Friday, January 10, 2014

GOP civil war comes to Houston

Let's just hope they don't start shooting (I'm more worried about them hitting innocent bystanders than I am each other).

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett has endorsed Paul Simpson, who is challenging six-term incumbent Jared Woodfill for chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, according to the Austin political website, the Quorum Report.

Reporter Scott Braddock quotes Emmett as saying that he believes the party should be making a greater effort to reach out to young people.

“Ronald Reagan would probably not be welcome in today’s Republican Party,” Braddock quotes Emmett as saying. “I would like to see the base in Harris County to be 400,000, not 150,000.”

The QR link doesn't offer much more unless you're a subscriber.  But Greg "Rhymes With Hate" is all over it, like orange cones on the George Washington Bridge.

No really, you should click over.  It's calm, reasoned, insightful; not at all like the deranged and hyperbolic comments he occasionally leaves here. Here's an example (of the former, not the latter)...

First, the Harris County GOP is the largest local Republican Party in the United States. Any change of direction here indicates the potential for a seismic shift in the state of Texas, with the shock waves rippling out to impact the entire country. And since Emmett is the highest ranking elected official in the county, it indicates that there are powerful people here in the Houston area who are not comfortable with the direction the county party has been headed for some time.

Secondly, it is important to note that the reason for the shift is the recognition by many Republicans that the party needs to move in the direction of greater inclusivity. In recent years the party has been controlled by a social conservative faction that has recently been loathe to include anyone who is not purer than Ivory Soap in terms of their support for every jot and tittle of the Texas GOP platform. It would appear that this is a significant factor in Judge Emmett's decision to throw his support behind Paul Simpson's candidacy -- the willingness of Jared Woodfill and those who back him to leave precinct chair positions vacant rather than fill those slots with someone who Ronald Reagan would have defined as friends and allies rather than traitors to the Republican cause. Judge Emmett openly expressed his concern that men like Reagan and Barry Goldwater, a pair who were once the gold standard for what it meant to be a Republican and a conservative, would no longer be considered acceptable candidates for office (even to be precinct chairs) by the current leadership in Harris County.

The GOP, from DC to Austin to Houston, obviously has tremendous issues.  I have catalogued many permutations of the insidious conservative virus and the damage it has done in over ten-plus years of blogging here, and things have only gotten worse over that time, in direct contrast to the party's stranglehold on state politics.  This movement to push back against their ideological extremists is a noble bid for survival and relevance.  Some of them are smart enough to glimpse the future and are rightly scared about it.

I became a Republican myself in 1974, when I heard Reagan speak at a banquet I worked as a 16-year-old busboy-promoted-to-waiter in Beaumont, TX.  I stayed a Republican until Clayton Williams ran for governor against Ann Richards in 1990 (I lived in Midland at the time, Ground Zero for witnessing the carnage of William's political seppuku).  I haven't been anywhere near the party in the twenty-four years since for easily discernible reasons, among them that they have only coarsened in the years since Claytie's rape joke -- meaner, more obnoxious, more fascist, and more irrelevant to people's daily lives.

Any movement by Republicans to try to pull their party away from the right and back to the center (in other words, to the left) is something I cannot oppose.  So I wish Judge Emmett and Mr. Simpson well in their endeavor and will watch these developments closely.

I have no idea -- and frankly don't care -- if Simpson is who Emmett thinks he is, or if he can accomplish what he says.  That isn't what matters at this point.  He's got to get elected first.

And to that end, this small internecine skirmish in the grand scheme is a little ripple in a big pond.  The overarching point is that America actually benefits from a sane Republican Party, if for no other reason than such a development would force the Democratic Party to keep practicing kaizen by trending left, an encouraging development in and of itself.

So I'll wish them luck because it's an extremely tough task they have ahead.  If they lose, the GOP keeps hurtling down the road to extinction (that's not necessarily bad if you're a Blue-ish-Green partisan like I am today, but "devil-you-know" and all that).  In the meantime -- if you're a conservative that doesn't like one of the two factions of the GOP, be it moderate or extreme -- you might consider going to see Gary Johnson, the 2012 Libertarian presidential nominee, speak in Austin, Houston, or San Antonio next week.

The most influence to be had by voters dissatisfied with the lesser of two options is to help a third voice grow louder.  That is the most effective protest vote a person can cast.

Update: Holly Jolly is a little puffed up over this post, but what's noteworthy is the careful drawing of his toe across the sand between the two conservative factions, who sound ready to go at each others' throats.  First, from Woodfill's e-mail, firing back against Simpson.

