Foolish short-term cash infusions from the federal government have proven to be costly. They provide a huge new expense for the state government, while only funding the first year or two. Our state has wisely  turned down these overtures from the federal government in recent years. We must continue on this prudent path if we are to stay at the head of the pack.

Texas rebuffed the Obama Administration’s attempt to expand unemployment insurance (UI) as part of  the 2009 stimulus package. It happened again with the 2010 Race to the Top initiative to centralize education standards. Governor Perry publicly rejected both of these long term claptraps, eager to protect the Texas government from federal encroachment.

Liberal media portrayals of these actions were short sighted, as liberalism almost always is. Forsaking long-term thinking (or even medium-term, really), media portrayals of our refusal of these programs generally focused only on the short term cash Texas turned down.

Both instances of self-control kept Texas in manageable shape fiscally, and in powerful shape nationally. Time has proven Texas right in refusing the UI overture from the Obama administration.

In early 2009 states were offered money to increase UI rolls. This was part of the President’s stimulus bill. Three years later deferred federal loans are coming due. States that couldn’t control themselves in 2009 are having to raise taxes to cover their unpaid debt and expanded UI rolls. Texas is sitting pretty by comparison.

Outside the Texas Democratic Party, Republican State Senator Kevin Eltife of Tyler was the only major opposition to conservatives in Texas fighting off this expansion.

ObamaCare was even more direct in its attempt to expand welfare. The bill forced states to expand Medicaid coverage to 133% of the poverty line or lose all Medicaid funding. The Supreme Court eventually protected states from this bit of blackmail but, as with the UI expansion, there is likely to be pressure to accept the terms anyway.

The UI case study is important to keep at the ready as Texans brace for ObamaCare.

Cash infusions sound too good to be true because they are. In Obama’s stimulus Texans have proof that avoiding these traps is a no brainer.

http://taxfoundation.org:81/article/unemployment-insurance-taxes-options-program-design-and-insolvent-trust-funds

After three years of activity tea party leaders have a better understanding of how the system corrupts good people.

Generally, the establishment gives a conservative a seat at their table, often without the conservative initially realizing it. The conservative now has something to lose. The conservative is suddenly averse to crossing the establishment.

Several things deserve consideration for tea party leaders being wooed by the establishment.

The first is that the establishment does not respect you no matter how good they make you feel for a time. You don’t have big money and you aren’t well-connected by birth, marriage, or professional circumstance. Plus, even in your compromised state you are likely still too burdened with ideals for them to feel comfortable opening up to you.

You have only one thing they need: a legitimate conservative reputation.

The establishment needs a steady supply of fresh conservative reputations to sanitize their political moves. Whether it is voting for a moderate over a conservative in a primary, helping depress a conservative issue that they don’t like, or voting for bad legislation, a trusted conservative standing next to it can ward off the grassroots tar-and-feather-patrol.

Conservatives who allow themselves to be used this way are eventually exposed. Their reputations are ruined and their supposed spot on the inside evaporates.

It’s sad but true that conservative movement crossovers function as the establishment’s makeup supply – temporary, beautifying, and replaceable.

One of the tea party’s primary functions is to be the establishment’s watchdog. When establishment moderates push certain people to the front of the tea party line they are effectively installing a beholden watchdog. This setup was unhealthy when Enron did it with Arthur Anderson. It isn’t healthier in the political realm.

So, beware of fellow tea party leaders suddenly interested in the perks associated with working with the establishment.

Smart tea partiers understand that their continued relevance lies in doing what they got into politics to do. Tell the truth, don’t let ambition cloud your judgment, and don’t become what you originally meant to get rid of.

Staying the course will cause the most potent force in Texas politics to keeps growing.

The notion that anything in government is efficient is ridiculous on its face. Nobody believes it, and yet everyone asking for new revenues is using it as a load-bearing assumption.

Like governments everywhere, our state government growth in the last 30 years has well outpaced population growth and inflation. It is a reflection of a culture-wide overestimation of government competency, going back at least to the Great Depression.

In that time there has been no end to schemes and optimism for government to fix things it cannot fix.

On the other hand, there has been seemingly no beginning of honest appraisals of the success of these programs. Results don’t seem to matter, only intentions.

For this reason our age will embarrass our great-great-great grandkids, or else make them feel superior. We’ll be known as the age of public policy worn as an accessory, like a scarf.

