Houston Democrats

We can expect a campaign filled with nasty tricks in 2006. According to the Washington Post, Delay has hired Sam Dawson, a Lee Atwater protege to run the next campaign:

In January, DeLay shook up his team of political consultants. He signed on Sam Dawson, who was a top political aide to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and helped devise the Republican strategy for taking over the House in 1994. Dawson will serve as his general consultant and media strategist...

Morrison is not just running against Delay, he has several pet issues:

The Birth Tax
It's time to call the deficit what it is - a birth tax. Thanks to ballooning costs and tax cuts, a child born today's share of the national debt is $150,000. That's right, our children start out in debt before they take their first breath. Republicans are so concerned with the inheritance tax, (which only affects the wealthy) that they renamed it the "death tax", but the birth tax, in the form of national debt is much more worrisome to every American - especially those who can least afford it.

Health Care Crisis
Thanks to the efforts of well funded lobbyists, the dialogue on the health care crisis in the United States has just about disappeared since last year's election. There are still many people who don't have access to affordable health care. Every citizen deserves the same standard of care offered to members of Congress. Morrison would like to see catastrophic health care handled separately from more routine health care using the FEMA model to fund care for catastrophic illnesses and accidents. Insurance could be administered through insurance companies, but funded by the Federal government. His plan is very similar to Kerry's but everyone agreed, he did a much better job explaining it.

Commuter Rail in Fort Bend County
There is tremendous growth in Fort Bend. With the last available development in the works in Sugarland and the Richmond-Rosenberg area growing, traffic will become a real problem. Morrison wants to start planning now to alleviate the problem before it gets as bad as Houston.

Getting the Message Out
No discussion of Democratic politics is complete without a discussion of how to do a better job communicating our message to the electorate. Morrison subscribes to Howard Dean's approach to getting the message out. We have to not only present serious Democratic candidates in every local race, but Democrats need to get involved in local non-political organizations in order to establish credibility - churches, Chambers, of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, Boy Scouts, Little League, etc. As a matter of fact, Richard was just returning home from coaching a Little League baseball game at the time of the call.

There was a good discussion of plans for improving on 2004's perforance. Pandagon, Brains and Eggs and Southpaw have already posted their takes on the discussion. The Agonist has a wrap-up on the newest Delay trip to come to light - paid for by Russian Lobbyists, a clear violation of the law, as well as over $500,00 Delay's PACs paid to his wife and daughter and offers some background in the way of a book review on The Hammer by Lou Dubose.

Keep an eye out for reports on Burnt Orange Report, Boadicea, Texas Law Chick, Red State and Off the Kuff over the next few days. There will be a second call Friday for those that couldn't join last night's call.

Update - Additional reports on the conference call:

• Norbizness
• 100 Monkeys Typing
• Supremeirony
• Texaslawchick