longer be accepted. We may also hold a special meeting between now and the February elections in order to have the nominees introduce themselves if they are unable to attend on Friday. Please see sections VI.1-14 of the CCYD Constitution for rules on Nominations plus the various officer positions available with descriptions.

We are also gathering dues and member information for mailings and the once-in-a-bluemoon phone call. Dues are $10 annually and you must be 35 years old or under at the time you pay your dues. We would definitely like 2 of 3 ways to reach you with one of the three being email so please send us your information as soon as possible.

And as an item of note, there is a Meetup at Scholz's that will involve a video of reknowned linguist George Lakoff on Wednesday Jan 5th beginning at 7pm.

Please don't hesitate to write (president at capcityyds.com) or call (569-0097).

Best,
Brooke Heller

--

Constitution of the Capital City Young Democrats

This document shall be considered the governing constitution of the Capitol City Young Democrats for all purposes and supersedes any and all constitutions previously adopted for the organization.

Name -- The name of this organization shall be the Capital City Young Democrats (hereinafter referred to as CCYDs)

Purpose -- The purpose of this organization shall be to foster the ideals and assist the candidates of the Democratic Party at the national, state, and local levels; educate young Democrats; and increase participation in the political process.

Membership -- Membership in the Capital City Young Democrats is open to anyone residing in the County of Travis. The organization welcomes everyone to attend our meetings and events, but only dues paying members 35 years of age and younger, shall be eligible to seek officer and to vote in officer and endorsement elections. Membership dues are $10 per year with a recommended due of $20.

Officers and Duties

There will be a President of this organization who shall:
Preside at all meetings of this organization;
Be the official representative of this organization;
Determine the time and the place of club meetings;
Coordinate fundraising activity for the organization;
Invite guest speakers to meetings;
Perform other duties and responsibilities as necessary for the efficient functioning of the organization.

There will be a Vice President of this organization who shall:
Serve in the absence of the President;
Preside over elections and endorsements;
Serve as the organization's liaison to other organizations such as the University Democrats, Texas Young Democrats, etc;
Perform duties not delegated to any specific officer as they arise, and other tasks and projects as assigned by the President.

There will be a Public Relations Director of this organization who shall:
Publicize all meetings and events;
Put up posters and fliers concerning CCYD events;
Handle all press releases and other media contact;

Supply the Membership Chair with literature about our organization, the Democratic Party, and Democratic candidates

There will be a Membership Chair of this organization who shall:
Collect dues and maintain a record of dues-paying members;
Maintain the contact information of members including name, phone number, and email address;
Keep records necessary to ensure proper membership credentials with the Texas Young Democrats;
Be responsible for the recruitment of new members;
Provide ideas for increasing membership in CCYDs

There will be a Volunteer Coordinator of this organization who shall:
Organize volunteer events with individual campaigns and the Democratic Party, as well as participation in political and community volunteer events;
Ensure that at least one biannual volunteer event is non-political community service.

There will be a Secretary of this organization who shall:
Maintain minutes at officer meetings and distribute them to all officers via email or any other preferred method;
Make ballots when needed for elections or endorsements;
Tabulate votes cast during organizational elections.

There will be a Treasurer of this organization who shall:
Keep financial records for the organization;
Reimburse individuals with proper receipts who incur expense on behalf of the organization;
Make purchases directly for the organization as deemed appropriate by the officers of the CCYDs.

There will be a Webmaster of this organization who shall:
Maintain and update the organization's web site;
Assist the Public Relations Director and Membership Chair develop effective strategies for publicizing the organization and attracting new members.

I. There will be a Historian of this organization who shall:
Attend all CCYD events and take pictures and/or video recordings.
Assist the Public Relations director in the making of the organizational newsletter.

J. There will be a Social Organizer of this organization who shall:
Plan, organize and assist in all social events.

K. There will be a Rules Officer of this organization who shall:
Bring a copy of the CCYD constitution to every meeting.
Answer any questions that may arise pertaining to the constitution of this organization.

L. There will be two At Large Officers of this organization who shall:
1. Assist any other officers with their duties.

Officer Nominations, Terms, and Elections

Officer shall be elected annually.
The Vice President shall serve as the presiding official over officer elections.
Nominations for officer positions shall be opened at the January meetings.
Individuals may be nominated by anyone present during open nominations, including themselves.
The nomination must then be seconded by another person present at the meeting.
The Vice President shall then instruct the Secretary to officially record the nomination.
Elections shall be held at the February meetings.
Elections shall be by secret ballot.
The Secretary and Treasurer shall tabulate the votes.
To be nominated for an officer position, an individual must have paid dues before the meeting when the election is held.
To be eligible for an office position, an individual must have participated in four of the last six meetings.
To vote in the election, each individual must have paid dues before the election.
The candidate who receives the most votes shall be declared the winner.
In the event of a tie, one re-vote shall be held of the members present, with votes allowed to be cast only for those candidates involved in the tie.
If there is still a tie after the second vote, the Vice President shall flip a coin, or the candidates shall decide on another game of chance suitable to both parties and a majority of the current officers, in order to determine the winner.
In the event of a vacancy in an officer position, a special election shall be held.
Nominations shall be taken over the course of two consecutive meetings, with dues-paying members voting at the second meeting in accordance with the guidelines listed above.
Voting by proxy or e-mail will be allowed.
Half of the membership shall constitute a quorum for any type of vote.

