Category Archives: Texas Politics

Is the Hole Getting Deeper for AG Ken Paxton?

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Off the Kuff does an excellent job of detailing the latest from the continuing saga of possible criminal activity by Attorney General Ken Paxton – so Red doesn’t have to.   Meanwhile, it seems no one cares that the state’s top legal official may have engaged in felonious conduct when he referred his legal clients to a financial advisor for a referral fee that was not disclosed to those same clients.  For the first time some of the clients speak up about Paxton’s conduct – and as you might have guessed they are not happy that Paxton failed to fully inform them of the arrangement.

Quote for the Day

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I believe in a balanced budget.”

“I’m not in D.C., I can’t tell you about the federal budget.”

State Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) explaining his support for a bill that passed the Texas House calling for a constitutional convention to consider a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And then turning around and proclaiming ignorance when asked what taxes should be raised or which federal programs should be cut to make the balanced budget a reality.

And he wants to be Mayor of Houston?

Ethics Reform Not Interesting the Legislature

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Gov. Greg Abbott heavily emphasized ethics reform in his state of the state address in February.  The push for reform came in the wake of contracting scandals at the Texas Dept of Health and Human Services and revelations that former Gov. Rick Perry’s business development funds had created almost no new jobs in Texas.  Months later, the reality is that almost nothing is getting done to push ethics reform through the Legislature.  The Texas Tribune reports on the little that has been done and the heavy lifting that remains.

Right now, with no scandal raging in Texas, lawmakers have moved only a few ethics bills. One, House Bill 681, would take government pension benefits away from officeholders convicted of certain felonies like bribery, embezzlement and perjury.

Another, House Bill 1690, would take prosecutions of state officeholders away from the public integrity unit of the Travis County district attorney’s office. Republican legislators are convinced that the lawyers and juries in the state capital are biased against conservatives. And the current district attorney’s messy drunken driving arrest two years ago only added fuel to that fire. That bill is part of a deal to close House-Senate differences before the end of the session; its chance at passage is pretty good.

But the contract and income disclosures that Abbott wanted remain undone. Those would require lawmakers to reveal contracts and business relationships with government contractors that currently go undocumented. Lower limits on how much money lobbyists can spend on lawmakers without identifying those lawmakers is stuck. And the Legislature’s expected attempt to force political nonprofits to reveal the sources of their money — so-called dark money legislation — hasn’t moved. That would have been law two years ago without a veto from then-Gov. Rick Perry.

Other loose ends have been kicked around this session without threatening, so far, to become law:

• Prohibiting lawmakers and staff from lobbying for one or two years after they leave the state payroll

• Barring elected officeholders from working as lobbyists

• Requiring officeholders to file their required personal financial disclosures in searchable online form instead of on paper

• Requiring lawmakers to report pension and other income they currently don’t have to list

• Prohibiting lawyer/officeholders from accepting referral fees or requiring them to report the fees they do receive.

Some of those provisions are in Senate Bill 19, which is the most likely vessel for an ethics showdown. It could make it all the way to a negotiating room where senators and representatives can work out a compromise bill or, in the alternative, suffocate ethics legislation many of them privately disdain but feel they publicly have to support.

That bill’s bumpy ride tells the tale of ethics legislation this year. It was 14 pages long when it started. A Senate committee chewed up and spit out nine of those. The full Senate added enough amendments to bring the page count back to 18. It has some of the promised stuff in it, and some odd bits, like a provision that would require candidates to take drug tests. (Maybe they’ll discover something that enhances the performance of elected officials.) And SB 19 could accommodate near every proposal promoted as ethics reform, if enough lawmakers are willing.

Time is short. A House committee has the legislation now, and has until the end of the week to send it to the full House, which in turn has to act on it by May 26.

The Anti-Gay Crowd Aint Going Down Without a Fight

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Texas AG Ken Paxton will not give up easy and Red suspects neither will his Tea Party cohorts.  Marriage is only for straights and the Gays can feel whatever they want, but don’t try to walk down the aisle in Texas.  RawStory recounts Paxton’s recent interview on CNN.

“My job as attorney general and the job of the Legislature is to really follow the will of the people and enforce the laws that we have,” he remarked. “This is both in statute and in our constitution. So, that’s my job, and that’s the job of the Legislature.”

But the attorney general was not willing to say that the state would follow the Supreme Court if it decided to rule in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage later this year.