‘CONSERVATIVE’ REPUBLICAN COUNTY LEADERS SUPPORT WOODFILL
Judge Robert Eckels, Commissioners Cagle, Morman, and Tax Assessor Mike Sullivan ENDORSE Jared Woodfill

It’s unanimous – conservative county leadership only trusts one man to continue leading the Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) – Jared Woodfill.  Why change what works? Conservative leaders like Woodfill do not come often, and there is a reason he has served longer than any other predecessor – he does the right thing, and he does the right thing effectively.

What is significant here is that Jolly himself has called out Woodfill for his leadership of the party and supported challengers Simpson and Ed Hubbard against Woodfill in the past.  Apparently not this time, though.

For anyone that thinks yesterday’s sloppy release of Ed Emmett’s endorsement of Paul Simpson was a game changer, think again. Communication skills are arguably the biggest part of the Chairs job in the HCRP and Jared Woodfill excels at that portion of the job.

If you are a conservative Republican, and most Harris County Republicans are conservative, which lead do you follow? It was a huge mistake for the Simpson campaign to give talking points to the left media and bloggers in their attempt to oust the chair of the very conservative Harris County Republican Party.

This much I know: cheerleading for Simpson and Emmett from far-left vulgar bloggers isn’t going to help their cause. And advice from moderate Republicans to disavow social issues will, if heeded, result in losing elections and destroy the party. There is a balance that must be maintained between all factions of our coalition – dropping any of the factions is bad advice.

Dave: for the record, nobody who is a Republican -- with the notable exception of Burt Levine -- has ever given me anything but shit, just like you.  (But hey, thanks for the traffic!)

Moderates versus Tea Party.  The country clubbers against the kooks.  It's going to be fun watching them sort themselves out.

Thursday, January 09, 2014

Christie. Over.

I just thought he was done yesterday morning.  By yesterday afternoon, he was crisped.

New details in the New Jersey traffic scandal that implicates people close to Governor Chris Christie show that the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge happened for political reasons, and on the same day, The Bergen Record has a new report saying that a 91-year-old woman died because of the traffic.

On four separate occasions, emergency responders were reportedly unable to respond to a situation due to the gridlock, and response time “doubled” in just two of those cases.

EMS coordinator Paul Favia made Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich aware of these concerns in a letter last September, which included the 91-year-old woman who they could not get to in time.
It also took EMS seven minutes to reach an unconscious 91-year-old woman who later died of cardiac arrest at a hospital. Although he did not say her death was directly caused by the delays, Favia noted that “paramedics were delayed due to heavy traffic on Fort Lee Road and had to meet the ambulance en-route to the hospital instead of on the scene.”

Yeah, Christie was kept in the dark about a political vendetta.  It's not like the Cincinnatti IRS office, where Obama kept close track of every detail.


Jon Stewart still doesn't think so, but he might just be kidding around.  Hugh Hewitt thinks Christie can save himself, but I don't think there's a life preserver big enough to fit around the guy.

Say hello to Scott Walker of Wisconsin, gubernatorial-loving Republicans desiring a 2016 candidate without the negativity of Ted Cruz or Rand Paul.

Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Catch-up (not Ketchup)

-- Hat tip to Rep. Wu for the condiment theme.


-- I'll be reading the book about Roger Ailes, but I probably won't read Bob Gates' book.  I agree with others who say that Gates is providing an assist to Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations by throwing a brick at Joe Biden.

Gates wrote: “I found her smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world.”

And at Gates’ farewell ceremony in 2011, he had high praise for Clinton, saying she’s become a cherished colleague and a good friend.

That makes his criticism of anybody else's decisions being influenced by politics thoroughly suspect.

-- Speaking of political machinations... Chris Christie is so over.


Then again, maybe this bridge thing is a Sopranos-style enhancement to his presidential aspirations.  Who can ever tell what the GOP values any more?

-- The dirty laundry about Florida Republican Congressman Bill Young, who died last October, is now being aired by his two families, and the stench is putrid.

Young had three children with his first wife, Marian, before divorcing her in 1985 to wed his 26-year-old secretary, Beverly, with whom he'd fathered a child while still married to Marian. (Young was 51 at the time.)

Young somehow kept the affair out of the papers (thanks in part to a quiescent media) and ensured Marian's silence with a lifetime alimony payment of $2,000 a month. He also rarely saw the kids he'd raised with Marian and stopped initiating contact in 1986. Young's first family, it seemed, had disappeared and few knew of its existence. But this all came to light at Young's funeral last fall, when Robert, one of his sons by way of Beverly, acknowledged his half-siblings at the end of his eulogy, admitting he didn't even know their surnames but later saying he "didn't think it was fair that they weren't being noticed."

