Let's Plant Some Trees

To bring accountability back to Williamson County government we need to start getting Democrats elected. We need to start at the most base level and start working up. We need to start at with school boards, city councils and the commissioner's court. I was watching a debate on C-SPAN a couple of weeks ago and the discussion turned to the topic of how best to start playing catch-up when you are already behind and something one of the panelists said caught my attention, “My Uncle always said, 'the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is today'”. I think that is where we stand as an opposition to the current unaccountable representation we now have in Williamson County. Not many trees were planted twenty years ago, so we need to start today.

If you know someone who would be great on your school board, city council, commissioner's court, or any other office for that matter, encourage them to run for office. If we want things to change we must contest every race in this county. We also need to make sure that anyone that wants to run for office in this county as a Democrat knows they have an organization to support them and back them up. We already have one such person running, Glen Fine is running for the Cedar Park City Council Place 1.

We are in need of candidates for the state legislature, U. S. Congress, etc.., but where do you get those candidates? That topic is the main point of this article, A Liberal Minor League,

2005 is an off year. There are no regularly scheduled elections for Congress, and liberal Democrats cannot do anything about conservative Republicans' complete and total domination of the federal government, right? Wrong, says Dean Nielsen, state director of Progressive Majority. This year, Nielsen says, liberals need to get busy building the farm team. "If we have any hope of taking back congressional seats," says Nielsen, "we have to start at the local level." Seventy-five percent of the members of Congress were once locally elected officials—members of city councils, county councils, port commissions, and school boards. For instance, nine out of 11 of Washington's congressional delegation began their political careers in local office. If Democrats want to take back the majority in Congress, Nielsen says, they need a pool of locally elected officials who are hungry to move up to the big leagues. "We believe in investing in people," he says.

Now let's get to work and plant some trees today.