This is a Democratic “pollster” who can’t give us any data. Instead, he talks about his “feelings”. Peggy Noonan had some of those before last November’s elections too. They were worth as much as this joker’s.
Because, of course, there is no data that would find that Democrats want entitlement cuts, or give a rat’s ass about any grand bargain. Voters might want a budget agreement, but one that gets rid of this bullshit sequester. And that shit about making “Medicare and Social Security sustainable”? I wish our own people would quit using Pete Peterson language to undermine our social net. Raise the cap on payroll taxes and be done with it.
Instead, a pollster who happens to be a principal at one of the biggest Democratic polling firms in the nation, Benenson Strategy Group, is going around telling people (and his candidate clients?) about his bullshit “feelings”.
Would it surprise you to find out that he was Harold Ford’s pollster? How about the fact that he was Blanche Lincoln’s pollster? Would it surprise you that Joel Benenson, Brodnitz’s partner, was Obama’s pollster in 2008?
And then we wonder why Beltway Democrats are so out of touch, when even their own pollsters have to resort to “feelings” to try and sell their bullshit austerity agenda. Oy vey.
State and federal investigations eventually will uncover the extent to which West Fertilizer Co. followed the law regarding the large amounts of highly volatile ammonium nitrate stored on its property. But regardless of what authorities knew, West residents remained clueless — by design — about the extreme dangers they were living next to until an April 17 explosion killed 15 and devastated a 35-block area.
A little-known section of Texas law allows agencies to withhold information they regard as confidential concerning the handling, storage and transportation of extremely hazardous chemicals. Not only can state agencies claim the right under the law to ensure that the public remains in the dark, they can assert the right to not even explain why they won’t release data.
All of the original justifications for budget cuts have gone away. The sequester is hurting the economy and keeping unemployment high. But instead Republicans plan to double down on cuts. Apparently their real game is to force high unemployment and desperation for 99% of us to further enrich the 1%.
The Republican justification for cutting was “soaring deficits.” But with recovery and tax increases the deficits are falling dramatically, already down by half. Even so Republicans continue to say we need cuts, even though cuts hurt the economy and cause continued high unemployment.
These sorts of facts in the U.S., and related ones from other economies, are threatening to upend the entire austerity movement, as Irwin observes. But while that debate proceeds and evolves elsewhere, Fox News continues to offer conservatives a venue to avoid reconciling ideology and fact.
A new survey of IT decision makers by SAP and Harris Interactive reithat the rise of machine to machine (M2M)communications – more commonly referred to as the “Internet of Things” – is on the cusp of transforming our homes, our cities and how business is conducted.
How, you ask?
By leveraging Big Data and real-time analytics to improve parking and traffic flow, which could reduce pollution and traffic accidents as well.
By managing all the gadgets in our homes, from lights, computers and smartphones down to our coffeemaker and garage door. Wake up, the coffee is brewing, the house is heated, the car already knows the best route to work and the news we need is showing on the screen of our choice – prioritized, obviously.
Connected cars, roads and smartphones will guide us to the nearest open parking spot – and bill us automatically.
This Internet of Things will also let businesses increase “efficiency, productivity and collaboration,” as it delivers real-time data and insight when and where it’s most needed, including to a widely dispersed, highly mobile workforce.
Buried within the survey results are such nuggets as:
Mobile devices will outnumber humans this year.
90% of consumer-connected devices will have access to some personal cloud in 2013.
66% of IT professionals surveyed believe business and consumer technology will converge within 3-5 years – great news for consumer tech leaders like Apple, Samsung and Google.
At least 4 billion terabytes of data will be generated this year alone.
The trend toward BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has clear and present business repercussions: 75% of the surveyed IT professionals believe that employees’ personal use of mobile devices impacts how the business itself uses the cloud.
65% think the Internet of Things’ biggest challent in managing and analyzing the resulting real-time data.