“Aren’t you saying that the gays and lesbians in your state are not as valued at heterosexuals because they can’t form into a union?” Camerota asked.

“All the Legislature has done in the past is try to reflect the values that have been in this state and this country for over two centuries,” Paxton insisted.

“What about homosexuals who fall in love? What should they do?” the CNN host pressed.

“They have — they can do whatever they want,” Paxton shrugged. “But the reality itself right now in Texas was defined by the people of Texas overwhelmingly as between a man and a woman. And that’s the law of Texas, it’s in our constitution, it’s in our statutes.”

“I mean, they can’t really do whatever they want as you’ve just said,” Camerota shot back. “Do you understand why gays in Texas would feel that is discriminating against them?”

“They can feel how they want,” Paxton replied. “The reality is the voters of Texas have passed the law as it is.”

Ten bucks says that even Tea Party crazed Texas would not vote the gay marriage ban into the Constitution today.

Dan Patrick Knew About Secret Tea Party Taping of Legislators

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The Texas Tribune reports that the Texas Rangers will be investigating the American Phoenix Foundation’s practice of secretly taping Texas Legislators.  The right-wing group has apparently been taping the lawmakers to find out if they are conservative enough and ostensibly to use the videos to support campaigns of Tea Party primary opponents for incumbent Republicans.

But the real news is that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick knew about the surreptitious videos and simply chose to not tell anybody about it.

A senior staffer for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was told by DPS about the secret tapings but senators were not told of it at the time “because no senators were believed to have been targeted by the group.” One senator, Houston Democrat Rodney Ellis, said Monday, “I would have preferred to have known if it was a possibility.”

In the words of Al Czervik, “Now I know why tigers eat their young.”

Wow, Ted Was Right! They Really are Out to Get You – If You Don’t Tow the Tea Party Line

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The Houston Chronicle reports that the Austin-based nonprofit the American Phoenix Foundation  has been secretly filming Texas Republicans to later expose them as not conservative enough.  John Beria, spokesman for the foundation, said that the group has had 16 staffers working on the project who have filmed more than 800 hours of covert footage of GOP lawmakers.

The undercover video campaign represents a new front by conservative groups to target incumbent Republicans and tilt the Texas Legislature further to the right. Several House Republican lawmakers already have expressed concerns with some of the group’s tactics, saying they aggressively were approached last week – inside and outside the Capitol – by men who used hidden cameras to secretly videotape a series of encounters that has raised alarms for Capitol security.

Lawmakers said cameras were disguised as lapel pins or hidden in a briefcase, and some characterized the incidents as harassment because the men repeatedly pursued legislators through the hallways of the Capitol and off Capitol grounds. One lawmaker was approached while eating dinner with his wife at a Tex-Mex restaurant in downtown Austin.

“It’s like they were almost stalking us,” said Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring, who navigated a detour through the Capitol with another female lawmaker last Friday to avoid the group.

Beria confirmed the “visionary” behind the program to collect secret footage of state lawmakers is Joseph Basel, the CEO of C3 Strategies, an Austin-based consulting firm that worked on the campaigns of state Sens. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, and Konni Burton, R-Fort Worth. Basel said none of the taping was done through C3, and that his consulting clients were not involved in any way.

In 2010, a federal judge sentenced Basel and fellow activist James O’Keefe to probation and community service after they pleaded guilty to entering the New Orleans offices of then-U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu under false pretenses.

O’Keefe was the mastermind behind the 2009 secret taping at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. During the exchange, ACORN staffers appeared to offer O’Keefe and Hannah Basel – masquerading as a pimp and prostitute – advice on tax evasion.

Both Basels helped found the American Phoenix Foundation.

“It’s a sleazy campaign tactic,” state Rep. Charlie Geren, a Fort Worth Republican who was approached three times last week, said of the secret videotaping. “There’s some real scumbags in this business.”

Harless, the lawmaker from Spring, said she initially was approached last week by a man in an elevator after leaving a committee hearing. As the elevator doors opened, she said he peppered her with a series of questions and then zoomed away.

Harless said a Department of Public Safety trooper who observed the exchange told Harless that a badge shaped like the state of Texas on the man’s lapel actually was a camera.

Red is more than happy to watch the Right-Wing eat its own, but he draws the line at using a Texas shaped lapel pin to house a hidden camera.

