Todd Staples' slimy pyramid scheme

Even compared to the vast corruption of Rick Perry, the incumbent agriculture commissioner occasionally manages to one-up the Eagle Scout/Aggie yell leader.

A criminal case from the mid-1990s refers to an "endless chain scheme" called the Friends Gifting Network (or the "Friends Gift Network" or  "Friends Network" or "Friends Helping Friends", and a variety of similar names).

In 1994, Todd Staples participated in this pyramid scheme and had family (his brother-in-law) participating in it. A criminal complaint was filed in Anderson County -- the seat is Palestine, Staples' hometown -- and Staples' brother-in-law was arrested and charged. The Palestine city attorney followed up by requesting help from the Anderson County district attorney for assistance in investigating the illegal pyramid scheme. (Staples is between elected-official jobs at this time; he has previously served on the Palestine city council, and for the years 1990 and '91 as mayor pro tem.)

This document reveals that the case was put on "hold" in 1994 and then dismissed in '96.

The case was dismissed because Todd Staples -- who was elected state representative in a special election to fill a vacancy in 1995 -- voted in favor of legislation that legalized the crime for which his brother-in-law was charged. This had the added benefit, of course, of making it impossible for Staples himself to ever face any charges or even be questioned in detail about the matter by a prosecutor, or the media.

But Staples wasn't finished. From the press release:

Staples and others managed to escape prosecution for their participation in the illegal enterprise, and court records reveal that Staples and Jeff Herrington, the Anderson County DA at the time, worked in concert to get the officer that investigated the scheme and arrested Staples’ brother-in-law removed from his job. At the time, the same police officer who investigated Staples’ brother-in-law was raising serious questions concerning why Herrington and his office received an unauthorized share of federal drug forfeiture funds. Additionally, a member of Herrington's staff had been implicated along with Staples in the pyramid scheme.

You read it right. Staples exacted revenge on the officer who investigated the case, Commander Jerry Powell of the Texas DPS, by colluding with DA Herrington to remove Powell from his post.

According to additional court records, shortly thereafter, Staples became involved in a series of events leading to the removal of a narcotics officer who arrested his brother-in-law and was the lead officer investigating the Friend’s Gifting Network.

Court records show that Staples’ facilitated meetings with the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety at the behest of, among others, the same Anderson County District Attorney whose staff member was involved in the pyramid scheme, in order to discuss removal of the police officer.

Court filings also show that, were the word of Staples’ high-level participation in the Friend’s Gifting Network become publicly known prior to the 1995 special election to replace State Rep. Elton Bomer, it would have likely ended Staples’ political career. The same court filings show that Staples’ assistance to the District Attorney came at a time when he and his office were accused of receiving an unauthorized share of funds seized during a federal narcotics investigation. The same police officer who arrested Staples’ brother-in-law had initiated inquiries to determine why the DA’s office had received this share of funding.

This document contains a transcript of an undercover phone call regarding Friends Gifting Network; these documents show Staples' rise to "vice-president" in the Friends Network pyramid scheme and contain the police case file on Staples' brother-in-law. This document is the transcript of the arrest in which Staples' brother-in-law helps entice the undercover police officer to participate in the pyramid scheme.

Finally, these documents contain the response to Staples' Motion for Summary Judgment, and the Affidavit of Plaintiff talks about Staples' motivation, mentioning the case's potential for damaging his budding political career.

Let's review: Todd Staples participated in an illegal pyramid scheme which bilked hundreds of East Texans out of thousands of dollars. The crime was investigated and his accomplice brother-in-law charged. Staples went on to be elected to the Texas Legislature, where he voted in favor of a bill which made illegal pyramid schemes legal, exonerating his brother-in-law in the process. Staples then conducted a personal vendetta against the investigating officer of the case.

All so as not to damage his future political viability. Because as all Texans are aware, you never know when the agriculture commissioner might one day become the longest-serving governor in the history of Texas.

Do we want to really reward this slimeball with re-election? No, we don't.

We want a new Commissioner of Agriculture (whose greatest crime, it should be noted, happens to be not wearing his seatbelt, and working out a payment plan with the IRS).

Update: Read this Dallas Morning News story and don't miss reading the comments.

The House may be lost

Some additional insights here from electoral-vote.com worth knowing.

Long-time political observer Charlie Cook is predicting the Republicans are likely to win 198 seats in the House, with another 47 being tossups. If the Republicans win even half of these, that gives them the majority. But in wave elections most of the tossups go the same way, so the odds of the Republicans winning 30 or more of the tossups are reasonably good. Cook's best guess is that they will pick up something in the range of 48 to 60 seats. This would put this election on a par with 1994, when they picked up 52 seats in the House.

