Statewide elections finally get some reportage

The election for Commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas broke into the MSM this past week with this Chronic posting. I've excerpted most of it following, since this contest has gotten nearly no attention:

The Texas Land Commissioner race between Republican Jerry Patterson and Democrat VaLinda Hathcox could hinge on who voters think can squeeze the most money out of 20 million acres of public lands.

The answer directly affects taxpayers and Texas schoolchildren because the millions in revenues generated by the General Land Office help fund public education.

For nearly a century, the land office has generated $9 billion for public education by funneling oil and gas royalties from state lands into the Permanent School Fund. The school fund, through stock investments, now holds $22 billion. Last year the land office generated another $500 million for the fund.

"That's been a tremendous benefit for Texas schoolchildren. However, oil and gas production peaked 20-something years ago," said Patterson, the incumbent seeking another four years in office. His No. 1 goal is to boost money for the Permanent School Fund by investing oil and gas royalties into lucrative real estate deals and by developing wind energy.

"Diversify, diversify, diversify," he said. "That's part of what we've done in the first four years. We're going to ramp it up substantially."

During the first five years of the diversification program, the land office generated more than $1.3 billion from oil and gas revenues, of which $566 million went directly into the school fund, according to the land office. Of the remainder, the land office invested $500 million directly in real estate and another $250 million into real estate investment funds.

"We're investing in income-producing real estate," Patterson said, explaining the idea is to leverage petroleum royalties long before the oil and gas spigots run dry. "You have to look at the Permanent School Fund as a trust fund for education. We were far behind the time in getting into real estate investments," he added.

Hathcox, of Sulfur Springs, said she decided to run for land commissioner because the state said it had no money for new textbooks even as the price of oil soared to $70 per barrel.

"When (the late Bob) Bullock was comptroller, every time the price of oil would go up you would hear what that meant for children in the state," she said. "You never hear that anymore."

She said that when the price of oil plunged to $17 a barrel in the early 1980s, the land office was still collecting $300 million in royalties for the school fund.

With oil prices more recently at $60 to $70 per barrel, the state collected only $500 million in royalties.

"I don't think we are getting the proper amount of money on our oil and gas leases," she said. Hathcox said she'd direct the land office's audit division to aggressively scrutinize oil and gas companies "to see we're getting the proper royalties we should be."

Patterson said Hathcox is fixated on the price of oil while ignoring two decades of production declines. Hathcox disagrees with the direction of the land office that began under Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and has been embraced by Patterson.

"This is a trust," she said. "I'm a trustee for all Texans. I do feel it's being operated more like a private real estate company where they're selling things for a quick buck and not looking at things for the long haul."

You don't suppose Patterson has managed the lease royalties to the favor of Big Oil and the detriment of public education and our children, do you?

Jerry Patterson has been one of Dubya's Good Ole Boys for a long time now. When Max Cleland, the former Georgia senator and Vietnam vet/quadriplegic, rolled out to Bush's ranch in August of 2004 to talk to the president about the baseless attacks on John Kerry's war record by the Swift Boat Liars, it was Patterson whom Bush dispatched to meet him.

(Of course, since George W Bush is too afraid to meet Cindy Sheehan, I'm not surprised he's scared of Cleland, who could kick his ass with no legs and his only arm tied behind his back.)

In the electoral battle for Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, the Republican incumbent has decided she'd better start spending some of her campaign millions on TV ads:

Republican comptroller candidate Susan Combs' Democratic opponent has no money, but Combs has bought $3.2 million of television advertising for the final three weeks of the campaign. ...

Combs' Democratic opponent, Fred Head, said he believes her advertising is either meant to help Perry by attacking Strayhorn or to "save" her own campaign from voter doubts raised by a steamy romance novel Combs once wrote. ...

"She may be going to spend the $3 million on T.V. to help Perry and hurt Strayhorn, but she's not going to be able to save her own campaign," Head said. ...

"I would imagine Mrs. Combs is trying to advertise enough to avoid having her pornographic novel stick to her campaign," Head said. "She's not who she says she is, and that's what Mark Foley wanted people to believe, too."

