80th Legislature: I Was On The Money

Last night, when I wrote today’s earlier post on pre-filled bills in the Lege (yes, I wrote it the night before and timestamped it…so sue me), I hadn’t read any MSM coverage of the “pre-filing.” Why? Because I wanted to look at a few bills and make my own determination about the Lege’s agenda.

The outcome? One of the bills I gave a lot of attention to, the Berman bill that deprives the “legal by birth” children of illegal aliens, was the lead of the Star-Telegram’s story on pre-filing and was the high up in the AP story on pre-filing.

Yeah, yeah. Give me a cookie. There was a 50/50 chance I’d get to that bill, since I only made it through about 50 bills before I got so depressed by terrible legislation I couldn’t go on, and that was an early bill and an inflamatory one. That, and I am simply brilliant.

Luckily, though, there are a lot of groups that are going to make sure this stupid legislation doesn’t pass:

“I think it’s kind of sad that people are resorting to such Draconian measures that will only serve to alienate segments of the community,” said Adrian Rodriguez, vice president of the Southwest chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

“We’re going to work very hard as a united community . . . to look at making sure some of these things do not pass,” Rodriguez said.

His group has joined several organizations, including the People for the American Way, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Texas Association of Mexican-American Chambers of Commerce, to fight the proposals during the upcoming session.

“We’re going to go after all of them,” he said.

Oh, this is going to be an ugly session.

And remember the old school of thought: The higher the number of the bill, the more important it is? Frank Corte, whose legislation we discussed earlier, addressed that:

But some legislators, such as state Rep. Frank Corte, like to get an early start. The Republican from San Antonio has submitted as many as 13 bills on the first filing day every session for a decade.

Bills are assigned numbers in the order they’re received, and Corte said he believes having low numbers on his proposals gives him a psychological edge.

“A low bill number a lot of times has the feeling to a lot of members that it’s an important issue,” Corte said. “It’s something that was thought out way in advance. It wasn’t something that you filed at the last minute.”

The Legislature does not operate on a “first come, first served” basis, however. Once the session starts, the bills will be read in the House or Senate and assigned to a committee, whose chairperson then decides what to tackle first.

So, going by Corte’s thoughts, the mentality of the Legislature is such that throwing lit cigarettes from cars is the 32nd most important thing facing the Legislature this year?

God help us all.

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