In the Senate, he is predicting a Republican gain of about 8 or 9 seats. If that happens, all eyes will be on Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to see if they jump ship. However, both of them are keenly aware of what happened to Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) when he did just that: he was defeated in a primary. Both of these could expect nasty primary fights if they became Republicans, especially if it were to save their own skins rather than out of some deep-seated convictions that have been rather absent until now. Nelson has to worry about the fact that Nebraska is full of Republican politicians who would primary him with the slogan "vote for a real Republican." If he decided to switch, his real battle would be the primary--where only Republicans can vote--rather than the general election, where Democrats can, too. Lieberman is so unpopular and unpredictable that anything is possible with him, but he has nothing in common with Jim DeMint and even less with Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, so he is likely to continue to caucus with the Democrats.

If the Republicans capture the House, as Cook, Nate Silver, and other close observers predict, the new Speaker of the House is virtually certain to be Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) (which he prefers to pronounce "Bayner" rather than "Boner" or "Booner"). Boehner has an everpresent deep tan and smokes two or three packs of cigarettes a day. The Washington Post has a long profile of him today.

Boehner has a strange history within the caucus. He was one of the authors of the Republicans' "Contract with America" that propelled them to victory in 1994. But in 1998, he was booted out of his leadership position, only to be elected majority leader in 2006. He is more of a back-room wheeler-dealer type person than an "ideas" man, as former Speaker Newt Gingrich fancied himself. Still, if the Republicans have a small majority starting in January, he is going to need all his people skills to rein in the fractious tea partiers intent on changing Washington the moment they arrive. It is likely that the tea partiers will form their own coalition. If they get more members than the Republicans' majority, they get a de facto veto on everything he does, much as the Blue Dogs have with the Democrats. However, since the brunt of the voters' wrath is going to fall on the Blue Dogs next Tuesday, the Democratic caucus is going to move to the left, and with the tea party members of his own caucus pulling him to the right ... he is not likely to accomplish much.

If Boehner moves up, the other Republican leaders will move up. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the only Jewish Republican in Congress, is likely to become majority leader and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) would then become whip. Boehner is not very close to either of these -- just as current Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't especially care for her #2, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Boehner tends to hang with some of the rank-and-file Republicans, especially Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA). Boehner lives in a basement apartment he rents from one of his many lobbyist friends. His wife, Deborah, lives in Ohio.

The Weekly GOTV Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes you all have voted or will be voting soon as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

This week at McBlogger, we take a look at the increasingly desperate campaign being run by Todd Staples. Last Friday they attempted to eavesdrop on an internal Gilbert campaign conference call, if that tells you much. You simply won't believe the rest...

Letters From Texas spent most of the week pointing to Republican efforts to scapegoat and alienate minorities, first pointing out both Parties' failure to communicate effectively with Hispanic voters, then pointing out Republicans' blatant attempts to prevent them from voting, and showing that they'd planned to do it in Texas too. Most shocking, however, was the release of a photo of the most disturbing political sign in Texas.

Off the Kuff published his last interview of this cycle, with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White.

Bay Area Houston would vote for Proposition 1 in Houston if....

Ever wonder why republicans have gotten so batsh*t crazy? CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks they're locked inside their own tiny, tiny minds.

The news of the week in Harris County spread all across the country: well-fed Caucasian conservatives are going places they've never gone before -- minority early voting polling locations -- and doing their damndest to keep as few of 'those people' from casting a ballot as possible. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs kept the story up to date.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shows the choice for governor comes down to this very simple issue: We must end Perry's unprecedented time as governor - he's been in office too long.

Martha Griffin at musings has questions about Prop 1 on the ballot in Houston. Why the lack of details about the plan and where is the political muscle to get this passed?

BossKitty at TruthHugger just decided to vent about the direction this election is trying to take the country ... with me in it: Federal Government in the crosshairs – OpEd.

Public Citizen is getting into the fray over early voting and intimidation activities across the state, with a press release and conference Monday afternoon in Houston with the League of Women Voters and a blog over at TexasVox. Keep watching for more coverage as this story continues to develop.

Len Hart at BlueBloggin looks at A Party of Panic and Depression, the Republican world of economics, death and destruction, K-Street and war. The administration of Ronald Reagan ushered in a depression of some two years, a contraction of the economy, and a transfer of wealth upward to the upper quintile, the nation’s richest 20 percent. A windfall of this nature is not stimulus to invest but rather to transfer the gains offshore.

