Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has long been critical of House Speaker Dade Phelan, but this week he stepped up his criticism, saying that Phelan was “impossible to work with.”
The Texas Legislature has ended the Fourth Special Session, with the Texas House once again leaving school choice undone.
At a press conference held this afternoon, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick laid the blame at House Speaker Dade Phelan’s feet.
Gov. Greg Abbott tasked lawmakers with border security and education issues during this most recent special session.
While they made quick work of border security measures, the two chambers and the governor remain at an impasse regarding education.
Abbott’s call specifically mentions increased funding for government schools as well as a school choice program. While both chambers appeared to agree in the abstract on increased teacher pay and school safety funding, school choice remained the sticking point.
The plan pushed by Abbott and passed by the Senate would create Education Savings Accounts, by which students enrolled in the program would receive money that they could use to pay for tuition at a private school.
But while the Senate passed that legislation numerous times, the House voted to strip the school choice provision out of their omnibus school spending bill last month.
Since that vote, the House has not considered any additional legislation, leaving the school safety and teacher pay raise proposals to perish.
On Tuesday, the House adjourned sine die, one day earlier than the 30 days allotted for the special session, leaving senate bills on school safety and teacher pay raises unaddressed. The Senate followed shortly after, with Patrick calling a press conference for the afternoon.
Over the summer, Patrick had ramped up his criticism of Phelan, eventually calling on him to resign. While he says he will not get involved in House races, he did say he would personally be making the speaker selection an issue as a voter.
“Republican voters need to ask their House members if they’re going to support Speaker Phelan for speaker, and if they do, there’s a good chance they lose their race,” said Patrick.
He noted that, while he had disagreements with past speakers Joe Straus and Dennis Bonnen, he could have conversations with them. Phelan, meanwhile, has not communicated with him.
“This guy’s just flat out impossible to work with,” he added, saying that if Phelan is speaker of the House next session, school choice and other issues, such as a taxpayer-funded lobbying ban, will die again.
Time after time, Patrick has marshaled the Republican majorities in the senate to pass conservative legislation in a timely manner, only to have it die in Phelan’s house.
Patrick should reconsider his policy of not getting involved in house races, so that he, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott can present a unified front for defeating not only Phelan, but everyone who voted to kill school choice.
The UT admissions scandal was not only real, but several of the state’s most powerful politicians (including then-speaker Joe Straus) and media outlets conspired to bury the story. And there’s no guarantee that the problem has actually been fixed, especially since Wallace Hall is no longer serving on the UT board of regents. That Statesman obituary notes that “It’s an open secret that leaders of public and private colleges put a thumb on the admissions scale from time to time,” as though this is just something we should calmly accept as the way of the world.
I guess handling college admissions by admitting students based on objective criteria is just too hard a concept for some people to grasp.
There’s a saying that the good men do is often buried with them, but the evil they did often lives on after they’re gone…
State Rep. Dennis Bonnen announced Monday that he has support from 109 members to become the next speaker of the Texas House. That number, if it holds, is more than enough votes for him to win the gavel.
The Angleton Republican’s announcement comes after four other speaker candidates — Republicans Tan Parker, Four Price and Phil King, along with Democrat Eric Johnson — dropped out of the race in the last 48 hours. All four endorsed Bonnen upon removing their names from consideration. Bonnen said during a news conference at the Texas Capitol on Monday afternoon that his team plans to release the list of 109 members supporting his bid soon.
“We are here to let you know the speaker’s race is over, and the Texas House is ready to go to work,” said Bonnen, who was flanked by at least two members of the hardline conservative Texas House Freedom Caucus — Jeff Leach of Plano and Mike Lang of Granbury — and state Rep. Tom Craddick, a Midland Republican and former speaker, among other Republican and Democrats. When asked by reporters what the House’s No. 1 priority would be during the 2019 legislative session, Bonnen suggested school finance would be at the top of members’ lists.
