Time To Bust the Prostitution Ring in D.C. and Texas
[font color=green]NOTE: A special election will be held on Tuesday, September 9, 2014 for Texas Senate District 28 which includes Lubbock and a large number of rural counties in the south plains of the Texas Panhandle. The race includes four Republican candidates, one Libertarian and one Democrat. The candidates are listed here: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/d28-candidates.shtml . If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, then a runoff will be held between the two candidates that receive the most votes irrespective of political party.
The top two fundraisers are both Republicans. They are Charles Perry, a CPA, current state representative and hard-line conservative and Jodey Arrington, a former vice chancellor for Texas Tech University. The other two Republicans include Delwin Jones, a 90-year-old former state representative who had to suspend his campaign due to a recent hospitalization and Epifanio “Eppie” Garza. The Libertarian candidate is Kerry Douglas McKennon who is an openly gay sales representative. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate is Greg Wortham, an attorney and the first Democratic candidate to run for this state Senate seat in 18 years. (Sources include http://lubbockonline.com/editorial-columnists/2014-09-06/rangel-special-election-will-be-watched-all-over-texas#.VAy3CGPuPoE and other articles from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and lonestarq.com which posted an article on McKennon).
The race is receiving significant interest due to the impact of Empower Texas which is a Tea-Party organization promoting hard-line conservative candidates throughout the state. If Dan Patrick wins the lieutenant governor race, then the Texas Senate may become more conservative since as many as nine of the 31 seats may change during the fall elections.[/font]
By Carol Morgan
Equating politics with the ladies of the evening isn't as far-fetched as you’d think. 75 percent of all Americans believe that politicians are corrupt. In my opinion, that’s a bad rap for the ladies, because at least, they're are honest about the services they provide.
Monday and Tuesday could very well be the first in a series of proverbial come-to-Jesus-moments for politics.
On September 8th, SJR-19 will come up for a vote in the U.S. Senate. This action has been over FOUR years in the making with thousands and thousands contacting Senators since July, 2013. Actually, the resolution doesn’t go far enough; it does overturn Citizens United, but it doesn’t address corporate constitutional rights; but just like we accepted Obamacare in place of single payer healthcare, we make compromises.
It’s more of that American mindset that involves settling for the lesser of two evils.
Polling shows 80% of the American public believes that corporations should not have the same rights as people, but Texas’ own Slim Pickens-Senator Major Kong a.k.a. Ted Cruz claims it thwarts free speech. True to form, he claims it’s a plan to repeal the First Amendment. His dramatic stance is not surprising, that’s how he was elected to the Senate. Cruz and his father are in dire need of a daily dose of Metamucil.
If SJR-19 fails to come to fruition, Americans will have two choices: 1. Accept our fate as a complete and total plutocracy or 2. Take more extreme (and inconvenient) measures to extricate our country from the rule of the wealthy.
Even a last minute call is better than none at all: 866-937-7983. At the risk of sounding like a late night infomercial: Call now!
It may be a surprise to some that even Texas lawmakers are cognizant of the dark money problem. The Texas Ethics Commission met in late August to draft a dark money disclosure proposal to stop secret campaign donor under the velvet black curtain of a 501(c)4.
Per the Houston Chronicle: “The proposal would require a politically active nonprofit group to start disclosing donors if 25 percent or more of the group’s expenditures can be classified as politically motivated. It also would require disclosure if political contributions account for more than 25 percent of the group’s total contributions in a calendar year”.
That effort is a tad ironic, given that SD28 candidate, Charles Perry, is being financed by the uber-conservative group, Empower Texans. And even more ironic that ET’s captain, former-Eagle-Scout-gone-bad, MQ (Michael Quinn) Sullivan, is under a dark ethical shadow of failing to register as a lobbyist AND suddenly established residency in Denton hoping to overturn this spring’s earlier ruling.
There’s more sticky layers to this than a giant dish of baklava.
Tangled webs and deception are synonymous with the GOP. That’s why 13 GOP governors are under suspicion and possible indictment or like former Virginia guv, O’Donnell have been found guilty.
To be fair, I’m not claiming that political corruption is limited to Republicans only. You need to read Bill Moyer’s piece to know that’s not true. But a recent study shows it leans heavily to the GOP side.
Here’s the deal: State legislative races are a fertile field for right-wing big spenders because state legislatures draw the maps. The wave of voter suppression and anti-choice legislation? It comes from Republican run state legislatures backed by Citizens United money.
Tuesday’s SD28 election is predictably intertwined with the bounty of political dark money. That’s why voting for Greg Wortham on Tuesday, September 9th is so important. We need a populist candidate now more than ever, because presently, there are none who represent the interests of South Plains’ residents.
Because of political corruption and a total absence of personal ethics, everyday people are being tested by fire right now. Let’s work hard so that the fire loses, shall we?
One phone call or one vote can do a lot toward extinguishing the flame.
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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, writer, speaker, former Democratic candidate for the Texas House and the award-winning author of Of Tapestry, Time and Tears, a historical fiction about the 1947 Partition of India. Read her work at the Houston Press and MetroLeader News Service. Email Carol at elizabethcmorgan@sbcglobal.net , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org
http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2014-09-07/time-bust-prostitution-ring-dc-and-texas#.VAywy2PuPoE
Permission granted to post this blog in entirety. Cross-posted in the General Discussion forum.
