Greg Abbott's Bad News of the Week

He makes headlines twice; this one is for dirty money.

A report released by Texans for Public Justice today revealed that Attorney General Greg Abbott took in $85,000 in campaign cash from two brothers who were convicted this month of massive civil securities fraud.  The Wyly brothers could be on the hook for $550 million for what SEC called "an elaborate sham system."

From the report:

Fruits of this investment fraud appear to have trickled down to Texas politicians. The two Wyly brothers contributed $1,247,543 to state PACs and politicians from 2000 through 2009, money that overwhelmingly benefited the GOP.

Unfortunately—considering Greg Abbott’s own record of corruption and insider dealing—it comes as no surprise that Abbott would count the Wyly brothers among his cronies.

(If you haven't been following the trial of Charles and the late Sam Wyly, then catch up here.  It's just run-of-the-mill Lone Star 1%-er corruption, but every time some of these white collar crooks get busted, more strings get pulled and their politicians fall out.)

And this one is for vote suppression.

As the Waco Tribune reports, 92-year old Ruby Barber has tried, but has so far failed, to obtain one of those so-called “free” photo IDs from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), now that one is required for her to cast her legal vote this year, as she has for decades, until now, without a problem.

Barber’s story is heartbreaking and maddening but, unfortunately, probably not entirely rare. The DOJ estimated, based on the state’s supplied data when the federal agency blocked the law in 2012, “the total number of registered voters [in Texas] who lack a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by DPS could range from 603,892 to 795,955.”

Barber’s driver’s license expired in 2010 and she’s now having difficulty locating “her nearly century-old birth certificate that she’d need to obtain a voter ID under a new state law.” As the New York Daily News reports, the details of Barber’s story and her fight to try and cast her vote are simply absurd.

It's shaping up to be a long hot summer for the man on wheels.  Is it really a surprise that Greg Abbott only wants to debate Wendy Davis twice?  There's no way he could get elected if Texans understood how truly terrible a human being he is.

Even just the small number of Texans who have ID and only an occasional voting habit.  Even the Texans that vote at all -- those who are smart enough to comprehend the depth of Greg Abbott's corruption -- are still enough Texans to keep him out of the governor's office.  Republicans are blind to it, but no one else.  And they're the minority... but only if enough of the casual-political-interest Texans see the light and take hold of the reins.

To be continued, from now until early November.

Update: And it just got worse for him.

Wrong foreign policy scandal opportunity, GOP

Benghazi is not ever going to amount to anything except a molehill on Fox News for Republicans, and even they seem to finally understand this.  And it's not because they are beginning to comprehend the hypocrisy associated with their MIA outrage at the thirteen attacks and over sixty deaths at American embassies on George W. Bush's watch.

The real blunder they have made is that if they had wanted to tar Obama with a actual scandal, they could have gone after this.

Amid a deadly backlash again vaccinations and a resurgence of polio in Pakistan, the White House has promised that the CIA will never again use an immunization campaign as a tool of spycraft.

[...]

The Central Intelligence Agency had enlisted a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to collect intelligence under the guise of an immunization effort in the city of Abbottabad as part of planning for the high-risk May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound there.

The agency aimed to confirm intelligence that bin Laden was at the compound by comparing DNA obtained from children living there to a sample from the fugitive al-Qaida chief’s late sister, the Guardian newspaper reported in July 2011.

Even before those revelations, the Taliban in Pakistan had already opposed Western-backed vaccination campaigns, claiming that they were secret efforts to sterilize Muslim children. But the CIA’s actions helped fuel an armed backlash against immunization workers, reportedly killing 56 people between December 2012 and May 2014. The victims include not just medical workers but police officers assigned to guard them.

Another result of the CIA’s actions was to lead many Pakistani parents to forgo vaccinations for ailments like polio. The crippling and sometimes fatal illness has no known cure – but there are several safe and effective vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Of the 77 documented new cases of polio worldwide in calendar year 2014, 61 were in Pakistan, mostly from the remote and restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region, which serves as a Taliban stronghold.

Maybe it's that presidents just aren't interested in reigning in the CIA.  Maybe they simply are unable to, or are fearful of repercussions if they attempt (a la JFK conspiracy theory).  But that's a separate quandary from "how do we make Obama look bad on this".

Irrespective of the glamorous drama of the CIA analyst's life in shows like '24' and 'Homeland', it's not all guns and bombs, as the disclosure of Valerie Wilson Plame's secret agent double life revealed.  Being deployed by State in a foreign country is both boring and exciting at the same time, dangerous and monotonous simultaneously.  It comes with mostly intrinsic rewards in exchange for the elevated risk of being violently killed.  Update (5/22): Please note the distinction I should have more clearly made between a diplomat and a spy.  And an ambassador's risk of violent death varies by nation, with Caroline Kennedy's risk being exponentially less than Christopher Stevens'.

