Sunday 'It's Up to You, New York" Funnies

"Trump shuffles campaign staff after stumbles"

On qualifications

The temperature inside the Democratic bubble increased overnight, with Twitter hashtags and their subsequent hijacking the order of the morning.  I think I'll dodge the catfight except to point out that Hillary and her people have always been just this progressive in their acidity, and she appears to have dragged Bernie down to her level at last, with this 'who's qualified' crapola.

Following a week where Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign refused to agree to a New York debate unless Bernie Sanders “toned down” his campaign, the Clinton campaign escalated its negative tone against Sanders, with one aide telling CNN their goal was to “disqualify” and “defeat him.”

One day after losing the Wisconsin primary by a sizable margin, Clinton appeared on “Morning Joe.” POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush gave Clinton a flattering interview. The New York Daily News published a cover story headlined, “Bernie’s Sandy Hook shame.” It accused Sanders of callously defending gun manufacturers against a lawsuit brought by relatives of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

As CNN reported, “It’s the latest chapter in Clinton’s approach to Sanders. She’s tried ignoring him, brushing him aside, gently dismissing his policies.”

“The Clinton campaign has refrained from going nuclear on Sanders, aides say, in large part to keep at least some goodwill alive in hopes of unifying the party at the end of the primary fight,” according to CNN. “No more, a top adviser [said]. The fight is on. Extending an olive branch to Sanders’ supporters ‘will come later.'

This is what her supporters refer to as her being "battle-tested", this fighting dirty like a Republican business.  It's one of the descriptions they file under 'qualified' (that she's withered the assaults from the right-wing and come out smiling).  The difference with Clinton is that all of her constant battling has left her weary and reactive in the most negative sense.  It has absolutely changed her for the worse over time.  Bearing scars from past scrapes has made her a much more bitter, vindictive candidate, one completely tone-deaf to her own hypocrisy.

To be redundant about it, I just don't think this long experience of fighting with everyone qualifies as a worthwhile presidential qualification.  And to be clear, I like my Democrats to be fighters, as a long list of archived posts here would show.  But in 2016, as in 2008, as her campaign loses enthusiasm and momentum, she and her subordinates aren't actually battling anything; they're flailing like a fish on the dock, trying to stick a spiny fin into somebody as they gasp for breath.

(T)he Clinton campaign and media outlets like CNN promote a false narrative that the campaign has not been in attack mode. Since September, she has used a network of surrogates and rapid response super PACs to push anti-Sanders talking points into the media.

Shadowproof has documented a pattern of dishonest attacks and rumors, particularly since January. The attacks include: Sanders supports Minutemen vigilantes and similar anti-immigrant hate groups, Sanders opposed bailing out auto workers, Sanders supports the NRA, Sanders wants to dismantle the Affordable Health Care Act, Sanders supported the indefinite detention of immigrants, and Sanders sees President Barack Obama as “weak” and will not support Obama’s legacy.

Voters have yet to see the full scope of what the Clinton campaign will sling at Sanders, but today’s interviews indicate she will return to her effort to paint Sanders as a gun-lover. She will focus on the fact that he is an independent senator, and, therefore, he is not a Democrat who will help the Democratic Party win in down-ballot elections in November. She also will attack him on regulating “too big to fail” banks and re-up her artful smear that Sanders has no respect for President Obama.

Let's take one example: the two candidates' perches on money in politics.  She has chosen the Rovian path -- attack your competitor's strength -- with her lambasting his responses in the now-infamous NYDN interview.

Hillary Clinton fashions herself as the ultimate general in a war against big-money politics.

“You're not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me,” Clinton said following the New Hampshire primary.

But the Democratic presidential front-runner stands poised to bludgeon her general election opponent with Republicans’ favorite political superweapon: the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which earlier this decade launched a new era of unbridled fundraising.

Clinton’s massive campaign machine is built of the very stuff — super PACs, secret cash, unlimited contributions — she says she’ll attack upon winning the White House.

Indeed, a Center for Public Integrity investigation reveals that Clinton’s own election efforts are largely immune from her reformist platform. While Clinton rails against “unaccountable money" that is “corrupting our political system,” corporations, unions and nonprofits bankrolled by unknown donors have already poured millions of dollars into a network of Clinton-boosting political organizations. That’s on top of the tens of millions an elite club of Democratic megadonors, including billionaires George Soros and Haim Saban, have contributed.

She has to keep having $700,000 fundraisers with George Clooney headlining because Bernie Sanders gets $1.5 million dollars a day from people who can only give $27 on average.  I'm sure it's been humiliating for Candidate Clinton to have to keep beating the streets for more big donors even as Sanders outraises her with his legions of small ones.  This is to say nothing about the ethical standards of the people who are raising her money.  They're not all as squeaky clean as Clooney.

Her ability to pump this much jack -- specifically the craven panhandling for it -- has become a liability, one holding sway with Republicans as well as Democrats.

