Op Ed

UPDATE 10:08 With more precincts reporting it looks like Republican incumbents have massively held their ground against challengers claiming Tea Party roots.

UPDATE 9:17 District 20: With 17 percent of votes in challenger candidate Schwertner is in the lead with 56 percent. Rister -supposedly the Capitol insider of the race- is trailing at 23 percent.

 

Yes, the governor’s race has flash and glitz – but the state lege has substance. In 2006 the Democrats won six state house seats and two congressional seats in Washington, and in 2008 they chalked up six more state house seats (minus one taken back by the Republicans). Today’s primary winners will be the central players in the November showdown over the soul of the state legislature -and with only a one-seat majority, now is a particularly vital time for Republicans to bring their best candidates to rally the troops and stoke the fires of populist sentiment over perceived missteps in Washington and Austin.

But the high number of primary challengers may present more challenges than opportunities for primary returnees. Tea Party groups across the state have been boiling over with anti-incumbent rage, and for many who are too milquetoast to endorse full-blown secession, replacing the local Republicans with representatives further still to the right has proven the popular choice. Today’s primary will give some indication of just how the first legislative election since the Tea Party’s messy beginnings might play out.

In short, we’ll get a better picture of the answer to the Tea Party question: loud, influential, or both?

Republican – House District 66

Mabrie Jackson vs. Wayne Richard vs. Van Taylor.

This GOP primary has plenty of seething unrest to go around: all three candidates have laid claim to the local Tea Party throne.Time will tell if official support by the local groups, such as Collin County Tea Party’s endorsement of Richard, will prove a boon or bust for those in the movement who view such actions as too mainstream.

Republican – House District 20

Milton Rister vs. Stephen Thomas vs. Charles Schwertner vs. Patsy Williams

Incumbent Dan Gattis’s impending retirement was like blood in the water for area Republicans, drawing four, count them, four newcomers to fight over this district north of Austin that includes Georgetown and Cedar Park. As pointed out by the Austin Chronicle the race highlights the possibility for overcrowded races across the state to stretch into money-squandering runoffs – especially in Tea Party-prone GOP primaries.

Democrat – District 146

Al Edwards vs. Borris Miles

Edwards, 71, has been the South Houston district’s representative since 1979 – except for 2006-2008, when challenger Miles broke the nearly 30-year streak. Edwards, a real estate broker, is known for successfully establishing Juneteenth as a paid holiday and for his 2005 bill to forcibly tone down the suggestive gyrations of high school cheerleaders. Miles, a district resident and owner of a multi-million dollar insurance company, is better known for his actions outside the capitol building – in February he urinated on live radio in what can only be described as the most transparent drug test ever broadcast this side of indecent exposure laws (it came back negative). The Chronicle endorsed Miles last month, and this back-and-forth battle could yet prove an upset for the poverty-stricken district.

Democrat – District 76

Norma Chavez vs. Naomi Gonzalez vs. Tony San Roman

University of Texas at Austin government professor Sherri Greenberg characterized the District 79 race as a perennial “battle of the titans” of campaign funding groups – proponents for limiting tort rights versus trial lawyers. According to the El Paso Times, challenger Gonzalez received more than $24,000 in contributions, most of it from Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a group aiming to limit the ability to sue. The Times noted that while the group also contributed nearly $20,000 to Chavez, the incumbent had received a $10,000 donation from the Houston-based law firm of Steve Mostyn, also president elect of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. San Roman, who has a degree in criminal justice from UT El Paso, said he would spend $6,000 to $7,000 of his own money according to the Times, whose editorial board endorsed Gonzales late last month.

Democrat – District 36

Sergio Munoz vs. Sandra Rodriguez

Incumbent Ismael “Kino” Flores’s announcement in September that he would not seek re-election came just a few scant months after a Travis County grand jury indicted him on 16 counts of tampering with government records and three counts of perjury for failing to disclose more than $847,000 in personal assets. Now two locals are scrapping to become the first freshman representative from the Southern border district in 14 years: Munoz, an attorney and Palmview municipal judge; and Rodriguez, a former juvenile probation officer and teacher who lost to Flores in the 2008 Democratic primary. According to the McAllen-based Monitor there’s been a whole lot of Freudian mudslinging going on in the district, where only 54 percent have graduated from high school and per capita income is barely more than $9,000.

