If someone ever creates an award for the most lobby-rific new Texas Republican candidate in a political season, it needs to be called the Chart Westcott Award.

Chart Westcott, aka “Richie Rich”, is the 28 year-old son of privilege anointed by the Texas Republican establishment to replace Dan Branch, a lobby star in his own right now running for Attorney General.

Boy, someone has tried to gift wrap this seat for him.

First, it took him roughly 45 days to build up just shy of three quarters of a million dollars in his war chest. Chances are, those aren’t checks from the Lion’s Club.

Next, Westcott started the latest anti-conservative crony Republican PAC called “Conservative Values PAC”. The name is appropriate considering lobby moderates always get their votes by saying they are conservatives.

Still, using the word “values” in the PAC name earns CV-PAC the hypocrisy blue ribbon, since it’s values voters that the GOP’s tragically well-funded and disastrously incompetent establishment wants to jettison from the Reagan coalition.

In Conservative Values PAC’s “About” page, sure enough, there is no mention whatsoever of life or marriage or any other moral/cultural issue.

Evidently, this season the moderate messaging has changed from “we’re not a morality party” to “our morals are money”.

Their message is all bidness, and with a tone more “revenge of the fat cats” than libertarian.

The PAC supported Jason Villalba and Bennett Ratliff last cycle, both moderates with conservative challengers.

And in a truly funny bit of publicity, California resident LaVar Burton, of Star Trek and Reading Rainbow fame, shows up in Westcott’s finance report as a donor.

The only federal politician Burton has ever given to is Barack Obama. The enduring image of this primary may be the California actor who gives to Obama and Westcott.

You couldn’t make up stuff this good.

Ladies and gentlemen, the first biennial Chart Westcott Award goes to (drumroll, please)… Chart Westcott!

Ross Ramsey of the Texas Tribune gave his reflections on the abortion fight during the special session.

One of his primary observations was that the “killing babies saves money” argument wasn’t leaned on very much, especially since the fiscal note came out basically neutral.

He suggests that next time there should be some numbers available, what with all the not-killing sweeping the state, for pro-abortion forces dust off their eugenics propaganda in favor of killing non-desirables.

This is argument is sick, racist, an one history will judge harshly. Pro-life advocates can take it as an enemy admission that they’ve saved lives.

Missing from Ramsey’s story was anything about the $1.4 million settlement with the state of Texas recently agreed to by Planned Parenthood in a Medicaid fraud lawsuit.

Congratulations, pro-lifers. You have saved the lives of innocent people and won back $1.4 million from Planned Parenthood for our state.

–Ramsey’s article

House leadership is trying to impeach a champion of higher ed reform, but is protecting a State Board of Education member who appears obviously ineligible to serve.

The difference? Wallace Hall wants to bring transparency to a massive government bureaucracy and Thomas Ratliff is a connected member of a huge bureaucracy.

University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall is actually doing what millions of Texans dream about – trying improve our faltering University system. The agenda? Open up the black box of higher ed spending, which keeps dramatically increasing with no change in services. For his efforts he has been attacked by the guardians of this nest of money and power.

Thomas Ratliff, on the other hand, is a member of the State Board of Education, but is also a lobbyist for Microsoft, a company the SBOE does business with.

In an AG opinion on the subject, AG Abbott wrote, “A person who has been retained to communicate directly with the legislative or executive branch to influence legislation or administrative action in or on behalf of a profession, business, or association on a matter that pertains to or is associated or connected with any of the statutorily enumerated powers or duties of the Board is not eligible to serve on the Board.”

Conservative activist Donna Garner has written a data rich article on VoicesEmpower.com laying this situation out.

This is a good representation of House priorities when establishment politicians like Joe Straus and his partner Dan Branch are in positions of power.

–Texas Tribune article on Wallace Hall probe

For Immediate Release
July 30, 2013
Contact: admin@agendawise.com

Austin, TX – Yesterday, as reported by Quorum Report, Salem Abraham, a wealthy investor, public official and political donor from Canadian Texas, issued a statement regarding the judicial dismissal of Abraham’s lawsuit against Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans. The early judicial dismissal of Abraham’s lawsuit against Sullivan comes several months after a duplicate lawsuit was filed and similarly lost by Abraham against AgendaWise and against AgendaWise‘s Executive Director, Daniel Greer. Abraham has since appealed the judicial denial of his claim against AgendaWise and Greer.

