Closing ranks behind a scandal

Leo Vasquez, Harris County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, issued a statement that dismissed complaints that Johnson’s job, which can include approving or rejecting voter applications, conflicts with his side business.

“Ed Johnson is an honorable man,” Vasquez said. “It is slanderous and absolutely reprehensible to suggest without evidence that he is involved in inappropriate activity with regard to voter registration in Harris County.”

Bullshit, Leo. You squeal like a stuck pig every single time somebody shows you the dirt under your fingernails. You're a hack. A token Latin hack, at that.

Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos’ campaign paid more than $7,000 last year to CDS. She said late Wednesday her campaign hired CDS for targeted campaign mailers but she did not know about Johnson’s job with the county.

She insisted she saw no compromise of the elections office’s mission.

“I saw no conflict,” Lykos said.

Now that's the kind of hypocrisy Harris County Republicans are more accustomed to: blind injustice.

Gee, ya think there's any chance Attorney General Greg Abbott will investigate?

Huckabee's "mushy middle"

Great news; the Republicans are still not getting it:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned Republicans Wednesday against moving to the "mushy middle," arguing that only clearly stated conservative policies can bring the party back to power. ...

"I hear people who give advice that the Republicans need to moderate. They need to be a little more to the left," Huckabee said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It sounds like advice that Democrats would give to us so that we'd never win another election ever."

Some argue that Republicans have lost Congress and the White House because they've turned the party over to social and religious conservatives, driving away moderates and independents. Huckabee made precisely the opposite argument.

"It's when they move to the mushy middle and get squishy that they get beat," he said.

Pastor Mike, patron saint of adult onset diabetes, he of the big mushy middle himself -- having lost all that weight -- is readying himself for a run in 2012. He's got to sound as tough as Newt and Dick, though, so he's throwing his own (stir-fried lightly) red meat to the mad-dog base.

You remember the right-wing base; they shoot doctors and museum guards, don't they.

"Historically, the way we've found our way back to winning, having clear convictions that are conservative and then when elected, act like it," he said. "In every election, when Republicans have had clarity of convictions and those convictions were conservative, they win."

He warned that many Republicans have gone astray by buying into President Barack Obama's big-spending effort to stimulate the economy, a move he called "a big, colossal, utterly disastrous mistake.

"Our Republicans have culpability in that," Huckabee said. "There were some people who questioned whether I was really conservative. I don't want to hear, ever, people ever again talk about how conservative they are if they supported that."

Now that last line there sounds like a shot at Kay Bailey.

Which reminds why Governor MoFo is going to whip her next spring, even with one arm in a sling.

Midland's water contaminated

Erin Brockovich is on it:

"I never thought I'd see another Hinkley, California," Brockovich told CBS News from Midland, Texas, “but I’m afraid I might be wrong."

Hexavalent chromium, Brockovich said, is now being found in significant amounts in the water of over 40 homes in Midland.

"The only difference between here and Hinkley," Brockovich said, "is that I saw higher levels here than I saw in Hinkley."

Midland resident Kay Saythre knew something was wrong, and asked Brockovich to investigate.

"We didn’t really understand why the water was yellow when we filled the pool," Saythre said.

She also conducted a town hall meeting there last night:

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing — green water,” Brockovich, now president of Brockovich Research and Consulting, told a crowd of concerned homeowners and neighbors at the Midland County Horseshoe Arena.

The water looked like Gatorade coming out of the tap at one home near the most hard-hit area of County Road 112. The levels of hexavalent chromium in the wells is the highest she’s ever seen.

Drilling company Schlumberger is the suspected culprit.

Bob Bowcock, Brockovich’s chief environmental investigator, said in his research he has learned the state tested some wells in the area in February 2006 and found the levels to be at 2,600 parts per billion (ppb), well above the 100 ppb safety threshold. However, an error was made and not one of the homeowners was notified of the problem.

Now three years later, some of those levels measure at 5,000 ppb and higher.

“What people are pulling out of their water today, I wouldn’t give to my dogs. Or rats I wanted to kill in my attic,” he said.

There's a website set up for the area's residents.

Conflict of interest in Harris County's voter registration office

You actually thought that when Paul Bettencourt suddenly resigned, and the Texas Democratic Party's lawsuit revealed his voter registration shenanigans (recall the Wite-Out Caper?) that they were cleaning up their act over there? Well, you were wrong:

"This is as blatant a case of election corruption that I have seen,” said Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project, a Democrat activist group.

The Lone Star Project’s complaint revolves around Ed Johnson.

Johnson is the associate voter registrar at the Harris County Tax Assessor Collectors office, but according to state documents, that's just his day job. Johnson is also a paid director of a small company that provides voter data to Republican candidates for office. That company, Campaign Data Systems, billed at least $140,000 in 2008.

"It gets to the fundamental rights in a democracy and that is the right to participate in an election. You've got an individual who has got a partisan axe to grind and that person is determining who gets to vote and who doesn't," Angle said.

No one from the Assessor-Collector's office would comment on the accusation. According to them, this is because a lawsuit against the office that was filed after last year’s General Election could be affected.

As usual, it's not so much the crime as the cover-up:

"The fact that it has a (negative) appearance could have a chilling effect on voter’s confidence," said 11 News Political Expert Bob Stein

Stein says that there is no sign of any legal ethics violation from the documents he has seen, but they could be viewed negatively.

"I think that these are legitimate activities, partisan activities none the less. But the fact that he is not disclosing them and did not think to disclose them, probably raises questions whether he even thought it might be embarrassing to his employer," Stein said.

Already some political adversaries are speaking out.

"That is corruption by definition. You shouldn't have election officials that moonlight as partisan political hacks,” Angle said.

