House Republicans today failed to deliver a quorum for their own sham redistricting field hearing in Brownsville. The illegal, unfair hearing was protested by dozens of members of American GI Forum and other leaders of the border community. State Rep. Richard Raymond (D-Laredo) attended a press conference denouncing the sham hearing.
Rep. Raymond's statement:
"I want to praise Rep. Kino Flores who stood up for Texas against these flawed, illegal hearings. Today we stood up against the efforts of Tom Delay and the Republicans to waste $7 million of Texas taxpayers money on an unfair powergrab, while 170,000 of our children are having their health care taken away due to lack of funding.
"This entire process has been an assault on Texas' rural and minority communities. Republicans have furthered this injustice by refusing to hold full and fair hearings all over the state, as has long been the tradition on redistricting matters in Texas. And Republicans have systematically tried to silence the voices of those of us on the committee who oppose their efforts to weaken the impact of Hispanic voters and other communities of interest across Texas.
"I am in Brownsville today because this is the only hearing that the House redistricting committee set for border residents to have their voices heard in this unjust process. Plus, they have denied two-thirds of the committee the right to participate in the full hearings. Indeed, Republicans refused to allow this committee's Vice Chair, Rep. Villarreal, to lead a subcommittee. Instead, they named three Anglo Republicans to lead the three panels.
"This redistricting power grab has been unfair from the beginning. I'm pleased that so many have turned out against this unfair process. We will continue to point out that these hearings are nothing but a lame attempt to cover-up an unfair and illegal Republican powergrab in Texas.
"The current map is fair and reflects Texans making choices with their ballots. That's pure democracy, which Tom DeLay and the Republicans apparently find unacceptable in Texas.
"This whole process has now been so badly broken there's no way to fix it. We need to stop this entire unconstitutional process before it wastes any more taxpayer money and go back to concentrating on the real problems we were elected to deal with - school finance, public safety, the well-being of our children and health care for our frail and elderly. These are issues Texans care about - not whether or not Tom DeLay can use a rigged process to add to his power base."
From an email
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