A Center for Public Integrity/Ipsos poll conducted in late February indicates many potential general election voters are likewise concerned about how serious Clinton is about remaking the nation’s campaign system —a monumental challenge under any circumstance, but a goal supported by the vast majority of Americans.

Half of all poll respondents overall — and nearly four in 10 self-identified Democrats — said Clinton is relying on super PACs and big money too much. That compares to 18 percent overall who said Clinton is relying on them the “right amount” and 5 percent who said “too little.”

And when asked, “If elected president, which of the following would do the most to reform the campaign finance system and make it less reliant on big money?” Clinton trailed both Sanders and Trump among respondents.

Her deeds don't match her words.  She has no credibility on the issue.

Citizens United reformer or no, she's very unlikely to be getting things done, progressively or not-so-much, with a Congress gone putrid after eight years of obstructing Obama.  (Sanders will have this same problem as well, of course.)  Supreme Court justice nominees with a freshly-Democratic Senate in 2017 should fare better, but climate initiatives that include something as innocuous as a BDS effort are a non-starter in a Clinton II Administration, and forget about $15/hour minimum wage jobs and an economy for the working class and not the investor/donor class.

As with our government-approved, private sector profit-motivated healthcare insurance, we're all just going to have to "keep shopping" until we find something we can get by with.  If the definition of 'qualified' includes the public duty of First Lady as her longest term of experience -- neither an elected nor appointed position -- yet you wish to have that experience considered only when it suits you and not when it doesn't, then we might just have to agree to disagree.

Sanders keeps winning, still losing; Carnival Cruz sails ahead

Post-Badger State wins for both, Ted Cruz's prospects for snatching the GOP nomination -- unfortunately for us all -- appear to be a little brighter than Bernie's.

First, the losers.

As the results came in from Wisconsin last night, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the front-runners in the Republican and Democratic primaries, were nowhere to be seen. According to reports from the television networks’ campaign correspondents, they were both in New York. Trump was holed up in Trump Tower, and Clinton, after attending a fund-raiser in Riverdale, had returned to her family’s home in Chappaqua, in Westchester County. The fact that Trump and Clinton had chosen to stay at home and not to schedule any press availabilities indicated that they were both expecting to lose. However, it is doubtful that either of them expected to be defeated quite so badly.

Lucky thirteen.

In the Republican primary, Ted Cruz beat Trump by about thirteen percentage points, forty-eight per cent to thirty-five per cent, delighting the organizers of the “Never Trump” movement. And in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders also won by about thirteen points, fifty-six per cent to forty-three per cent, earning his sixth victory in the last seven contests. Despite the fact that Sanders had been expected to win in Wisconsin, and that his campaign had expended a lot of energy and money there, his margin of victory was impressive. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Clinton was holding a narrow lead in the polls. Buoyed by a large turnout, Sanders turned that deficit around and won handily. According to the network exit poll, he came out ahead among voters of both sexes and all income groups, and with college graduates and those who did not graduate college.

It should be stated straight away that neither of the two Wisconsin results made much immediate difference in regard to the delegate math, which will ultimately decide who the parties’ Presidential nominees are. Both Trump and Clinton still have substantial leads in the number of elected delegates, and Clinton also has a big advantage over Sanders among Democratic superdelegates—party officials and politicians who can cast votes for whomever they want at the convention. (The Republicans have far fewer superdelegates.)

On the Republican side, forty-two delegates were up for grabs in Wisconsin, which is a “winner-takes-most” state for the G.O.P. The nature of the contest insured that Cruz received the overwhelming number of those delegates: as of this writing, he was set to win either thirty-six or thirty-nine, depending on the final vote tallies. That left just three or six delegates for Trump, who went into the night with two hundred and fifty more delegates than the Texas senator.

It sets us up nicely for the New York debate between Clinton and Sanders on April 14 and the vote on the 19th.  My expectation is that Hillary and the Prags are going to come out slinging.  More bricks and bats in the Five Points from Poop Cruz and Drumpf are on tap as well.

What can’t be disputed is that both New York primaries are shaping up to be epic showdowns. Trump, who has had a terrible couple of weeks, will be trying to steady things and confirm his position as the front-runner. Sanders will be seeking an upset victory in the state that Clinton served as a senator and where she now lives—a result that would hit the Democratic Party like an earthquake.

[...]

... It’s hard not to see Cruz’s victory as a consolidation of anti-Trump forces—one that is likely to continue and perhaps expand further, especially if John Kasich, who finished a distant third in Wisconsin, were to drop out. (Despite the result, he showed no signs of doing so. “Nothing is more important than winning back the White House in November,” his campaign tweeted. “Only John Kasich can make that happen.”)

Watch to see how the state elections going forward -- New York and Pennsylvania this month -- have different elements that favor Clinton and Trump to some greater degree. 