AgendaWise seeks to correct several false statements made by Abraham in his statement about the judicial dismissal.

First, Abraham alleged that Daniel Greer was scheduled to go off of the payroll at AgendaWise. In fact, Greer has never been off AgendaWise payroll.

Second, contrary to Abraham’s assertions, AgendaWise and Daniel Greer have never admitted to or been found to have libeled Abraham.

In an attempt to avoid early judicial dismissal of his suit, Abraham offered into evidence a video his employees shot of him at the Levelland Pie Shop political event in which Gov. Rick Perry was helping Jim Landtroop get out the vote. The video is available at the following link. Readers are invited to judge for themselves how best Abraham’s actions at the Levelland event should be characterized.

AgendaWise notes several facts apparent from the video:

Abraham identifies himself as a public official, specifically a member of the Canadian ISD school board. It has long been established under American jurisprudence that the First Amendment affords citizens and media the opportunity to openly comment about public officials.

Abraham rises at the conclusion of the event to make his point and is told by the moderator to “save it for another day”. Salem testified at the hearing that he thought the event moderator interrupted him, not the other way around.

While Abraham is speaking, what is believed to be a DPS officer or possibly a member of Governor Perry’s security detail is seen walking across the frame towards Abraham’s direction. He’s the gentleman in a cowboy hat and suit, indoors, in Texas in the middle of July.

At the conclusion of his monologue, Abraham’s accomplices who are filming the incident instruct him to stop, saying “that’s plenty.” We believe that this statement and the fact that Abraham brought his own fliers and was being filmed by two cameras during the incident suggest that he attended the event that day with the intent of disrupting the event and making a political statement on behalf of his preferred candidate.

As the video picks up again outside, Abraham and his accomplice are seen rudely berating campaign staff.

While outside, an event organizer again instructs Abraham that his disruption to the event was upsetting to the guests and asks him to leave.

At the conclusion of the video, Abraham is being spoken to by what appears to be a member of Governor Perry’s security detail while a uniformed officer looks on before he finally walks away from the incident.

AgendaWise believes that video supports the eye witness reports of the incident.

In Abraham’s statement, he took the opportunity of his latest legal defeat to attack the character of Tim Dunn and Michael Quinn Sullivan. During the past legislative session and for the last six years, Dunn and Sullivan have worked to involve and inform the Texas electorate and have been attacked by establishment politicians whose plans to expand cronyism and big government have been impacted. Abraham’s two frivolous suits are examples of such attacks. Texas’ Anti-SLAPP law, designed to protect free speech against frivolous and abusive lawsuits, was created for just these sort of cases. AgendaWise believes that people should be free to comment on and criticize public officials. In this situation, Abraham put himself out as a public official in three ways, first as a school board member and also as a leader in West Texas and as a major campaign donor.

Furthermore, Abraham has admitted not being damaged in this case. In a hearing on the case in Canadian, Abraham acknowledged that he has personally suffered no damages as a result of the original AgendaWise publications. This point is magnified by the fact that Abraham has done more to bring attention to this publication than AgendaWise ever did. What initially was acknowledged by merely a few lines in an AgendaWise article, Abraham has amplified by filing suits and issuing statements and press releases after each development in the ensuing litigation.

AgendaWise is pleased that, once again, a Court has determined at the outset of litigation that Abraham does not have a justiciable claim.

AgendaWise Texas is a web-based, non-profit 501(c)(3) research and information organization committed to providing transparency in the Texas political discourse. AgendaWise understands the era of naiveté in media and public life is over and information is shaped by messengers. Seeking to aid the desire of Texans to become more intelligent information consumers, AgendaWise seeks to uncover associations of actors in the political discourse including donors, media sources, and charities; analyzing themes and choices made by such actors. In addition to being an information outpost, AgendaWise is a responder to unfair political attacks. We seek to clarify misdirection, bring perspective to bias, and illuminate untruths in Texas political discourse.

In November Texans will be voting on a ballot measure to basically legalize the cooking of their own books, and Speaker Straus is leading the push to pass it.

This is because the constitutional amendment is designed to keep $2 billion of water funding from counting against the spending cap.

During the 83rd Legislature legislators would not treat as a real priority, by addressing it out of general revenue, the so-called “water crisis”.

Instead, legislators created a replenishing $2 billion water bank that busts the spending cap. They weren’t willing to either spend the money or pass a legalized cooking of the books themselves. Like a hot potato, they passed it on to us.