For us, they’ll say, support for a thing had little to do with a searching attempt to fix a problem, and had mostly to do with talking points that make supporters look good in light conversation.

People and parties whose business is growing government, and they are legion, aren’t prospecting for solutions to social ills. They are prospecting for causes that go well with a black dress and a Prada handbag. And a cause is as fashionable as its talking points are powerful and obvious, even if they are utterly misguided.

Take welfare, for example. Never was there a cause better fitted for our superficial time. When LBJ was selling the “War on Poverty”, designed to wipe out poverty forever in America, who could oppose it, especially in elite circles where such god-like estimations of human potential are culturally embedded?

Who could have known that welfare would eventually destroy marriage among the poor by giving more money to single poor people than married poor people? Who could have known welfare recipients who get entry level jobs would have welfare benefits cut by more than the job pays, destroying the incentive to work? Back then could you say that the concept of perpetual welfare seemed an awful lot like a lifetime allowance – not great for cultivating responsibility and maturity?

No, the war on poverty  was going to end poverty as we know it. You can’t oppose that.

More damning, when Charles Murray authored the book “Losing Ground”, detailing how social problems were all being made worse by the government programs designed to fix them, few people actually cared. Only those who were genuinely interested in fixing social ills cared. For the biggest liberal contingent, people only desirous to be thought of as fixing social ills, such a book didn’t ping their radar.

This relates to our state government. The grow-government crowd is desperate for us to assume our government is efficient. That way, any perceived need has only one solution: more revenues.

Introduce the idea that there may be waste, fraud, and over-hiring in government agencies and schools; introduce the idea that there may be inefficiency and suddenly a better solution emerges to perceived funding needs: cut spending.

Western governments scarcely even know how to cut budgets. Frankly, there has never been a people who thoroughly demanded it.

After all, government employees themselves are normally much more motivated to protest the cuts than the rest of the state is to insist on them. The bureaucrats are comparatively few, but the cuts will affect them quickly and seriously.

This is what makes the tea party chapter in the conservative movement so unique. What was always a lightly-motivating long term danger – government bankruptcy from overgrowth – has become a short term possibility. The overwhelming majority are now motivated.

Still, inertia is on the side of more growth. Leaders of agencies build their budget proposals from reports from department heads in their agencies. In an agency, you are as important as your department is big, so everyone is trying to grow their department. The same is true of an agency on the whole. The same is true for schools. The same is true for every government activity.

With almost no counterweight, growth has been the incentive structure of government programs and agencies up until now.

We now have no choice but to turn the tide.

On cue, a tougher breed of conservative legislator is being elected all over the country. Governments must be made to justify spending – all spending.

Let the government prove it is efficient by serious cuts and restructuring.

Legislators manipulate taxpayers into thinking the burden of proof is on us to deny new revenues. It is the opposite. The burden is on legislators to prove to our satisfaction the need for revenues, and the burden is high. Our time in history demands it.

Ronald Reagan’s common sense conservatism was never more prescient than when he said that the only way to make a college kid spend less is to cut his allowance, and the same is true of governments.

Perhaps most important of all, people need to consider the danger of allowing grow-government leaders in a cut-government age.

Government growers want to conceal the need and possibility for government cuts. If they are eventually beaten – forced to cut – they want to make cuts as painful as possible in order to teach everyone that budget cuts are Hell.

Common sense believers in government efficiency must be in charge in this cut-government age, or we risk wasting it.

–Classic Ronald Reagan line on government cuts

For a year the Internal Revenue Service has been under fire for harassing tea party groups. Now it seems the much-maligned bureaucracy is leaking sensitive documents in what looks like an effort to intimidate conservatives.

Forrest Wilder, writing for the liberal news magazine Texas Observer, reported this afternoon that a confidential list of donors to the Texas Public Policy Foundation was released to the public.

The information was originally published by GuideStar, a nonprofit organization that collects and distributes information about other nonprofits. According to the group’s website, their data comes directly from the IRS. By law non-profits are allowed to shield donors from public view. GuideStar has since retracted the mistakenly released list of donors.

This leak is the latest in a slew of strikes against the IRS under the Obama Administration.

Recently the agency was told by GOP lawmakers to stop attempting to revoke tax exempt status to tea party groups. In addition to tampering with preexisting status the IRS has been unduly probing tea party groups in Texas applying for tax exempt status.