From now on, most of the primaries, including New York’s, will be closed or semi-closed, and many will take place in states with a larger percentage of minority voters than Wisconsin has. That doesn’t mean that Sanders can’t win in such places. It does mean, however, that he will have to win over more registered Democrats and non-whites than he has previously.

Senior pol David Gergen sees Trump now as the underdog.

With 16 primaries and caucuses remaining, Donald Trump has to win 70% of the delegates to secure the 1,237 needed to win a first ballot at the Republican convention. Several states are coming up that are more favorable territory for Trump than Cruz, especially New York and Pennsylvania where Trump still has significant leads.

Even so, winning more than two thirds of the remaining delegates is a daunting challenge for him. In the 36 primaries and caucuses leading up to Wisconsin, Trump won only 46% of the delegates. And now he heads down a tough homestretch with Cruz seizing the momentum.

In a year crammed with surprises, no one can say for sure what will unfold in Cleveland, Ohio. But there are two likely outcomes: First, Cruz and Trump have each vowed to vote against a change in the GOP's Rule 40. That's an obscure provision that requires any candidate to win at least eight primaries and caucuses before he or she can be nominated.

Trump and Cruz will be the only two people in Cleveland with that distinction. They should also have enough delegate strength between them to block a rewrite of Rule 40. In other words, potential candidates like John Kasich, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney won't be eligible even if many delegates think them likely to fare better against Hillary Clinton -- the race could narrow to Trump vs. Cruz.

If Trump then falls short on the first ballot, there will be a donnybrook. But it is now becoming apparent that Cruz is much better prepared to win that fight. Trump has run a campaign long on the outside game of televised rallies but short on the inside game of quietly piling up delegates.

[...]

In a first ballot, delegates must vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged but thereafter, of course, may vote for someone else. Signs increasingly point to the fact that Republican party regulars pledged to Trump are ready to bolt on a second or third ballot. With Cruz the only other man in the race, that almost certainly means they will drift -- rush? --toward the Texan, and he will take the crown.

Wisconsin exit polls gave further evidence, as if any were needed, that Trump's self-destructive behavior in the two weeks leading up to the vote cost him dearly. He reacted so badly to various challenges, especially in his inability to speak clearly about abortion, that one wondered whether he had tired of the game and wanted to go home. Wisconsin voters punished him severely.

Trump's trump card has always been to ditch the Republicans and go his own third way, but the time remaining for him to qualify for the ballot on enough states to compete -- not to mention the 'sore loser' laws that would prevent him from doing so in states like Texas -- make it clear he can't be anything but a pure spoiler in that regard.

Is it possible that Trump is going to prove to be a very bright flash in the GOP pan?  Can the so-called establishment wrest control from him, only to see Cruz grab the rebound?

So if we're headed to a Hillary v. Ted fall matchup, the Texas media will be thrilled, crowing about all the Lone Star influence to be had once again in DC and yaddayadda, and with Julian Castro riding side-saddle with Calamity Clinton producing the same measure of Texas pride in Democrats, maybe we won't all be bored to tears.  Nobody should whine about Texas not being a swing state, thus nobody should complain if Bernie's revolution keeps going left and maybe Green.  There will still be angry conservatives in bunches when Cruz runs aground on the shoals of sanity, the po' folks will still be scratching out a living without making time to vote, and the biggest headache the wealthy will have is crossing Panama off their tax haven lists.

Kinda sorta same as it ever was.

Happy to be wrong

About the New Yawk showdown.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have agreed to debate in Brooklyn on Thursday April 14, according to reps for the two campaigns. The debate will be hosted by CNN and NY1 and will be held at the Brooklyn Navy Yard at 9 p.m. ET.

The announcement comes after a week of back-and-forth between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns as they tried to negotiate a day and time for a debate in New York ahead of the state’s primary on April 19.

I didn't think it was going to happen, and after all the vitriol that has been spewed from the Clinton camp, I felt pretty good about that bet right through to Opening Day yesterday. 

Over the weekend, the Clinton campaign accused the Sanders campaign of playing “games” over the debate schedule and for rejecting three possible dates that they had offered, including April 14.

On Monday the two campaigns finally reached an agreement.

“Brooklyn. April 14. It's on.” Clinton national press secretary Brian Fallon tweeted ...

The Sanders campaign -- which moved a rally they had scheduled for that night -- confirmed the debate too, but not without taking a not so subtle shot at Clinton.

"Fortunately, we were able to move a major New York City rally scheduled for April 14 to the night before,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said. "We hope the debate will be worth the inconvenience for thousands of New Yorkers who were planning to attend our rally on Thursday but will have to change their schedules to accommodate Secretary Clinton’s jam-packed, high-dollar, coast-to-coast schedule of fundraisers all over the country.”

Facts may be snarky but they are not attacks, Clintoneers. 