Lightseeker at TexasKaos reports that according to a recent Gallup poll, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans... basically our non-white/non-black population... are going to vote for the Republicans in this election by a 52%-42% margin. Turns out that polling on this mid-term election has some serious problems. There is more at The Polls are Off and Nobody Knows by How Much!

Neil at Texas Liberal offered his election endorsements for Texas in 2010. And as a long-time former resident of the Buckeye State, he also made endorsements for Ohio.

The finish line in sight

When even poor ol' Karl-Thomas is down in the dumps over the polling, you know there's some gloomy Guses out there. But leave it to Kuffner to destroy that stubborn inevitability meme again. Only fools and Republicans -- there's a difference? -- believe it anyway. Look what the Texas Democratic statewides are doing:

-- Hank Gilbert is working West Texas hard in the closing days before the election.

Gilbert will meet and greet voters in Amarillo, Clyde, Panhandle, Pampa, Canadian, Perryton, Dalhart, Dumas, Stinnett, Fritch, Borger, Canyon, Tulia, Levelland, and Midland.

What, no Plainview?! These are not the kind of Texas towns in which a Democratic candidate usually spends the week before Election Day getting out the vote. But Gilbert has won over many Republicans and Tea Partiers in his campaign this year, and he's going fishin' where they're bitin'.

Update: jobsanger has photos from Amarillo yesterday.

-- Barbara Radnofsky kicks Greg Abbott in the pants again...



As she pointed out in her debate with the suddenly-proud-he's-wheelchair-bound attorney general, the amount of money the Wall Street banksters cost Texans comes pretty close to equaling the amount of money the state budget is lacking.

So even though the governor won't acknowledge the budget deficit, why aren't Perry and Abbott trying to recoup those billions? Because it would anger their fat cat donors, that's why. Perry's already been exposed for having pushed TRS trustees to invest in his cronies' companies, an investigation into which was essentially whitewashed. Harvey Kronberg had more on the curious case of Roel Campos last Friday:

Earlier this week, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White released a whistleblower memo reporting that the Perry appointed Teacher Retirement System board reversed staff investment recommendations which benefitted the Governor’s campaign contributors.

The Governor’s office responded to Dallas Morning News' Wayne Slater: "This matter was brought up over two years ago. TRS had an outside lawyer review the facts and they said they had no merit or such, the matter was then turned over to the state auditor's office and they took no action."

Of course, the identity of “outside lawyer” proved to be a entirely separate issue of bad judgment on its own. Roel Campos of Cooley Godward Kronish LLP was the attorney that issued the report that ignored most of the substantive issues raised by the whistleblower and essentially reported that bosses get to over rule staff.

Our colleague Paul Burka called the report “pablum” and he may have been too gentle.

But the real question is how did someone with Campos’ resume’ ever get close to TRS and not once, but twice?

There is more to the story of Roel Campos and the Teacher Retirement System.

-- Speaking of the governor, he's lying again.



Border security is the signature hot button issue with the freak right. But Perry is demagogueing it by repeating the same "sanctuary city" BS his base keeps mumbling.

-- Bill Clinton is in Brownsville today rallying voters.

There's more, but you get the picture. This year's election results are still a cake in the oven.

MoDo is making me ill again

It's just too early in the morning to be this nauseous. Two excerpts I can manage to keep down:

It’s too late to relitigate the shameful Thomas-Hill hearings. We’re stuck with a justice-for-life who lied his way onto the bench with the help of bullying Republicans and cowed Democrats.

... and ...

The 5-to-4 Citizens United decision last January gave corporations, foreign contributors, unions, Big Energy, Big Oil and superrich conservatives a green light to surreptitiously funnel in as much money as they want, whenever they want to elect or unelect candidates. As if that weren’t enough to breed corruption, Thomas was the only justice — in a rare case of detaching his hip from Antonin Scalia’s — to write a separate opinion calling for an end to donor disclosures.

In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court chose the Republican president. In Citizens United, the court may return Republicans to control of Congress. So much for conservatives’ professed disdain of judicial activism. And so much for the public’s long-held trust in the impartiality of the nation’s highest court.

Justice Stephen Breyer recently rejected the image of the high court as “nine junior varsity politicians.” But it’s even worse than that. The court has gone beyond mere politicization. Its liberals are moderate and reasonable, while the conservatives are dug in, guzzling Tea.

And if you want more of this, vote Republican.