Monday, June 21, 2010

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance was unable to attend summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge this morning, but welcomes the official start of summer anyway with a cold beverage and the highlights from the past week's blogging.

There is no way in hell Txsharon could pick just one post from this hellish week in the Barnett Shale, so she did a recap, at Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

San Antonio hospitals are dumping seriously ill homeless patients at Haven for Hope. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme sees Republicans hating health care for the poor. How selfish and cruel can a group of people be?

Off the Kuff examined some data to get a handle on Rick Perry's performance with Latino voters in the 2002 election.

The update on the Green Party's bid for the ballot, including Perry campaign operative Dave Carney's latest lie, is at PDiddie's Brains and Eggs.

Bay Area Houston has More on Driving Ms Daisy-Harper-Brown and her scandal.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw reminds Smokey Joe and Old Box Turtle what their jobs are, in Earth to Joe Barton and John Cornyn: You are not Lobbyists.

Neil at Texas Liberal offered up a post with two examples of folks voting across party lines. Neil says political parties provide a useful shorthand for voters and says people should support a slate that has the same general outlook and goals.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Serving up crow at Smokey Joe's Cafe


Excellent op-ed from the Denton Record-Chronicle.

We should all cut U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, a little slack. When he apologized Thursday to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the harsh treatment BP was getting for causing the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States, Barton was simply following a cardinal rule of politics: Once bought, an honest congressman stays bought.

Barton has been in the vest pocket of oil, gas and other polluting industries since the mind of man runneth not to the contrary. In Congress, he is the champion of any industry that can erect a smokestack, befoul a free-running stream and write a fat check to a political campaign.

God Damn that liberal media.

House Republican leaders backed away from Barton and his “apology” like a mess of crawdads. They reportedly took Smokey Joe to the woodshed even as the hearing was still in progress and threatened him with expulsion from the House subcommittee should he not retract his statement.

Which, of course, he did, with one of those patented nonapologetic Washington apologies.

We feel a measure of sympathy for Joe Barton. His lickspittle pandering to the head honcho of BP on Thursday was no worse than what he had done for much of his congressional career. It was as though he did not know that the object of his fealty had just inflicted grave harm upon this country through greed and neglect. It was as though he were pimping for Typhoid Mary.

And I left out some of the best parts.

In other apology-related news, Barton has taken to hiding in his basement:

The day after Rep. Joe Barton became a household name -- and a source of ridicule for late-night comics -- by first apologizing to BP and then retracting his apology, the Texas Republican appeared to go underground.

A phone message said his Washington office was closed, although press secretary Sean Brown eventually e-mailed that aides were, in fact, at work, but that there would be no further comment.

[...]

Barton is in a safe Republican district, although his Democratic opponent, David Cozad, mocked Barton in a web page, joebartonwouldliketoapologize.com, that has the lawmaker apologizing for many things, including bad World Cup calls.

If you're feeling generous, throw a few shekels at Cozad and let's see if we can't make Barton's district a little less safe.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

On behalf of all Texans ...

... I apologize for Joe Barton. He is as venal and corrupt as a Texas Republican comes. And since he is so "ashamed" and "doesn't want to live in a country" where we hold corporations responsible for their mistakes, then I invite his sorry ass to GTF OUT of MY country.

A staunch conservative who has a long record of backing oil industry interests, Barton apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the "shakedown" the Obama White House pulled on the company. (Barton has received more than $1.5 million in campaign donations from the oil industry, according to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan watchdog group.) You can watch the video here:



"I'm not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself," Barton explained, "but I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case a $20 billion shakedown."

Wrapping up, Barton said: "I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words — amounts to a shakedown, so I apologize."

Joe Barton's Democratic opponent is David Cozad.

Update: And wipe that 10W-30 off your mouth when you say "misconstrued".

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Greens ballot bid update

Wayne Slater:

A top Republican lawyer has been hired to represent the Green Party in a lawsuit in which Democrats want to know who bankrolled a petition drive to put the party on the ballot. ...

Andy Taylor, a Republican redistricting lawyer with ties to Tom DeLay, John Cornyn and Rick Perry, will represent the liberal Green Party. It's unknown who's paying him. Neither Taylor nor Green Party state coordinator Kat Swift returned telephone calls. The hiring of Taylor is the latest in a series of GOP connections to the Green Party effort.

Taylor represented GOP efforts to beat Democrats in legislative races in 2002 to clear the way for a DeLay-backed redistricting plan. He has represented DeLay's political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and the Texas Association of Business, which spent corporate money that is banned in Texas races to elect legislative candidates. He was a top aide to then-Attorney General John Cornyn. And he has defended Republican candidates in political cases. As a lobbyist, his clients have included top GOP money givers such as Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, the governor's biggest campaign contributor (no relation).

Taylor also led the losing effort to unseat Hubert Vo and re-seat Talmadge Heflin in 2004. This scumbag is a Republican-exclusive hired gun. Every billable hour is spent advocating the legal causes of the GOP. And he doesn't do pro bono, either.

The Lone Star Project:

Any doubt that the Green Party of Texas is willingly being used by high profile Republicans with connections to Rick Perry can now be set aside. With an ethical cloud hanging over the Republican-Green Party petition collaboration, notorious GOP attorney Andy Taylor has signed on to represent a Green Party of Texas Co-Chair. ...

Perhaps most interesting is his relationship with Rick Perry. Andy Taylor has such a close relationship with the governor that when Perry was looking to fill vacancies on the Texas Supreme Court, he asked Taylor to interview “potential candidates and [assess] their strengths and weaknesses.” (Source: Texas Monthly, February, 2005)

One other thing: Dave Carney is a big fat-ass liar. Surprise!

Rick Perry's chief political strategist now acknowledges that the consultant who spearheaded the petition drive for the Green Party in Texas is somebody he's worked with in the past. But Dave Carney says he didn't work with him to put the Greens on the state ballot this year. ...

But Ross Ramsey at the Texas Tribune got a different reaction when he caught up with Carney at the state GOP convention this weekend in Dallas. Carney said he and (GOP consultant Tim) Mooney had worked together in the past after all, but are no longer in contact: "I couldn't pick him out of a lineup, and I haven't seen him, emailed him or talked to him on the phone in years."

Horseshit and corruption all around. Par for the course for the GOP, and the Green Party is coming due for a name change to the Watermelon Party; green on the outside, red on the inside.

Perry campaign punk'd

Mark Miner, Rick Perry's douchesack lickspittle campaign spokesperson, tried to pull another little Republican dirty trick yesterday, scheduling a press conference outside the Bill White campaign's Austin office with a generator marked "BTEC". But he was greeted by about fifty White supporters, including one in a chicken suit, calling once again for the governor to debate, and yes, the media got it all (thanks, Elise Hu-Stiles at the TexTrib):



More from Burnt Orange and the Statesman. See the Flickr slideshow here.