More truth: Sanders needs to win Wisconsin today by a much larger margin that he currently leads in the polling, and then he must win New York in two weeks and Pennsylvania the week after that (4/26; Clinton +27.5) in likewise fashion, or the ice just keeps getting thinner for him.

... There was a time when Hillary Clinton held commanding leads in Wisconsin, but the most recent polling shows Bernie Sanders with a small but steady lead heading into today’s voting. And Wisconsin certainly fits the profile of a state that would favor Sanders – he’s run very well in the industrial Midwest, the state has high concentrations of white liberals and college students, and it’s an open primary. For Sanders these are all good signs: he keeps beating Hillary in big states that are critical to Democratic victory in November, and a Wisconsin win would provide another boost in momentum.

But, again, the critical problem he just can’t seem to solve is the delegate math. It’s not enough for Sanders just to win Wisconsin; he has to blow Hillary out of the water to put any sort of significant dent in her delegate lead. A finish that tracks with his two-point lead in the polling average won’t do him much good, given that Democrats award delegates proportionally ...

He’ll need a strong showing in Wisconsin because the next big delegate prizes on the Democratic calendar – New York and Pennsylvania – appear to be strong territory for Clinton. Setting aside the elaborate and exotic delegate-gaming strategies, the only hope for a Sanders victory rests on posting big upset victories in states that are solidly pro-Clinton. To the extent that that is possible, it can only happen if Sanders scores blowouts in pro-Bernie states like Wisconsin.

I will repeat that the poisonous remarks from Clintonoids are not likely to be so easily forgotten as they have been in presidential cycles past (and particularly so when it depends on what the definition of words like 'Democrat' or 'all my adult life' are).  Maybe I'm wrong about that, too, but either way I still see the lady standing on the Capitol steps taking the oath of office next January 20th ... because #NeverTrump and #NeverCruz are pretty potent things.

Speaking of those two guys, the right-wing news coming out of the Cheese State is that not only will Lyin' Ted slow the Orangutan's roll, but that Scott Walker is at the center of Cruz's comeback.

... as bad as (his presidential campaign) was, Walker made two intelligent choices as a candidate that are coming into play as his state votes today for the Republican presidential nominee:

The first was that Walker quit the race early – he recognized very quickly that he had no chance at winning the White House, and so he folded up shop in late September and went back to Wisconsin to tend to his political affairs at home. Walker’s second smart move was to recognize the threat posed by Donald Trump to his party and call for the other candidates to unite to stop him. Nobody listened then, but now Walker has the state GOP behind him as part of a unified effort to elevate Ted Cruz over Trump, and it seems to be working – going into today’s voting, Cruz is leading Trump in the polls and poised to put a large dent in Trump’s delegate lead. Wisconsin was a bad state for Trump to begin with, given its demographic make-up, and the candidate has done himself no favors recently, so Cruz and Walker are positioned to deliver a stinging blow to Trump.

Ted's in much the same boat as Bernie, needing to score big wins in forthcoming contests in order to make a persuasive case for himself as standard-bearer.

The question is whether it will be enough to do real damage to Trump’s push for the nomination. For the #NeverTrump types, Wisconsin is a critical part of the plan to deny Trump the nomination outright. The margin in Wisconsin matters, given how the state apportions its 42 delegates – 18 delegates go to the statewide winner, while the winner of each of the state’s congressional districts gets three. It’s conceivable that Cruz could shut out Trump or limit him to just a handful of delegates, which would force Trump to make them up in later contests. Right now, for the #NeverTrump faithful, it’s all about making Trump’s delegate math as difficult as possible, keeping him from reaching the 1,237-delegate threshold to win outright, and hoping that someone else will prevail in a contested convention.

Ah, that brokered convention.  Since GOP delegates are released from their commitment after the first round, it's almost a certainty today that the nomination will be negotiated.  And making that deal looks like poor odds for The Donald, even if he tries to buy them or bribe them.

The question remains whether this scenario is good for Ted or not.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said (last month) that he would be OK with a "contested convention," but not a "brokered convention."

The two terms have become prominent in political buzz as it grows increasingly likely that no candidate will claim an outright majority of delegates before the GOP convention in July. In that case, delegates would re-vote to pick a winner.

Cruz previously has asserted that a brokered convention would prompt a voter "revolt," but he told Fox's Megyn Kelly at a town hall interview in Raleigh, North Carolina that, "a contested convention is a different thing."

So, what's the difference? According to Jeff Engle, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, "In a contested convention, no one shows up with all the delegates they need (to win the nomination). In a brokered convention, people begin cutting deals."

In other words, the delegates supporting third- and fourth-place candidates would have to choose which of the top two candidates to support in a contested convention.

Ted's not lying here; like Hillary he's just using flexible definitions of words.  Both Mr. T and Havana Ted are worried about a Paul Ryan nomination from a floor fight, but it's more possible in my humble O that a Trump/Cruz ticket comes out of that, since Ted holds most of the face cards.