This, my friends, barely begins to tell the story. Among the many eyebrow-raising details, few things come through more powerfully than what a horrible, horrible human being Bev Young is. My skin crawled to read her nasty comments about her husband's children. Terry Young, she said, is only speaking up now because he's "trying to get rid of his guilt for being a horrible son."

Of course he voted to impeach Bill Clinton over an extramarital blowjob.  Just when you think Republican family values can't sink any lower...

-- One last frozen toon before the thaw.

Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Abbott escorted the loansharks into Texas in '06

Matt Angle waves to the media and says, "Over here, folks. The ballgame has moved back onto the playing field".

Greg Abbott’s office issued the key document that has allowed payday lenders to operate outside of Texas usury laws and exploit Texans across our state. A letter issued from the office of the Attorney General carefully lays out that payday lenders in Texas can take advantage of a loophole used by credit service organizations to avoid Texas laws preventing unscrupulous lending. It is essentially a “how-to guide” for payday lenders to expand and grow their predatory lending businesses.

Payday lenders had been nervous about expanding their operations in Texas, but Abbott’s letter gave them the go-ahead they needed. The respected financial industry publication American Banker reported how payday lender Ace reacted to the Abbott letter:

"The Irving, Tex., company originally saw too much legal risk in the CSO setup, in which payday specialists can collect as much as 20% in fees for arranging a short-term loan from a third-party lender. But this month Texas' attorney general, Greg Abbott, sent a letter to the state's Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner saying that CSOs are permissible. So on an earnings conference call last week Ace said it will begin brokering loans as a credit service organization sometime in the next two quarters." (American Banker, February 1, 2006)

The El Paso Times, once more, shows the Hearst affiliates locally how to cover the news.

State Sen. Wendy Davis is highlighting a 2006 letter by the office of Attorney General Greg Abbott that says there are no limits to the fees that payday lenders can charge.

Davis said the letter, which was written in a response to an inquiry by former state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso, set the stage for an explosion of high-interest lending that critics say exploits the poor.

[...]

Abbott's campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. It also has not responded when asked for more than a week whether Abbott believes the Texas payday lending industry needs to be reformed.

This is also top-notch explanatory journalism.

The concept of usury -- unconscionably high interest rates -- goes at least as far back as the Old Testament.

It's also part of the Texas Constitution, which says that in the absence of legislation, interest rates in the state are limited to 10 percent a year.

Lenders that are licensed and regulated under Texas law face caps of their own. Commercial loans in most instances can't exceed 18 percent except when the loan is greater than $250,000, when they can't exceed 28 percent.

Auto loans can't exceed 27 percent. Short-term loans by licensed lenders can't exceed 150 percent and pawn loans can't exceed 240 percent.

But the letter by the attorney general that was released Monday said fees associated with payday and title loans have no limits.

So what Abbott did not only violates the Texas Constitution... but the Bible, too.  That reality is going to rock his Christian army's world.

Please, go read the whole thing.  So when you see former conservative bloggers who consider themselves devout Catholics taking up the cause of the poor, picked-on payday lenders in the comments of what's left of the sagging Houston conservative blogosphere... you know that desperation has really set it.

Now if you want the straight story, no spin, then read Wayne Slater.  If Abbott and company really wanted to say something truthful and still damaging about Davis in this matter, then they would point out that she's taken money from payday lenders also.  About one-tenth the amount he has.

Bay Area Houston skewers it again, much to the cringing rage of other sad-sack Christian conservative blogging Republicans (the small caucus of those without a shred of common sense).

Monday, January 06, 2014

The Frigid Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is turning up the thermostat as it brings you this week's roundup.


Off the Kuff ponders the potential political future of Houston mayor Annise Parker.

A Green candidate's long-distance bid for Congress got picked up by the mainstream media, just a week after PDiddie at Brains and Eggs blogged about it. The story raises the larger issue of whether Texas might benefit from a jungle primary for Congressional seats, as occurs in California, Louisiana, and Washington state. And that's an open question.

Texpatriate published a brief summation of 2013's major political events.

Eye On Williamson posts on the three Texas Republican money men who passed away last year: Texas GOP lost three sugar daddies.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme hopes that the La Villa school district and the city end their water dispute. The kids suffer enough under Republican rule; why add to their misery?

Neil at All People Have Value started off the New Year with the message that the work of freedom is up to each of us. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

=================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Jason Stanford tells Texas Democrats to embrace their underdog status.

The Texas Living Waters Project reviewed the year in water news, and Texas Clean Air Matters did the same for Texas air quality news.