Fred Head has been exposing corruption in state government since 1971, when as one of the "Dirty Thirty" he revealed the dealings of Texas House speaker Gus Mutscher and what came to be known as the Sharpstown Scandal. As a result of Head's efforts in the Lege in 1972, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act -- one of the most powerful consumer protection statutes ever enacted -- was signed into law. Texas also has an Open Records Act and an Open Meetings Act because of Fred Head.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram adds:

"I'm all for the First Amendment [but] this book is 180 degrees in the other direction from the Republican Party, which during their last state convention told the people of Texas that they were the party of God," Head said. "I think it's the hypocrisy -- that's what's relevant."

The two candidates for Agriculture Commissioner, Hank Gilbert and "Big Head" Todd Staples, have highlighted their differences regarding the Trans-Texas Corridor and RFID for livestock in this joint interview on News8Austin. Here's a transcript if you can't watch the video. And the Startle-Gram points out the distinctions between the two on the Texas State Railroad, which runs close to where both men grew up in East Texas.

And David Dewhurst, a man of immense wealth, has already hit the airwaves hard to defend his miserable record as Lt. Governor against the Latina towering over him, Democratic challenger Maria Luisa Alvarado.

What are these Republicans so fearful of? Besides losing, that is?

This Thursday evening, US Senator Perjury Technicality has finally deigned to debate Barbara Ann Radnofsky (it will be broadcast live on your PBS station). Don't miss it.

Oh yeah, my man David is appearing at a courthouse near you this week, and is scheduled to appear in Houston tomorrow, Wednesday afternoon the 18th of October with several Harris County Democratic candidates and office-holders, including the man walking for Texas Supreme Court, Bill Moody. Don't miss that, either.

Republican incumbent Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was invited but I don't expect he will be there. More about Abbott, the Texas Residential Construction Commission -- a consumer protection organization owned lock, stock, and barrel by Bob "Swift Boat" Perry -- and the overflowing bayous of money surging in and out of these Republicans, in the post above.

Elephantiasis of the Hubris

No, that's not a picture of Speaker Hastert.

It's not even Karl Rove -- though he does have some shoes like that.

This of course is actually a person with a disfiguring ailment used as a symbol of what the Republican Party has become. And it's not their legs or even their genitalia (if the picture here makes you squeamish, then don't click here) but their egos that have swollen so hideously large that you will recoil in horror upon gazing at them.

Behold ...

David Kuo, who will be on "60 Minutes" tomorrow evening, describes how the GOP has used the religious right as a fob in his book Tempting Faith, here on Keith Olbermann recently:



ThinkProgress has posted another excerpt from the book, setting the scene just prior to Bush's 2001 inuguration:

Every other White House office was up and running. The faith-based initiative still operated out of the nearly vacant transition offices.

Three days later, a Tuesday, Karl Rove summoned (Don) Willett (a former Bush aide from Texas who initially shepharded the program) to his office to announce that the entire faith-based initiative would be rolled out the following Monday. Willett asked just how — without a director, staff, office, or plan — the president could do that. Rove looked at him, took a deep breath, and said, “I don’t know. Just get me a f—ing faith-based thing. Got it?” Willett was shown the door.

Don Willett was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court, by Governor Rick Perry, in 2005 with nearly no courtroom -- much less judicial -- experience. (His opponent, Judge William Moody, was the only Democratic statewide candidate endorsed by the Dallas Morning News.)

Got the stomach for following the thread a little further?

Rick Perry has released a television ad portraying Chris Bell as the recipient of special interest money, while at the same time accepting even larger contributions from Bob "Swift Boat" Perry and James "Death to Public Schools" Leininger, a couple of guys with no hidden agenda.

Bob Perry has also contributed over a million dollars to former Texas Supreme Court justice and current Texas attorney general Greg Abbott, whose own faith-based intiatives as well as his moral failings and ethical lapses have been well-documented.

Greg Abbott, a man who was paralyzed when a tree fell on him, who then sued to collect millions from insurance, then also succeeded in changing the laws by which he collected that money by advocating for tort reform in Texas, is a darling of the religious right in Deep-In-The-Hearta. The fundamentalists and evangelical Christians long ago joined forces with the Texas Republican Party to take over not just the legislative and judicial branches of state government but also the state board of education in order to re-write school textbooks -- performing edits such as deleting scientific theories of evolution and replacing them with creationist views. The Texas Freedom Network details how this came about; here's a summary:

• The religious right has tightened its grip on the Republican Party of Texas and now completely controls the party leadership. In fact, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between the movement and the party in leadership, political goals and tactics.

