Thursday, February 06, 2014

More Texas Republican one-upsmanship

-- Chris Christie will be in the Metroplex today, raising money for the Republican Governors Association.  And neither Rick Perry nor Greg Abbott is going to meet him while he's in town.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) will not be at Christie's events in Dallas and Fort Worth. A spokesman for Perry told the Dallas Morning News Perry was "pleased" Christie would be visiting Texas.

"Governors come to our state regularly for a variety of reasons and we’re pleased to have them here," the spokesman said.

Greg Abbott, the likely Republican nominee in Texas' gubernatorial race this year also will not be at Christie's event. A spokesman for Abbott told the Dallas Morning News he would be in Houston for an appearance on immigration.


There was a third Republican who wasn't going to be able to meet Christie also, but nobody can remember who it is.  Oops.

-- Abbott does have his plate full, to be sure.  In a remarkable gaffe earlier this week, he revealed that South Texas is like a whole other country... a third-world one.  From my inbox:

Speaking from Dallas on Tuesday, February 4, Abbott also singled out the elected leadership and people of the Texas border region and neighboring Mexico, which is the largest trading partner with Texas, as being dishonest.

“This creeping corruption resembles third-world county practices that erode the social fabric of our communities,” Abbott said.

State Rep. Terry Canales of Edinburg took exception.

“What kind of Texas leader tells the whole world that the most important state in America has “Third-World” conditions, which sends the extremely damaging message that Texans are uneducated, unskilled, controlled by drug lords and other thugs, and served by incompetent local and county governments?” Canales asked. “It shows how much contempt that Greg Abbott has for millions of his fellow citizens. With so-called friends like Greg Abbott, who needs enemies?”

I don't think even Abbott's Latina wife is going to be able to help him out with this. That mistake is going to cost him another couple of million bucks in Spanish-language media, and Aaron Peña will be sent back out on the road again.

-- Not to be outdone, Congresscritters Pete Sessions and Joe Barton stepped up and tried to take the heat off Abbott with malaprops of their own.

Sessions:

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, called long-term unemployment insurance “immoral” on Tuesday.

“I believe it is immoral for this country to have, as a policy, extending long-term unemployment [insurance] to people rather than us working on the creation of jobs,” he said on the House floor. “[People must] be able to have a job, to learn to take care of themselves, to be able to meet their needs, to be able to become engaged in their community and have self-respect enough to know that jobs are important.”

Sessions’ statements were first reported by the Huffington Post on Tuesday. As Rules Committee chairman, he wields significant influence in crafting the House’s agenda. In January, the Senate failed to pass a Democratic-sponsored bill that would extend federal benefits for more than 1.3 million Americans who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks.

Barton:

At a question-and-answer session with reporters, Representative Joe Barton said Republicans should push for deficit reduction in exchange for a debt-limit increase.

Barton, a Texas Republican who has been in Congress since 1985, said his party should push for curbs in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security.

"A clean debt ceiling, I think, is capitulation," Barton said at "Conversation with Conservatives," a monthly forum moderated by the Heritage Foundation.


No UI, no SS.  Just go live under a bridge and starve while we find more tax cuts for oil companies, so that they can eventually create some jobs for you poor slobs in steerage class.  And if you get sick, then die quickly and reduce the surplus population.

If I hadn't linked it, you'd think I was making it up.  You would say to yourself: 'nobody could possibly be this cold-blooded'.

-- Finally, comprehensive immigration reform is dead in the US House until after the election.

Conservative Republicans on Wednesday ruled out any immigration legislation in the House this year, insisting that the GOP should wait until next year when the party might also control the Senate.

[...]

But several of the conservatives were adamant that the House should do nothing on the issue this year, a midterm election year when the GOP is angling to gain six seats in the Senate and seize majority control. Democrats currently have a 55-45 advantage but are defending more seats, including ones in Republican-leaning states.