TPPF is a major conservative think tank. The group has close ties to Governor Rick Perry, who donated the proceeds from his latest book Fed Up to the non-profit. Perry has been one of President Obama’s boldest and most outspoken critics.

Texas is on the administration’s map, and by the looks of this leak, so is the influential Texas think tank.

TPPF has been an integral part of the conservative shift in Texas politics and many sound economic policies advanced by the group have set Texas apart from the rest of the country.

This attack on a key conservative movement thinktank provides Texas conservatives with more motivation for November.

TPPF does not accept government funds or contributions.

–Guidestar FAQ 

-Texas Observer story

The school vouchers fight is on again.

Over the past 30 years the left has developed ways to confuse this issue. We are likely to hear some of them next session.

The good news is, after 30 years of tilling, planting, and watering, states around the country are entering a season of school voucher harvest.

Louisiana is pursuing school choice much more aggressively than Texas. In truth, school voucher goals for the Texas 83rd Legislature are modest.

Still, the cause is picking up momentum.

The left is likely to take the debate down many rabbit trails. There are a few things that should be kept in mind throughout the debate.

1. Schools and school districts should answer to parents, not Austin bureaucrats. In our current system, taxes for school funding are routed through Austin. Austin bureaucrats dispense money to schools. That means they are in charge. Under school vouchers, those taxes will be re-routed back through parents, who will choose which school to pay. Schools and school districts begin making policy to please parents, not bureaucrats.
2. Conditions for voucher-worthiness must not require liberal curriculum. Requirements should only protect against fraud. Liberals see states falling to vouchers one by one, and with it their educational hegemony. They know it will continue. Their new game is to try to make liberal curriculum a condition for schools receiving vouchers. Liberals believe Texans should only be able to use their own money to educate their children in ways liberals approve of.
3. Study the actors. Pay attention to the people on both sides of the argument. What are the common threads in everything else they support? This will tell you most of what you need to know to guide you through the debate.

Conservatives are starting to gain the upper hand in this fight. Conservatives must be diligent to ensure the prize – school vouchers – retains its integrity.

If you are a conservative and/or Republican in Texas, you have probably been served Facebook ads by a group called “Stop TLR”. Though they present themselves as conservative the group is actively teaming with progressive liberals.

The group’s front man Mark McCaig had liberal operative Alex Winslow on his radio show this weekend. The topic was the Texas Department of Insurance. Both men attacked the TDI.

Winslow is Executive Director of Texas Watch, a liberal watchdog group. Winslow’s Linkedin profile shows one-sided political employment, including Bill Clinton and state Representatives Richard Raymond, Barry Telford and Jim McReynolds – all Democrats.

In addition to heading Texas Watch Winslow is President of the Texas Democracy Foundation’s “Next Generation of Leaders,” a program used to identify and introduce progressive leaders. The Texas Democracy Foundation governs the Texas Observer, one of the most liberal publications in Texas.

Winslow and McCaig have a shared interest in the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.

Trial lawyer Steve Mostyn, McCaig’s boss, made millions by suing the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, a quasi-governmental organization. Following the huge TWIA judgment Mostyn dumped millions into the 2010 election in order to beat Republicans. Mostyn lost big. With his “Stop TLR” initiative, it seems Mostyn has added meddling on the other side to his donor activities.

During the 2011 session Texas Watch worked against passage of the conservative TWIA bill. Of late, the Texas Department of Insurance has been targeted by some coastal lawmakers over TWIA.

Specifically, coastal officials would like to continue to have hefty coastal property insurance needs subsidized by all Texans. They also would like the state of Texas to be obligated to cover any insurance shortfalls that may crop up now that the old insurance fund has been decimated. Finally, they would like to expand the circumstances under which TWIA can be sued.

Stop TLR is a trial lawyer-funded attempt to weaken conservative regard for Texans for Lawsuit Reform. In addition to limiting frivolous lawsuits through political action, TLR has worked to keep TWIA out of the cross hairs of trial lawyers.

Stop TLR’s Facebook ads are getting liked because of the money being pumping into them and the red meat conservative rhetoric they are draped in, not because of the trustworthiness of the messenger.

November will be another anti-Obama wave election in Texas. This means that down-ballot open seats and some incumbent Democrats will be available for the GOP to capture. Leaders in the Republican Party have a golden opportunity to feed the anti-Obama fire if they choose to do so.

Unfortunately for conservative Texans, GOP leadership in the past has been passive in GOP wave years.