Get Your Tax-Free Guns

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The Senate has approved Senate Bill 228  which designates one weekend a year where as a tax-free holiday for gun sales.  The bill sponsored by Sen. Brandon Creighton (TP-Conroe) exempts  firearms, ammunition and hunting supplies from sales tax during the last weekend in August.  Creighton calls it a Second Amendment tax holiday weekend.  Part of the rational for the sales tax exemption stems from a similar tax holiday that occurs one week earlier in Louisiana.  Proponents claim that Texas businesses near the Louisiana border lose considerable sales because of the tax disparity for that one weekend.  The Legislative Budget Board estimates that Texas will lose over $3.5 million in sales tax revenue each year if Creighton’s bill becomes law.

Abbott Kowtows to Paranoid Fringe of the Tea Party

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Gov. Greg Abbott is sending Texas Guard troops to “monitor” a U.S. Armed Forces training exercise being conducted in Texas.  Abbott is apparently listening and responding to the paranoid fringe of the Tea Party who fear that the Feds are coming to take over the state.  Remember the days when the so-called conservatives supported our military?  It seems so long ago.  What changed? Oh yeah, a black man became President.  The Dallas Morning News reports on the Abbott’s latest attempt to assuage the Tea Party and provides some details on the planned operation.

The operation causing rampant suspicions is a new kind of exercise involving elite teams such as the SEALs and Green Berets from four military branches training over several states from July 15 to Sept. 15

Called Jade Helm 15, the exercise is one of the largest training operations done by the military in response to what it calls the evolving nature of warfare. About 1,200 special operations personnel will be involved and move covertly among the public. They will use military equipment to travel between seven Southwestern states from Texas to California.

On Monday, command spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria attended a Bastrop County Commissioners Court meeting to answer community questions and was met with hostile fire. Lastoria, in response to some of the questions from the 150 who attended, sought to dispel fears that foreign fighters from the Islamic State were being brought in or that Texans’ guns would be confiscated, according to a report in the Austin American-Statesman.

He was forced to rebut that martial law was underfoot and said misinformation has been spread by those with a “personal agenda.  You may have issues with the administration. So be it. But this institution right here has been with you for over 200 years,” he was quoted as saying. “I’ve worn this uniform across five different administrations for 27 years.”

Radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been sending out warnings for weeks regarding the exercise, saying it is the U.S. military positioning itself to take over the states and declare martial law.

Abbott apparently has heard the concern and ordered the Guard to monitor the training and U.S. military personnel.

“To address concerns of Texas citizens and ensure that Texas communities remain safe, secure and informed about military procedures occurring in their vicinity, I am directing the Texas State Guard to monitor Operation Jade Helm 15,” Abbott wrote in his letter to the commander of the Texas Guard.

Poor Poor Pitiful Patrick

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Texas Monthly reports that there may be trouble in Tea Party paradise.

The weekly kumbaya breakfast between the big three Texas lawmakers broke down today into a round-robin of recriminations that concluded with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick declaring he was tired of Governor Greg Abbott and Speaker Joe Straus “picking on me.”

The blow-up, confirmed by multiple sources, represents the boiling point of long-simmering disputes. The House has been upset that Patrick declared his inauguration marked a “New Day” in Texas and that he pushed a conservative agenda quickly through the Senate with expectations that the House would just pass his legislation. But, instead, most of the Senate’s bills on tax cuts, licensed open carry of handguns and moving the Public Integrity Unit have languished in the House without even being referred to committee by Straus.

The House instead has passed its own version of the same legislation, putting the Senate in a take-it-or-leave-it position. To pass the Senate bills now, the House would have to have an entirely new debate on controversial measures it already has approved.

So the Senate, in what looked like retaliation on Tuesday, ignored a House-approved border security bill to vote on its own measure, putting the House into a take-it-or-leave-it position on border security – a measure that House Ways and Means Chair Dennis Bonnen had crafted to win support of border Democrats.

This may be Patrick’s New Day, but Straus’ Old Guard still runs the House.

Wow!  Patrick has chosen the wrong game if he thinks he doesn’t deserve getting picked on.  Patrick who made his living “picking on” anyone who didn’t agree with his reactionary right-wing views on his radio show, is mighty thin-skinned when the tables are turned.  And once again, the Tea Partisans are proving that they are incapable of running the government that they hate so much.