Now leadership has formed two new PACs to fund “vote yes in November” water propaganda. Chances are strong that the word “spending cap” will never to be uttered in their propaganda.

This is more boondoggle than crisis.

This amendment is set up so that the money will only be spent if the cooking the books is legalized. They don’t want to be seen busting the spending cap. That’s how much of a real “crisis” this water crisis is.

These spending caps were put in place to create fiscal discipline and accountability. This ballot measure is designed to take it away.

What’s driving this?

The Texas ruling class wants badly to raise taxes. Under Straus’s watch, every time tax hikes become a conversation, gambling expansion is put up as an alternative, even though the idea that gambling is a net revenue enhancer is going the way of the dodo bird.

Since Texans so strongly demand fiscal responsibility, two things are needed by the ruling class to sanitize talk about a new tax: create a crisis and deplete the Rainy Day Fund so that taxes are the only crisis-fixer.

It seems Speaker Straus is working hard on both the crisis and the RDF spending fronts.

Peggy Fikac, Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News columnist, tweeted the following: “@DavidHDewhurst says Straus told Senators he wants a transpo crisis in 2015 to increase pressure for taxes”

While it seems the 2015 funding crisis based on transportation is being planned, the current raid on the RDF is in full swing in the form of the November water ballot measure.

As previously mentioned, Joe Straus and Rep. Allen Ritter have created a political action committee called Water Texas, or the purpose of raising money and creating propaganda in favor of promoting “crisis” and the constitutional amendment ballot.

Two senators, Tony Fraser and Tommy Williams, have started another PAC for the same purpose called H204Texas PAC.

Will Texans vote for is a replenishing water fund that nobody can track? Time will tell.

This week Texas Secretary of State set the November ballot. The water fund amendment – Proposition 6 – will cook our state’s books and create a low visibility slush fund and the lobby effort to get it passed is kicking into gear.

In this gang the new PAC H2O4Texas is one of the lead characters providing “Vote yes on Prop 6” propaganda.

The group itself has been pushing for more spending for some time and has published a list of sponsors. Only its PAC is new.

Tarrant Regional Water District is a founding member of H2O4Texas and according to the Texas Ethics Commission the district employed Bryan Eppstein as their lobbyist during the 2013 session. Eppstein is a noted ruling class Republican lobbyist.

Another member organization is the North Texas Municipal Water District, which itself spent bookoo bucks lobbying the legislature in 2013. Their lobbyist was Lloyd Gosselink of Rochelle & Tonwsend P.C.

There are others in this gang. Check them out for yourself:

Meet Steve Bresnen. He is a lobbyist for trial lawyers and gambling interests. Now, as a supporter of H2O4Texas PAC, he’s pitching in with the business lobby to help pass the water fund amendment this November.

Bresnen seems to be making a habit of being on the wrong side of average Texans. Bresnen spoke in favor of SB 346 during the regular session. It was a measure designed to expose general interest conservative non-profits to harassment by forcing them to reveal documents to the public that are currently confidential. The bill gave a pass to unions. Liberals in Washington DC have lusted after this kind of bill for years but haven’t been able to get it. With the help of our liberal Republican House leadership it passed but Governor Perry prudently vetoed it.

Bresnen seems to be a ruling class utility man, making him no friend of average Texans. The water amendment he is promoting is not Texas-friendly either.

As we have discussed previously, the water amendment will cook our state’s books by arbitrarily keeping $2 billion of water money from counting against the spending cap. What is the point of spending caps if our elected officials simply cook the books when they hit the limit?

The water amendment will also create a veritable slush fund for connected people to sell land and services for outsized sums, and with very little oversight. The amendments offered on the bill that were designed to make the water fund more transparent and accountable were opposed by all but the conviction conservatives who authored and supported them. They were defeated by the moderates and liberals.

Water and SB 346 are two places where we see sometimes-enemies — the trial lawyers and the business lobby — teaming up with each other against average Texans. The two groups will always have their fight about the ease or difficulty of suing in Texas, but that hasn’t stopped them from joining forces when an unrelated ruling class opportunity presents itself. Like the bill designed to chill accountability, this water amendment is designed to benefit the ruling class at the expense of average citizens.

This cooperation between trial lawyers, the business lobby, and gambling interests has been especially evident since Joe Straus took over as Speaker of the House in 2009. His family business is gambling, and the gambling oligopoly badly wants slot machines. However, he was voted Speaker by the Democrats — practically a wholly-owned subsidiary of the trial lawyer lobby. And, he has an “R” next to his name, which puts him in bed with the business lobby too.