...in the event that Trump fails to lock down the Republican nomination by June 7, it will be Cruz’s turn to deal a high-stakes hand of Texas Hold-Em. If he cannot put together three of a kind with Kasich and Rubio, he’ll get his share of the pot by pairing up with Trump.

Good times.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance's favorite week of the year -- the NCAA national championship game coinciding with MLB's opening day, and other sporting events on tap through the weekend -- has us buying some peanuts and Cracker Jack as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at the potential redistricting effects of Texas' continued population boom.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos discovers that Trump's presidential candidacy is proof that the GOP is, in reality, a Neo-Confederate Party. The Dixiecrats are still in charge: The Bigoted Party of Jesus, Bait and Switch Deserves its Devils.

Lawyers figured out how to monitor late payments from insurance companies. Who's at fault? The people who found the problem? Nope. The lawyers. According to the people who are paying late. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows we live in an oligarchy.

Socratic Gadfly found yet more reason last week to be disappointed with Rachel Maddow.

In developments in the special election to fill the vacancy on Harris County commissioners' court, PDiddie at Brains & Eggs notes that interim appointee Gene Locke has broken his word and decided to run for the job, and state Sen. Rodney Ellis and his long career as a municipal bond lawyer has come under scrutiny.

Egberto Willies posted pictures and video from the National Endowment for the Humanities forum on inequality, hosted at Lone Star College's Center for Civic Engagement.

Texas Vox blogs about the Democracy Awakening event in two weeks, with details about the Austin and Dallas rallies.

Neil at All People Have Value said that even worse than Trump's comments on punishing women who have an abortion, is the fact that in Texas women seeking an abortion are subject to the state-mandated rape of the forced sonogram law. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And Dos Centavos reviews Stefani Montiel and her latest release, La Dueña.

==================

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

Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill attended the Final Four in Houston this past weekend and picked the perfect day to dine al fresco, according to Culturemap Houston.

The Houston Press has the news that DuPont will shut down the LaPorte facility where four workers lost their lives in a 2014 gas leak.

Chuck Smith decries the current wave of discriminatory politics.

The Lunch Tray is not loving McDonald's latest attempt to get into schools.

Tamara Tabo explains why the Planned Parenthood video fraudsters really did break the law.

Austin Eater reports that the gas station used as the set for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s barbecue restaurant will soon be opened as a "horror barbecue resort".

Abby Johnston wades into the sweet tea debate.

And Pages of Victory retells a WWII battle story -- the kind that occurred between soldiers and officers -- in Wilkerson's Tank.

Harris County Commissioner's race updates: Locke in, Ellis' bond deals

Gene Locke lied finally and publicly changes his mind about running for the job to which he was appointed 'interim'.  Here's what he said on January 22nd.

Asked if he intended to run for the post in November, Locke said, "My intention is to go back to the practice of law and enjoy my family,." (sic)

Never-corrected punctuation error Chron's.  Here's what he told the Chron a month later, a few days after Carl Whitmarsh outed him on Facebook.

Locke said he has not made a final decision, but his statement signals a shift for the former city attorney, who previously said he intended to return to his job as a lawyer and spend time with his family after the end of the current term in December.

It also would conflict with County Judge Ed Emmett's previously stated desire to appoint a caretaker commissioner who would not seek the job beyond Dec. 31.

"It's the number of people who I respect that are asking me to consider it," Locke said. ...

He declined to name those asking him to run and said he needs to talk to his family about it. He did not give a timetable for when he would make a decision.

You can find oodles and oodles of blogging about his bid to become mayor in 2009 and the subsequent bitter runoff that year with Annise Parker.  (I received a telephone call intimating physical violence to me during that period as I wrote about Locke.)

Parker defeated him and his African American/Republican coalition of smear merchants and homophobes and hate-mongers in founding her legacy as Houston's CEO.  But that conservative coalition of hate prevailed in the HERO campaign last year, and we see those efforts being duplicated now in North Carolina.  Ashton Woods, who also blogs at Strength in Numbers, summarizes my objection to Locke's candidacy in less than 140 characters.

If @genelocke broke the very first promise he made as a commissioner, how can we believe anything he says? (5/5)

— Ashton P. Woods (@AshtonPWoods) April 1, 2016

All of this would be of interest to me as a constituent of Locke's and formerly one of the 130 Democratic precinct chairs who will vote for him -- or one of the other politicos seeking the office -- in an election to be held at the Democratic county executive meeting in June.  But as my disinterest in local politics has swollen, I just haven't taken it as blogworthy ... until the Chron took note of Rodney Ellis' lucrative bond lawyering over the recent decades, and the various ethical dilemmas one can find oneself tangled in (if ethics is ever a concern, that is).

Over the past 26 years, state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, has voted to confirm gubernatorial appointments to the Lower Colorado River Authority, a powerful electric utility in Central Texas. During the same time, financial firms he either owned, worked for, or owned stock in have profited handsomely by helping underwrite $3.7 billion in bonds sold by the authority.

