This is the Tom Hartman program.

And greetings, my friends, patriots, lovers of democracy, truth and justice, believers

in peace, freedom, and the American way Tom Hartman here with you.

And it has become kind of an article of faith in the American media that the current

insanity of the Republican Party is being driven by Donald Trump, that down in Texas

when the Republicans got buffaloed by the Democrats refusing a quorum, I'll just very briefly

explain this, we have the same situation here in Oregon.

You have to have a quorum, the quorum is set, I believe as two-thirds, sometimes there's

60%, sometimes there's 70%, whatever, the quorum requirement can be established, sometimes

there's 50%, can be established or typically is established in the constitution or as law.

And what a quorum means is there's enough people now present that we can do business.

If we don't have a quorum, if we don't have enough people present to do business, then

we can't vote on anything, we can't do business.

And what's happened here in Oregon now for two years in a row is that whenever the Democrats

want to pass a particular piece of legislation that they have plenty of oaths to pass, Democrats

have major majorities in the House and Senate here in Oregon, the Republicans just walk out.

In some cases they even leave the state, they hide.

And the result of that is the legislation that Republicans don't like doesn't get passed.

So this has been going on for a couple of years here in Oregon, so now this is what

happened in Texas over the weekend.

The Republicans proposed a law that said, we can pick a district, let's say a black

part of Houston, and we can decide that we're going to cut in half the number of voting

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