Take 2010, for example. High-end estimates for the Texas House held that 82 Republicans would be elected. With little support from insider-generated expectations, 99 Republicans won.

If there has been a change in Texas, it is that Obama is more unpopular and feared now than he was then. Plus, ObamaCare is on the ballot for the last time in November.

In spite of these conditions, optimism for November is not the undisputed GOP conventional wisdom.

Why, in years like this, does GOP leadership so often seem to trim its own coattails?

One answer is that national GOP leadership is at best moderate, and therefore doesn’t actually want to decimate the Democratic Party.

This line of thinking says Republican leadership needs a healthy opposition party to explain not moving on the issues the party membership likes but leadership doesn’t.

It is true that without a healthy Democratic Party many clung-to GOP insider myths and assumptions would fall flat. The myth that the social issues are dangerous would fall flat. The relied-on premise that government is relatively efficient would fall flat.

After all, when two-thirds of the officials elected to office are social conservatives and budget hawks, eventually the idea that these things are kryptonite quits resonating, even for status-conscious conservatives.

In this vein, for years rumors have circulated in Austin that George W. Bush wasn’t happy with Rick Perry beating John Sharp for Lieutenant Governor in 1998 because then-Governor Bush wanted more flexibility when campaigning for President.

Paul Burka recently said that then-Governor Bush supported Perry because it would have looked self-serving not to have supported a Republican for Lt. Governor when he was considering a run for President.

It has also been publicly reported that the Bush people forced Perry not to go negative against Sharp, which is risky in politics. Remember, it was less than six months ago when the most recent GOP presidential primary still hotly contested. We saw the favorite GOP establishment candidate, now the GOP nominee, rely heavily on relentless negative ads to carry him to victory in early states.

The “Bush preferred Sharp” concept goes like this:  a Democratic Lt. Gov. would have allowed then-Governor Bush to go on the presidential trail with great flexibility. To conservative audiences he could blame liberal outcomes in Texas on the Democratic Lt. Gov. To liberal audiences, he could take some credit for the same outcomes.

True or not, the considerable sense this makes alone accounts for the staying power of this particular rumor.

In fact, the conservative movement in Texas knows how much easier their job is when more Republicans are elected. Many Republicans winning makes it very difficult for moderate Republicans to hide behind Democrats. They begin to have to own their own failure to deliver on campaign promises.

In any event, Romney will win Texas big this year. Debate around that is finally beginning to die even among the perpetually afraid. Obama might as well be Godzilla on the top of the November ticket.

This means Republicans have big down ballot potential. Pretending otherwise is little more than an excuse for not putting in the work called for in an election like this.

–Burka recently on then-Governor Bush and “the Perry dynamic”, circa 1998

–The Atlantic on the 1998 Bush campaign’s restraining of Rick Perry’s Lt. Gov. bid.

Last week Bob Garrett, writing for the Dallas Morning News, told a one-sided story regarding the Texas Insurance Commission. As a result, Texas Insurance Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman chided Garrett, issuing a letter to lawmakers informing them that Garrett omitted “important, relevant facts” in his Thursday piece.

Kitzman has experienced growing pressure recently from liberals.

Last week Senator Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) called for Kitzman’s removal. The weekend before that Steve Mostyn political employee Mark McCaig and left wing activist Alex Winslow attacked the commissioner on a radio program.

Prior to that Rep. Todd Hunter (R), Rep. Craig Eiland (D), and Rep. Chuy Hinojosa (D) attacked Kitzman over the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.

Hunter, a former Democratic Representative who party swapped in the mid 2000s, received a $25,000 political contribution from Democrat mega-donor Steve Mostyn in 2010. Just weeks later Hunter mediated the TWIA dispute resulting in a massive $189 million award to Mostyn, his clients, and his co-counsel. During the legislative session Hunter met in secret with Mostyn and other Democrats.

One man who gets better than “the Kitzman treatment” from Garrett is House Speaker Joe Straus. Garrett interviewing the Speaker at the GOP convention in Tampa helped Straus try to rehab his terrible image with the grassroots.

Dredging up the June convention, Garret wrote that there were scattered boos when Joe Straus took the stage. He left out the fact that Straus benefitted from a well-engineered stage on which he emerged from House Republicans, many of whom the grassroots strongly support. It isn’t the first time Straus has benefitted from his more conservative House membership.

Garrett quoted Straus suggesting there wasn’t a walk out at the convention in June. In fact there was a walk out. Whether or not Straus could see it is irrelevant. That Garrett doesn’t correct the record is par for the course.

