March 11th, 2014
You may remember the case of New Rome, Ohio, an infamous speedtrap that existed only to line the pockets of a corrupt family and their friends. The corruption was so bad, Ohio disolved the town on September 9, 2004.
Now comes word that Hampton, Florida seems to be trying many of the same tricks.
“A state audit of Hampton’s books, released last month, reads like a primer on municipal malfeasance. It found 31 instances in which local rules or state or federal laws were violated in ways large and small.”
The big question seems to be where the ticket money went…
(See also: Maywood, California.)
Tags: corruption, Crime, Florida, New Rome, speed trap
Posted in Crime, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
March 11th, 2014
There have been a lot of wishful thinking thumbsucker pieces from liberal media outlets proclaiming that the Tea Party is done, finished, a spent force. (Here’s an example.)
And indeed, those looking only at some top-line races in Texas (like Katrina Pierson’s failed attempt to take down Pete Sessions) might find tend to agree.
However, a look at all the races (including many down-ballot) shows that the Tea Party is alive and well.
Start at Lt. Governor. Dan Patrick says he followed the Ted Cruz blueprint and leaned heavily on the Tea Party. “If you have a candidate who will work and at least enough resources to fund a statewide race then and you have the credentials, the tea party will bring you to victory.”
Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s Michael Quinn Sullivan sees conservative victories up and down the ballot:
The most liberal Republican in the Texas Senate lost.
Conservative ranks in the Senate are swelling.
Every House conservative won re-election (with re-enforcements coming from the open-seat races).
House incumbents affiliated with Speaker Joe Straus lost big.
Statewide races saw the TFR-backed candidates earning commanding leads going into run-offs.
Sullivan goes on to cite Don Huffines defeating John Carona, Brooks Landgraf defeating Austin Keith, and the defeats of Straus allies Bennett Ratliff, Ralph Sheffield, Linda Harper-Brown, Diane Patrick and Lance Gooden.
This AP piece touts Tea Party success in Texas, but is lamentably short on details.
Even liberal fossil Paul Burka says that “If there was a clear winner in last night’s election, it was the tea party,” noting the defeats of Joe Straus allies Harper-Brown and Ratliff.
So too at the national level. The enthusiastic response to Sarah Palin’s speech and other Tea Party favorites shows that the movement is far from dead.
Which is not to say huge obstacles don’t remain. The Tea Party still hasn’t built up their financial networks enough to reliably take on big-money incumbents, and even in Texas, previous Tea Party gains were insufficient to wrest the Speakership from Straus (who just spent $2,578,942.72 to retain a job that pays $7,200 a year). But the Tea Party movement is still very much alive and kicking, much to the chagrin of RINOS, democrats and the media…
Tags: Bennett Ratliff, Dan Patrick, Don Huffines, Joe Straus, Linda Harper-Brown, Michael Quinn Sullivan, Republicans, Tea Party, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
March 10th, 2014
Time for another LinkSwarm, sweeping up all the news that was happening while I was churning out Texas primary news:
“The uninsured just aren’t buying ObamaCare.”
A not-so-short compendium of all the people Harry Reid is calling a liar.
ObamaCare will slash wages by as much as $5 an hour for hospitality workers.
ObamaCare helps states transfer medical costs for imprisoned felons to Medicaid.
In Sean Trende’s latest senate simulation, Democrats are more likely to lose 14 seats than 0 seats.
Among those in trouble: Mo Udall. (Hat tip: Shall Not Be Questioned.)
Even Obama is worried that Democrats will get “walloped.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
This week’s Democrat caught beating his wife: Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida
Senate to Obama’s cop killer fan nominee: REJECTED!
But evidently Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan are just fine with cop-killer supporters.
New York City’s new mayor is perfectly willing to screw poor black kids attending a charter school because it’s a non-union school run by his “political nemesis.”
Speaking of cities run by Democrats: woman’s mummified remains found in foreclosed Detroit house.
A great list of things Obama won’t even consider to stop Putin.
Time magazine continues its record of unrivaled prognostication: “No, Russia Will Not Intervene in Ukraine.”
“If economic success is all but criminal in France these days, why not depart for places that reward it instead?”
Israel intercepts more Iranian freedom missiles and happiness rockets in route to Hamas.
Nigerian Muslim defends daughter’s conversion to Christianity, pleads for multiculturalism and tolerance. Ha, just kidding! He hacked her to death with a machete.
“What Nigerian scams are to your grandfather, Bitcoin exchanges are to the 20-30 semi-tech-savvy libertarian demographic.”
“The exchanges are based on layers upon layers of bad software, run by shady characters,” he writes. “The Bitcoin masses, judging by their behavior on forums, have no actual interest in science, technology or even objective reality when it interferes with their market position. They believe that holding a Bitcoin somehow makes them an active participant in a bold new future, even as they passively get fleeced in the bolder current present.”
The bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin’…
Can anyone derail the juggernaut that is Biden 2016?
Vaunted liberal tolerance rears its head in Ireland:
We have an early winner for “stupidest Critical Race Theory race-baiting essay” from Salon (natch): “Why I can’t stand white belly dancers.”
Meanwhile, National Review is celebrating Chinese classical musicians. Now remind me again: Which side is racist?
More on Critical Race Theorist/Social Justice Warrior types: “These people don’t listen to things like “logic” and “reason” when they are in one of their social justice tizzies. It’s not even worth trying to be kind or polite to them.”
Winners and Losers from the Texas primaries.
Tags: 2014 Lt. Governor's Race, Alan Grayson, Bill De Blasio, Crime, Critical Race Theory, Democrats, Detroit, education, election, France, Iran, Ireland, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, New York City, Nigeria, ObamaCare, Ukraine, video
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, ObamaCare, Texas, video, Welfare State | No Comments »
March 8th, 2014
Ace of Spades, showing considerable time, effort, and a somewhat shaky grasp of MS Paint, has produced a single, superginormous .PNG that will annoy everyone without a 30″ Apple Cinema Display that shows, in great detail, why Wendy Davis is doomed.
It’s essentially a color-coded county-by-county breakdown map of Texas that shows negligible voter growth in the most heavily Democratic counties since the Ann Richards—Clayton Williams gubernatorial election of 1990, while East Texas has flipped Republican and the big suburban Republican counties have grown tremendously as of the 2010 Rick Perry-Bill White gubernatorial election.
“The GOP margin out of Montgomery Co ALONE almost completely negates that of the D’s in Harris, Travis, and Bexar Cos combined, falling just 1300 votes short!” [all sic from the PNG]
For those outside the state who may not immediately twig to what that sentence is saying: A single suburban county north of Houston has enough of a Republican margin to negate the Democratic advantage in Houston, Austin and San Antonio combined.
Red areas have gotten redder, blue areas have flipped red or gotten pink, even deep urban areas are less Democratic than they were two decades ago, and the few counties in the Rio Grande Valley who have stayed deep blue have barely added new voters.
All that adds up to Wendy Davis being slaughtered in November.
And Ace’s map only goes up to 2010. Since then, things have gotten even worse for Democrats.
Hey Ace: Is there any reason you couldn’t have stacked the two Texas images vertically? Are you in the pay of the Big Monitor Lobby? Inquiring minds want to know!
Tags: 2010 Election, 2014 Election, Ace of Spades, Ann Richards, Bill White, Clayton Williams, Rick Perry, Texas, Wendy Davis
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
March 7th, 2014
When last we checked, Glenn Hegar was on the edge of winning the Republican nomination for Comptroller outright, but he ended up garnering a frustrating 49.99% of the vote.
Thankfully, primary opponent Harvey Hilderbran has aceeded to reality and announced he’s withdrawing from the race, saving everyone a lot of money and effort for contesting a race that was already a foregone conclusion.
Hegar will face (and most likely obliterate) Democrat Mike Collier in November.
Tags: 2014 Election, Elections, Glenn Hegar, Harvey Hilderbran, Republicans, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
March 6th, 2014
The Texas Tribune has a fascinating chart up showing the cost per vote for Texas races.
A few highlight:
Wendy Davis spent $4,172,161.26 to garner 432,056 votes, or $9.66 a vote.
Greg Abbott spent $8,109,379.17 to garner 1,219,831 votes, or $6.65 a vote.
David Dewhurst spent $4,093,809.73 for 376,164 votes, or $10.88 a vote.
Dan Patrick spent $4,891,374.86 for 550,742 votes, or $8.88 a vote.
The highest amount per vote was spent by Republican Chart Westcott for state House District 108, spending an eye-popping $1,197,762.24 for a measly 3,709 votes, or $322.9 per vote (which did get him into the runoff). Second biggest amount spent for vote? House Speaker (and Tea Party foe) Joe Straus House District 121 (R) spent $2,578,942.72 to get 9,224 votes, or $279.59 a vote. I guess Straus’ special interest backers consider it money well-spent.
Most effective use of money? The two sitting Supreme Court incumbents who didn’t spend anything:
Jeff Brown received 820,558 votes for zero spent.
Phil Johnson received 731,247 votes for zero spent.
Incumbency + Ted Cruz Endorsement = millions, evidently (at least in judicial races).
Now I’m going to post this just to get myself to stop playing with those figures…
Tags: Chart Westcott, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, fundraising, Greg Abbott, Joe Straus, Ted Cruz, Wendy Davis
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 6th, 2014
…enjoy a Golden Retriever nodding its head in time to the music:
There may or may not be any real content today, as it’s a Stuff Needs To Be Done day. But certainly I’ll have something tomorrow at the latest…
Tags: dogs, video
Posted in Uncategorized, video | No Comments »
March 5th, 2014
Will Franklin has an interesting piece up detailing just how poorly Democrats did in primary turnout on Tuesday, noting that both the Democratic Party total, and Wendy Davis’ numbers compared to Bill White, were down significantly from 2010. By contrast, “Abbott received 1,219,831 votes, or 91.50% in a four-way primary race. 1,333,010 Republicans voted in the 2014 primary.”