[...]

... (B)ecause of Texas' lax ethics law, much less is known about Ellis' equally impressive career in the lucrative government bond business, which repeatedly has placed him in a position to exercise authority over local governments and public agencies whose bond proceeds were being used to pay Ellis' firms. His dual role as lawmaker and bond underwriter has left him straddling the line between politics, municipal finance and public policy, raising questions about potential or actual conflicts of interest, or the appearance of conflicts.

You should probably go read the whole piece -- you know, if you're interested in this sort of thing -- but here's one more excerpt.

Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group, has watched Ellis in action from the start of his legislative career. During that time, Ellis has taken the lead on ethics issues, from requiring more disclosure to overhauling how judicial campaigns are financed, Smith said.

"There's the good Rodney and the bad Rodney. The good Rodney knows what needs to be done, but he also has made a lot of money off of connections, knowing who to talk to, and selling bonds," Smith said.

On several occasions, Ellis has defended his work in public finance by noting that legislators receive only $7,200 a year in salary. Ellis said in 2013 that he wouldn't run for Congress because he couldn't take a pay cut. Congressmen are paid $174,000 a year.

Here it might be important to remind everyone that a county commissioner's salary is currently -- as of two years ago -- $165,900 annually plus a $550/month auto allowance (that some commissioners take and some don't).  So since this number appears to be in the range of a Congresscritter's jack, you might ask yourself, or Senator Ellis: what has changed about Senator Ellis' financial stipulations for accepting a new job?

Do you think he'd be willing to disclose his tax returns so that the public can help him assess whether he's being market-appropriately compensated for his work?

I'm guessing without asking anybody that it's the side jobs that county commissioners get paid for that appeal to Ellis, and I don't mean the high-dollar commissions for bond lawyers (since those will have to go away for him, see story).  The most polite way of referring to this income is campaign contributions, and here you might be reminded that the dearly departed El Franco Lee left behind a campaign war chest of $4 million, despite not having either a Democratic or Republican challenger for decades.  Questionable ethics seem to be the standard among state senators as we know, and that's why several of the also-rans in the commissioner's race -- you can find their names in some of the links above -- will focus their attention on replacing Ellis in Austin as soon as they lose this very special election.

Because even though the stated pay grade is poverty-level, some of these guys are becoming millionaires while serving the public interest.  And that apparently is fingerling potatoes compared to what a county commissioner can grift earn.

Indeed, the best democracy money can buy.

Sunday Funnies

Trump is fading

Suddenly drooping in the polls (read it all) and flagging in his desire to be the president because it's not actually a monarchy or a dictatorship, Donald Drumpf may be the only person that can defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.

Drumpf may be taking the lead.

When it comes to a classic narcissist like Donald Trump, it’s hard to say when (or if) he’ll begin to find the process of running for president so humiliating that he’s tempted to just drop out. He clearly doesn’t care that “respectable” people are routinely calling him a racist and comparing him to some of the most notorious fascist dictators of the 20th-Century. He doesn’t seem to care that the intelligentsia and the media elite are condemning his character and his intelligence. But he’s also obsessed with his image and he’s financially dependent on his brand. His campaign has already cost him business relationships and partnerships, yet that hasn’t tamed or dissuaded him so far.

[...]

Trump’s already getting a little squirrelly. He’s under pressure after his campaign manager was indicted yesterday for battering a Breitbart reporter, and now he’s reneging on his pledge to support the eventual nominee because he feels the RNC has treated him shabbily and he can sense that the party elite are plotting to deny him the nomination at the convention. There’s increasing talk that he could cost the Republicans control of the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.

Due to sore loser laws in many states that will prevent Trump from running as an independent after failing to secure the Republican nomination, he cannot run a successful third party candidacy. But he could get on the ballot in some red states, split the vote, and hand Electoral College delegates to Clinton or Sanders. I can see him doing that out of spite.

Ted Cruz never stood a chance of winning the presidency anyway, Drumpf or No Trump.

He’s very unpredictable. He seems to be getting enough validation at the moment to make all the hits he’s taking seem worthwhile, but this doesn’t seem to make much sense from a business or branding perspective, and he surely knows that history is written by the same intellectuals who increasingly despise him with the heat of a thousand suns.

[...]

... what terrifies him more?  The humiliation of losing?  Or the responsibility of winning? 

Relative to sinking popularity (Clinton 54, Sanders 42 in the latest NY poll) as familiarity becomes more contemptible, it was understood that was supposed to be Hillary's problem exclusively.  I am sensing the rising paranoia of those Republicans who claimed long ago he was a stalking horse for Clinton.  Down or out... you go, Donnie.

THIS should be an interesting development.