Removal from Office
An officer may be removed from office if 2/3 of the other officers vote to remove him or her.

Endorsements

The CCYDs are able to give their endorsement to the following:
Candidates in Democratic Primary Elections.
Candidates for Austin City Council.
Candidates for any local governing board.
Amendments to the Texas Constitution or the Constitution of the United States.
Any other ballot item, organization, bill, resolution, etc not prohibited by this constitution and deemed necessary by a majority of the officers.

The Capital City Young Democrats are prohibited from endorsing the following:
More than one candidate in a given race.

The Vice President shall preside over endorsement meetings.
Endorsements must be approved by the majority of votes cast.
If there are more than two candidates in a given race and no candidate receives a majority of the votes, there shall be a runoff of the members present with the two candidates with the highest vote totals participating.
If neither candidate receives a majority in the run-off, No Endorsement shall be given.
Only members in good standing as of 30 days prior to the endorsement meeting may cast a vote at the meeting.
Members shall be given the option of voting for No Endorsement in all endorsement votes, including run-off votes. If the majority of votes are for No Endorsement, the organization shall issue no endorsement.
The Secretary shall prepare ballots for endorsement elections and shall be responsible for tabulating the final vote count.
The Webmaster shall post endorsement results on the organization�s web site, and the Public Relations Director shall make endorsement results available to the press.

Meetings

General meetings should be held the first Tuesday of every month.
The President shall have the discretion to call any special meetings as appropriate.

Amendments

This constitution may be amended by a two-thirds vote of dues-paying members constituting a quorum.

Ratification -- This constitution shall go into effect immediately upon its ratification by a two-thirds vote of dues-paying members constituting a quorum.

[Adopted January 6, 2004]

Posted by GlennM at 9:41 AM in Texas Organizations | Permalink

Below are my notes on the January 05 Democracy For Texas Meetup. The bulk is from a DNC representative, with a little bit about who was there and what else is happening around Austin. The second-half of the meeting was viewing a Lakoff DVD followed by a group exercise. I'll posted that part under "How to Communicate".

This entry is split between what I witnessed, and my opinions about it. The opinions are at the end.

The meeting was held at Shultz's Beer Garden, and filled the inside hall. Many of the folks that showed up were first-time visitors.

The Agenda:
1. David Holmes - a DNC member from TX
- He ran through who was running for the DNC chair. All those running are interested in supporting all 50 states, not just the battleground states. Dean is running, to great applause (DFT started as Dean For Texas). Simon Rosenburg is running, someone who started their own Dem think tank. Donnie Fowler is running, someone who's been active on the blogs. Martin Frost from TX is running, he's been involved in the DCCC and has supported down-ballot campaigns in all states. Wellington E. Webb and Jim Blanchard apparently have not been campaigning hard.
- The DNC has traditionally been a fundraising group.
- Democracy For America (the parent group for DFT) may be a better organization for changing elections.
- The DNC meets twice a year. In the four years that David has been a member he's made one vote, where Terry McAuliffe was the only choice on the ballot.
- DNC leaders are usually selected by sitting presidents.
- DNC members are chosen at their state Dem conventions. In TX, the 10 members are split between 5 seats spread around various lobbies (negro, latino, and one or two more) and 5 at-large members. David is at at-large member.
- David has started a yahoo group (texasdnc at yahoo.com) to foster discussions among democrats in TX.
- The DNC finally has a real office in Washington. A few years ago there was just a small office with a laughable list of dems.
- The impact of DNC members depends on the individual. David's been working to get folks trained to be local precinct leaders.
- McAuliffe's goal was mainly fundraising.
- The DNC basically follows the plans of it's chairman. It really doesn't have a group consensus.
- The 60-65 members of the "executive committee" are selected by the chairman. They're the real voting members.
- The TX DNC members aren't very happy with the national organization, since the DNC took $$$ out of TX and spent it in battleground states.
- You can send questions to David at texasdnc at yahoo.com.
- The last DNC meeting talked a lot about values and the growth in the exurbs.
- Before the last election the thinking was that we just needed to get "our family" out to vote. The grassroots voter turnout efforts were astounding. But just getting the existing family out there wasn't enough. To win in the future we need to grow our family.
- One gentleman in the audience harassed David as "part of the problem", saying that the DNC needs to be scrapped and restarted. David's response was that we shouldn't wait for the DNC/DLC (Dem Leadership Council) to fix themselves. We should start making things happen within other organizations like DFA/DFT.
- As a side comment, if you look at the DLC web site you'll see that Dean has been very involved with it.