According to this morning’s Empower Texas email, two Republicans that had been going the Straus “get elected via Democrat votes” route, Travis Clardy (R–Nacogdoches) and Drew Darby (R–San Angelo), both dropped out of the race as well.
Said a political insider following the race: “Better than Straus. Not owned by Gordon Johnson. He’s prone to wild fits, but they are his and not manufactured to appease the lobby.”
At some point I will grapple with all the unraveling Clinton/Mueller/Fusion GPS/FISA/Brennan Scandularity…but not today.
Democrats, rather than maximizing their chance at a blue wave, have insisted on electing far left-wing candidates over more-electable party moderates. Those national results replicate what the Texas Democratic Party did to themselves: Push moderates out of the party. Result: More Republicans elected. They appear hellbent on replicating those results at the national level…
Former New York speaker of the House Sheldon Silver found guilty of a kickback scheme yet again. The first conviction was overturned on appeal over a technicality.
“The people who’ve lost their way are the liberals and civil libertarians, blinded by their rage for Trump, who have dropped their principles in a moment of political threat and are taking out their anger on a man who has been their staunchest ally. Maybe the question isn’t what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it’s what happened to everyone else.” Caveat: Writer suffers from usual “Fox News and Trump are the Devil” derangement. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
President Donald Trump: “Members of the violent MS-13 gang are animals.” MSM: “Trump just said all undocumented immigrants are animals!” Also: “Trump supporters are fleeing the media not because they want cheerleaders, but because they are tired of a secular, coastal, liberal press that not only cannot relate to heartland voters but thinks it is beneath them to even try.”
China, Russia and other scumbag authoritarian countries are lying about their GDP. This is my shocked face. This also why you should take all those “OMG China’s economy will overtake the U.S. in 20XX!” panics with several grains of sand.
Seattle thinks that golden goose would taste mighty fine cooked in a white wine reduction.
Class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook over revelations that the company logged users’ text and call logs using the Facebook smartphone app on Android phones. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
EU: here’s a statement condemning the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania: LOL, no. BLOCKED. (Hat tip: Pat Condell on Gab.)
Jason Shoumaker, the law school’s facilities director until November 2017, is the subject of an ongoing probe by the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Rangers. Though Shoumaker was taken into custody Thursday over tampering charges, he is at the heart of a major fraud investigation – one that potentially involves “several million dollars of questionable expenses,” a source familiar with the probe said….During multiple pay periods, Shoumaker logged regular 8-hour days with the university while he was actually cavorting out of state, according to the affidavit.
Another Straus crony, Rep. John Zerwas of Richmond, announced he was running for Speaker, though with both Straus and Cook leaving, reassembling Straus’ “Democrats and RINOs coalition” is going to be difficult (and hopefully impossible). Phil King of Weatherford, had previously announced he was running for Speaker.
Ross Ramsey provides some insight on the race (some of it even accurate) and discusses the unusual nature of Straus stepping down.
It’s an unusual move for a speaker: Straus unseated Craddick, who had beaten Democrat Pete Laney of Hale Center when the House flipped from Democratic to Republican. Laney had succeeded Gib Lewis of Fort Worth, who decided to quit after an ethics scandal. Lewis came after Billy Clayton, who had been acquitted after a federal bribery sting operation caught him in its net.
Snip.
This will be the first open race since the lead-up to the 1993 legislative session when Lewis was ending his fifth and last term, freeing anyone who wanted to throw their hat in the ring. Pete Laney had been chairman of the powerful State Affairs Committee. Other candidates for speaker included other Lewis lieutenants — the heads of committees on Appropriations, Ways and Means, Transportation and so on. They battled right up to the beginning of the 1993 session, when Laney announced he had put together the 76 votes it takes to win.
Rather than take a victory lap, Empower Texans announced they were going harder than ever after Republican Representatives who supported Straus:
Taxpayers must be vigilant to ensure that Straus is not able to install a hand-picked successor who will continue to be controlled by Democratic lobbyist Gordon Johnson and liberal special interests. That means being more engaged than ever in the upcoming elections to ensure that those Republican sycophants who have propped up Straus will be removed from power as well.