• Having spent $10 million since 1997 to help the Texas GOP take control of state government, wealthy San Antonio businessman James Leininger is now working to purge from office those Republicans who fail to support fully the religious right’s public policy agenda. In fact, with Leininger’s financial support, the religious right is on the verge of finally winning a majority of seats on the State Board of Education.

• The new model in the religious right’s political strategy relies on recruiting conservative evangelical pastors who will use their positions as church leaders to advance the movement’s policy agenda. In fact, the state’s newest far-right pressure group, the Texas Restoration Project, has been recruiting thousands of pastors to support (successfully) a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and to back conservative candidates for office, including Gov. Rick Perry.

• David Barton, vice chair of the state GOP and president of the Christian advocacy group WallBuilders, has become a key part of efforts to recruit conservative evangelicals into the Republican Party. Using questionable research, Barton appeals to Christian conservatives with the dubious argument that the separation of church and state is a myth created by activist judges.

Karl Rove, Don Willett, Rick Perry, James Leininger, Bob Perry, and Greg Abbott. Six degrees of barely any separation, and bookended by Jesus. Men who have waved the flag, carried the cross, made millions of dollars and used it to ruin other men, destroy public institutions, re-write laws to serve their means, spread lies and disinformation and done it all not in the name of God or even in defense of liberty but for power and ever more money.

Praise God.

And pass the ammunition.

Update (10/17): More about David Barton, Republican Jesus freak, at this Kos diary.

Christie Elam is stalking me again.

You know where to find him. He's always good for a few horse laughs, and then you suddenly realize his obsession with me is probably unhealthy.

Chris, honey: get a life.

And some mighty fine blogging elsewhere

Easter Lemming has a link-heavy post about Houston's largest church and its unrelenting efforts to influence the neoconservative social agenda.

The Agonist reminds us of a pop quiz on foreign leaders' names that then-Governor George W. Bush failed six years ago. Take heart, Grandmaw.

Lake Jackson Dem excerpts The Nation's "Cultural Famine" article.

Half Empty announces that Paul Begala is coming to Missouri City to boost the Fort Bend Democrats next week.

Lots of David Van Os around the blogosphere.

Grits for Breakfast has a theory about why Houston hasn't been attacked by terrorists.

The San Antonio Current singled out Pink Dome, In the Pink Texas, and Burnt Orange Report for some snarky blogging jealousy. They had better things to say about the Blogging Rep and Little Pollyanna and Burkablog. They do seem to like pretty colors and pictures over at the Current. The reading? Not so much.

Everybody go wish Karl-Thomas Happy Birthday.

Capitol Annex has more on the humiliation that is Todd Staples. Elect Hank Gilbert.

Bay Area Houston keeps up the heat on the Texas Residential Construction Commission.

Dos Centavos points us toward Judge Mary Kay Green's new website. Judge Green is one of the best persons -- not just one of the best Democrats or best candidates -- on the ballot this year. Her opponent is the abysmal Annette Galik. Harris County needs more judges like Mary Kay Green.

And from across the Sabine, People Get Ready reminds us why parental notification requirements are inhumane.

Republicans really shouldn't be debating

... particularly if they aren't capable of doing any better than Martha Wong performed last night in her tete-a-tete (that's French, Martha) with Ellen Cohen and Mhair Dekmezian last night at Rice.

Really. That Wong tapes over the word "Republicans" on her lawn signs starts to make sense when she says things like"The Trans-Texas Corridor will only cost $2 million dollars." I can't really blame her for doing that, though; if I were still a Republican, I wouldn't want anyone to know it either.

This woman isn't even my representative and I'm embarrassed. The same kind of embarrassment that wells up when Carole Strayhorn, who has been endorsed by Texas teachers' unions but can't name the newly-elected Mexican president, or when Kinky Friedman opens his mouth to say anything at all.

Wong also has an extraordinarily unsettling manner of viciously denouncing her opponents, and inappropriately grinning at the conclusion of her rabid attack. Disconcerting.

Pollyanna posted her lengthy summary (sorry we weren't introduced, Kim; next time let's do a kaffeklatsch --that's German, Martha -- afterwards) and she notes some of my highlighted moments:

-- Libertarian Dekmezian offered more than a few moments of Kinky-style comic relief. Visibly nervous all the way to the end, with no apparent rehearsal or even prepared remarks for opening or closing, Dekmezian still made points that the mostly progressive audience nodded and applauded and laughed at (in a good way). As hilarious as it is watching a 14-year-old trying to play with grown-ups, he ought to be excused from the third scheduled debate, despite the fact that he was better at understanding and communicating the issues than the Republican incumbent.