Some DFT members will be going to the DNC meeting where the next chairman will be elected.

[For more on the DNC elections, the Washington Post has a recent article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48514-2005Jan4.html]

2. Dem Fest working group and committee head introductions
Work has begun to prepare for this year's Dem Fest to train in learning grassroot's organizing, which will be held in Austin this June: http://www.democracyfortexas.org/Demfest/index.html

3. Library (Jim McElroy)
Jim's started a lending library. One suggestion at the meeting was to bring in "conservative" material so we can read up on what they're saying.

4. Latinos for Texas
- Has been formed under the umbrella of Latinos for America (which started as Latinos for Dean).
- Their goal is to support, train, and recruit latino candidates and volunteers.
- You don't have to be a latino to join.
- Their tax status keeps them from aligning with any specific political party.
- Their kickoff meeting is Tuesday, Jan 18th. Regular meetings will be held the third Tuesday of each month.
- For more information: info at LatinosForTexas.com, http://www.LatinosForTexas.com.

4.5 Call for RapidResponseNetwork.org
- They follow the news, and when something jumps out spreads the word to other members who then will write letters to the editors to local newspapers and TV stations.
- It's done through yahoo groups.
- There's a national group and a local TX group.
- The national group has suggestions on how to frame the messages. The TX group may start helping with framing as well.

5. Lakoff DVD
To be described under "How to Communicate". It was projected from a PlayStation2.

Conference calls with Lakoff will be held next Monday/Tuesday for folks that are interested:
http://democracyforamerica.com/meetuphosts/framing.php

6. Preview of February meetup
Chris Bell will be in from Houston. Chris was the one that brought forward ethics charges against DeLay.

7. Open mike
- There will be a rally to support Vo (who beat Heflin, where Heflin will ask the legislature to seat him anyway) next Tuesday at 2pm on the south steps of the Capitol. The legislature's swearing in happens at noon on Tuesday.
- Stick has withdrawn his similar complaint against Strama.
- The TX youth (35 and under) voters' next meeting is this Friday at 6:30pm at the TDP HQ, 707 Rio Grande. It's the dues/nomination meeting. [I'll cross-post info when I get it.]
- Another Dem group (?) will be meeting at Central Market at 7pm next Tuesday. They'll be talking about "Buying Blue" and supporting "Not one Damn Dime Day" [a movement to protest the war by not buying *anything* on Inaguration Day, Jan 20th].
- A mother came up to tell people that the military (Marines in this case) came into Travis High School to recruit those 15 and up. Because of the "No Child Left Behind" Act, students could be required to fill out forms with their information on it, which would otherwise be protected. The mother's supporting groups trying to help financially disadvantaged students find non-military work.
- Someone suggested a vigil on Inauguration day, lighting 1300 candles for the US soldiers fallen so far.
- Jesse Jackson's "The Word Network" show on TV has been nailing the republicans recently. It's a show about religion and politics.

Attendees included Margot Clark, Bruce Elfant, and Greg Mack (local candidates and/or officials).

A gentleman passed out talking point fliers at the beginning of the evening, but didn't follow-up with a discussion. The fliers mentioned "RPGAttack.org", which doesn't seem to be live.

There was also a flier passed out for the Progressive Democratic Summit in DC at the end of January. www.pdamerica.org

Opinions:
- This was the first "working" meetup since the elections (the Nov meeting was for catharsis, the Dec meeting was a fundraiser).
- It's a very good sign that many of the folks that showed up are new. The usual membership turnover is something like 10%/month. Having a lot of new bodies to keep things rolling is encouraging.
- I'm still not sure about the layout of "who's who" locally and/or nationally. If Carrie can't fill in the details, I'm still interested in taking out some of the DFT organizers to ask them about the lay of the land.
- The number of local groups is good, and I know there was a "coordinated campaign office" for the last election. But it seems like it would still be good to have some kind of more formalized cross-communication between the groups.
- It was good to have an activity to do with folks at my table. I'll admit that my first reaction to comments made by a table-mate were "I agree that I care about the same issues you do (sep of church/state), but I'm leery that they'll resonate with those in the middle".
- As usual in volunteer organizations, some folks rambled on during the presentations of the exercises we did. And there was the heckler against the poor guy from the DNC (who knew the DNC wasn't very strong but joined it anyway to do what he could to change it). Actually makes me wish some of the folks had taken the communication/team training I got at MOT (ack!) [Only speak if you're moving the room forward, etc.]

Posted by GlennM at 10:23 PM in Texas Organizations | Permalink | Comments (1)