Voting us underway in the party primaries across the state, and the big question will be by what margin Gov. Rick Perry beats his challengers. Will King Rick face a run-off? And if he does, will Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison finally breathe some life into her race to replace governor good hair? We’ll have Forrest Wilder at Perry’s party tonight to see what happens.

The other race that is too close to call is for the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. The party power-brokers got behind Linda Chavez-Thompson, but that didn’t keep former Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle from taking a gauge of the value of his name recognition. We’ve got Melissa del Bosque covering that race.

Dave Mann has the privileged assignment of following some of the more entertaining races. He’ll be keeping up with Kinky Friedman and Hank Gilbert in their competition for agriculture commissioner. And then there is the State Board of Education.

We’ll be covering all of those races and more throughout the day and well into the evening. To see all of our coverage, go to Campaign HQ. Providing the best political analysis in Texas, editor Bob Moser will be anchoring our primary coverage and letting you know what it all means to you and the future of Texas.

So if you haven’t voted, you need to celebrate Texas Independence Day with a trip to a school, church or other public building near you and cast a ballot. It doesn’t take that much time, and it’s good for you.

Governors and mayors love to win a prize in a game called “Corporate Welfare Roulette.”

It’s a sort of casino game–politicos throw wads of taxpayer cash at a corporation as an “incentive” for it to move to their states and create jobs. When they “win” one of these bets, the politicos convene a media event to praise themselves for their job-creation prowess.

Governors and mayors hate it when their prize reneges and fails to deliver the number of jobs promised. Bad politics.

Gov. Rick Perry has come up with a slick trick to fix this problem: When one of his corporate welfare deals doesn’t succeed, he redefines success.

A watchdog group, Texans for Public Justice, documented that many of Perry’s corporate giveaways have failed to produce the job numbers required to get taxpayer money–and others will come up short in the reports they’ll file this year. So without consulting other state officials or whispering a word to the public, Perry has been “amending” the terms of the deals.

Such corporate slackers as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Tyson Foods Inc. have been allowed to create far fewer jobs than promised, count part-time jobs as full-time, and even been OK’ed to use foreign workers rather than Texans to meet quotas. Once his secret “fix” was about to be exposed by the watchdog, Perry rushed out a statement insisting nothing was amiss. “These contract amendments,” he lamely declared, “will refresh and reinforce the ongoing relationship between the [taxpayers] and these private sector partners.”

Refresh? What happened to “a deal is a deal?” How oily is that? To see the full report on this scam, go to www.tpj.org.

Find more information on Jim Hightower’s work—and subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown—at www.jimhightower.com.

The State of Texas executed Charlie Brooks for the crime of murder on Dec. 7, 1982. The method used in Huntsville that day was the first ever of its kind: a lethal injection. Brooks’ execution was also the first in Texas following the reinstatement of the death penalty by the Supreme Court in 1976, breaking a 16-year hiatus.

The case against Brooks, as with so many capital cases, remains ambiguous. It was never clear whether Brooks actually carried out the cold-blooded killing. His friend, Woody Lourdes, may have pulled the trigger instead; neither would say. Woody got a different sentence. He served 11 years of his 40-year sentence and was paroled in 1989.

Brooks was black. Drugs were involved. The question of whether he committed the murder, as in a surprising number of cases, was not deemed especially relevant.

Since then, Texas has executed 447 prisoners. This is quadruple the number of any other state. In 2009, half of the nation’s executions took place in Texas.

These statistics will leave death penalty advocates unfazed. They see it as a form of justice against unmitigated evil. Opponents see all of the elements that make execution so vile: It is meted out mostly to blacks, it is handed down capriciously and it has never been proven to be a deterrent.