-- Wong is a little too redundant with phrases like "plaintiff's attorneys" and "tort reform", especially for an audience that is not the River Oaks Republicans.

We sat in the mezzanine, behind a row of seating reserved for the Wong campaign, and who should plop his fat ass down in front of us than Tom DeLay's Cabana Boy and two of his minions. Culberson acted just like the rest of the partisans in the audience, applauding after the moderator asked us not to, nodding his big fat head at the moronic pronouncements Wong made seemingly every 60 seconds, and so on. A special shout-out to John NoRailonRichmond: my mother-in-law and father-in-law, Republican voters since they came to the United States in 1962, are voting for Jim Henley. It's easy to see why you don't want to debate, either.

Enjoy your lobbying career, you miserable ass.

Ellen Cohen handled this affair the way Chris Bell managed his competition last Friday night: if it had been a prizefight, the referee would have stopped it at the halfway mark.

New, real, effective representation for the 134th. That fresh air you feel this morning inside the Loop isn't just a cool front.

Drive-by linking

A few quick shots for your reading pleasure:

-- The Statesman has drawn an analogy between my man David and Dorothy Gale of The Wizard of Oz. It's a proper analogy, when you take it in full context. David is wrapping up the last of the Whistlestop Courthouse Tours this week and next, in Fort Worth and Dallas, then Houston, and completing in San Antonio and Austin.

-- Tonight's debate between HD-134 candidates Ellen Cohen, Martha Wong, and Libertarian Mhair Dekmezian at Rice University promises to be fun. Ryan has the particulars if you want to attend, or if you'd rather stream it live online. I'll be on hand and post a report late tonight or tomorrow.

-- Chris Bell's call for Kinky to pull out of the gubernatorial race was met with sputtering indignation from the former Texas Jewboy, and even more vinegar-laced invective from his supporters, including -- natch -- the Repugnants who are praying Governor MoFo can manage to get re-elected.

Snap, goons: this is about Kinky's supporters, not Kinky. They're the ones who are desperate for an out, and Friedman keeps giving it to them every time he opens his mouth. I think most of them are smart enough not to waste a vote on possibly the worst candidate the state of Texas has even seen, but unless their boy does the smart thing and quits the race, we'll have to test that intelligence theory on Election Day.

A vote for Kinky is a vote for Rick Perry, that's why the hell not.

-- Mark Warner is not going to run for the Democratic nomination for President. Eileen and Greg are sad. Me? Not so much. Warner is too conservative for my taste. He'll be kingmaker of a sort this presidential cycle with his obvious fundraising talents, but I don't look for him to even take the #2 slot on a presidential ticket (if one accepts the rationale for not running for President is to save the wear-and-tear on his wife and kids).

I like Warner as a Senator or even as Governor again, and we 'll let the future sort itself out. And I agree with kos relative to how the 2008 Sweepstakes shifts with Warner out now.

See how easy that was, Kinky? Oh wait, you don't have any family, just a bunch of stray dogs. GTF out of the race anyway, dude. The joke is over.

Pull out, Kinky.

The overnight news from the Dallas paper has Chris Bell asking Kinky Friedman to get out of the race. Kinky's response is to dig in his bootheels.

Here's my message:

Pull out, Kinky. You know you want to.

You're not having fun any longer. All this running around all over Hell's half-acre, having to talk to reporters who keep asking the same damn questions (like 'why do you say "n----r" all the time'), lousy food and weak coffee and hard hotel beds and shitty pillows and everything else about life on the road that you quit years ago when you stopped making music and started writing cheap detective novels.

It's time to go back to the ranch, to your stray dogs, to the cigar-smell infested bunkhouse you call home, take off that nasty hat, brush your slimy teeth and lay it down.

Texas needs you to quit, Kinky. Now.

It's no longer about Mark Foley, Part II

The Grand Old Pederast Party has closed ranks around their rotund Speaker, ensuring his continued leadership all the way to January (when he will likely be replaced by Nancy Pelosi anyway).