For all the money BattleGround Texas is pouring into the state, Democrats are doing worse than they did in 2010.
Although Franklin doesn’t go into the 2012 numbers, I’d also like to note that overall Democratic votes are down from 590,164 in 2012 to 546,480. Normally a presidential election year will have higher numbers, but there were no big-money, hotly contested races at the top of the Democratic ticket that year. Turnout should have been up this year. It wasn’t.
More Will Franklin:
In short, there is a partisan enthusiasm gap in Texas, and Republicans are winning it. Democrats have years of soul searching and retooling to do before they’ll even sniff winning their first statewide race since the early 90s. Anointing someone known almost exclusively for filibustering on behalf of elective late-term abortion post 5 months of pregnancy may have set the Democrats’ plan back at least one full election cycle, if not more.”
Read the whole thing.
Tags: 2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Bill White, Elections, Greg Abbott, Texas, Wendy Davis, WILLisms
Posted in Elections, Texas | 1 Comment »
March 5th, 2014
A very brief look at last night’s primary results:
John Cornyn won, but couldn’t break 60% against a field of underfunded challengers.
The Democratic Senate runoff is going to be between the big-spender David Alameel and the LaRouche candidate Kesha Rogers.
As expected, both Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis won their gubernatorial primaries. But Abbott garnered 91% and over 1.2 million votes, the most of any candidate for any office. By contrast, Davis got 432,000 votes and won 79% of the vote against underfunded challenger Ray Madrigal, indicating a distinct enthusiasm gap despite Davis’ nationwide MSM cheer-leading corps.
Dan Patrick’s early lead over incumbent David Dewhurst in the Lt. Governor’s race held up. Patrick pulled in 550,742 votes for 41.5% of the vote, while Dewhurst got 376,164 votes for 28.3%. Maybe Dewhurst can carpet-bomb the runoff with money, but that’s an awful big gap to make up. We knew that Dewhurst losing to Cruz in 2012 hurt him; now we know how much.
Ken Paxton takes the lead into the runoff with 566,080 votes over Dan Branch’s 426,561.
Glenn Hegar is hovering right at the threshold of beating Harvey Hildebran outright in the Comptroller race.
George P. Bush garnered 934,501 to win the Land Commissioner primary…or over twice as many votes as Wendy Davis.
Sid Miller (410,273) and Tommy Merritt (248,568) are heading for a runoff for Agricultural Commissioner, leaving Joe Straus ally Eric Opiela out in the cold.
All the Ted Cruz-endorsed Supreme Court incumbents won their races.
Super-tight runoff in U.S. House District 23 between Francisco “Quico” Canseco and Will Hurd to face Democratic incumbent Pete Gallego. Canseco held the seat before Gallego, and whoever wins the runoff has a good chance of taking the swing seat back.
Katrina Pierson was unable to unseat Pete Sessions in U.S. House District 32, garnering 36.4% of the vote. As I feared, Sarah Palin’s endorsement came to late to truly capitalize on it in fundraising.
Matt McCall did even better, where he and another challenger kept Lamar Smith at 60.4% in U.S. House District 21. Though they won their primaries, Sessions and Smith might be vulnerable to further challenges in 2016.
As far as I can tell, every U.S. or statewide incumbent Republican either won or is leading their race. Except David Dewhurst.
Tags: 2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Dan Branch, Dan Patrick, David Alameel, David Dewhurst, Elections, Eric Opiela, Francisco "Quico" Canseco, George P. Bush, Glenn Hegar, Greg Abbott, John Cornyn, Katrina Pierson, Ken Paxton, Kesha Rogers, Matt McCall, Pete Sessions, Republicans, Sid Miller, Ted Cruz, Texas, Tommy Merritt, Wendy Davis
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 4th, 2014
Most people were expecting to see a David Dewhurst-Dan Patrick runoff for Lt. Governor. however, you’d be hard=pressed to find anyone who would predict that not only would Patrick garner more votes in the primary than Dewhurst, but also do so by a significant margin. Right now, with 59% of the vote in, Patrick is ahead of Dewhurst by over 100,000 votes, garnering 41.8 of the vote, while Dewhurst is getting 28.3%.
People we’re saying that Patrick was lucky Jerry Patterson and Todd Staples were the race, ensuring a runoff. Now it appears that Dewhurst should be thankful they’re keeping Dan Patrick from winning outright…
Tags: 2014 Election, 2014 Lt. Governor's Race, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Republicans, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »