COURTS LOOK FOR WAY TO GO FORWARD ON PRIMARIES WHILE RE-DISTRICTING SORTED OUT

The Supreme Court handed the re-districting argument back to Texas courts and here is what they are saying about the primaries while they continue to look for a way to work out the disputed re-districting maps:

1. They will issue an order suspending the deadlines of the December 16th order.
2. They advised the political parties that they can inform party officials and candidates that the February 1st filing deadline will be vacated and that the drawing for ballot positions next week should be postponed.
3. They indicated that if the parties could agree on maps and submit those maps by February 6th, that an April 3rd primary was still obtainable. However, the court and the attorneys have been very specific that any agreement is not a settlement.
4. That if there was no agreement and maps were not drawn by February 6th, that an April 3rd primary would not take place.
5. In the event there is no settlement agreement and maps are not completed by February 6th, the court makes no present indication of when the new primary would be rescheduled.
6. In the event the parties cannot agree on new maps, the court requires them to submit advisories to the court as to which districts are still in dispute and the issues related thereto.
7. The court will then schedule future hearings if necessary and issue new orders if necessary.

Advisory to all Republican county chairmen, precinct chairmen, and party activists - As it is still a possibility that we will have a single unified primary on April 3rd, you can still continue your plans for an April 3rd primary as best as you can until at least February 6th. By February 6th, we should know whether or not we will have an April 3rd primary. Even if maps are not submitted by February 6th, there is still a possibility that a single unified primary could be held in mid-April if the court can draw maps by mid-February. It is unclear what will happen in the event that maps are not drawn by mid-February. We will let you know as soon as we know. We do expect there to be a new schedule issued with new filing deadlines, etc., once it is clear when the primary will be finally scheduled. The final primary date will not be determined until maps are ready to be issued by the court. This is all we know at the present time. Please stay tuned for further updates from the State Party - we will issue them as soon as we have additional information.

OUTSIDER CANDIDATE MAY ABANDON PATTERSON

This week speculation has increased that a major political retreat is soon to come from Sheriff Henry Patterson and his relatively unknown Houston attorney who was set to run for either District Attorney or County Attorney here in Liberty County.

According to people on his campaign team, part of the effort to push voters to give Sheriff Patterson a second chance and a new four year term was having a struggling Harris County lawyer friend of the infamous Outsiders rent an apartment in Liberty and sign up to run for something and campaign with him.

Until recently Patterson’s team has stuck with the plan they hatched early this summer. James Farmer rented an apartment this summer so he can claim residency though he has no furniture in the apartment and he has not spent one night in it. He announced his candidacy for District Attorney a few months ago and was set to speak at political gatherings and tell voters to vote for Patterson. But when a change in plans occurred and Farmer signed to run for County Attorney instead of D.A. it began to smell “Fuddy”, I mean like Fuddy Williams the right arm of the Outsiders and, along with Eddie Shauberger, the Wizard of Oz behind the curtains for Henry Patterson. The Patterson re-election team’s strategy is expected to be as bizarre and secretive as Patterson having a group of people from outside the county come in and brag about “investigating” half the known world as they lurk in the shadows of the sheriff’s office firing off Open Records Requests as they gather information on Patterson’s enemies. In fact, these people are so strange speculation that James Farmer had changed his mind about helping the politically endangered sheriff began to swirl as Farmer’s political signs are yet to be planted in Liberty County soil.

Now more evidence that James Farmer is up to something has surfaced to cause speculation as Farmer failed to file his campaign finance report by the mandatory date of January 15, 2012. Farmer may withdraw his name from the race and Henry Patterson may not have a partner to run with. But who knows? Farmer may just not know the law or heck, Patterson could withdraw. Sheriff Patterson is yet to come clean and open up his records and publicize the specific of how he has spent the money and managed the assets of the slush fund created by confiscating convicted criminals’ belongings.

CLEVELAND POLICE DEPARTMENT

A video that appears to show a Cleveland police officer pounding the abdomen of a subdued man that has already been handcuffed during a December 30, 2011 traffic stop is one more reminder of the kind of problems Cleveland has had for over twenty years.

The Cleveland Advocate posted a video on their website Thursday January the 26th showing Officer Paul Lowrey on a Cleveland Police Department dash cam hitting a handcuffed man in his midsection with a flashlight and then hollering at him to “do what he is (f**king) told to do.” Vanesa Brashier, the editor of paper, broke this story and reported that this case is currently under review. This story is worth reading and details of her story can be found at http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/cleveland/.