Garrett, like liberals generally, has been kind to Straus and unkind to Kitzman.

For decades in our public square the culture war has been one-sided. We’ve thrown out the old and ushered in the new. Hiring writers was easy for editorial boards back when liberalism was the exciting option in the world of ideas.

The rebellion has begun to stall, however, and for an unexpected reason. The march leftward has gotten boring.

This is the context in which Josh Trevino has emerged. Trevino’s talent is obvious to everyone who follows him. He articulates with power many of the principles that built our civilization.

Established liberal publications The Guardian and Texas Monthly recently hired him. In both cases this type of hiring was overdue. Unusual perhaps, but overdue. Under “usual practices” liberal media publications are declining and many are dying.

Sadly for these publications, their desire to conform seems to have overwhelmed their survival instinct. After a smear campaign against Trevino both publications caved. Trevino had to resign shortly after he was hired.

The Trevino situation is an example of a new reality in the culture war. Liberals used to be rebels, but nowadays are much closer to playing the role of teacher’s pet. Liberalism is completely safe now. Conservatism has a distinct excitement advantage.

This is a big reason the old media is dying. New media doesn’t thrive because of the internet per se. The old media has equal access to the internet, and massive name recognition, money, and experience advantages. New media thrives because it isn’t saddled with a post-compelling institutional orthodoxy.

And liberalism is unquestionably in its post-compelling stage. If not, someone please list the compelling next step in the quest for sexual liberation. How much more license can the west possibly provide? Sandra Fluke would like all of us to pay for her birth control pills, but that isn’t exactly the kind of thing people pour into the streets with picket signs to support.

Please name the compelling next step for the civil rights movement. That quest is so exhausted that it today consists of Chris Matthews trying to make words like “Chicago” and “chair” into racist words when Republicans utter them. Sad.

In fact, there is a very compelling civil rights cause today, but it is championed by conservatives. It is the abortion abolitionist movement. Republicans are on a quest to destroy their second monstrous institution kept alive for the convenience of its patrons. Slavery was the first.

In truth, the liberal culture war is down to its dregs. It is for the American left’s zealots to continue to push it. People who entertain common sense are bound to take many conservative positions in today’s politics.

So the left needs an Obama Administration in the White House, people like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann doing news, and people like Sean Penn and Michael Moore carrying the torch in Hollywood. These are not the reasonable factions in their respective spheres who can think for themselves. These are the hard core ideologues, the foot soldiers, the company men.

Nobody should be surprised that these types are running today’s left. Their cause has little to attract fair-minded people today. It consists mostly raw power and inertia.

Editors need something besides a spent liberalism to sell their publications. The people who hired Josh Trevino knew that and were trying to recapture some of the old magic.

The people responsible for Trevino’s early exit should have to own the pathetic circulation of their publications going forward. They’ve successfully warded off a justified survival instinct.

Trevino will be fine and the new media will keep growing. Rupert Murdoch, and people like him, will keep taking boxes of the old media’s inheritance out through the front door. More spots for people like Trevino will be created.

The old media will continue dying a boring, conformist death.

Texans will soon gear up for the general election. Politicos already are.

Last month we asked the question, “in TX, is Obama worse off now than in 2010?”. It is an important question to ask since in 2010 Texas Democrats were crushed electorally and it wasn’t for a lack of effort. They were simply helpless in the face of the anti-Obama and tea party tides.

It is hard to find a factor alive in 2010 that isn’t the same or worse for Democrats today. It feels an awful lot like the reverse of the 2006-2008 cycle, or at least it should. The difference, of course, is that Democrats fan the flames in their up cycles while Republicans generally fret and gnash.

In fact, who remembers how in 2010 the Texas Democrat Trust finished a serious half-decade attempt to control redistricting? Millions upon millions were spent to gain control of the Texas House.

And while the Trust worked on control of the house, Steve Mostyn spent lavishly attacking Rick Perry and pumping Bill White.

After these impressive efforts, however, Republicans had more members in the House than ever and Bill White was a footnote in Texas political history.

Recently capitol insider and establishment bellwether Robert Miller gave a lineup of competitive house races to watch in 2012, basically relaying conventional wisdom in Austin. Miller sees Democrats picking up around seven House seats, getting them to 55.