"I think it's a mistake for us to have an internal battle in the Republican Party this year about immigration reform," Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, told reporters at a gathering of conservatives. "I think when we take back the Senate in 2014 one of the first things we should do next year after we do certain economic issues, I think we should address the immigration issue."

Labrador's comments were noteworthy as he was one of eight House members working on bipartisan immigration legislation last year. He later abandoned the negotiations.

Wayne has more on the fecklessness of the GOP, and the spinelessness of the Democrats to effectively run on the issue.  Latino voters: it's all on you to change this if you don't like it.  As Howard Dean said not so long ago: you have the power.  Get your block, your neighborhood, your church, and your community registered to vote in November.  And make sure you have proper ID.

Update: Almost forgot to mention that the True the Vote pasty gangsters are once again vindicated; there is indeed voter fraud in Texas.  Unfortunately it's Harris County Republicans doing the defrauding.

Four political campaign workers have been indicted by a Harris County Grand Jury in the wake of allegations of election fraud in a Harris County Justice of the Peace race, first reported by Local 2 News in January.

The suspects -- two men and two women -- were paid to gather signatures to place Republican candidate Leonila Olivares Salazar's name on the ballot in the Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2, Place 2 race.

Salazar is fighting to stay on the ballot. She says the four workers were hired by her campaign consultant, Collonnade Marketing, owned by long-time politico Fred Blanton.

[...]

The indictments, handed down Monday, come about two weeks after Salazar’s Democratic opponent, incumbent Judge George Risner, sued to have her name withdrawn from the ballot.

As first reported by Local 2, Risner obtained signed statements from three of the suspects admitting they did not actually obtain the signatures listed on the petitions.

Risner said his investigation shows that 380 of 447 signatures submitted to put Salazar's name on the ballot were forged.

The indictments name campaign workers 57-year-old Ralph Basil Garcia, 53-year-old Annette Irigoyen, 28-year-old Iris Irgoyen and 55-year-old David Basurto. All face felony charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and tampering with a governmental record.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Wednesday, February 05, 2014

Only two things today

If your time is short -- like mine -- and you only have time to read one or two pieces about Texas politics today, then click on these from Paul Burka and Charles Kuffner.

The evolution of the Republican primary into a race to the far right is a sad moment in Texas politics. There is nothing left of the party of George W. Bush, or even the party of Rick Perry. The press has done little to hold up its side of the equation; they can't get away from the Wendy Davis saga. We should be talking about how Republicans have allowed creationism to creep into the schools, about the myopia of the media when it comes to setting the agenda for a political race, about the failure of the business community to shoulder its share of responsibility for educating Texans about the things our citizens need: better schools, better roads, better health care.

There's only three more paragraphs there.  Burka isn't all that accurate all that often any more, but he's dead solid perfect there.  And so is Charles.  All the grafs ahead of this last one are important.

Here’s where Mark Jones’ idea really makes no sense. Pretty much every county where Democrats are strong features important primaries. We already know about Harris County, where the need to nominate Kim Ogg outweighs Jones’ suggestion all by itself. Travis County is electing a County Judge, as is El Paso County, which also features three hot legislative races. Bexar County has races for County Judge, County Clerk, District Attorney, District Clerk, and a slew of District Court judges. Dallas County has a power struggle between current DA Craig Watkins and Party Chair Darlene Ewing, with the former running his own slate of candidates, including one against Ewing. Tarrant County will be key to Rep. Mark Veasey’s re-election. And those are just the big counties.

The media and the consultants and the anal-ysts like Jones have dictated the terms of this election so far, and not just with the roasting of Wendy Davis for the snarling consumption by the fringe right hogs in this state.

The only way that will ever change is if enough people refuse to buy what they're peddling, and upend the conventional 'wisdom' with their direct action at the polling place.  If that does not happen, then Texans will keep getting what they have gotten for the past 20 years.  And will excruciatingly deserve what they will surely get in the years to come.

This is your final warning.