I would encourage all of those who live in House District 20 and Senate District 5 to watch the video of GOP state legislators Marsha Farney and Charles Schwertner talking with the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith. Farney, for a Republican from Williamson County sounds almost liberal when talking about public education, and the sense she speaks when discussing the voucher question, that Schwertner dodges. But Schwertner is way out there. It really showed when he started talking about Medicaid expansion. He refers our Federal Government as being broke, which is completely false, regularly refers (falsely) to it as insolvent, which is decades old BS. He regurgitated tired GOP talking points like “golden hand cuffs”, spoke about vague “solutions”, and spouted debunked statements about the “expansion group being a group of able-bodied, single, chilldless adults”. As if poor people who are able-bodied, single, and without children doen’t deserve health care. His indifference highlights the change that has occurred in our country over the last 40 or so years.
I got the feeling watching the debate yesterday over the water bill, that it had very little to do with H2O. The debate was more about whether to pay for the water bill from the Economic Stabilization Fund, aka the Rainy Day Fund (RDF), to cut indiscriminately – sequester style – from the state budget to pay for it. Like so many of the fights that are currently going on in Texas politics it has to do with an internal struggle inside the Texas GOP. And there just aren’t enough members of the GOP in The Lege that are willing to go on the record against the wing nuts in their party.
Water Bill Falters After Contentious House Debate
A major bill on the top of Gov. Rick Perry‘spriority list that would authorize spending billions of dollars on state water projects faltered in the Texas House on Monday night after a contentious debate over where to pull the money from.
“My understanding is it’s doorknob dead,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, said after debate on the measure, which was backed by Speaker Joe Straus, was halted over a legislative technicality.
In a statement, Perry said Texans “expect their elected officials to address the water needs of our state, and we will do just that.”
“This issue is too important to leave its fate uncertain,” he said, “and I will work with lawmakers to ensure we address this need in a fiscally responsible manner.”
Ritter’s bill, House Bill 11, would have taken $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund — a multibillion-dollar reserve of mostly oil and gas taxes — and spent it on water-supply projects, in an effort to help the state withstand future droughts.
The vote on RDF vs. General Revenue (GR) was a vote that the Hosue leadership never wanted to have. Of course their trying to blame the Democrats, and the Democrats are rightly standing up for what’s right.
But HB 11’s backers faced an uphill battle to get enough votes, because drawing from the Rainy Day Fund requires a higher bar — 100 votes rather than the usual 76 votes — to pass.
Democrats’ objections were grounded in the argument that if the Rainy Day Fund gets used for water, it should also be raided for other purposes like public education. Some far-right conservatives, meanwhile, worried about drawing at all from the Rainy Day Fund, which they say should be reserved for emergencies.
Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, ultimately avoided a vote on HB 11 by raising a point of order, a legislative term for a procedural problem with the bill. Ritter said the bill in its current form is now dead; Perry has previously threatened to call a special session if lawmakers cannot find a way to fund water projects.
There was never an actual vote on the contentious amendment that would have allowed the money to come from GR, instead of the RDF. And that’s likely what the GOP leadership in the House was trying to avoid when the accepted the point of order. The wing nuts in the Texas GOP will try to use any situation like this to try and gut government, that’s what they do. Until the “squishes” stand up to the crazies in the GOP this is the kind of government we are going to have in Texas.
But with a reputed 80 votes, and needing 100, it’s not just the Dems who stand in the way. (The statehouse is split 95 R and 55 D.) The TP doesn’t care much for the bill either, but that’s because they don’t want to spendanything.
House Bill 11 also faced challenges from the House’s tea party faction, which has been itching for a fight all session. To appease the brawlers, the House GOP caucus chair Rep. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) presented what one lawmaker called a “nuclear bomb”: an amendment stipulating that if the bill didn’t get a vote of two-thirds of the House, then it would be funded out of general revenue by imposing a $2 billion across-the-board cut. In other words, Creighton would force lawmakers to choose between water and everything else in the state budget.