Not surprisingly, this division is political. Democrats largely oppose the death penalty, while Republicans mostly embrace it. But if we leave political parties aside, and ask ourselves what one might expect based on conservative principles, a very different picture emerges.

Conservatives true to their values should oppose the death penalty.

When we give to the state the ultimate power over a person, the total control over their life or death, we cede to the government an authority that is wholly at odds with conservative principles. If, as conservatives maintain, that the power of the state should never exceed what is necessary for its minimal functions, isn’t it obvious that the death penalty violates that principle? And since it is in the nature of power that it seeks its own expansion (i.e. “power corrupts . . .”), wouldn’t one want to restrict the government’s power over individuals?

Once a state has the power of life and death, it can exercise that authority according to whatever laws it enacts. It works that way in the other countries that still allow the death penalty: China, North Korea, Somalia, and most Muslim nations. We could, and sometimes do, determine that a crime against the state, such as treason and sedition, is an offense punishable by death. What true conservative would sanction this kind of state-determined authority? Not one. Why then do our “conservative” leaders — yes, I’m looking at you, Gov. Rick Perry—feel that the State of Texas should be accorded this kind of power? You may or may not believe in rehabilitation, but do you genuinely believe that state-sponsored executions conform to a conservative viewpoint? Death allows for no rehabilitation. And it also allows for no reconsideration. This matters not just because we may in fact have been wrong in our judgment and have put an innocent person to death. It may matter even more because we have given the state power in accordance with laws—laws we may later deem immoral. When we execute a person, we not only “take their life,” we commit ourselves to the ultimate authority of the state.

On Dec. 29, 2009, we learned that a British citizen was put to death by the Chinese government for smuggling drugs into that country. The court reportedly met for just 30 minutes before arriving at their verdict. They were, presumably, acting according to Chinese law. The world reacted with outrage.

Texas, not surprisingly, is no stranger to the execution of foreign nationals. Jose Medellin died by lethal injection last year for the rape and murder of a teenage girl. Aside from a crime’s brutality, or whether rehabilitation is possible, or whether guilt or innocence is firmly established, an execution precludes all further discussion. It does this because we have accorded to the state an authority that only the most repressive of regimes reserves for themselves.

Texas could strike a great blow for conservative principles by distancing itself from the most repressive of government action. That our governor is impervious to this argument says a great deal about the distance between populism and principle—a subject that we will have ample opportunity to revisit.

Are you feeling sorry for Wall Street bankers yet? Poor babies; everyone is down on them. First, We the People are steamed that these bailed-out barons of finance are again putting billions of dollars of bonus pay into their pockets. Second, a special national commission is publicly grilling top bankers about the damage their greed has done to our economy.

And third, President Barack Obama is proposing to slap a greed tax on the biggest of the giants. Wow. Three strikes and you’re out, right? In baseball, yes; in bankerball, never.

Such human traits as modesty, shame and personal responsibility are not in the genetic makeup of Wall Streeters, so they have an answer for everything that’s being thrown at them. Start with those bonuses. yes, say the bankers, we’re stuffing ourselves with money that we should be lending to help Main Street recover from the crash we caused, but—hey— we’ve also started a few charities to help, you know, the little people.

So buzz off, killjoy. As for that commission digging into who caused Wall Street’s financial meltdown, the bankers’ answer is unanimous: no one. The jefe of JPMorgan Chase, for example, explained to the commission that a financial crisis “happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.” Uh, this is the worst crash since the Depression—and we are surprised.

And angry.

Then there’s Obama’s tax. Unfair, screeches the Wall Street flock, apparently clueless that their own greed caused the crash, which led to the bailout, which let them grab bonus cash for themselves. That’s the definition of unfair.

Not only should these sorry greedheads have their banks taxed to recover all of our bailout money, but we should also tax all of the bonus pay they’re ripping off.

Find more information on Jim Hightower’s work— and subscribe to his awardwinning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown— at www.jimhightower.com