Updates:

Warning: This May Be as Unpopular as Trump Gets

Trump makes surprise closed-door visit with RNC

Wisconsin town hall serves up smelly cheese

In going to the town hall format for the remaining three GOP presidential contenders, let's at least give a little credit to CNN and Anderson Cooper for their attempt to bring some civility to the discourse.  The two front-runners just aren't up to the task of elevating it.  Too heavy a lift.

It came well into the second hour of a Republican town hall event Tuesday night, in which CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and a cast of carefully curated ordinary Americans got a chance to ask each of the three remaining GOP presidential candidates questions, one by one, and those candidates each got the chance to completely ignore those questions and spray clouds of rhetoric like startled, flailing squids. It was a rerun, in other words, of the same episode that's played out over and over again during this interminable primary campaign.

First went Cruz...

The night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, began with Cooper asking Texas Senator Ted Cruz about his suggestion that US law enforcement should patrol "Muslim neighborhoods" as a way to combat terrorism; a plan that has been roundly condemned by New York City law enforcement officials who tried monitoring local Muslims and realized it didn't help anything. Cruz shrugged off the criticism, calling New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio a "left-wing radical," and raising the specter of Europe's Muslim-dominated "no-go zones" where the police fear to tread, a fairly common myth floating around the far-right wing.

The exchange set a pattern: Someone would ask Cruz a question and he would either avoid answering, or find a way to bend it to his purpose. A job interview-style query about Cruz's biggest weakness prompted a monologue about how dang much he loves the Constitution. A father asked Cruz if he would support a bill aimed at stopping the Department of Veterans Affairs from overprescribing drugs—a measure named after his son, who died of an overdose while in VA care—and the Senator just repeated vague platitudes about VA reform and the War on Drugs.

A woman asked what Cruz would do specifically for women and he rambled about how great his mom and wife are (in other words, he isn't going to do anything in particular for women). When Cooper brought up the ugly campaign fight over a National Enquirer story accusing Cruz of infidelity—a story that Cruz has accused Trump's campaign of planting—and asked whether the Texan would support Trump as the party's nominee, Cruz hemmed and hawed for long minutes, then basically refused to answer the question.

Trump used up most of his fourth-grader-on-the-playground vocabulary early in his segment.

When it came to foreign policy, not day-to-day Twitter spats, however, Trump seemed less prepared. The most substantial exchange came when Cooper challenged the candidate to clarify some of his statements about nuclear proliferation, since Trump has said he's worried about more countries acquiring nuclear weapons, but also OK with Japan, South Korea, and maybe Saudi Arabia getting nukes. Trump's response was, basically, Whatever, if it means the US does less to police the world, fine. Later, he pulled the same light-on-details act when he said the US government should provide healthcare and education, and then said no, the states should, or the private sector should get involved, or something.

We've seen this all before—the avoidance of questions, the pandering, the almost pathological focus on talking points. The latter was most grossly displayed Tuesday when a police officer who'd been shot 15 times while fighting a white supremacist who was attacking a Sikh temple asked the Republican frontrunner what could be done to combat prejudice. Trump had a chance to soften his tone, to look presidential while interacting with a man universally regarded as a hero. Instead, he trotted out some stuff about Muslim terrorism, and once again, completely ignored the question.

That Kasich had to go last meant most everyone tuning out before he came on, another sad reality of the state of play for the GOP this cycle.

(Kasich), it must be said, actually did answer questions, including those about unpopular stances he's taken in the past. As the campaign's third wheel, he doesn't have the luxury of ignoring the queries of interested voters. He won't be president no matter how well he performs at events like these.

Kasich's hopelessness, like Trump's bluster and Cruz's smarm, was nothing new. When Wisconsin primary voters cast ballots next week, they'll be choosing from the same menu they faced before the town hall; the same spread of squabbling and half-truths will be laid out, growing increasingly stale for the next few months, until the Republican Party finally lands itself a nominee. In that sense, Trump's complaint about being tired of debates was the truest moment in a night that was short on them—he's as eager to see the end of this as voters are. 

Kasich's last luxury is that, as the winner of one primary -- his home state of Ohio -- and the possessor of 143 delegates, at least nobody (except Ted Cruz) is calling for him to drop out.  Contrast that with the hourly exit calls to Bernie Sanders, who owns 15 state wins to Clinton's 20 and trails her by only 200 delegates ... the human, mortal, democratically-chosen ones, not those of the super variety.  All numbers here.

Republicans thought that they would be safer holding town halls than presidential debates, and they were wrong. The top two Republican candidates made a great argument for supporting the Democratic nominee. The town hall was a total disaster. Neither of the top two Republican candidates is electable, and there is no sense in discussing John Kasich because he will never be the nominee.

I sourced PoliticsUSA -- a questionable opinion site, poorly edited being my main objection -- for the above excerpt because some people think it's a propaganda outlet equal to Blue Nation Review.  That's what is known as a false equivalency.  Click over and look at their stories and tell me if you agree or disagree.

