Good morning –

Democrats are trying to make the case for why voters should trust them with more power in the Lone Star State.

Today's Texas Minute will look at the mess made where DEMs already have power.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan

The immediate response to today’s Texas Minute will be self-important local officials jumping up to scream, “We don’t have partisan politics in Texas’ cities. We’re non-partisan.” Those people are actually the problem; they are raising your taxes, politicizing your police, erasing Texas’ history, expanding government, shuttering businesses, and generally making life miserable.
Let’s get this off the table: Texas has long played a stupid game of calling city and school elections “non-partisan”. It’s how leftist Democrats have managed to seize power in otherwise conservative areas. The deceitful notion that city and school government should be devoid of political ideology is beyond idiotic, and has become downright harmful. Local government is where political ideology finds its most practical expression – good or bad.
Nowhere is the danger and absurdity of Democrat rule more apparent than in Texas’ major cities such as Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.
Do not forget, though: this is our fault as voters and taxpayers. We live under the government we ignore. Less than 10 percent of registered voters bother to participate in city and school elections, but 100 percent of us live with the results.

Texas’ Democrat-run cities are a financial disaster.
Austin, with a far-left city council complete with a self-avowed socialist, is the “least affordable” city in the Lone Star State. Every single day, the City of Austin serves as an example of just how devastating Democrat policies are for “working-class” Texans.
As a way to provide massive corporate welfare for out-of-state businesses, Democrats running local government in Texas shift property tax burdens on residential property owners and small businesses.
As an aside... understand this about property tax burdens in our cities: While homeowners are feeling a massive pressure... it is even worse for renters. Why? Residential property tax burdens are, at least, (barely) capped out with homestead and disability exemptions and the like; those people who are renting a roof over their head have no such protection and it is reflected in skyrocketing rent.
And it’s about to get a lot worse for everyone...

Even more than Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Democrats in local office have rushed to take advantage of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Using Abbott as their guide, power-hungry Democrats running Dallas, Austin, and elsewhere have implemented rules and mandates far exceeding their actual authority.
Approximately four million Texans have been thrown from work by the combination of Gov. Abbott and city/county level Democrats restricting Texans from going about their daily lives.

Socially, Democrat-run cities are on fire; literally. Almost every case (alleged or actual) of police brutality exerted against a minority, has happened in a Democrat-run city, in which the police departments are effectively unionized and support Democrat politicians and policies.
San Antonio’s city council – trying to be as “woke” as Austin – has been at the forefront of efforts to dismantle the Cenotaph in front of the Alamo... and devalue the critical role the 1836 battle and subsequent massacre had on Texas.
Not to be out done, the City of Dallas removed the iconic statue of a Texas Ranger (the lawman, not a baseball player) from Love Field’s main terminal.
The City of Austin recently voted to defund their police department, putting the money toward leftist causes – like paying the transportation costs for girls seeking abortions.
One can debate the irony of a leftwing city council defunding a Democrat-endorsing police union, but any thought taxpayers might catch a tax break was clearly a bridge too far.

In their quest to establish little leftist utopias, Democrat policies have resulted in making Texas’ cities less friendly and more unlivable than ever.
And it’s not just the big cities mentioned above. From Leander’s flirtation with a “drag queen story time” to Frisco’s taxpayer-subsidies for the PGA, city government in the Lone Star State is pushing an agenda severely at odds with Texans’ otherwise conservative values.
This trend will only be reversed when Texas taxpayers and voters begin participating more actively – and aggressively – in city government.
But before we can reverse the trend, Texans must first stop allowing more harm to be done.
In 2020, Democrats have given Texans plenty of examples of why they cannot be trusted with any more power in the Lone Star State. It is up to us to stop them.

64

Number of days until the 2020 General Election.

[Source: calendar]

“They have the usual socialist disease; they have run out of other people's money.”

– Margaret Thatcher

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