If Republicans had chosen this vaccination scandal instead of Benghazi, then it certainly follows that they would have had to condemn the CIA.  More problematically IMO, they would have been forced to express sympathy for little brown children dying of an easily eradicable disease... because American security interests in Pakistan were more important.

And it's difficult to care about poor children in Pakistan when you don't care about poor children in America, or even in your own state.  At least Republicans are consistent, in other words.  Mean, sorry, and stupid, but consistent.  Oh well, suppressing the vote and sustaining the Obamacare outrage seems to be working for them, so why should they worry too much about 2014?

Dan Patrick's CHL

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who has sought to raise voters’ apprehensions about Sen. Dan Patrick’s past mental health problems, on Monday sought to snare Patrick in a trap. But Patrick, who is leading the race for lieutenant governor, once again eluded Patterson’s grasp.

Patterson, chief author of the state’s 1995 concealed handgun license law, said that when Patrick applied for a conceal-carry license, he had to disclose his two stays in Houston psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s and obtain a doctor’s seal of approval to be carrying a gun.

Patterson called on Patrick to let the Department of Public Safety release his application for a concealed handgun license, so reporters can see if Patrick complied with the law.

Patrick spokesman Allen Blakemore, though, said Patrick is “definitely not” going to ask DPS to do that.

There's much more.

I have nearly no doubt that Patrick is going to prevail in the runoff, and I wonder if the various questions raised about his fitness to hold the state's most important office might be of greater concern to general election voters than they have been to those who vote in Republican primaries.  Most everyone I have talked to (who are not GOP, that is) seems a little conflicted about these developments.  The DMN's Rodger Jones defines the dilemma.

When Patrick’s defenders cried  foul against Patterson, did they really think the information doesn’t belong in the public domain? Because it does, since people want to know who their top elected leaders really are.

The fact that it came from Patterson may help Patrick in the long run. His defenders hope and pray the release backfires on Dewhurst and wins Patrick some sympathy votes if he plays a good enough victim.

And that just might happen. This newspaper had been a Patrick detractor, and now we’ve risen up to join his defenders, in a sense. In a very reluctant sense. Our editorial voice is hollering at Jerry Patterson for doing something that our own news department probably would have done if our newspaper had first crack at the information.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

The Weekly Early Voting Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance celebrates the ten-year anniversary of same sex marriages in America -- which, at last report, was still standing -- and reminds you to vote in your political party of choice's primary runoff elections this week, as it bring you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff highlights another report on how commercial property owners get to pay a lot less in property taxes than the rest of us do.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos cringed when she read the New York Times front page story about Texas and its fixation on death: Confronted on Execution, Texas Proudly Says It Kills Efficiently. Considering Texas has turned down federally expanded Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act, Libby discloses the Texas GOP's dance with the Grim Reaper: Rick Perry, Greg Abbott Argue for Killing.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is wondering what the outside audit of ES&S voting machine results in Hidalgo County will show.

Houston's social conservatives shrieked and wailed as city council appeared poised to pass a non-discrimination ordinance, and succeeded in getting it delayed for a week. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs believes that justice delayed is justice denied.

Bay Area Houston is wondering why anyone is surprised about Dan Patrick's mental health issues.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson says the people of Texas want roads and new transportation options, what they don't need is another slogan. No More "Texas Solutions", please.

Horwitz at Texpatriate is concerned over Mayor Julian Castro's nomination to a Cabinet position, worrying it may spell doom for a later run for governor.

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

Socratic Gadfly chronicles another recent failure of newspapers in the digital age: ageism.

Juanita Jean celebrates some local race results.

The Texas Green Report cheers another win by the EPA in court.

Lone Star Ma wished us all a Happy Children's Book Week.

The Lunch Tray is sorry to say she saw the efforts to scale back the hard-won school food gains of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act coming.

The Texican welcomes our robot insect overlords.

Texas Election Law documents another way that voter ID is disenfranchising people.

Transgriot calls out a Houston radio station for spreading misinformation about the non-discrimination ordinance and the transgender community.

Texas Watch wants local authorities to be able to hold polluters accountable.

Grits for Breakfast explores the implications of Rick Perry refusing to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Behind Frenemy Lines connects a few dots on Michael Williams, Greg Abbott, and a lavish party thrown by a lobbyist.

Very Very Urban recounts a long list of "new Republicans" and explains why they were all just the same old thing.