Yes, we need to see some grown-ups do this debate thing, but we won't get that.  Because somebody is a little miffed about someone else's tone.

Why Clinton won't debate before the NY primary

The last public poll conducted two weeks ago showed her with a very comfortable 71-23% spread.  (You may recall that her win here in Texas at the beginning of this month was by a 66-33 margin.)  So what does she have to gain by debating?  Nothing, and she stands to lose some if she does.

The ever-cautious and calculating leader much prefers to sit on her lead, run out the clock.

FiveThirtyEight.com projects an almost even split of the NY delegation, which strikes me as ass-covering on their part after their earlier embarrassments.  Fresh polling, somewhere in the pipeline, will likely show the lead shrinking; that's what the polls have done throughout this cycle, tighten up as election day draws closer.  So in the three weeks between now and April 19 -- when New Yorkers vote -- her campaign has probably calculated that can withstand some Twitter flak and even the grievous attacks of her nasty handlers and their enabling, sycophantic third-rate media (Blue Nation Review, need I say more?) and still come away with both a convincing victory and the talking heads on teevee spinning as loudly as we have yet heard for Sanders to exit the contest.

California's primary in early June, where she holds just a 7-point lead, looks long in the distance.

I still see a Democratic convention where Bernie gets a prime time speech in one of the first couple of nights, concedes gracefully, and politely herds his supporters onto the Clinton bandwagon.  There will be some larger-than-usual quantity of bitter-enders, but the safe bet is that like the PUMAs in 2008, most of the #NeverHillary-ites fall in line.

On a side note, has anybody been called a Sandbagger (scroll down to the comments) yet?

Just as boring as being alive.  Let's hope for a minor miracle, like a little bird alighting from the closed-auditorium sky, or another polling error, or the *ahem* usual something-unforeseen.  Clever and seriously snarky hashtags aren't going to be enough.

Otherwise the hearse bus is waiting.

Update (3/30): Nate Silver applies the numerical coup d'grace.

The Weekly Wrangle

In presenting this week's blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance is sad that Rick Perry won't come out of retirement to run as a third-party alternative to Donald Trump. (Sad for all the missed comedy opportunities, of course.)

Off the Kuff would really like to see some general election polling of Texas soon.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos exposes how the Republican Party cleverly stoles fear and hate among its religious base voters for the sole purpose of winning: How the GOP Foments Outrage and Fear Among Christian Fundamentalist Voters.

SocraticGadfly takes a deep look at the problematic background and connections of Tulsi Gabbard, the Congresswoman and former Democratic National Committee vice-chair who resigned the DNC spot to endorse Bernie Sanders.

Dan Patrick touts xenophobic, racist memes at the border while forgetting about community building trade. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes Patrick is a Republican and that's what they stand for nowadays.

Hillary Clinton is eager to get her war on, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs really doesn't want to go down this road again: war protests, war criminals, torture, disabled vets who can't get their VA benefits handled properly, etc. and so on.

Egberto Willies talked to an insider about why we no longer get the truth from our media: news is packaged and sold for ratings and clicks.

TXsharon at Bluedaze was at the seminar in Denton where experts from across the country said that a 100% renewable community was possible, ending the need for additional gas plants.

Dos Centavos posts some of the races and candidates he's watching in the Harris County Democratic Party's runoff election, to be held May 24.

Neil at All People Have Value encountered a Donald Trump window sticker on his travels around Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And the Lewisville Texan Journal had a concert review of Texas legend Jimmie Dale Gilmore and his son Colin who put on a music show locally.

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

In an Easter ritual where the most evil thing  is cleansed, Trail Blazers reported that Mexicans burned effigies of Trump (as 'Judas') in the streets of that country.

Grits for Breakfast revealed the business model for the company that manufactures Tasers: they also supply police bodycams and intend to be the dominant vendor in that market.

Prairie Weather points out the Democrats' forty-four-year-old paranoia, and its name is George McGovern.

Texas Election Law Blog reports that the Firth Circuit Court of Appeals in its entirety (en banc) will review the Texas voter ID lawsuit, and the plaintiffs have asked the Supreme Court to block the law from implementation in the 2016 election.

Zachery Taylor is on board the "Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein, but never Hillary Clinton" bandwagon.

Carl Davidson at The Rag Blog premises that there are actually six political parties in the United States (and that's within the two that wear the "major" label), and has some suggestions for working within them for progress.

The TSTA Blog highlights a rural school district that is trying to hang on.

Better Texas Blog celebrates the 6th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.

The Texas Campaign for the Environment advocates for a Zero Waste plan for Houston.

Paradise in Hell asks the tough questions about Ag Commissioner Sid Miller.

The Current reminds us that SBOE candidate Mary Lou Bruner is still deranged.

Austin On Your Feet lists nine barriers to building housing in Austin's central city.

Pages of Victory saw a nice dance.  A strange one, but a nice one.

Sunday Funnies