I noted the first calls for him to step down, but never advocated his doing so myself. My feeling from the outset was: meh, let him stick around if he chooses. Hastert is a much heavier albatross around the necks of the GOP than even Tom DeLay would have been at this point, and as a result becomes the icon of a Congressional scandal entering its second week as a top news story.

See, among the reasons it stays in the news -- besides the MSM's sexual obsession -- is that the history of Foley's child predation has been extended once again; it now goes back as far as 2000. Which means that when the Republicans say 9/11 changed everything... well, they didn't mean "everything."

Here's a talking point:

More protection was given to a sexual predator among their ranks by Republican leaders than to our soldiers in Iraq (body armor), than to our national security (ports, nukes in North Korea), than even to our childrens' health care (millions -- in Texas alone the number is 1.4 million -- abandoned, uninsured).

Pretty sweet if you're one of the elite, that conservative agenda.

The Congressional page-sex scandal, as of this moment, rightfully deserves to be pushed from the headlines. And it needs to be replaced with the threat of a nuclear showdown looming with Kim Jong Il, or the second weakness exposed in our national food supply in a month (this news suggests that the terrorists understand that they could terrorize us with it), or even -- God forbid -- the 32 soldiers killed in the first eight days of October in an increasingly unstable Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet, perhaps the so-called liberal media still take their cue from the White House in a perverse way. What would Our Dear Leader be most upset about lately?

Disloyalty.

There's a lot of very important things that the Bush administration simply doesn't give a shit about, North Korea being only the latest example of the consequences of electing (sic) a moron President.

And I have to think that a Democratic Congress in 2007 is going to be able to help him focus on a few of the real issues.

(thanks to ThinkProgress, one of the very best places on the Internets, for the leads)

Blogger scoops traditional media (again)

Rep. John Davis, a Republican representing the Clear Lake area in the Texas Lege for the past eight years, has been revealed to be woefully inept at best -- and criminally negligent at worst -- regarding his expense report filings. One hundred thousand dollars' worth of campaign expenses lack sufficient documentation. That's a violation of Texas election law.

So reports KHOU today.

But Muse is the one who broke this story weeks ago; her painstaking gumshoe investigation revealed the ethical lapses that finally drew the attention of the Texas Ethics Commission and the so-called liberal media.

John Davis is so incompetent that he was declared a piece of "used furniture" by Texas Monthly in 2003.

Though the results of the TEC investigation into Davis' finances will not be made public until after November 7, the voters of District 129 can cast a vote for good government by electing Sherrie Matula to the Texas House.

They deserve it. Hell, we all deserve it.

Sunday Postpourri

That big blonde digging out a kill attempt happens to be my niece. She is the star on the University of Arkansas volleyball team.

Last evening the two candidates competing for the US Senate held a debate at Rice University. My birthday buddy Barbara Radnofsky and Scott Jameson, the Libertarian candidate, talked substance for 90 minutes before an assembly of about fifty voters and a few media. Kay Bailey Torture was too scared to show up, and after watching Barbara tear her into little pieces in absentia, I can understand why. Senator Perjury Technicality alleges she will show for another debate scheduled for October 19, in San Antonio and to be broadcast on all statewide PBS stations. We'll see.

The conglomerate that owns the Los Angeles Times fired its publisher because he refused to cut staff. This is amazing to me, because I spent a decade in corporate newspaper management and never met a single man nearly brave enough to do this. I'll have more to say at a later date.

One of the best restaurants in New Orleans is finally open again. I'm not a candidate for the turtle soup, but most everything else on the menu -- including the jazz brunch; they invented that -- is worth the drive over. Right across the street from Commander's Palace is the Lafayette Cemetery, one of the Crescent City's oldest burial grounds. Lots of interesting history when you take a ghost tour and lots of movies filmed there. Here's a good picture of it.

The old I-10 bridge over the Trinity River -- between Houston and Beaumont -- is finally going to be replaced.

If you have ever sold a used car to another person and conspired to report the selling price as lower than reality when you recorded the title change at the courthouse... well, you can't get away with that any more. The state estimates that they will collect an additional $35 million dollars from eliminating the "liar's affidavit", and the county tax assessor-collectors estimate that many will be pissed off about it. Way to go again, Rick Perry and the Republican Texas Lege. At least they haven't raised your taxes, right?

TIME declares that the Republican Revolution is over. Stu Rothenberg says "a true blowout is now possible".

And don't miss the Moral High Ground Mudslide edition of this week's Sunday Funnies.