11.10.09
Bradley, the budget, history, and far right challengers
BOR on Bradley’s day in front of the committee, John Bradley to Serve as Rick Perry’s Puppet on Texas Forensic Science Commission.
Eventually, the bigger picture left the hearing — that going forward, the Texas Forensic Science Commission should be a place where the best forensic science can be determined, where mistakes can be evaluated, and where the work done by law enforcement across the state can be guaranteed to be the best work imaginable. But that’s only going to happen because of the work of Senator John Whitmire, Senator Rodney Ellis, and Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa. Of the Senators attending the hearing, the three Democrats carried the lion’s share of the work. Republican Senator Dan Patrick asked questions that would have made a Rick Perry criminal justice staff person proud, and Senator Glenn Hegar sounded like he wrote his remarks while taking a bus to school in the morning.
Ultimately, I have faith that our Democratic State Senators will be able to kick-start this Commission into moving in the right direction. I also believe that John Bradley actually wants to make that happen. But that’s only his second job.
Bradley’s first job, which was made clear during today’s hearing, was that he is to work as Rick Perry’s puppet and delay the Commission’s work for as long as possible — at least until it is no longer politically damaging to Governor Perry.
The answers the people of Texas and, indeed, across the country are looking for from Rick Perry’s cover-up are well protected and hidden with John Bradley chairing the Texas Forensic Science Commission.
The Texas Trib has a couple of audio cuts, Bradley Makes His Case. The little bit of the hearing I watched I was under-impressed. Bradley seemed defensive and arrogant, and the questions didn’t seem very sharp.
It’s going to be hard to write a 2011 budget in Texas. All candidates need to be able to answer serious questions about this. If they don’t want to raise new money, aka taxes, they must be able to answer, specifically, what they will cut.
Picke up Nick Blakeslee’s book Tulia: race, cocaine, and corruption in a small Texas town at a garage sale over the weekend. He’s a great writer. When I googled his name found this piece he wrote about Enron in 2002 in The Nation, How Enron Did Texas. How soon we forget what the Texas GOP and the corporate criminals in Texas did.
As Enron wedged its way into the inner circles of state government, the company’s political largesse became legendary. “I think they viewed campaigns as an investment strategy, and it paid off for them,” Woodson said. The most important investment Enron made was in George W. Bush’s first gubernatorial campaign, in 1994. As Bush somewhat disingenuously sought to remind voters this past December, Lay had been a minor patron of Democratic Governor Ann Richards. But when W. entered politics, Lay switched horses in a big way. A longtime supporter of the Bush clan, Lay was considered for a Cabinet post during the first Bush presidency. He then became a close adviser to W. and a key source of funds: $146,500 from Enron PACs and executives in the 1994 campaign. After Bush eked out a narrow win over Richards, the new governor gave the company a fundamental component of its Texas strategy in one of his first appointments: Public Utility Commissioner Pat Wood, a deregulator’s dream.
Texas GOP members of Congress may be getting teabagger challengers, Tea parties inspire some GOP challengers.
U.S. Rep. Michael Conaway of Midland was among 16 Texas Republicans who sailed to renomination last year, unopposed in their party’s March primary.
But in March, Conaway looks to be among half a dozen members of the state’s GOP caucus, including Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin, facing challenges from people inspired to run, in part, by tea party rallies.
Initially dismissed by some as inconsequential shout-a-thons and by others as pseudo-events cooked up by GOP-leaning special interests, the tea parties are showing signs of branching out from rallies to involvement in election-year politics. The movement has inspired some people to consider running for Congress and others to make plans for candidate forums.
The unintended consequences of teabagging. Some on the right wing fringe are growing weary of the teabagging moniker.