Lone Star Ma explains what "bubble kids" are and what they have to do with the classroom instruction other kids get.

New Media Texas gives four reasons why blacks should support immigration reform.

Nancy Sims looks ahead to November.

SciGuy lists the top five stargazing events for 2014.

Juanita Jean wonders if David Dewhurst knows what day of the week it is.

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Chron picks up Don Cook's long-distance bid for Congress

Carol Christian didn't link to me, but that's cool.

A familiar face among Houston's progressive political activists is running for U.S. Congress to help create buzz for the Green Party.

Nothing too unusual there, except Don Cook is running in Congressional District 13 in the north Texas panhandle, some of which is 600 miles from his home.

Thanks to a little known provision of the U.S. Constitution, congressional representatives don't have to live near their constituents - as long as they're in the same state. Even if the state is huge.

This falls under the "any publicity is good publicity" header.

He acknowledges that he's running not so much to win the office as to raise the profile of the Green Party.

"I really feel that the Green Party sees problems that other people aren't talking about, and solutions to problems that people do see (that) are being ignored," he said.

For example, he said, Congress recently voted to end subsidies for wind power but has kept them in place for oil companies.

"There are many areas to explore in the interaction of government and people," Cook said.  Another issue, he said, is how well residents of densely populated districts are represented.

"We should remove districts altogether," he said. "They're all gerrymandered, anyway."  It would be fairer, he said, to elect all 37 of Texas' congressional representatives statewide.

"It eliminates gerrymandering and promotes proportional representation," he said.

Cook has indicated to me in an e-mail this morning that he's pretty certain 37 is the wrong number for Texas Congressional seats... but he's not saying Carol misquoted him.

In seeking a district with a lot of land and a low population, Cook said he considered some in west Texas. But when he looked up District 13 in Wikipedia, he read that it's the most Republican district in the nation.

"That just warmed my heart," he said.

Cook's candidacy, which he announced last month, won't be official until the Green Party nominates him at its statewide convention in April, Cook said.

"I have to convince the delegates that it's better to have me run than not have the party represented," he said.

It's doubtful to become a campaign issue in 2014, but go back and read what Gadfly and Greg said in the comments here.  If Texas held a jungle primary for all 36 members of the House of Representatives that looked sort of like a municipal election for an at-large seat on city council... would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

Three states already do it.  It's debatable whether it strengthens or weakens one of the two dominant political parties, or whether it translates into more moderates of either stripe going to Washington.

A lot of redistricting quarrels would vanish (good).  It may result in even more Texas Republicans in Congress (bad).  With perhaps more than a hundred names appearing on every Texan's ballot, and with instructions to vote for their favorite three dozen... is that too complicated for the average (read: mostly non-) voter?

What other advantages or disadvantages would be involved?  I still like the idea of a geographically based representative, but as with so many things about our current system, it's been corrupted by avarice and ignorance.  But I'm keeping an open mind.  Somebody want to make a case for or against in the comments?

GOP civil war comes to Texas

It is on like Donkey Kong.

Some of Texas’ biggest business trade groups are moving to counter tea party and anti-government forces that have dominated recent Republican primaries.

The Texas Future Business Alliance — a mix of 10 major business groups, including the chemical industry, bankers, builders and contractors — is sending out mailers and providing other support on behalf of GOP candidates who have supported water infrastructure development, highway construction and education spending.

Many of the incumbents have been pilloried as big government spenders and liberals by fiscal hawk groups.
The movement mirrors the schism happening nationally between hard right and establishment Republicans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently pledged $50 million to back pro-business Republicans in U.S. Senate primaries and fight tea party insurgents. Republican leaders, such as House Speaker John Boehner, have castigated hard right groups, accusing them of wanting contributions more than solutions.

“It’s part of the same trend you’re seeing nationally. A lot of the business community is tired of people who don’t want to govern,” said a person involved in the Texas Future Business Alliance, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Guess who's mad, y'all?  "I'm Not a Lobbyist" Mucus.

Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of the fiscal-hawk group Empower Texans, said the Texas Future Business Alliance is nothing but a group of big-money interests wanting taxpayer dollars to flow into their pockets.

He described the consortium as a “fake group” of large trade associations masquerading as a grass-roots organization and sending out leaflets that give incumbents “A Rated” report cards.

“This is what we’ve come to expect coming out of the Washington, anti-Ted Cruz movement,” Sullivan said. “They want people who will vote for cronyism and corporate welfare.”

Sullivan said he did not see the business interest as a battle against tea party groups. Instead, it’s about a divide that’s been in the Republican Party for a long time, he said.

