Posts Tagged ‘Ana-Maria Ramos’

Chinese Gambling Interests And The Texas House Speaker’s Race

Sunday, December 29th, 2024

I’ve not been covering every twist and turn of the Texas House Speaker’s race because it’s obvious there’s a lot of Liar’s Poker going on. The current state of play is the Rep. David Cook is the Republican choice to be speaker of a majority Republican House, while Rep. Dustin Burrows is the latest head of the Joe Straus/Dennis Bonnen/Dade Phelan RINO hydra to keep Democrats in power-sharing in the House, along with at least one or more actual Democrats (I think Rep. John Bryant and Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos also declared they’re running) also supposedly running. After Cook secured the GOP caucus nomination, Burrows said he had a list of enough Democrats and Republicans backing him to become speaker, even though multiple reps on his list said they hadn’t agreed to back him at all.

It’s quite confusing.

Now we have more information on just who is backing Burrows, and it turns out to be Chinese gambling Interests.

For the past two legislative sessions, a Chinese casino operator, Sands, has been trying to expand gambling in Texas.

Sands, which established itself in Las Vegas, divested entirely from the U.S. market in 2022. That was the same year they went all-in on China, where the company operates a casino complex. Sands signed a 10-year concessions agreement with the Chinese government to continue its gambling operations.

The operation is in Macao, a special administrative region China took over in 1999. Sands, according to Yahoo Finance, derives a substantial portion of its revenues from China.

This is problematic. No business in China is allowed to operate without CCP approval. Doing business in China requires companies to operate at the whims of a political machine singularly focused on power expansion. This is an environment where American businesses are made to bend the knee to set up shop.

An example of this is the formerly family-friendly Disney Corporation. In the 1990s, then-CEO Michael Eisner and his lieutenant Bob Iger both went on an apology tour in China after releasing a film that upset Beijing.

Eisner promised the company would not take action that “insults our friends.” In 2010, it was widely reported that current-CEO Iger met with the CCP’s head of propaganda. He gave his word that the Mouse House would use its platform to “introduce more about China to the world.”

China is constantly working to maintain its public image abroad, and cultural institutes are a big part of its efforts in the U.S. Last week, Sands reportedly donated $15M to the University of Las Vegas to establish a Chinese Culture Institute.

Like Disney’s promise to introduce more about China, Sands’ China Institute will promote appreciation and understanding of the Chinese language, traditions, and history to UNLV students.

It will also facilitate student and faculty exchanges, not unlike former vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’ trips.

Why would Sands busy itself spreading CCP propaganda? Simple: it’s incentivized to do so. According to a release announcing UNLV’s new institute, Sands “has been a steady supporter of fostering Chinese culture since it opened Sands Macao in 2004.”

Last week, in a bid to secure the Texas House speakership surreptitiously, State Rep. Dustin Burrows broke caucus rules and went to the House Democrat caucus and its leader, Gene Wu, to gather enough votes.

A Houston-based state representative, Wu is an outspoken and abrasive member best known for publicly hoping that then-President Trump would die from COVID-19. Wu has a liberal voting record and has also faced scrutiny for his alleged ties to the CCP.

His ascent to lead Democrats in the Texas House was a shock to Capitol observers after the 2024 election. Burrows’ uniting with Wu is noteworthy, especially given the latter’s links to the CCP and the gambling interests trying to invade Texas.

One of Gene Wu’s largest political donors during the 2024 election cycle was Sands.

The casino’s political action committee donated $4,000 to Wu. Although that’s not a large contribution compared to the PAC’s global giving in Texas, it was enough to be one of Wu’s largest donations of the cycle.

Wu has attended events hosted by Chinese consulates and opposed the 2020 federal closure of the Houston Chinese Consulate, which was shut down due to espionage concerns. He has also been a vocal opponent of legislation aimed at banning hostile foreign entities, including China, from purchasing land in Texas.

In 2023, when the Texas House was entertaining a measure to establish casinos in the state, Wu voted to gut an amendment that would have forbidden gambling companies with links to China from operating in Texas.

The 2023 bid to link Texas to China via gambling ultimately failed, but the Texas Lottery, through acts of commission and omission, has managed to pull it off.

Jackpot.com is a platform that has been selling lottery tickets online in Texas since 2023. The company also operates an exclusive lottery in China called Lotto China, which has raised eyebrows given China’s strict control over gambling operations within its borders. Additionally, the country has been known to export gambling to neighboring countries as a tool for conducting surveillance.

Call be old fashioned, but I don’t think Texas Republicans should be beholden to Chinese communist gambling interests…

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Posted in Communism, Democrats, Republicans, Texas | 4 Comments »

Dade Phelan/Texas Speaker Race Update

Monday, September 16th, 2024

I’ve been needing to post a Dade Phelan/Texas Speaker’s Race update for a few weeks now, because I held off because I needed more information and I wasn’t sure what’s going on. Now a couple of tidbits of news have dropped that pretty much requires a post…but I’m still not sure what’s going on.

  • Now that Rep. John Smithee (R-Amarillo) has joined the race there are five Republican representatives who have declared they’re running for Speaker:
    • David Cook (Mansfield)
    • James Frank (Wichita Falls)
    • Tom Oliverson (Cypress)
    • Shelby Slawson (Stephenville)
    • John Smithee (Amarillo)
  • But wait! It’s not just republicans! Democrat Ana-Maria Ramos has also thrown her hat into the speaker’s race ring.