Straus would rather focus on things like these and others where lobby factions are aligned, like water and the anti-accountability SB 346. He’d rather not focus on things they fight on, issues the ruling factions would like him to take their side on. One such example is TWIA reform, which did not happen this session.

Clients of notorious ruling class consultant Bryan Eppstein’s have pushed for both the water fund and the anti-accountability SB 346.

It is red meat season and Attorney General hopeful Dan Branch is already serving caviar and crumpets.

Yesterday Dan Branch helped make the case for his opponent Ken Paxton, releasing an endorsement list he called “conservative”, but that was made up of the most liberal Republican members of the Texas House.

This self-generated publicity is a good snapshot for primary voters who get to see the liberal Branch’s concept of “conservative” – a Republican endorsement list with a D+ average on the 2011 scorecards of Empower Texans and Young Conservatives of Texas.

The other side of the coin is that the actual House conservatives have gone overwhelmingly for Paxton. Paxton’s GOP House endorsements average an A+ on the Empower Texans scorecard and an 85 on YCT’s scorecard. For the purposes of the GOP primary, these are the only endorsements that matter.

This year’s scorecards aren’t out yet, but it is projected the freshmen who endorsed Branch will do even worse than the veteran liberal Republicans Branch considers conservative.

Look for a follow-up post when 2013 scorecards are released.

The ruling class’s “Texas Conservative Roundtable” has released its new scorecard, and it is more ridiculous than the first.

The first thing to notice is that almost every single Republican got a blue ribbon. The ruling class is about taking care of their own, and this scorecard is exhibit A for that fact. Basically, this worthless scorecard tried to give every Republican legislator a scorecard award to go run his primary on.

Bad for them, scorecards like this are not worth the server space they are written on.

The next thing to notice is that this scorecard gives a double blue ribbon to a group that seems best described as “political goulash”. Some are saying this category is the lesser one, but it is the more exclusive. Anyway, what’s the point in pretending this list makes actual sense? They have a token conservative or two in there to legitimize the list, neither of which will be helped by the association, they have several establishment Republicans, and they even have a Democrat.

Yes folks, the Texas Conservative Roundtable put San Antonio area Democrat Texas Senator Leticia Van de Putte into their extra special “guardian” category, but left out San Antonio conservative Republican Senator Donna Campbell, who happens to be so conservative she has drawn an establishment challenger.

This San Antonio storyline probably has nothing at all to do with the fact that the Texas Conservative Roundtable has, from its inception a couple of years ago, been known as Joe Straus’s answer to Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. Releasing their scorecard one day after TFR released theirs? Pure coincidence.

The first scorecard was so awful they had to change it after publishing it.

The funny thing about this entire effort by the moderate/liberal ruling class is that by trying to steal the conservative high ground they prove again to everyone that they know what people in this state want, and it is not what they provide.

The Texas Tribune basically did an infomercial for CSCOPE, the controversial anti-American curriculum under fire from parents all over Texas.

In the latest Tribcast a reporter tutored her Texas Tribune workmates about CSCOPE, reciting CSCOPE’s talking points while Evan Smith asked leading questions to color the reporter’s portrait.

In the discussion they tried to whitewash CSCOPE’s treating an American symbol, the nonviolent Boston Tea Party protest, as a terrorist act, claiming, with CSCOPE, to be engaging in mere perspectivalism.

By contrast, CSCOPE described the Black Panthers as protesters. The Black Panthers tortured and murdered 19 year-old Alex Rackley, and nine law enforcement officials lost their lives in altercations with the Black Panthers. The Texas Tribune made no mention of this is their CSCOPE infomercial.

They also made no mention of CSCOPE’s perspectivalism in favor of hijabs and burkas, or in comparing Christianity to a cult. They also seem to have forgotten about CSCOPE’s listing of Communism as the big idea of the 20^th Century.

Underlying both CSCOPE and the Texas Tribune’s pretended innocence is a corrosive relativism that refuses to make cultural value judgments except against American and Western civilization. In reality it isn’t relativism or perspectivalism at all, it is a selective perspectivalism, the portfolio of which reveals an anti-Americanism they are too cowardly to own.

For those misled by the Texas Tribune’s recounting of CSCOPE, The Daily Caller did a real report on CSCOPE’s sins.

Any Battleground Texas success will be the product of GOP sellout, a disturbing pattern of behavior voters are tiring of.

