Good morning!

We’ll just be doing a couple editions of the Texas Minute this week, but today’s leads with a confession from yours truly...

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Monday, December 28, 2020
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• For the past couple weeks I asked Texas Minute readers what one word they would use to describe 2020.
   
• Finally, at our office Christmas party last week, one of our guests called my bluff. “What word did you put down?” she asked pointedly, after saying unexpected was her choice.
   
• I confessed to her, as I will to you, that I was still struggling to find it. Despite years as a writer with a fairly decent vocabulary and the equivalent of every thesaurus at my fingertips.... the right word kept eluding me.

• Until late yesterday. I was thinking about the growth we’ve seen this year at Texas Scorecard – new subscribers, new donors, new team members. I reflected on our long-standing supporters, who give sacrificially to our mission. I was thinking about our new headquarters building in central Texas. I was thinking about the team members who stuck it out when we all took pay cuts earlier in the year to ensure our financial stability. I thought about my family and our friends.
     
• I thought about the patriots who have stood up loudly and boldly against government overreach. I thought about people who risked everything to keep going when it would have been easier to give up.
   
• A word hit me like a ton of bricks: “Thankful.” It hasn’t been an easy year; in fact, it has been a pretty hard year. Yet, through it all, I am profoundly thankful.

• The most common word folks used to describe 2020 was “fraud,” followed by “tyranny,” “challenge,” and “revealing.” 
   
• Next up was “blessed” and then “family.”
   
• Here’s what all those submissions look like in a computer-generated word cloud:

• Whatever word you used to describe 2020, let me suggest a word to start you off for 2021: INVOLVED.
   
• No matter what any of us have done up until now, 2020 has been a reminder that each of us must be more involved. We must demand substantive results from our elected officials, and be intimately involved in the fight to see it happen. We must be more involved in our communities, supporting local businesses and pushing against the public servants who have become petty tyrants.
   
• We must be involved in reclaiming  government from the taxpayer-funded lobbyists and establishment cronies who use and abuse the tools of government for their own benefit.

• One way you can help your fellow citizens be more involved is to ensure they are better informed. That’s where Texas Scorecard comes in.
      
• Encourage your friends and family to visit our website and subscribe to our digital products.
     
• Be a recurring monthly donor to Texas Scorecard. This ensures we have the funds available to do this work – prying intensely into those things politicians and their cronies don’t want anyone seeing.
      
• As we like to put it: Someone is always keeping score; we think it ought to be the citizens.

• As we enter 2021, only our active and recurring donors receive the print edition of Texas Scorecard – featuring exclusive content and features.