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Reconnoitering

But still no time for anything but an assembly.

-- Trey's rant about the Lone Star media was... okay.  I don't understand how anybody can call me vulgar after that, but all of McB's drunken-sailor-ishness doesn't detract (much) from his point: that the people covering politics in Texas day to day are simply a weak bunch, and especially from a historical perspective.  That isn't going to change, and if the Davis campaign is looking for a break... that ain't happening either.

The Texas Tribune apparently represents the best that it's going to get, and they are consumed with the horse-race aspect while at the same time advancing the usual false equivalencies that are by now just lazy and sloppy.  Click here, and then compare the headline to what you read in the address bar (the former headline, I presume).  And Charles Kuffner is absolutely correct: the next time you see "Mark Jones" in a story on Texas politics, just stop reading.

But the bottom line for Wendy Davis remains the same: her campaign is going to have to make something happen and stop reacting to what's happening.

-- I thought that Gadfly one-upped me with this.

Greg Abbott wouldn't want the political correctness police to treat his candidacy with kid gloves related to his physical handicap limitations, now would he?

We know that a good conservative like Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott would never, ever succumb to political correctness, now, would he?

Of course not. A rugged individualist hombre who can shoot thousand upon thousands of clay pigeons with a powerful 12-gauge loaded with double-aught buckshot a light, likely multi-round chambered 20-gauge shotgun with barely-more-than-blanks skeet loads surely doesn't need the support of librul buzz words, coded phrases and mollycoddling language, does he?

Or does he?

"Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus", indeed.  I remember singing that in church when I was a kid.


I wonder how Greg Abbott feels when he sings it.  To have to live with the fact that he can't, I mean.  Does that foster shame, or embarrassment, or some kind of putrid self-hatred?  Can you get counseling to deal with it?  It's probably covered by Obamacare, but not Medicaid, even under the terms of expansion that General AbouttheSame has no more intention of accepting than Governor Goodhair.

Neither of them should ever have to worry about being on Medicaid, after all.

-- Some Republicans have started an anti-Nathan Hecht campaign.  There's a Twitter account as well.  If you want something a little more serious -- and not seriously stupid all the time -- with your Texas Supreme Court campaign soup, then head on over and read John Coppedge at QR.  Excerpt complete with Harvey Kronberg's typical oddball emphasis.

There are three Texas Supreme Court incumbents facing challenges in the Republican Primary this election cycle- Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, Justice Jeff Brown and Justice Phil Johnson.

It is no secret that Houston mega-lawyer Mark Lanier is not a fan of the current court. What is noteworthy is that a look at the most recent Texas Ethics Commission reports of the three challengers to Hecht, Brown and Johnson shows that they have collected $61,100 in total. And 98% of that came from members of the Lanier firm. (Mark Lanier and 10 lawyers in his firm have contributed $60,000). He and his firm seem to be leading the charge. It remains to be seen if others will follow.

If the personal injury bar follows Lanier's lead this cycle, they will contribute handsomely to the campaigns of the three challengers. But so far, they are laying behind the log. And notably some are supporting the incumbents. In past campaigns, the trial lawyer contributions came primarily after the "30 Day Report", thus shielding them from public view until just a few days before the election. And the dollar amounts have been staggering.

More if you have a subscription.

-- Just so we're clear: the underling at MSNBC that got fired over a Tweet about the right-wing acting all indignant about a Super Bowl commercial (you know, the one Phil Griffin apologized to Reince Priebus for) just had the wrong Super Bowl commercial in mind.  You think Griffin will hire that person back?  Since they were correct about the right-wing reaction, that is?


Still way behind on events past and future.  I wanted to blog about all of the Keystone XL developments and #NoKXL rallies yesterday, and even about Louie Mueller Barbecue in town on Super Bowl Sunday (I went, it was great) and coming to Houston permanently soon, but there aren't enough hours in the day.  I'll get a round tuit eventually.