Sure, Battleground Texas is setting up their voter fraud and/or voter turnout operations, but mostly they are positioning themselves to take credit for the gains the Democratic Party will get if amnesty becomes law nationally.

This is the amnesty bill the GOP establishment is working for against their constituents. It’s a bill that will empower Democrats nationally, and change the game for the worse in Texas. It’s a bill some careerist ‘conservatives’ are trying to figure out how to be in favor of right now, wrongly thinking they have to be.

Really, as long as the Texas GOP bosses are trying to give up all of their advantages Battleground Texas has reason to be in Texas.

If you notice, the GOP establishment picks fights about policy during the session, when the lobby is on the front foot. When the action moves in district, they clam up about the future of policy in the GOP. Accusations suddenly stop that conservatives are extremists, the future of the party is self-evidently liberal, and principle is obstructionist. And this is because the GOP establishment candidates are busy pretending to be conviction conservatives now.

We call businesses incompetent who constantly tell the customer he is wrong, but it is a GOP establishment way of life.

A new favorite Texas establishment talking point is that the recipe written in the 90s that gave the GOP control of the state is being tampered with to the peril of GOP control. The recipe they refer to is 100% business, and by “business” they mean “business lobby”. A short definition of the business lobby is, businesses that rely on performance enhancing bills (PEBs) to make money.

What of this magical 90s GOP recipe? The GOP establishment isn’t honest enough to read people the real recipe from the 90s.

The real recipe is as follows: On paper, stand for free markets, a lean government, and traditional values to get elected (tort reform was featured in the free markets category and education bloat was worked into the traditional values category). Then, legislate entirely for the business lobby, putting on Kabuki Theater when voters need convincing that they care about the three things they claim to stand for.

Now the Texas GOP establishment is whining that, ever since the Tea Party woke up the conservative movement, this magical recipe is being tampered with.

The establishment should have some cheese to go with their whine. It is an immutable rule of life that nothing based on deception is built to last. Despite apparent intentions to the contrary, the designers of this 90s scam recipe built a temporary stopgap, not a lasting charter.

And sorry, the Reagan coalition moved the entire South into the GOP, not tort reform and education bloat.

The GOP has to get honest to stand a chance.

The problem with the GOP establishment is that their real agenda has always been serving the business lobby, with a moderate/liberal lean. This moderate/liberal lean is because they need the Democrats to get their PEBs (performance enhancing bills) passed, and Democrats always trade for liberalism.

In fact, most of these Texas establishment GOP politicians are conservatives by conviction, which is why they can sound good on the campaign trail. However, convictions are worth very little if they are not what you govern with. They govern as careerists, objective: PEBs.

Performance enhancing bills, PEBS, are also CEBs for legislators– “career enhancing bills”. Successfully managing one gets you pushed ahead in the party.

This implies something ugly but seemingly true – that the Texas GOP bosses run bait and switch operation.

They also underestimate the power of honesty. While the Democrats church up their bribes, they basically do for voters what they promise. They offer a bevy of bribes to people groups, some in the form of other people’s money, and others in the form of normalization of deviant behavior that Americans used to have the sense to suppress.

The GOP does seem to be catching on to the honesty thing a little bit. Disastrously, they’re choosing honesty along the lines of their lobby agenda instead of their vote-getting agenda. They’d like the party to go liberal on a host of issues, from fiscal responsibility to abortion to immigration and beyond.

How much sense does it make for them to come out of the closet with policies they have themselves judged too toxic to reveal for decades? The only people this strategy really serves is the designers of the old GOP recipe who will be obsolete if ever this approach ends. The strategy is suicidal for voters, donors, and GOP politicians.

For every issue, the GOP goes liberal on, they become twins with the Democrats, but not identical twins as they might hope. They become twins like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in the movie Twins. Guess which twin the GOP is on, say, entitlements?

They want to go onto the enemy’s ground, where the enemy is entrenched at the top of a steep hill. The only open space on this field is at the bottom of the hill with the sun directly in their eyes. The establishment can’t encamp fast enough.

Ever since the Reagan coalition began the GOP has owned ground of its own, ground the American public loves. Pro-American fiscal policy, pro-American foreign policy, pro-American social policy. Americans instinctively know progressive fiscal, foreign, and social policy is corrosive to America.

This is all to say the GOP has the American market cornered on Americanism, which is a pretty darn solid foundation, but someone needs to convince the guys in charge of this.