Earlier this year Straus earned a spot on the Citizens’ Choice Ten Worst List wherein he was labeled “The Puppet” for serving as a public face for Johnson, the Democratic Caucus, and a group of liberal Republicans. Whether his retirement will mean the ouster of his puppet-masters remains to be seen.
During the regular and special session this year, Straus went to war with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott, and the Republican Party of Texas, obstructing each of their conservative agendas on property tax reform, privacy, ethics, gun rights, and others issues. Straus appears to now be paying the price for aligning himself against voters and the leaders they have popularly elected.
According to Capitol sources, Straus’ decision took some of his allies by surprise, with many having no knowledge the announcement would be coming this week, if at all. Those representatives who have backed Straus in the past and are still running for reelection will have a particularly tough road ahead as they are forced to defend Straus’ record of obstruction in the March primary without his backing.
Not all of Straus’ lieutenants were out of the loop however. At the same time that Straus announced his retirement, State Rep. Byron Cook (R–Corsicana), the speaker’s top hatchet-man, also announced he is not running for reelection. That announcement comes on the tail end of several other retirements and others are likely forthcoming.
For example, according to sources, State Rep. Dan Huberty (R–Houston), who killed all school choice proposals this session as Straus’ Public Education chairman, has cancelled his fundraising events and may be headed for the door as well.
With Straus out of the way, conservative Texans need to be on high alert. There will certainly be an attempt to install a replacement for Straus who continues to empower lobbyists like Johnson and the Democratic caucus. It is essential that taxpayers ensure the Republican caucus unite around a candidate, and that those candidates commit to advancing the Republican platform and working with statewide Republican leaders.
In recent years, Straus supporters have promoted State Rep. Four Price (R–Amarillo) as a possible 2019 successor. With a liberal record and alleged ties between his and the Straus family, Price would certainly be a continuation of the current regime. Other possible candidates, such as former Democrat State Rep. Todd Hunter (R–Corpus Christi), who served over the past several sessions as Straus’ gatekeeper on the Calendars Committee, would also likely continue to maintain a power coalition with the Democrats.
Straus managed to stay Speaker by ruthless threats of killing legislation and bad committee assignments for Representatives who refused to toe the line. With that power gone, expect Straus’ Dem/RINO coalition to give way to actual conservative governance in the 86th Texas legislative session in 2019.
With increasing hostility coming from his own caucus for his RINO ways, Texas Speaker Joe Straus has announced that he’s retiring at the end of his current term.
Conservatives will find this very welcome news, and it shakes up the state’s political status quo quite a bit.
In an unprecedented abuse of power, House Speaker Joe Straus unilaterally adjourned the Texas House without warning a day before the special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott was scheduled to end. In doing so, he ignored loud objections from the floor and denied members their right to vote on the move.
Shortly after the Texas House voted to approve a half-billion-dollar education spending program, State Rep. Dennis Bonnen (R-Angelton) began briefing lawmakers on the progress of negotiations about a property tax reform measure. Bonnen told lawmakers he would not appoint a conference committee on what was arguably the center-piece legislation of both the governor and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that was watered down over the weekend in the House.
Instead, Bonnen told his colleagues, the Senate would have to take the House version or leave it.
Then, without warning, State Rep. Dan Huberty (R-Humble) stepped to the microphone and moved that the House adjourn “sine die” – the constitutional language concluding the chamber’s work for the special session.
Besides property tax reform, the adjournment killed the key issues in Gov. Abbott’s agenda, such as spending limits, privacy protections, paycheck protection, and more.
Straus’ radical move could be a last hurrah for the liberal Republican speaker.
The House Republican Caucus is scheduled to meet on Wednesday at 8:30am to discuss adopting procedures for a caucus nominee for speaker.