The proposal, said Turner, puts “water first and everything else is second. By definition your amendment has picked a winner and everyone else stands to lose.”
Creighton’s rejoinder was that everyone would suffer from not funding the water plan. “Whoever is impacted by small reductions in the budget will benefit for years from this move,” he said.
But before the amendment came to a vote, the point of order killed the bill.
The bill could get passed if the Republicans with half a functioning brain could reach Sly Turner’s common ground on funding education and transportation. But Ritter says it’s dead now, so I guess we should take him at his word.
It’s unclear how the House gets the water plan funded now. Any transfer from the Rainy Day Fund, as is preferred by Gov. Perry and other top Republicans, would require a two-thirds vote. The Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment last week pulling a total of $5.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund, including $2 billion for water. However, Ritter said that legislation “has a snowball’s chance” in the House.
Ritter and the Democrats pointed to another bill sitting in committee, House Bill 19, which spreads $3.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund to water and roads.
Without 100 votes, something will have to give to fund the state water plan.
It’s called compromise. It’s defined as Republicans giving up something — their apparent desire NOT to fully fund public schools — in order to get what they want. Which, though difficult for them to manage, beats the kind of intransigence they have demonstrated on other legislative items (such as Medicaid expansion).
State Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, commenting after Turner’s point of order won out, voiced determination to see a water bill through. “If we don’t fix this, I think a lot of people’s political careers will be on the line,” he said.
Since Larson is the guy who advanced term limits legislation over the objections of the governor, hopefully it’s Rick Perry’s political career he’s referring to.
Oh well, he was going to have to call one for getting his bidness buddies their tax cut anyways, might as well have a real reason to call one.
As Eaton and Price reported it in the Statesman, “The rule violation sprang up during contentious debate on the measure, which had become a chip in a game over the larger priorities of the House. Republican leaders, including Gov. Rick Perry, back the plan to tap the rainy day fund for water projects, saying water infrastructure is crucial to maintain Texas’s economic competitiveness.
“The state water plan warns that unless Texas spends billions for water projects over the next half-century, water shortages and drought could cost a million jobs. Democrats, however, want to make sure public education is not shortchanged while water infrastructure is funded, and conservative, largely freshmen Republican lawmakers want to leave the rainy day fund untouched.”
So, as Chris Tomlinson pointed out in his report for AP, while “the error was pointed out by House Democrats who were frustrated that the Republican-controlled Legislature was ready to spend the Rainy Day Fund on water projects, but not on restoring funding cut from public education … conservative Republicans welcomed the measure’s failure because it saved them from having to make a politically difficult vote. Tea party members called the bill’s spending reckless and fiscally imprudent.”
Martinez-Fischer said that Democrats had been “negotiating in good faith for a common solution when all of a sudden HB 11 was on the calendar” and, as the day wore on and Democrats became aware of where things were head, “people started scrambling to file amendments. Everything you saw today happened in real time. There was no rehearsal the night before. Members were writing amendments on the House floor. This was a real-time exercise. It caught everyone by surprise.”
When other points of order failed, Sylvester Turner played his, which he said he was aware of because it had been used against him some years ago. Was that the Democrat’s ace in the hole all along? “No,” said Martinez-Fischer, “I think this one was the ace in the hole,” clutching an envelope in his hand. “I didn’t get to use it.”
In a nice surmise of the legislative process, Martinez-Fischer said, “You have amenders who amend, debaters who debate and you have rules experts who use the rules.”
He said yesterday’s rules play was necessary because, ‘we can’t negotiate with HB 11 pointed at our head like a loaded gun. Today we removed the loaded gun.”
The bottom line is that our drone policy is creating more problems for us then it is fixing. And that being the case, why in the world do we keep doing it?
Yesterday I linked to this article, Texas, Congress go blue if immigration reform goes down at the bottom of a post. It makes the point that if immigrations reform dies so will the Republican Party. While that likely makes some people smile – especially in Texas – if it did happen, something just like it would emerge to take it’s place. There will always be a right wing party, not matter what it’s called.