There is a liberalizing movement in the GOP that threatens the future of Texas and the GOP in Texas. Texans should demand their politicians be up front about where they are in this struggle. Nobody is neutral.

The first two speaker races showed a tale of two outcomes: an opposition floor vote versus no opposition floor vote. The difference was huge.

The opposition floor vote in 2011 undermined establishment Kabuki Theater by authorizing a band of truth tellers. There were 15 truth tellers the first time, and they were potent. There could have been many more in 2013, but the vote never made it to the floor.

Conservative opposition eventually emerged in 2013, and did some good, but it was late to the party and weakened.

An opposition vote on the floor is worth its weight in gold for Texas policy. There are at least two ways to keep it from happening.

The obvious one is not to have a floor vote. That can be accomplished by backing down real speaker opposition or by planting friendly speaker opposition with a directive to back down at the end.

The other way to avoid an opposition vote is to have an “opposition” floor vote. This would be possible if an establishment-coordinated speaker challenge collected all of the conservative opposition. This kind of speaker candidate would probably want to avoid a floor vote, but even if the grassroots could force such a challenger into a floor vote, the inside chatter would still undermine the value of the exercise. Even 74 challenge votes of this kind would mean less than the 15 real opposition votes meant in 2011 because the establishment could claim to have orchestrated it.

The emergence of a real conviction conservative challenge guaranteeing joiners a floor vote, a clean conscience, and a kind of grassroots credibility that money can’t buy would be bad news for the Texas ruling class.

The water slush fund, on the ballot in November as Prop 6, is being sold to Texans right now by the Texas ruling class.

Water Texas PAC, created by the ruling class to get Texans to deliver funds lawmakers were too scared to vote themselves during the session, has put out a large list if legislators in a very tough position.

It seems Joe Straus was unable to get unanimous support among legislators, which makes the support he got highly exposed.

The circumstances are precarious for those on the list. Most of all, this is because the band of honest brokers in the Texas legislature are not signed on. Without this group’s endorsement, an establishment initiative can safely be categorized an abuse of power. For the remaining legislators, this means the Emperor has no clothes, but Straus has put his colleagues out there anyway.

To make it funnier, several ruling class politicians stayed of the list apparently due to an ambition for higher office. Wendy Davis is mulling a gubernatorial run and has stayed off the list. Dan Branch is trying to beat Ken Paxton, a conservative with an iron reputation for integrity, for the office of Attorney General. Branch has stayed off the list. Harvey Hilderbran, running for Comptroller wisely stayed off the list. Brandon Creighton wants to be Ag Commissioner and had sense enough to stay off the list. Finally, Stefanie Carter running for Railroad Commissioner also stayed of the list.

Golly, Beav, how come all the establishment politicians who can’t blend in are staying off this list? Because they know a Suicide PAC when they see one.

Representative Jim Pitts has chosen not to become this cycle’s Vicki Truitt – the establishment Republican that held on too long amidst a swelling crony reputation.

The writing was on the wall for Pitts. He only missed a runoff last time by 7 points.

Pitts was confronted this week by National Review Online about the possibility he used his position and influence to get his son into UT Law School. Pitts cattily rejected the suggestion, and the next day announced his retirement.

University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall, the emerging hero of government accountability in Texas, is probably somewhere smiling.

The left’s boot-licking relationship with Wendy Davis is an extended exercise in damage control. They are trying to transform her into gold somehow.

The Davis saga is a bad omen for the left in their fight to extend the abortion holocaust, our country’s great shame. The left is much more aware of this than anyone else, and are obsessed with taking this situation somewhere safer, where they don’t yet know. In the meantime the political left are trying to find Davis her softest landing, and media are reflexively, obnoxiously, and unconvincingly selling her.

Wendy Davis is bad for the left for three big reasons.

The first and most important is the major pro-life legislative gains she failed to prevent. There have been pro-lifers wanting and planning for progress for a long time. Now, for two sessions in a row the Texas pro-life movement is making serious gains. This is making the left very uncomfortable. It also represents a big defeat for Joe Straus, who flexed his muscles against the pro-life lobby at the beginning of the session only to be ultimately steamrolled.

Secondly, Davis stuck her neck out for abortion and got her head handed to her. Her political consequences couldn’t have been higher. She is a model for  prominently protect this barbarism in the new, much tougher and more confident era of pro-life activism. Though she is finished politically, someone seems to think it is better for her to lose a gubernatorial race than her senate seat, so she’s talking gubernatorial candidacy right now. This is pure PR.