After Straus gaveled the House out, conservative members confirmed on social media that the speaker ignored a chorus of objections and demands for a record vote on the motion to adjourn.
It is Straus’s most insolent rebuke yet of Gov. Abbott’s authority to call a special session, and the basic foundations of our constitutional order.
Over the past several sessions, Straus had gradually consolidated power, refusing to recognize member’s motion, refusing to allow members to lay out amendments, and refusing to answer questions or justify his actions on any legal basis.
Governor Abbott was blunt about who was to blame for the special session failure:
Gov. Greg Abbott laid the blame for the failure of the Legsialture to pass half of his 20-item special session agenda on the House and its speaker, Joe Straus, laying the groundwork for a challenge to Straus in the next session.
In an interview with KTRH radio in Houston Wednesday morning, Abbott said he was gratified by the progress made in the special session, which ended a day early Tuesday, but unhappy with the failure of the House to even vote on nine of his agenda items.
“I’m disappointed that all 20 items did not receive the up or down vote that I wanted,” the governor said.
While the Senate worked quickly to pass 18 of his priorities at session’s start, Abbott said the House was “dilly-dallying” on unrelated matters, and laid the blame at the doorstep of the speaker, who he said had made plain during the regular session that he would block any transgender bathroom legislation in a regular or special session and delivered on that promise.
“We [sic-LP] was not tricky. He was open and overt that he would not let it on the House floor,” Abbott said.
The governor said he was especially disappointed that the session ended without agreeing on his top priority of property tax reform. He said he could call another special session at any time, but it would not make sense to do so with the same cast of characters, suggesting, “that’s why elections matter.”
That seemed to be an invitation to members of the House Freedom Caucus to seek to replace Straus in the next session. In that he is on the same page at Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who blistered Straus at a sine die press conference Tuesday night.
The Texas House Republican Caucus is meeting right now to address the Speaker question.
I’m getting to the point where my eyes automatically skip over stories with the words “Russia” or “Mueller” in the same way they skip over stories with the word “Kardashian.” So be advised the smattering of Russia news here is of the non-imaginary variety:
Liberals: “Democratic voters are fired up and ready to vote against Trump!” Polls: Eh, not so much.
To win back voters, Democrats need to be less annoying:
No item in your life is too big or too small for this variety of liberal busybodying. On the one hand, the viral video you found amusing was actually a manifestation of the patriarchy. On the other hand, you actually have an irresponsibly large number of carbon-emitting children.
All this scolding – this messaging that you should feel guilty about aspects of your life that you didn’t think were anyone else’s business – leads to a weird outcome when you go to vote in November.” The central premise is probably valid, but the piece itself is larded with lies and half-truths.
True, but this piece comes with a very large caveat: In this course of describing why Social Justice Warriors annoy the living shit out of ordinary Americans, author Josh Berro (a registered Democrat) makes several sweeping assertions about the supposed popularity of tranny bathrooms, gay marriage and gun control that are simply false.
It’s clear that Natalia Veselnitskaya pulled a bait-and-switch on Donald Trump, Jr. She induced him to a meeting with the promise of information that could be used against Hillary Clinton, but delivered no such information. Instead, she used the meeting to lobby the son of the presumptive Republican nominee for president on the supposed evils of the Magnitsky Act.
And this:
Second, the pro-Russia element in Washington, D.C. is substantial and cuts across party and ideological lines. Dana Rohrabacher, dubbed Putin’s favorite congressman, is a conservative. Ron Dellums was among the most liberal members of Congress.
Shame to hear that about Rohrabacher, who I did an interview with a long, long time ago.
The damage the Obama Administration did to the criminal justice system in America. “Under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, the Department of Justice pushed the states to pass new laws. The goal was to make it impossible to hold repeat offenders in jail before trial. Why? Because so many repeat offenders are black.”
Still more about the madness at Evergreen State College. “I was told that I couldn’t go into the room because I was white.”