That being said, sometimes it does look like the GOP is trying to legislate itself into oblivion when it comes to the Hispanic vote. When looking at Medicaid expansion, they have a similar issue. Their rhetoric is against it , which also pits them against those who will benefit the most, Texas Latinos have most to gain from Medicaid expansion, while GOP counties have little to gain. And it’s a political conundrum for the GOP. Being for this may get them beat in a primary, but staying against may just get the Democrat’s foot back in the door in Texas.
Republican leaders in Texas have ideological opposition to Medicaid’s expansion, but also have little political reason to expand a program that would primarily benefit a constituency leaning towards the Democrats.
“Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into this fool’s errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system,” Gov. Rick Perry said at April 1 news conference. “That’s not just me who said that, by the way. In 2009, President Obama, himself, called Medicaid a broken system.”
[...]
Texas is one of 14 states that will not participate. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured population in the country at 24 percent, according to the Kaiser Foundation. For those with incomes 139 percent of the poverty level—those eligible for Medicaid expansion—Texas is second in the nation at 43 percent, one point below Nevada.
Kaiser data also show that a disproportionate number of Texas Latinos are uninsured. A majority of the uninsured in Texas—60 percent—are Latino, despite being 38 percent of the population. Latinos have an uninsured rate of 38 percent in Texas, compared to the statewide average of 24.
Texas appears to be an ideal candidate for Medicaid expansion: The worst health coverage rates, the promise of federal dollars, and its own estimated budget surplus of $8.8 billion.
[...]
Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in Texas, and are a majority of Texans without insurance. Texas Latino household incomes are about two-thirds the average, indicating Medicaid would disproportionately benefit this group. Yet with low voter turnout, most breaking for Democrats at the ballot, and with few significant competitive races hinging on Latino support, Texas Republican leaders have little reason to make the issue a political priority.
For many Texas Republicans, winning the party primary is the key election hurdle. Just ask David Dewhurst.
The worst area for health coverage are the counties along the border, many ranging from 30 percent uninsured to Texas’ leading county, Hudspeth at 43 percent, according to data from the Population Health Institute.
Jose Luna Jr. has worked as a clinical physician in El Paso for 30 years, serving many of the uninsured. Luna, currently the chief medical officer at Centro San Vincente, strongly supports the Medicaid expansion.
“There are people that I know that will die because of a lack of healthcare,” Luna said in a phone interview. “Patients that I have seen have a higher probability of dying simply because they have a lack of healthcare.”
Luna said he has lists of such patients, including one truck driver who lost his job after a stomach cancer diagnosis. Unable to work, the man lost his health insurance and relied on the clinic where Luna worked for care. The patient was unable to see an oncologist, and Luna said the only care he could provide was painkillers.
Luna said many Latinos in his community work service jobs without the full benefits many other sectors provide, explaining the dearth of insurance coverage.
“Health care should be a human right, not a privilege,” Luna said, describing the attitude towards healthcare he sees in many Latinos. Though Latinos are disproportionately affected by a lack of insurance in Texas, Luna said his support for Medicaid expansion was universal.
Republicans in Austin have little to fear in the short-term in their opposition to Medicaid expansion. However, national Republicans, who made courting the Latino vote a priority after the 2012 election loss, may take a different perspective. A Kaiser Foundation poll found that Obamacare was supported by a two-to-one margin among Latinos nationwide. [Emphasis added]
Few, if any, members of the Texas GOP see any political upside, only a downside, to Medicaid expansion, and that’s why it’s languishing. Maybe, if it inconvenienced their wealthy donors the way the flight delays did there would be some action, Hayes Slams Congress for Protecting Air Travelers Alone Among Sequester Victims.
With Congress undoing the one and only thing you could say was good about the sequester, which is that it bound together the poor, middle class and the wealthy with the across the board cuts, sadly, this should not be that surprising, given their voting records.
In almost every instance, senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes.
