Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
Mike Ellis
TDR MEMBER
Those who have lived in Texas for awhile may remember a previous group (much smaller though) of Fuge-o-Crats known as the Killer Bees that were briefly famous back around 1979 or 1980. This was a group as I recall of about 10 state senators who fled session and hid in an apartment somewhere to stymie some legislation they didn't want to see come to the floor. Just like the current bunch.
I suffered through my required 3 hours of Texas government at UT back in 1981, and the prof was a bona-fide tie-dye / sandal wearing hippie leftover who near foamed at the mouth when he talked about the evil Republicans in general and Ronald Reagan in particular. He believed the Killer Bees were about the holiest group to ever tread on Texas soil and regaled us at length with their many crusades against the villainous conservatives.
We had a neat book that they made us read on Texas politics, it was (as I recall) a Texas Monthly or Texas Observer compendium of articles about the legislature. Watching "the lege", as Molly Ivins refers to it, is a popular pastime in Austin and since the city is quite liberal most of the articles were pretty savage. It kind of backfired on the prof though, because rather than make us all hate the conservative Republicans it caused a bunch of us to start questioning the strange antics of the Democrats and eventually realize they were little more than Communists in sheep's clothing.
For those of you who are interested in politics and tend to believe the pious justifications that our politicians blather in the press and on TV, I recommend a fine memoir of big-city machine politics, "Plunkett of Tammany Hall". Read that book, and you will understand how the party machines in the big cities manipulate the public for the benefit of the few, and in particular you will understand the heritage of the tactics used by our fine Fuge-o-Crats here in Texas.
I suffered through my required 3 hours of Texas government at UT back in 1981, and the prof was a bona-fide tie-dye / sandal wearing hippie leftover who near foamed at the mouth when he talked about the evil Republicans in general and Ronald Reagan in particular. He believed the Killer Bees were about the holiest group to ever tread on Texas soil and regaled us at length with their many crusades against the villainous conservatives.
We had a neat book that they made us read on Texas politics, it was (as I recall) a Texas Monthly or Texas Observer compendium of articles about the legislature. Watching "the lege", as Molly Ivins refers to it, is a popular pastime in Austin and since the city is quite liberal most of the articles were pretty savage. It kind of backfired on the prof though, because rather than make us all hate the conservative Republicans it caused a bunch of us to start questioning the strange antics of the Democrats and eventually realize they were little more than Communists in sheep's clothing.
For those of you who are interested in politics and tend to believe the pious justifications that our politicians blather in the press and on TV, I recommend a fine memoir of big-city machine politics, "Plunkett of Tammany Hall". Read that book, and you will understand how the party machines in the big cities manipulate the public for the benefit of the few, and in particular you will understand the heritage of the tactics used by our fine Fuge-o-Crats here in Texas.