Trump ends Obama’s asinine CIA-run guns for Syrian jihadis program (though we’re still arming the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces). Naturally the MSM is spinning this as “Putin wins!”, but as I’ve argued before, we never had any national interest in arming anti-Assad jihadis in the first place.
President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are evidently telling Qatar and Saudi Arabia to play nice.
Poland on verge of passing a law forcing all their supreme court justices over a certain age, except those reappointed by the justice minister, to retire. The EU is complaining it’s a “blow to a independent judiciary,” while the ruling conservative Law and Justice Party is saying its getting rid of a lot of holdover communist judges.
Even if Congressional Republicans still can’t repeal ObamaCare (in which case we need to replace them), the Trump Administration still has many options to chip away at it.
Kurt Schlichter says we must elect Kid Rock Senator, chiefly due to the conniptions it will induce in Never Trumpers like George Will and Bill Kristol.
Have Clinton donors lined up behind California Senator Kamala Harris as heir 2020 Presidential nominee? On the plus side, she would help shore up the Obama coalition among black voters. On the minus side, she does a much poorer job than Obama of hiding just far out on the left wing of the party she is. After all, this was a woman who preferred seeing Catholic hospitals serving the poor close unless they agreed to perform abortions.
The Washington Post is very, very upset that all their fake news isn’t moving their fake polls. “Maybe you shouldn’t have cried wolf all those other times. Or was this one another crying of wolf? You squandered your credibility, trying so hard to get Trump. You built up our skepticism and our capacity to flesh out the other side of any argument against Trump.”
“US Special Operators Are Moving Closer to the Fighting in Raqqa.” Evidence? “On July 17, 2017, pictures began to appear on social media of flat bed trucks carrying M1245A5 M-ATV mine protected vehicles. On July 20, 2017, additional images emerged of another convoy with more M1245s, as well as a number of up-armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers.” The M1245A5 M-ATV is evidently only used by U.S. special forces. Bulldozers were also crucial to the battle of Mosul.
The Juice is loose. Well, not really: O.J. Simpson will not be released on parole until at least October. While I believe Simpson did indeed get away with a double homicide, he was acquitted of that charge, and his current parole is in line with his time served on the robbery and kidnapping charges of which he was actually convicted. Now Simpson can get back to paying off his civil lawsuit judgment.
“Newsweek Settles with Journalist Smeared by Kurt Eichenwald.” So. Much. Stupidity. “Eichenwald inferred that the only possible means by which Trump could have come across the misattributed quote was purposeful collusion with the Russians, and that the Wikileaks documents themselves had been altered.” Although, to be absolutely fair to everyone’s favorite seizure-prone tentacle-porn fan, plaintiff Bill Moran did not exactly cover himself in glory either… (Hat tip: Lee Stranahan’s Twitter feed.)
“DC Comics Reboots Snagglepuss as ‘Gay, Southern Gothic Playwright.'” Honestly, I have so little interest in the original character this actually strikes me as an improvement. (Imagine the outrage if they brought back Scrappy Doo as an “antifa” agitator. That’s right, there wouldn’t be any, because everybody hates Scrappy Doo.) Though one wonders just who the audience is for this reboot; I doubt many urban hipsters will make their way to a comic store for the irony value…
Gov. Gregg Abbott has a tendency to hold opinions close to his chest. But in this Chad Hasty Show interview, he sounds genuinely irritated when talking about the need for the special session he’s been forced to call because so many of his priorities died in the Joe Straus-led house:
Gov. Abbott: If you guys are not going to take care of business during the regular session, if you’re going to use this must-past bill about ensuring the Texas Medical Board is going to continue on as political fodder, then I’m going to make sure we have a special session that counts, that focuses on the issues that I know are very important to our fellow Texans. Such as reducing property taxes. Such as addressing something that has turned out to be a very substantial issue all the way from Dallas, Texas to the Rio Grande Valley, which is to crack down on fraud that has taken place in the mail ballot process.
Chad Hasty: Governor, you said that the Speaker of the House [prioritized] his priorities, you prioritized the issues for the state of Texas. Are you saying that maybe the House Speaker didn’t have the priorities of all Texans in mind?
Gov. Abbott: In my conversations, and also in my perceptions, it seems like his priorities differed from, for example, these priorities I have on the special session call. His priorities differed from the deals that we were trying to broker at the end of the session. Some easy examples: I called, in my state of the state address, that I gave at the very beginning of the session, for meaningful property tax reform. Several weeks before the end of the session, I said publicly, in the press, there were a couple of items that were must press items in order for this session to be concluded successfully, ine of those was property tax reform. I know that I articulated, both in my state-of-the-state address as well as during the course of the session, to have at least some form of ability, especially for parents of special needs children, to have the opportunity to pick the school that’s right for them. And none of these have an opportunity of being addressed in the Texas House of Representatives.
Chad Hasty: Now, I’m looking at 20 items here, one that is much-pass before we get to everything else, which is the sunset legislation. I’m going to be honest with you, Governor: I watched this past session. How do you expect all these lawmakers to get all 20 of these done in 30 days?
Gov. Abbott: It’s pretty easy, because for almost all of them, nothing new needs to be created. I am resurrecting bills that were already proposed, that were largely debated on, many of them already passed out of the senate. I know, in my conversations with the Lt. Governor, that these are all items that can be passed out of the Texas senate in short order. It’s just a matter of of getting them to the house floor, getting a vote on them. The issue is not one of timing, because these are not difficult issues to grapple with, because they’ve already grappled with most of them. It’s just a matter of are they going to stand for them and vote for them, or evade them and not vote for them?
Here’s the interview, which goes into more detail on the special needs education bill, which is a bigger issue than most people realize:
Governor Abbott is essentially saying what conservative activists have: These are popular bills, and the only reason they haven’t passed is the obstruction of Speaker Joe Straus and his lieutenants
Abbott gave legislators an ambitious 19-item agenda to work on — including a so-called “bathroom bill” — after they approve must-pass legislation that they failed to advance during the regular session. An overtime round, Abbott said, was “entirely avoidable.”
“Because of their inability or refusal to pass a simple law that would prevent the medical profession from shutting down, I’m announcing a special session to complete that unfinished business,” Abbott told reporters. “But if I’m going to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for a special session, I intend to make it count.”
(Ignore the usual Texas Tribune hand-wringing about the “controversial” nature of the bathroom law; it’s just a restoration of the status quo, reversing what the Obama Administration imposed on the nation via executive fiat.)
Here are Governor Abbott’s 19 items:
Teacher pay increase of $1,000
Administrative flexibility in teacher hiring and retention practices
School finance reform commission
School choice for special needs students
Property tax reform
Caps on state and local spending
Preventing cities from regulating what property owners do with trees on private land
Preventing local governments from changing rules midway through construction projects
Speeding up local government permitting process
Municipal annexation reform
Texting while driving preemption
Privacy
Prohibition of taxpayer dollars to collect union dues
Prohibition of taxpayer funding for abortion providers
Pro-life insurance reform
Strengthening abortion reporting requirements when health complications arise
Strengthening patient protections relating to do-not-resuscitate orders
Cracking down on mail-in ballot fraud
Extending maternal mortality task force
That’s an ambitious agenda…if Texas Speaker Joe Straus, who did so much to thwart so many of those items, let’s any of them pass.
In an effort to force the special session, [Lieutenant Governor] Patrick had held hostage legislation, known as a “sunset bill,” that would keep some state agencies from closing. That “will be the only legislation on the special session [agenda] until they pass out of the Senate in full,” Abbott said.
That’s quite defensible from a governance perspective, but it is going to eliminate Lt. Gov. Patrick’s biggest piece of leverage against Straus.
With fewer items on the agenda, maybe House Republicans will have a chance to concentrate and actually act like Republicans rather than let Straus’ liberal coalition run roughshod over them.