You need enough popcorn to last all the way into March, and then the runoffs in April.  And while the Democrats have their own problems, the Republicans have much, much bigger ones.  Such as the Neanderthals who are their primary-voting base.

The business community is concerned that the Legislature, pushed by tea party groups, “is swinging too far” against government and is unwilling to make even sensible, modest investments. As for corporate contracts, Hammond said, the state has to pay someone to build highways.

“If you cannot advocate for more roads when they’re desperately needed without being accused of being in the pocket of road builders, then there’s no room for honest debate,” Hammond said.

Sullivan countered that fiscal hawks do not oppose investments. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. But they want the money spent carefully, and they are not convinced that is happening.

Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, is one of about two dozen Republicans the business alliance is backing so far.
He said its support is vital to balance groups “that set themselves up as judge, jury an executioner of all things conservative... They just want to purify the party over and over again where they have only their people doing what they say all the time. That to me is just power, and it’s dangerous for our future,” Keffer said.

Keffer said he is a conservative who wants the state to keep pace with the crush of its huge population growth. The trade coalition is welcomed as a group willing to “support those people who are trying to govern.”

“I’m very glad the business group is standing up,” Keffer said. “It’s about time.”

Watch carefully how this plays out.  It won't just be about who has the most money or the best (sic) consultants.  It may break along a similar fault line as the Ted Cruz-David Dewhurst 2012 primary for the US Senate.  In fact, the lieutenant governor primary battle among the Four Stooges could be a microcosm.  Republican candidates jostling to get furthest to the right may well carry the day in the spring, but perhaps not with the country club conservatives -- desperate to rein them in -- writing big checks to the lesser of two (or three or four or twelve) kooks.

And the open question remains: can Texans finally see through the crazy and vote for sensible candidates of any of the four parties on the ballot in the fall, thus turning back the Tea tide, as has been happening for a couple of cycles in other states?

A stay-tuned development for sure.

Sunday Funnies


How you can be certain that the United States will be attacked again by al-Qaeda:

Saturday, January 04, 2014

We have our first flashpoint in the Texas governor's race

And it's the loansharks.  The El Paso Times -- you know, the city that has all those Latinos and statewide Democrats running in 2014 -- continues to lead the reporting.

Attorney General Greg Abbott on Thursday called state Sen. Wendy Davis a hypocrite for demanding that Gov. Rick Perry remove William J. White as chairman of the Texas Finance Commission.

In a statement, Abbott pointed out that Davis voted to confirm White after Perry appointed him in March 2009.

"Sen. Wendy Davis' statement is blatant election-year hypocrisy," said a statement by Abbott's press secretary, Avdiel Huerta.

Davis voted to confirm White on May 11, 2011 -- four months after she told the Texas Observer that White's presence on the commission was "the classic fox in the henhouse."

Abbott refused, however, to say whether he supports White, who heads the state agency responsible for consumer protection.

There's a hint at the real story in that last sentence. Not Davis' vote to confirm White...

Davis' press secretary, Rebecca Acuna, said that despite her opposition to White, Davis voted to confirm him because he was part of a large group of nominees and Davis didn't want to torpedo the lot.

"A group of 40, including White, were confirmed in a single vote," Acuna said. "The bigger issue is what he's done since. Our call for him to resign was made in light of recent developments."

Abbott and his spox appear to have preferred that Davis block the mass of appointments with a filibuster.  That would be SOP for a Republican obstructionist, and certainly closer to meeting the description of "political".  But we still haven't reached the moneyshot yet.

(Flack Avdiel) Huerta, Abbott's spokesman, was asked Monday -- and twice Thursday -- whether Abbott supports White, who said people get stuck in payday loans because they do things such as buy $6,000 TVs. Huerta didn't respond to those questions.

He also didn't respond when asked whether the slot on the finance commission for a representative of the consumer-credit industry must go to someone who works for a payday lender or if it could go to someone who works for a credit-card company or some other consumer-credit business.

Abbott has been a big beneficiary of political cash from the payday-lending industry, which the Texas Catholic Conference and Texas Baptist Christian Life Conference say needs tighter regulation.

Abbott received the fourth-most of any Texas politician -- $159,000 -- from the industry between 2009 and 2012, according to a March 18 report by Texans for Public Justice.

Davis, who has pushed bills that would place stricter regulations of the industry, does not appear on the list of big recipients.

According to the Abbott campaign, Davis has received $9,500 from the payday lending industry since 2007.

Huerta did not respond when asked if Abbott supports tighter regulation of the industry.

Let's review: Abbott's mouthpiece won't answer any questions about White or the shylock industry, contests the amount of campaign contributions Abbott received (a number easily verifiable* from required reporting), and then calls Wendy Davis a hypocrite.