Thirdly, average Americans are making Davis into “Abortion Barbie” faster than the media can manufacture useful celebrity for her. It must be unsettling for them. This fact explains most of the media’s pro-Davis chorus. They need to salvage something positive for her to downplay her political decimation due to fighting for abortion. Any second profession gifted to Davis by someone on the left, should that happen, will be a monument to her political defeat.

Particularly fun to watch in this is Evan Smith at the Texas Tribune. For a guy who likes to play things straight, he’s bought early and often into the pro-Davis bluff. In something of a modern day alchemy project, he’s working hard on making Davis into the new Ann Richards. How obliged to this project is he? One of his writers scurried over to Texas Monthly, seeding an article about how Davis propaganda, which it appears the Texas Tribune will be peppered with for the foreseeable future, isn’t really propaganda.

Wendy Davis represents a huge legislative, political, and cultural victory for the unborn. More ominous for the left, she represents a serious legislative, political, and cultural defeat for one of the left’s flagship causes – the normalization of promiscuous sex.

The Texas Tribune “Inside Intelligence” campaign predictions are a reflection of Austin groupthink, which is driven by risk-avoidance, not analysis.

Last cycle the same Texas Tribune Inside Intelligence believed, with a 91% to 8% margin, that David Dewhurst would beat Ted Cruz. Warren Chisum was picked to beat Christi Craddick 58% to 37%. Jeff Wentworth was picked to retain his seat by 85% of the Tribune’s Insiders, Elizabeth Ames Jones got 13%, and Donna Campbell, the eventual winner, was picked by 2% of the insiders.

Each of these were the safe opinions. Predictive quality is not really the point. Austin insiders are expected to help build a sense of inevitability for establishment candidates. If you pick the non-establishment choice and he wins, you are seen as smart, but a little reckless. There is risk in this approach.

By contrast, if you pick the establishment choice and the other candidate wins, it is easy to turn your lack of vision and faith in the challenger into a compliment. Just say, “Wow, you did great! Everyone thought you were a long shot! I doubt you’ll be underestimated again!” There is no risk in this approach. It is a crack in the wall for capitol city cockroaches to sit in.

Now the Austin groupthink, reflected in the newest Texas Triune Inside Intelligence, is picking Dan Branch over Ken Paxton by 40% to 28%, Todd Staples over Dan Patrick by 27% to 26%, and John Cornyn over Louis Gohmert 88% to 10%.

Austin insiders are bureaucratic-type survivors, not reliable predictors of campaign outcomes, making these insider opinion polls virtually worthless.

–April 24, 2012 Texas Tribune Inside Intelligence

–August 28, 2013 Texas Tribune Inside Intelligence

“TEKS Resource System” is the name given to makeover the image of the embattled CSCOPE, the substandard anti-American, anti-Christian K-12 learning resource parents are currently chasing out of the state.

The wolves behind CSCOPE/TEKS Resource System consistently behave as if a better sheep’s outfit should be enough to convince Texas parents to let them shape their children. This name change is only the latest episode.

Many shocking inclusions in CSCOPE/TEKS Resource System’s curriculum have been exposed then removed. For one thing, communism was called the big idea of the 19^th century. Islam is presented sympathetically, while little Texans are taught to doubt the Christianity many of their forefathers came to this country in order to practice. A symbol of the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party, is called a terrorist act while shifty, spineless liberals stand around saying “What’d I say?”

CSCOPE/TEKS Resource System is just the latest offensive in the left’s assault on western civilization under the guise of tolerance and relativism. The big difference now is that parents are fighting back.

Lieutenant Governor Candidate Sen. Dan Patrick and Thomas Ratliff recently debated CSCOPE/TEKS Resource System, and the fight is still in the early rounds. This new, slicker name is not likely to inspire parents to new confidence in the integrity CSCOPE/TEKS Resource System. In fact, it is likely to have the opposite effect.

Barry Smitherman, running for Attorney General, is creating a hardcore right wing campaign character, seemingly to counterbalance his long record as an Austin insider.

Smitherman spent approximately seven years in a plum appointment to the Public Utilities Commission. In 2011 he was appointed to the Railroad Commission, and in months the newbie appointee was made Chairman. This strengthened his position ahead of his first primary election, which took him a runoff to secure.

Also, his campaign finance chair is Robert Miller, a lobbyist and blogger who has been an outspoken voice of support for embattled House Speaker Joe Straus in his struggles against conservatives.