It is important for the traditional media to report stories like this rather than stay silent like the police chiefs and sheriff might hope… even if some might misinterpret it and rather than recognize them doing their job try and label them as anti-law enforcement. It clearly is part of their duty as professional journalists to report the good, the bad, and the ugly. There is plenty of good professional law enforcement and, if the facts of this case are what they seem to be, this is an opportunity to help purge the Cleveland Police Department of one of the few people that needs to find another line of work and to let the public know that high standards of behavior are being upheld.

The Cleveland Police Department and the community of Cleveland have been in bad need of positive change for many many years. The community’s faith and respect for law enforcement can only be healthy when they see unbiased investigation and appropriate action in matters like this. Though the Cleveland community is made up of many of the kind of wonderful people southeast Texas is famous for, their southern hospitality and neighborly country living is often overshadowed by a reputation for uncontrollable crime and scandals. The good people of Cleveland should not rest until changes are made and Cleveland’s potential is reached.

The most recent scandal was made more widely infamous by both local and Houston news media and federal agents. Former Cleveland PD Assistant Police Chief and current Liberty County Sheriff Henry Patterson and his sidekick in the Cleveland PD, Harry Kelly, both had keys to the room where evidence was kept in the CPD. Months and months of investigation in search of the facts surrounding hundreds of missing guns from that evidence room were the subject of many news stories and many rumors all around the county. When this case went to criminal court Patterson had already defeated Greg Arthur in the sheriff’s race; and Kelly had already been serving as one of his captains. Kelly is now serving time in the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. With federal agents not being able to prove Patterson’s role in court, if he had any, he continues to serve as Liberty County Sheriff.

And Cleveland continues to have the same reputation. A community full of wonderful people, located in the beautiful pines near all of the things the big city offers, but still having the advantages of country living. Our hats are off to Vanesa Brashier for reporting this story, and our hopes are that the Cleveland PD, outside of any potential lawsuits, will start holding their officers to the highest of standards and fearlessly helping create a culture worthy of its citizens. It is a dangerous job that there is never enough compensation or enough praise and we salute the men and women who do it and perhaps sometimes feel the sting of criticism aimed at a few. You are our modern day heroes. Our goal is to support you and to give you the best leadership and the tools you need to have to do your job safely and with excellence.

WELCOMED, HARD FOUGHT CHANGE IN LIBERTY COUNTY POLITICS

For those who are well informed, the recent activism of the movement known as the Tea Party is only a national version of what started in Liberty County in 1994. The purging of the entrenched good ole boy system led by runaway unaccountable elected local government officials and characterized by a tax and spend mentality is nearly complete here in Liberty County. This is not a declaration that we are anywhere near having a perfect government here or perfect elected officials. But this is a sigh of relief because gone are the days when whoever a handful of leaders of the Liberty County Democrat Party chooses to run in their primary are the unbeatable winner in the November election and the defenders of a system of wink and nod politics that had no oversight. Gone are the days when the entire media served as more of a guard dog than a watchdog for the status quo.

For local people who have become more politically active in the last five or six years, it may seem like change came quickly and relatively easily. And they may not know or care about the history of the war that appears we will win in the final battle coming up in November of this year. But it is important to know for a couple of reasons.

First and foremost, whether it sounds like self congratulatory hubris or not, if activists do not realize the role Liberty Dispatch played in holding people accountable and keeping the good ole boy system from using their pals in the media from doing what they did for decades, then they will be blind to the need to push harder for our local traditional media to stop picking winners and losers and forming unsavory cozy relationships to politicians.

Please pay attention. You may have come along at a time when someone else had dulled the knives of what had been an undefeated enemy to the conservative/Republican cause, but if we do not use this period of time when we have a new political beginning in this county to do what we can to fix this, then when we are not so unified and when new kingdoms have been built within our political structure – the media may again protect interests of the politicians instead of the people. It has not been that long ago when the media would broadcasts any and everything negative about Republicans and try and make Democrats look like they were God’s gift to problem solving – even if they had to blinders on to not know that some of the same Democrat they were promoting were scandal-ridden good ole boys that were more like bloodsuckers than public servants. If you were not involved then, you may have been the ears the media was assaulting and you may have been the mouth they were hoping to use to carry their message – “keep the status quo, Democrat ‘good’, Republican ‘bad’.” We all see a faint reminder of this in the radio station still working to whitewash the FEMA scandal and Phil Fitzgerald’s contribution to the county.