You have to like how this is going if you're a Democrat.  Abbott and his people are again committing unforced errors that Davis and her team are capable of exploiting.  It's also moving the skirmish away from the "AB" smears and the moldy oldie of "Clinton Obama Wendy Davis is goin' to take yer guns".  Since the 'mental illness' angle isn't getting any traction either, it looks like Abbott is desperate to attack Davis on something, anything to distract from his abysmally failed record.

I just don't think "hypocrite" is a label any Republican is going to successfully hang on anybody who isn't a Republican.

*Update: Not so easily verifiable, it seems.  The Davis campaign's own unforced error seems to be the point of this piece by David Rauf of the HouCHron, and not that Abbott is on the take from the payday lenders.  Only this last sentence at the very end acknowledges the point...

In all, the Express-News/Houston Chronicle estimates those 13 entities gave Abbott between about $190,000 and $205,000.  

Everything above that (in other words, everything else) is some awfully favorable media spin for the AG from the Hearst flagship.  Abbott has to be pleased about that.

Update II: KHOU has a better version of the story.

Update III: Peggy Fikac at the SAEN/HC covers it a little better, but is still extending the non-story for Monday morning's assist to Abbott.  The trouble with this kind of reporting is not just that the reporters gulped the Abbott campaign spin, but that they continue to make the "gotcha" the news.  And that is a direction chosen by editors at the top of the food chain.

Friday, January 03, 2014

Payday lenders going on offense

Privatization hits full tilt.

If you want to set up an account to use the new toll road in El Paso, Texas, you may have to first stop by a payday lender.

The El Paso Times reports that the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority will be working with the payday lender ACE Cash Express to help collect tolls for the César Chávez Border Highway toll road, which is expected to open Jan. 8.

While people who want to set up an account to use the road or pay off their toll charges can do so by phone, mail or online, the only places to do so in person in El Paso are at ACE stores. Those individuals who make the transaction at the payday lender "will be charged a $3 fee to set up the account and a $2 convenience service fee to replenish a non-credit card," the paper notes.

Keep in mind that this news follows the report that Rick Perry's appointee to the state Office of Consumer Credit -- and the executive of a payday lending company himself -- has lashed out at critics of his usurious racket.

The official who oversees Texas' consumer watchdog says payday-loan customers -- not the lenders -- are responsible when the loans trap them in a cycle of debt.

William J. White says it's out of line to even question an industry that has had its practices called exploitative by many critics, including the Catholic Church.

White was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to chair the state agency that oversees the Office of the Consumer Credit Commissioner, which is responsible for protecting consumers from predatory lending practices.

White also is vice president of Cash America, a major payday lender that the new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month socked with its first sanctions for abusive practices.

The only thing left to know is how much Cash America and Mr. White and others have contributed to Rick Perry.  Do you smell the fascism yet?

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia ban payday lending, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation defines as "imposing unfair and abusive loan terms on borrowers." Another nine states restrict payday lending.

Payday loans often prey on society's most economically vulnerable. As the Center for American Progress notes, in Texas, more than 75 percent of payday lenders are in neighborhoods where the median household income is less than $50,000.

[...]

Under Gov. Rick Perry (R), Texas has been a welcoming state for payday lenders.

"Texas is still essentially the wild, wild west of payday lending, where you can see payday lenders charging 400 and 500 percent annual interest rates," Diane Standaert, senior legislative counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, said.

The toll partnership with ACE was set up in 2010, during Perry's tenure.

With the vacuum of legislative inaction against these shylocks, Texas mayors have responded.

In December 2013, the City of Houston passed its own ordinance regulating pay day lending that requires lenders to register with the city, places limits on the amount of loans that can be dispersed, as well as the number of times loans can be renewed. Houston’s ordinance is similar to those adopted previously by the cities of Austin, Dallas, El Paso, and San Antonio.

Those cities all have Democratic mayors.  We're forced to remind ourselves that we get the government we deserve when Republicans get elected.  And that happens because Texas is the lowest among all 50 states in voter turnout.  Indeed, most of the victims of these usurious crimes can be found at the intersection of Poor and Dumb.  (Both of those are treatable conditions, but not as long as we let the GOP play doctor.)

But we also need to note that minor-league Democrats and their chickenshit political consultants have had their snouts in the payday lending trough as well.  John had his satirical take yesterday, while Sen. Sylvia Garcia has joined Wendy Davis in calling for White to step down.

“William White can’t protect Texas consumers while he represents a predatory lending company on the side,” she said.