It would be preferable that the Texas GOP wake up and do what is right now, and keep people from having to suffer unnecessarily. But if this is what it takes for Texans to finally wake up and vote in people that will actually make this a reality, then so be it.
The Texas Progressive Alliance would have gotten rid of the entire sequester, not just the part that inconvenienced the few, as it brings you this week’s roundup.
Greg Abbott is running for governor in 2014, but is Rick Perry? PDiddie at Brains and Eggs turned over the Magic 8 Ball and it said: “Reply Hazy Try Again”.
Perry’s compensation may be $60K more than next highest governor.
Rick Perry spends a lot of time bashing government employees and hascalled for Members of Congress to take pay cuts. But, when it comes to his own place at the government feeding trough, Rick Perry is not budging an inch. In fact, Perry probably takes more in money from his state each year than any other governor in America.
Here’s how Perry’s double-dipping compares to other top paid governors.
Rank
State
Governor
2012 Pay
1
Texas
Rick Perry
$242,000 ($150,000 salary + $92,000 state pension)
2
Pennsylvania
Tom Corbett
$183,225
3
New York
Andrew Cuomo
$179,000
4
Illinois
Pat Quinn
$177,412
5
Michigan
Rick Snyder
$177,000
Perry has been Governor of Texas going on 13 years, but his high pay is not due to seniority. Perry takes more than his share from taxpayers through a loophole – he double dips.
While a state-by-state survey of all potential income is not yet completed, Rick Perry appears to be the only governor in the nation who draws a fulltime salary from the state payroll office ANDtakes full payment as a state retiree. Perry gets $150,000 each year for serving as governor, but then he gets another $92,000 as though he is a retiree. Perry’s double-dipping payments of course are on top of his free housing, transportation and travel also covered by Texas taxpayers.
Yes it’s always funny when the “gument” haters make a good living off of it.
“It is a rich man’s game, and you are making everybody susceptible to undue influence when you put them in that position,” said Rita Kirk, director of the Maguire Ethics Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“If they offer you a meal when you need one, you’re going to be more influenced by that if you had no need of it,” she said. “We are influenced when we need the favor.”
On the wealth side, voters need to know where the money is, what the investments are, and whether that is connected in some way to what the lawmaker is doing in office. On the poorer side, the question is — to use Kirk’s example — who’s paying for dinner?
The first situation is troublesome when disclosure standards are low. The second might be solvable, if Texans are willing to pay high enough salaries to make lawmakers less susceptible to high-culture panhandling.
“What you’re trying to do is find some healthy balance,” Kirk said. “Voters should be able to make decisions between people who have ideologies like theirs or that can represent them well. We eliminate a whole cross-section of people who can’t afford it and who perhaps are unduly influenced by the fact that they have to take money in order to serve.
“Really, if we want good government,” she said, “there is a certain amount we have to pay for it.”
And Kuff has the latest on Perry’s veto threat, the supplemental budget in the House, and Medicaid Expansion, Weekend legislative threefer.
The Cruz-promoted, rightist attack on immigration reform puts the squeeze on Cornyn. Does Cornyn support immigration reform, making him vulnerable on the right, or oppose immigration reform, making him anathema to Hispanic voters?
Late last night I watched the dedication of the “Dubya” Library on C-SPAN. There were speeches or remarks given by all the former and the current president. And other then a few words from his father, the speeches were all given by Democrats. I had never realized how much he had done for Africa. I say that because there was no mention of Iraq, or his wrecking of our economy, or the PDB, etc.. Just thought it was kind of funny that pretty much all that could be talked about was his good work in Africa, by a bunch of Democrats.
Economic debates rarely end with a T.K.O. But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close — at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.
{…]
What, after all, do people want from economic policy? The answer, it turns out, is that it depends on which people you ask — a point documented in a recent research paper by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright. The paper compares the policy preferences of ordinary Americans with those of the very wealthy, and the results are eye-opening.
Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face. And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is, “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.
You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.