Establishment politicians never have more freedom to shape their image than when they are running for office for the first time. They have no record to weigh them down, and, not yet having incumbency to prop them up, they enjoy complete freedom to say what is needed to get elected.

Smitherman has been talking tough generally, and talking specifically about Texas breaking away from the United States of America.

Though this is music to some people’s ears, it is the kind of noise that would get a true conservative mocked at full volume by every newspaper and ruling class voice in Texas. Fidgety conservative movement people would immediately distance themselves from such a person, offering to be the first to stab him with the “that guy is crazy” blade. It would feel as if the candidate walked into a blazing fire.

When instead of a blazing fire there are a few token candles of outrage lit, but nothing uncomfortable, it is a good time to question the authenticity of the drama.

Sometimes what is not happening says much more than what is.

Jim Pitts used his good buddies at the Texas Tribune to wrap a meaningless statement inside a puff piece to whitewash a growing drama.

The drama is about Texas politicians moving unqualified but politically-connected kids into admissions lines ahead of qualified, unconnected kids. National Review Online recently wrote a story suggesting Pitts intervened with University of Texas School of Law admissions on behalf of his son. In responding to NRO for their piece, Pitts expressed outrage at the line of questioning against him, labeling it “disgraceful” and “cowardly”. He did not disclose that he wrote a letter of recommendation for his son. This week he admitted to the Texas Tribune that he wrote such a letter.

Here is Pitts’ statement, divorced from the propaganda service provided him by Evan Smith.

“Did I ever call for my son-or any of the over 100 people I’ve recommended over the years-and ask for special treatment? No, I did not.”

When a person defending himself begins to ask and answer his own questions you know you have a straight shooter (sarcasm).

Notice an implied defense of his bad behavior is that he did it a lot – over 100 times. This is the old lower-the-bar trick, and it doesn’t make the behavior better. It actually makes the behavior worse, but it can make the behavior feel less manageable, and so less actionable. Very slick.

Also, Pitts didn’t actually deny the accusation against him, which was that he exerted undue influence on the admissions process at UT. He denied a different accusation, a more specific, and easier to beat, accusation that he crafted for himself in the statement. He said he did not make a phone call in which he asked for special treatment.

But who ever asked if he made a phone call for his son? Nobody. And, did he ask for special treatment for his son? Perhaps not. But then, dirty politics is almost always done with suggestion, not incriminating statements.

Consider the admissions officer or his superiors. How is he to interpret this letter of recommendation from the Chairman of Appropriations, the man who basically decides who gets money and how much. In a more honorable day people in positions like these would refrain from giving letters of recommendation due to their almost certainly discriminatory effect against other students.

Pitts picked a smart time to choose not to run for office again.

Tea Partier Ginger Russell seems to have outsmarted the Texas Education Agency, Thomas Ratliff, and the entire Texas education establishment in the battle over CSCOPE, the anti-American and anti-Christian curriculum hotly opposed by parents all over the state.

Russell has published 10 CSCOPE tests and answers, which compromise their integrity and render them unusable to teachers.

In response, a suggestion has been floated by desperate pro-CSCOPE forces that there is a copyright on the CSCOPE materials.

Too bad for them, the Texas Education Agency’s own attorney already declared CSCOPE to be public domain. They were trying to circumvent a newly-passed law designed to remove CSCOPE curriculum from Texas classrooms. Their claim was that teachers could still use CSCOPE even though the TEA could no longer make it compulsory.

The following is a quote from the Beaumont Enterprise on July 19, 2013:

However, the Board of Education heard Wednesday from a top Texas Education Agency attorney who suggested that CSCOPE has simply been moved into the public domain. That would scrap previous intellectual property concerns, meaning any school district who wanted to could continue to use the curriculum system.

For this play by the education establishment to work, CSCOPE needed to be made public domain. If not, teachers lack legal access to the materials.

TEA attorney David Anderson said, “The CSCOPE lessons are in the public domain in the sense that Shakespeare is in the public domain and anyone is allowed to use it.”

Public domain means the copyright is gone, forfeited, and the education establishment can’t have it both ways. No doubt they will try to go put the copyright genie back in the bottle, but their credibility has taken another mortal blow.

Russell and all of the anti-CSCOPE warriors are fighting very well.

–Beaumont Enterprise article

–TEA “CSCOPE is public domain like Shakespeare” quote