You can count on Greg Abbott dodging questions about this for as long as he possibly can. The one thing the Attorney General is consistent about is avoiding taking a stand on anything until he runs it past his contributors. How much have they paid, again, is the only question that needs an answer.

We already know what they bought, after all.

Update: No sooner did I hit 'publish' than I see Charles' post, which links to Wayne Slater at Trailblazers -- with Abbott's (campaign spokesperson's) full-throated defense of his buddy, White.

In a statement Thursday, an Abbott campaign spokesman defended White and accused Davis of “blatant election-year hypocrisy” for criticizing him. Although Davis filed bills during the 2011 legislative session to curb abusive practices in the payday loan industry and was critical of White, the Abbott campaign spokesman notes she didn’t vote against confirming his nomination. Further, the spokesman said Davis had an opportunity to amend bills to limit industry representatives on the commission, but didn’t. A Davis campaign spokesman said White was one of more than 40 nominees to numerous state agencies and commissions voted on as a group. Cash America’s political committee — which White contributes to — has given Abbott at least $18,000 in political donations, according to state finance records. The industry’s major political committee, the Texas Consumer Lenders PAC, gave Abbott $10,000 before last year’s legislative session.

Not a single surprise there, not even Abbott's distortion of Davis' vote.

Thursday, January 02, 2014

2014, 2015, 2018...

No time like the now to talk about the future, I suppose.

-- CultureMap followed up with Annise Parker, who made news last week in disclosing her long-range political plans.

On the eve of her inauguration for a third — and final — term as Houston's mayor Thursday morning, it's a bittersweet time for Parker, who has always been more of a policy wonk that a back-slapping, baby-kissing politician. She can't run for another city of Houston office because of term limits. Yet, she finds the thought of not running again a bit liberating.

"I don't have any plans to run for anything so I am free to do things that people don't like and do what I think is right, whether it's settling 16 years of litigation with the topless industry or working on a nondiscrimination ordinance for the city of Houston or acknowledging legal (same-sex) marriages," Parker said.

Funny; that's not what she told Lone Star Q.

LSQ: What’s next for you after your term expires at the end of 2015? There’s been a lot of talk that you will run for statewide office as a Democrat in 2016 or 2018.

AP: I don’t intend to run for anything until I’m done as mayor. Unfortunately, in 2016, there’s not a lot out there, so I probably will need to go back into the private sector for a while, but I hope that while mayor of Houston is the best political job I would ever have, I hope it’s not my last political job. … I would certainly be interested in looking statewide. [I'm] not trying to be coy. People talked to me about running in 2014 as a Democrat for one of the statewide positions. I’ve had a lot of conversations with folks about that, but I made the commitment to serve as mayor of Houston and to do my best for the city for as long as I could. I just wasn’t in that place. I’ve also been fairly public that what I’m most interested in in terms of a future political position is something where I’m in an administrative or an executive position. [With] due respect to my members of Congress down here, I’ve been the CEO of a $5 billion corporation. I like to get things done, and the idea of, say, running for Congress, doesn’t excite me. … [It will be] a statewide executive position.

Strange. Those two quotes seem both direct and contradictory. Anyway, that reference to the $5 billion dollar corporation appears also in the CultureMap Q&A.

CM: As your last term as mayor, it must be a bittersweet time.

AP: It is because I hear the clock ticking. While we have done some amazing things, I really had to spend a lot of the first two years patching holes in a leaky boat. The economy was dreadful. I had to walk in and slash hundreds of millions of dollars in spending and it wasn't possible to drive an agenda at first, it was much more reactive.

... I also fully intend to do something about term limits before I leave, not that it will benefit me, and probably not benefit anyone serving in city government today. But two-year terms are too short. We're a $5 billion dollar corporation and we turn our leadership every two years. No corporation would do that.

Comparing government entities to public (or private) companies is simply a false analogy.  This corporate mentality that Democrats, even so-called progressive ones, fall back on is nothing but an old frame of the GOP.  It started with Reagan.

It is wrong to think that government should be run as a business.  If someone said "Corporations should be run like the government", they would be laughed out of the room.  The reverse premise is also mistaken.

I will have an opinion in just a moment with regard to term limits of municipal elected officials.  It's helpful to recall that such limits came about as the result of the deep-rooted corruption of several city council members some years ago.  At a time when people are crying about capping the terms for state and federal offices, to move in the opposite direction -- again -- is not the right move.   And with that...

As the inauguration of Houston's elected leaders begins Thursday morning, supporters and spectators gathered at the Wortham Center downtown will see six new City Council members walk across the stage.