Rather than pat myself or my colleagues on the back, I am myself am hereby recognizing and saluting Ray Akins for taking the heat (including plundered mail boxes, selective prosecution, and all kinds of invalid unwarranted demonetization) at a very high cost. Of course, the openly liberal socialistic policies of Barack Obama and the statewide surge of the Republican party has had a huge influence on Liberty County politics, but Liberty County was fortunate to have in place an opposition political party active and outspoken and already equipped and experienced at running candidates. And Akins, with all of his unconventional and unafraid moves, was ready to force the media and unscrupulous politicians to think twice before doing what they have done around here for years. If you meet him, pat him on the back and listen careful. He is battle tough and you have to get past the same crust on him that enables him to keep slogging forward no matter how much is thrown at him, but his contributions, though distorted by our political enemies and the misinformed, have been crucial to our success. When our victories seem easy and our battles bloodless, you might want to remember the pathway has been blazed to a large degree before the last election.

Second, those of us that have been around for years have at times been frustrated in what has sometimes seemed like a lack of interests and sometimes seemed like wrongheaded uninformed ideas of exactly who the enemy of the change we desire has been. We fought on the front lines and worked hard to begin a foundation for the future we are now in and when the ones that received the proverbial bruises and cuts in the political arena have found common ground in a few of the people who were thought to be lifelong political enemies, we expect at least enough deference to be listened to rather than have new activists adopt without question the motivations assigned to us by those we all oppose. It has, at times, been exceedingly frustrating to hear people (who were not anywhere to be found until this century) allow some of our Republican leadership that has as its priority (by definition) the promotion of Republicans and the defeat of Democrats pick and choose who they were going to use their influence to help. We had a chairman of our party helping Democrats and much of the leadership of the party had to be circumvented in order to replace the misguided chairman. If the newer activist would have been known more about politics, we might still have the counterproductive leadership that was almost openly supporting some of our most notorious opposition. Worse than that, we had the chairman and some of his lieutenants with very little knowledge of past history, deciding who would be offered an olive branch and be invited to switch sides. And again, without asking longtime Republicans who bare scars from battle that should merit consultation, our leadership never took accounting of what crimes and misdemeanors had been committed by politicians they were courting.

We should all be thankful that we have survived those times when we were working against each other at times. We should all be thankful we are two commissioners and one District Attorney away from doing what the Tea Party has just begun doing nationally. After we have elected people to these positions that are not affiliated or connected to the good ole boys of the past, we enter a new day with new goals and new opportunities to heal this county from its past and to build a better community.

* Please note any attempts to use the Tea Party to promote local candidates in the upcoming Republican primary will clearly be done by people who are using the Tea Party for their own purposes. You may agree or disagree with Liberty Dispatch at times but we hope that you will listen to this warning and help stop all efforts to bastardize the good work the Tea Party has been doing. We welcome comments reporting any effort in any local primary race to try and drape a candidate in the Tea party cause in order to gain votes.

WHAT’S UP WITH ALL OF THE ELECTION DATE CHANGES?

For those who have been too busy to stop what they are doing and find out why dates pertaining to the 2012 primary elections have changed so much, here is s short catch up article.

There are two competing sets of redistricting maps setting out proposed two different sets of borders of election districts in Texas for the State Legislature and the House of Representatives on the basis of the most recent 10-year census.
One set of maps was drawn by the Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. Those maps seem to favor Republican candidates. The other set was drawn by a special three-judge federal court in San Antonio, and it increases the voting power of Hispanic voters and seems to help Democratic candidates.

Four House seats hang in the balance and all that is affected by the particulars of state and U.S. congressional lines. The justices have told the Texas courts that the judges have overplayed their role and the role their court should play in redistricting and to go back and use the maps the people elected to the state legislature chose as a basis.

As a result of the Democrats pulling out every stop they can to get their way, the primaries in Texas had already been moved back to April. For those primaries to proceed, officials there said, an answer from the courts was needed by Feb. 1.
It seems Democrats like to have the right to gerrymander when they are the minority just like they did for years when they were the majority. Almost all redistricting maps that are changed are changed to prevent racial discrimination. Democrats try to get the courts to interpret discrimination as they should at least the same percentage of seats for blacks (and for Hispanics) as their percentage of the population. Most Republicans are not as likely to want to categorize people in terms of race or any other category to form special districts.
This decision by the Supreme Court is seen by Republicans as a win for those who believe elected officials rather than judges are the ones the Constitution says should draw the lines. But the Democrats challenge is still having all kinds of bizarre effects on the election. The date of the primary is still unsure and who might be qualified to run for the state Senate or the state House or the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House in an area is still dependent on how the lines are drawn. No ballots can be printed until county chairman know who can run for these offices on their ballot.

The only thing for sure if you are a Democrat running for office in almost every place but the border area, this argument your side just lost at the Supreme Court was about your only chance to win anything. No wonder no one ran for Democrat Party Chairman in Liberty County – ‘Turn Out The Lights, Nancy and John, The Party Is Over”!