Does a continuing depression actually serve the interests of the wealthy? That’s doubtful, since a booming economy is generally good for almost everyone. What is true, however, is that the years since we turned to austerity have been dismal for workers but not at all bad for the wealthy, who have benefited from surging profits and stock prices even as long-term unemployment festers. The 1 percent may not actually want a weak economy, but they’re doing well enough to indulge their prejudices.
And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make. To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies?
I hope not; I’d like to believe that ideas and evidence matter, at least a bit. Otherwise, what am I doing with my life? But I guess we’ll see just how much cynicism is justified.
What, after all, do people want from economic policy? The answer, it turns out, is that it depends on which people you ask — a point documented in a recent research paper by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright. The paper compares the policy preferences of ordinary Americans with those of the very wealthy, and the results are eye-opening.
Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face. And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is, “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.
You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.
Does a continuing depression actually serve the interests of the wealthy? That’s doubtful, since a booming economy is generally good for almost everyone. What is true, however, is that the years since we turned to austerity have been dismal for workers but not at all bad for the wealthy, who have benefited from surging profits and stock prices even as long-term unemployment festers. The 1 percent may not actually want a weak economy, but they’re doing well enough to indulge their prejudices.
And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make. To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies?
I hope not; I’d like to believe that ideas and evidence matter, at least a bit. Otherwise, what am I doing with my life? But I guess we’ll see just how much cynicism is justified.
In other words, this is a fig leaf. Reinhart and Rogoff’s work is a cover for political actors who do not want to take steps to boost the economy and lower the unemployment rate and who want to cut programs like Social Security and Medicare. It is not part of a honest policy debate.
So now we all agree and we can all be friends. But the fact is that this isn’t just some sad case of conservative politicians running around mischaracterizing a sober-minded study and then liberals overreacting in response. Ken Rogoff was writing op-eds drawing strong policy conclusions from this paper. He was delivering congressional testimony drawing strong policy conclusions from this paper. And it’s not as if he’s some political naif who stumbled down from the ivory tower into a partisan controversy he could never have predicted. He was research director at the International Monetary Fund and he knows how the game is played. He’s signed up as a paid speaker for the Washington Speakers Bureau. His “fees vary based on event location” but they promise that in exchange for your money “Kenneth Rogoff reaches beyond the theoretical and delivers quantitative proof from his frequently cited research and best-selling book to explain why our financial history continues to repeat itself-and just where the US and global economies are heading.”
But of course their is no quantitative proof. In a sense there never was, but the University of Massachusetts counter-paper helped exposed how little quantitative proof was there. Now under attack Reinhart & Rogoff are retreating to much softer, much milder, much more defensible claims. And good for them. But that shows how much credit their critics deserve.
In a sane political world everyone would realize that austerity is keeping us in a depression and that we have much, much bigger economic problems.
We should do things that are smart policies that target the long-term unemployed. Amy Taub of Demos has done convincing work on why ending credit checks as part of the job interview process would be a good idea. Extending unemployment insurance is also important. But the idea that we should change course away from boosting the general economy strikes me as a bad idea. The long-term unemployed experience the worst impact of a generally weak economy. But its that weak economy that is doing the damage. If unemployment was actually brought down, which we could do with more expansonary policy, then employers couldn’t afford to be so choosy.
We can fix the unemployment crisis we’ve done it before. And the beauty is, if we put people back to work, that will fix the deficit and many of our other economic problems. And the chained CPI scheme for Social Security should be scrapped, Why Obama’s Stealth Social Security Cut Is Bigger Than It Seems. Keynes was right, it’s time to put people back to work.
A bill to force more disclosure from, as the bills caption states, “..certain persons who do not meet the definition of political committee”, is causing quite a stir in The Lege. Not just intra-party, but inner party squabbles as well. Which is a plus. But in cases like this I think it’s better to err on the side of too much disclosure, as opposed to too little disclosure.
Politically active nonprofits, which are playing an increasingly important role in state elections, would no longer be able to hide the identity of their major donors under a bill making its way through the Texas Legislature.
Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, says he plans to push Senate Bill 346 through a House committee this week without any changes. Since it has already passed the Senate, the bill would go straight to Gov. Rick Perry if the full House subsequently approves the legislation without amendment.
“My intention is to get the bill out of committee exactly like it came over and take it to the floor, and fight off all amendments and then send it to the governor,” Geren said. A public hearing is set for Wednesday.
Geren and the Senate sponsor, Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, say they are targeting nonprofits organized under 501(c)(4) of the tax code, which the IRS says are supposed to be “social welfare” organizations but are allowed to engage in political activity as long as that’s not not their primary activity. The bill would trigger disclosure of donors who give more than $1,000 to a group that engages in more than $25,000 of political activity intended to influence an election. The disclosure only applies to political donations.
On the federal level, politically active groups that don’t disclose their donors, most of which are 501(c)(4) nonprofits, have had an outsized impact in recent elections, giving a whopping $300 million in the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
[...]
According to state figures compiled by Texans for Public Justice (TPJ), a liberal campaign finance watchdog group based in Austin, one politically active nonprofit, the conservative Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, spent about $350,000 in the 2012 elections, most of it in the Republican primaries. (Spending is reported, but contributions are not.)
On the left, the Texas Organizing Project, a 501(c)(4) that advocates for moderate- and low-income Texans, spent about $240,000 over the same period, TPJ figures indicate. A column in the San Antonio Express News last year also identified a 501(c)(4), South Texas Alliance For Progress, behind an effort to torpedo an initiative to fund pre-K education with a small sales tax increase.
Proponents of SB 346 say if the Legislature doesn’t require donor transparency for 501(c)(4)’s this year, elections in 2014 and beyond will be awash with secret money.
“This bill will close down a loophole that is about to become the size of the Grand Canyon,” said Fred Lewis, a lawyer and campaign finance activist who recently registered his approval of the bill during a Senate hearing.
Capitol whisperers say the bill was primarily designed to smoke out the donors behind Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which is run by conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan.
Seliger said fellow GOP senators cited Sullivan’s opposition to the bill when they voted to undo their vote last week approving the bill.
And there certainly is no love lost between House Speaker Joe Straus and Sullivan, who has made the San Antonio Republican a frequent target of his Tea Party infused ire. The group’s largest expenditure in the last election cycle, $82,169, went to support Straus’ primary opponent Matt Beebe, according to TPJ figures.
Sullivan calls the Seliger-Geren bill an attack on the First Amendment and notes that labor unions are not covered by the legislation.
“I find it difficult to see where the state of Texas has a compelling interest in regulating the First Amendment right of non-union corporate political speakers differently than others who engage in political speech,” Sullivan said. A call to the Texas Organizing Project was not immediately returned.
Sullivan’s opposition isn’t the only hurdle for the legislation. Democrats are also expressing concerns about it and could band together in an unlikely union with their Republican counterparts to kill it.
Several Senate Democrats already joined Republicans in an attempt to “recall” the legislation back from the House after they initially voted to approve it. But the recall effort failed because the bill had already arrived in the House, which treated it like a fumbled football. Senators said they didn’t fully understand what the bill did when they approved it the first time.
One of the vote-switchers, Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said he was afraid there could be “unintended consequences” from the bill and wanted a chance to more fully vet it. He held open the possibility that he could support the legislation once he got a better look at it.
After the Democrats flipped their votes, word spread that Democratic mega-donor Steve Mostyn was behind the move. Mostyn spokesman Jeff Rotkoff acknowledged that the wealthy trial lawyer had concerns about the bill but said he is not working against it.
Rotkoff said the legislation does not specifically mention 501(c)(4)’s and might require the reporting of donations from groups the sponsors weren’t intending to cover.
“Steve agrees with the goal of the bill,” Rotkoff said. “But campaign finance counsel we have spoken with believes the bill could have significant unintended consequences. This is not something Steve is actively working on, but our opinion is that this bill may attempt to do the right thing in the wrong way.”