Observers at the ceremony two years ago saw seven new members sworn in, and those present two years before that saw five new faces cross the stage. That's 18 position turnovers in four years around a horseshoe that seats 17, including the mayor, as Councilman C.O. Bradford pointed out at the council's final meeting of the year two weeks ago.

With this churn in mind, Mayor Annise Parker, Bradford and others are calling for changes to the city's term limits structure, which allows three two-year terms for the mayor, city controller and council members.

"That's simply too frequent. When I came to council, there were council members in the process of leaving … and they were just well-seasoned, they were just at the point where they were really ready to dig in and serve the city," said Bradford, who is starting his third and final term. "As we go forward in efforts to move our city forward, look at 18 turnovers in a four-year period and look at the challenge that presents."

Parker, herself term-limited out of office at the end of 2016, said she will ask council to present voters with a shift to two four-year terms, adding that any proposal will not apply to her.

"Churn" is the wrong word to use to describe this situation.  It's better left to the newspaper circulators and cable TV customer retention analysts.

And C.O. Bradford is self-servingly incorrect.

I just won't be in favor of anything that gives people on council, or the mayor or the city controller, more time in office.  One four-year term is enough; that way nobody is ever running for re-election, with its attendant fundraising and consultant-influenced bullshit.

This is how you get (some of) the money out of politics.

They can stagger the elections and have 50% of the new members rotate in and out every two years.  To refute Bradford directly: continuity on council is far too overvalued.  And as Mayor Parker herself noted, when you don't have to run for re-election, one can focus on one's agenda.  Whether it is hers, or Michael Kubosh's, or C.O. Bradford's.

Before we leave the topic of Houston city elections, let's read this and snort.

The 2013 election cycle has come to a close, meaning that speculation is already running rampant about the 2015 municipal election cycle. With an open Mayor and Controller’s race, potential candidates are already lining up to establish themselves as potential successors. State Representative and former Mayoral candidate Sylvester Turner has indicated his desire to run, along with former Congressman and Mayoral Candidate Chris Bell. Current Council Members Stephen Costello and Oliver Pennington are also rumored to be looking at the race. On the Controller’s side, Former Council Member and HCCS Trustee Carroll Robinson has expressed interest in running along with recent controller candidate Bill Frazier and current Deputy Controller Chris Brown. With a little over a year before candidates can formerly declare their intentions, many questions remain. Will Benjamin Hall consider running again after his unsuccessful 2013 campaign? Will the business community field a candidate along the lines of Bob Lanier in 1991 and Bill White in 2003? Will 2015 mark the entry of a viable Hispanic Mayoral Candidate? Already candidates have begun polling and meeting with financial backers to measure their viability. In the era of the continuous campaign, this is par for the course. Hopefully some or all of these candidates will address many of the longstanding issues that are facing this city. Only time will tell.

Way, way too much inappropriate capitalization.  This is a little better.

Houston Chronicle Reporter Mike Morris and Rice University Political Science Professor Bob Stein were guests on KUHF's Houston Matters.

Morris says there are a number of names already being discussed.

"Ed Gonzalez in District H, his name has been mentioned but I don't know that is particularly likely. I haven't put the question to him directly and I wouldn't expect him to really weigh in at this point in the game. Adrian Garcia, the sheriff of Harris County, his name has been mentioned. He's a former city councilman. I know State Rep. Sylvester Turner has not ruled it out."

Bob Stein says there's also Houston At-Large Councilmember Stephen Costello, who has already announced his intention to run for mayor.

"But I think there will be a half a dozen or so men and women who will run for this. But I think the candidate that's most likely to succeed, we don't know yet. I think you'll see a candidate come from outside of the elected officials we're talking about."

Stein says one name that likely won't be on the ballot again is Ben Hall, who lost to Parker in a thorough defeat.

-- Finally, something recent about the present.

Chili? No beans. Star Trek beats Star Wars. Hunting trumps fishing.

For those wondering whether Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis and Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott can agree on anything, the gubernatorial candidates' answers to a short set of light questions find a bit of common ground - and some amusing asides.

Not that amusing.  Except for this.

Asked to name one thing they fear, neither picked a potential physical danger, as Gov. Rick Perry did when the Des Moines Register asked if he had any little phobias (he hates snakes).

Abbott's answer could have come straight from a campaign speech: "The steady growth of government and how it is chipping away at our liberty. (Ex: Obamacare)"

Davis' was more personal. "Failing to do my best on behalf of others," she said.

Can't wait to see a picture of Abbott crying like a Boehner because of all the little Texas kids who won't grow up to live the 'Merkin dream... because affordable healthcare insurance held them back.