    State Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos has filed to run for Speaker of the House, becoming the first Democrat to do so in what is becoming a crowded race against incumbent Speaker Dade Phelan.

    Snip.

    With Republicans expected to maintain or even grow their current majority in the Texas House, Ramos is unlikely win her bid for speaker. It does, however, add to the ever-growing consensus that Phelan will not be speaker next session.

  • In theory, the Republican caucus will determine their speaker nominee by secret ballot.

    The vote for Speaker of the House will take place on the first day of the legislative session on January 14, 2025.

    The decision may be made long before that as part of the Republican Caucus’ nominating process.

    The process of Republican legislators nominating a unified speaker candidate ahead of the official vote at the start of the session in January was adopted in 2017, in an attempt to prevent Republican speaker candidates, like then-Speaker Joe Straus, from courting Democrat support for the position.

    In the years since, however, both the former Speaker Dennis Bonnen and the current Speaker Dade Phelan have released lists containing Democrat supporters ahead of the caucus vote, making the exercise a formality.

    This year appears to be shaping up differently as Phelan has already gained four challengers who have promised to appoint only Republicans as committee chairs and gain Republican support first. For the first time, the caucus nomination process could be significant.

    The caucus vote will take place in December as part of their retreat ahead of the session. To clench the caucus’ nomination, multiple rounds of voting can take place during a secret ballot. The winner must receive 2/3 support during the first two rounds of voting. If that does not occur, the threshold then drops to 3/5.

    The widespread disillusion with Phelan over the Paxton impeachment, the school choice vote, and so many Phelan loyalists getting slaughtered in the primary, plus the vocal opposition of Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Senator Ted Cruz to Phelan continuing as speaker, plus a secret ballot, would seem to doom Phelan’s chances of being the Republican caucus choice.

  • But Texas speaker election rules run things on a top-two runoff basis, not round-by-round elimination, and the process is overseen by the Secretary of State. In combination with Ramos’s run, this would seem to eliminate Phelan’s chance to be elected speaker, as Democrats would presumably support Ramos on the first ballot, while Republicans would support whatever non-Phelan candidate gets the official GOP House Caucus nod, which means Phelan is left out of the top two.
  • Maybe Ramos is getting high on her own supply, actually believing that Democrats are ready to “turn Texas blue,” perhaps thanks to the Democratic Party’s relentless importation of illegal aliens. But since Ken Paxton has been hypervigilant in cracking down on potential voting fraud, that outcome seems…remote.
  • But since the cabal backing the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan speakership line is unlikely to go gently into that good night, I must be missing something. There must be some scheme to either keep Phelan in the speaker’s chair, or elect another cabal toady in his place, that I’m just not seeing.
  • Phelan shows every sign of trying to finagle another term, even going so far as to declare that now he he really is for school choice after working so hard to kill it last session. I don’t think anyone believes those new spots are genuine.
  • Another sign that Phelan is working to win is the announcement that former Republican Governor Rick Perry has hired as a senior advisor.

    Perry’s new position follows the announcement of Phelan’s new chief of staff, Mike Toomey, whose campaign finance records show numerous donations to Democrat lawmakers since 2015.

    Toomey, who previously served as chief of staff to Rick Perry, has been a casino lobbyist, which garnered him between $3.4 and $6.7 million this session alone. One of Toomey’s largest clients is the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which seeks to legalize monopolistic casino gambling in Texas.

    Toomey has also represented Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the group that advocated for Phelan’s impeachment of Paxton last year. Notably, Perry’s name was on the by-line of a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for Paxton’s impeachment and conviction; the article was ghost-written by TLR.

    As of 2022, Perry has warmed up to the expansion of gambling, becoming a spokesperson for Sports Betting Alliance, a group lobbying to legalize mobile sports gambling in Texas.

    Perry will advise Phelan in a “voluntary capacity” until the start of the 89th Texas Legislature in January, according to an official press release.

    Perry’s support of Phelan may seem inexplicable to Texas Republicans who remember him as a conservative stalwart, but Perry has long gone off on ill-advised tangents every now and them, from backing the Gardasil mandate for pre-teen girls to his love for expensive high speed rail subsidies to derailing his presidential campaign by debating while hopped up on goofballs for back surgery.

    Plus, I suspect that gambling money pipeline jets out a pretty lucrative stream…

  • Finally, I note for the record this Texas Scorecard “Speaker Phelan Used State Jet for Campaign Activities” article.

    A new investigative report revealed that House Speaker Dade Phelan used a state jet for campaign activities.

    KHOU 11 has reported that members of the Texas House have used TxDOT’s executive-style jets for activities that crossed the line between “official state business” into personal or political business.

    According to state law, the jets cannot be used for attending “an event at which money is raised for private or political purposes.”

    When Phelan (R-Beaumont) used the jet in September 2022 to attend a speaking engagement at the leftwing Texas Tribune Festival, he didn’t stop there. He then used the jet to attend a University of Texas versus Texas Tech football game in Lubbock.

    In a statement to KHOU 11, Phelan’s office said the trip was to meet with Tech officials and paid for by university donors.

    However, campaign finance records show that he accepted a $2,500 in-kind contribution for “food and beverage for campaign event” the day he got to Lubbock. He also had an $880 charge at a hotel for “staff lodging for political fundraiser.”

    KHOU 11 estimated that he raised at least $37,522 for his campaign on the trip.

    Yeah, probably a violation, but it seems pretty smallball stuff compared to Phelan’s other shenanigans…

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 2 Comments »