Other then these general, vague, and non-specific reasons for why this bill is “bad”, the only real concrete reason anyone has put forward for not supporting this bill comes from Sen. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury) in the Senate Journal:
Today I cast my vote in opposition to Senate Bill 346. The bill was primarily captioned to address transparency–”Relating to reporting requirements of certain persons who do not meet the definition of a political committee”–and while I am certainly a strong proponent for such open government and transparency, I had constitutional concerns on the bill. First, the bill establishes separate reporting requirements for corporations. Some corporations like labor unions are exempt, while other corporations like 501(c)(4) entitiesiare not. In 1990, the Supreme Court determined in Austinivs.iMichigan Chamber of Commerce that different restrictions on speech related to spending based upon corporate identity were constitutional. Had
SBi346 been passed while that 1990 case had still been the prevailing precedent, I believe it would have been constitutional. However, in 2010 the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens Unitedivs.iFederal Election Commission case determined that
theiFirst Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations, associations, or labor unions. The court also found that the First Amendment protects associations or individuals in additional to individual speakers. Corporations, as associations of individuals, therefore have First Amendment rights. Second, SB 346 treats corporations differently from labor unions and associations in what they must report. SB 346 requires that corporations which spend less than $25,000 must report expenditures, while those corporations which spend more than $25,000 must not only report expenditures, but report their donors. Again, this is a disparate treatment not only among corporations based upon their spending levels, but corporations as they are treated in relation to labor unions and associations. The reporting requirement of donors also begs another constitutional question. In 1995, in McIntyre vs. Ohio Election Commission, the Supreme Court determined that citizens had the right to engage in anonymous political speech. Since corporations now have the same First Amendment rights as individuals to anonymous political speech, requiring the
reporting of donors strikes me as a violation of the First Amendment. For these reasons and concerns I voted against SB 346 today.
The old corporations are people and have First Amendment rights defense. Citizens United is the gift that just keeps on giving. Despite the recal the bill sailed through the House State Affairs Committee yesterday. And Committee Chair Rep. Charlie Geren thinks it is constitutional, Disclosure Bill Clears House Committee.
The bill came to the House after an unusual episode in which the Senate passed the measure 23-6 before attempting to recall it, by an equally lopsided vote, a day later. The bill, though, had already been sent to the House, where it was taken up by the House State Affairs Committee. Now, the bill must pass through the House unamended if it is to avoid returning to the Senate. The bill passed out of committee, unaltered, with a 12-0 vote. It will now go to the full House for consideration.
At Wednesday’s committee hearing, the bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, said that the disclosure requirements – similar to ones lawmakers are subjected to – were common sense.
“If it’s good enough for us, it should be good enough for them,” he said. “And if you’re embarrassed about where you’re getting your money, you ought to not take it.
Geren stressed that disclosure requirements had been repeatedly ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court – even in the court case that recently helped unleash a torrent of money into the American political system, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Fred Lewis, a lawyer and campaign finance activist, testified that transparency was the sole safeguard of the state’s election system.
“In Texas, we do not have public financing of campaigns, and we do not have contribution limits,” he said. “All we have is disclosure.”
The vote on the Senate recall can be found here (SCR 33), where 9 Democratic senators changed their votes, (Davis, Ellis, Garcia, Hinojosa, Rodriguez, Uresti, Watson, West, and Whitmire).
Keep in mind the bill must pass the house without amendment to avoid going back to the Senate where it would likely die. And it would still need to be signed by Gov. Perry to become law. So this bill still has a long way to go before it’s becomes law. Unfortunately this kind of nonsense will continue until we reform how political campaigns are financed.
Rootstrikers has a great FAQ on the issue of our corrupt campaign finance systems. Suffice it to say that it will be hard for real people, not corporate people, to regain control of our government until this system is fundamentally changed. And the only way it will change is if an overwhelming amount of people start working to change it.