Stein would not go that far, but did say that “at the very least, it was a very embarrassing and awkward position."

Ed Johnson -- recall his testimony on Voter ID, and that of his consort George Hammerlein during the last legislative session -- has to be fired immediately by tax assessor-collector Leo Vasquez. And that would be only a necessary first step.

Charles Kuffner elaborates on the incriminating connection: Johnson's moonlight employer is owned by Rep. Dwayne Bohac. Bohac, like most of the rest of the hard-right in the Texas Lege, humped Voter ID to the detriment of thousands of pieces of important legislation.

And that's the latest accomplishment brought to you once again by the alumni of the Tom DeLay School of Advanced Political Corruption.

Update: See the KHOU video report. And read the Lone Star Project's comprehensive report on the entire sordid affair.

The Weekly Wrangle

The kids are out of school, the temperatures are climbing, the SDEC just met last weekend and accomplished absolutely nothing, and the Texas Progressive Alliance has another blog post round-up. This week's compilation was performed by George Nasser of the Texas Blue.

Neil at Texas Liberal writes about the relocation of the National Cash Register company from Dayton, Ohio to Georgia. Treating people like dirt for 200 years gives Southern states an advantage in creating a so-called "business friendly" low-tax low-wage climate.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is so amazed at the short-sighted policies our state and country continue to pursue. "Buy American" is a path to destruction, as she notes in Isolationist Trends Protect US From Reality.

Lamar Smith wins South Texas Chisme's asshat of the week award. Hyper-partisan Smith thinks all media should be like Fox News.

Who would have thought that an otherwise obscure bill about granting homestead exemptions to folks who lost their house in Hurricane Ike would become the most controversial issue in the first week post-sine die, including a threat by the Land Commissioner to refuse to follow the law if it gets signed by the Governor? Off the Kuff has the details.

Citizen Sarah over at Texas Vox sheds a tear over good environmental bills lost this legislature ... so much for the "solar session".

Burnt Orange Report writer Todd Hill has been selected as an Archer Fellow by UT-Arlington and will be headed to Washington DC in 2010 for a semester.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the former Tyler mayor looking to replace state representative Leo Berman.

Over at TexasKaos, liberaltexan argues that even Christians at Liberty University should be able to dissent. What a radical idea!

A Devon official strongly suspects a connection between recent North Texas earthquakes and the widespread hydraulic fracturing. Devon and other operators are leaving their mark on TXsharon's statcounter. She wonders what they are so worried about on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Teddy at Left of College Station reports on the College Station red light camera debate, and covers the week in headlines.

Bay Area Houston has the scoop on Perry calling a special session on Voter ID.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the excellent first session for Williamson County's Democratic state representative: Diana Maldonado -- Freshman of the Year.

Robert Reich describes how Big Pharma and Big Insurance plan to kill the public health care option, excerpted at Brains and Eggs.

WhosPlayin has AARP's call for Michael Burgess to act decisively on health care.

This week, McBlogger takes a look at some fashion advice from Details.

Lastly, The Texas Blue looks at the big winners and losers of this year's legislative session in Sine Die: The Aftermath.

Richard Shelby claims the 'Douchebag of the Week'

An unbelievable performance from the senior senator from Alabama:



Jed Lewison picks out the highlights if you can't stand to listen to them:

• The Obama administration is "obviously" turning America into a socialist nation.
• "No doubt we're going to government intervention everywhere, government ownership."
• It all started when Obama bailed out the banks last fall. (Yes, that was when Obama was a candidate and Bush was president, a fact Shelby later acknowledged.)
• Obama is "destroying the best health care system the world has ever known" by creating an alternative to private health insurance companies.
• Obama will "destroy the marketplace for health care" and the "American people better be careful in what they want."

Yes we had, Senator Shelby. And what this American person wants and what you want could not be further removed from each other than if I were you and you were RuPaul.

Update: The "best healthcare system the world has ever known" is in 37th place.

Funnies: Some dare call it terrorism

Key Figures in Global Battle Against Illegal Arms Trade Lost in Air France Crash

ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug trafficking

Amid the media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.

Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was traveling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio's sprawling favelas.

Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.

It is always amazing to me that sometimes the unfortunate circumstances of airplane disasters claim the prominent as well as the anonymous as victims.

Though his focus was on Latin America, Dreyfus also advised the government of Mozambique and at the time of his death was preparing to do the same for the government of Angola, where stockpiles of weapons left over from the civil war continue to pose a security problem.

Dreyfus and Dreyer were on their way to Geneva to present the latest edition of the Small Arms Survey handbook, of which Dreyfus was a joint editor. It was to have been their latest step in their relentless fight against evil.

Sunday Funnies: Sotomayor Derangement Syndrome

How Pharma and Insurance intend to kill the public option

Robert Reich:

I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.

You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.

So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.

That sorry-ass Max Baucus is behind this. The Democrats are more dishonest than the Republicans in this regard; at least the GOP is straight-up about their intentions. Mitch McConnell: "The key to a bipartisan bill is to not have a government plan in the bill, no matter what it's called ... When I say no government plan, I mean no government plan. Not something described some other way, not something that gets us to the same place by indirection. No government plan." The Blue Dogs will put together a Potempkin bill which looks like a public option, but as a practical matter won't be -- their modus operandi in other policy matters.

All this will be decided within days or weeks. And once those who want to kill the public option without their fingerprints on the murder weapon begin to agree on a proposal -- Snowe's "trigger" or any other -- the public option will be very hard to revive. The White House must now insist on a genuine public option. And you, dear reader, must insist as well.

This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.

We remain silent at our peril.