Below is Miller’s analysis of the competitive matchups. His chart includes ORVS (Optimal Republican Voting Strength) — a measure that indicates how well a strong Republican should expect to perform in the district based on previous elections.

ORVS, like any measure, is fallible. In fact, during the 2010 wave election, seven Republicans took out incumbent Democrats despite having ORVS ratings below 50%. John Garza, who had an ORVS rating of 46, beat incumbent Vince Leibowitz with 51% of the vote.

Below is a table with 2010 ORVS and establishment predictions in races where Republicans beat Democrats. We took these 2010 Austin insider predictions from Texas Monthly.

When you add conventional wisdom, predictions get worse. Insiders were wrong on 10 that they predicted and correct on only 5. Every toss-up went to the GOP.

Since 2010 the fundamentals have not been improving for Democrats in Texas. The tea party has been getting increasingly organized and efficient.

With Texas resources being sent to battleground states for Obama, it will be interesting to see if 2012 turns out to be the answer to 2008.

2010 establishment prediction source 1, 2, 3

Recently Joe Straus has come under fire from Democrats and Republicans for the way his office handled redistricting.  AgendaWise began trying a year ago to gather important information about how the contentious maps were drawn.

In a letter to Joe Straus, Democrat state Representative Trey Martinez Fischer decried how redistricting was handled and called on the Speaker to admonish further attempts by Attorney General Greg Abbott to defend the maps. Last week Republican Representative David Simpson joined Martinez Fischer condemning the way the maps were drawn.

During the session conservatives cried foul over the Speaker using the process to harm conservative House members. The specter of such action was exposed before the session when Representative Bryan Hughes testified under oath that Straus allies were threatening members with redistricting reprisials if they refused to support the Speaker in his reelection bid.

After the legislative session concluded we sent the Speaker’s office an open records request for documents relating to how they handled the process. That initial request was largely blocked by disclosure exceptions. The Speaker’s office was allowed to withhold documents for several reasons. One reason was pending litigation over the maps.

When the legal process for determining the interim maps was substantially over, we petitioned the AG for documents turned over during the redistricting trails.

The AG disclosed hundreds of pages of material, but we are still waiting on significant information that will only be released with Straus’ consent.

We sent a letter to the Speaker requesting he allow the AG to release the remaining documents in the interest of political transparency.

We will keep you informed as to further developments.

Team Straus is desperate to distract from the fact that they preserve the political relevance of the enemies of tort reform in Texas – Texas Trial Lawyer’s Association (TTLA) and the Democratic Party.

First, let’s be clear: the Republican Party has carried tort reform and the Democratic Party has opposed it. While both Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) and TTLA have made token inroads across the aisle, this activity amounts to weakening the opposing force. Both sides’ ball-carriers are their stronghold parties – the business party versus the sue-business party.

Under the guise of fairness, Straus consistently gives Democrats their largest possible presence.

For example, the Straus policy of being “pro-incumbent” in a time of Republican growth has the practical effect of minimizing damage to the political army TTLA rents – the Texas Democratic Party. It means Straus is not helping pro-tort reform Republicans to unseat anti-tort reform Democrats in the upcoming election. Of course, he’s manufactured an excuse for sitting on his hands, claiming he’ll be too busy helping Romney to help his own state.

Never mind the fact that Romney is a lock to win Texas. Never mind Texas GOP donors are well covered by the national GOP, which uses Texas as an ATM. Evidently we’re to believe the speaker’s days are too filled with wall-to-wall donor recruitment meetings to leave time to help replace anti-tort reform Democrats with pro-tort reform Republicans.

Furthermore, TTLA favorite Todd Hunter, one of TTLA’s few Republicans (a former Democrat convert heavy on the ‘Democrat’, light on the ‘convert’), was appointed chairman of the powerful Calendars Committee by Straus.  Hunter boasted to a crowd less than a year ago that he was the “gatekeeper of legislation”.

Hunter was also the mediator of the giant TWIA settlement that provided Steve Mostyn millions. In turn, Mostyn was by far the biggest Texas Democratic donor in the 2010 elective cycle, and is now helping Obama significantly in his bid for re-election.

In addition to being the Texas Democratic Party’s sugar daddy and the former president of TTLA, Mostyn is an ally-on-ice of the Straus family business. The Straus family are longtime Texas gambling providers and Mostyn was recently one of the owners of the Lone Star Park racetrack license. Had Democrats done better in the 2010 election Mostyn would have been part of the pro-gambling power base in the Democratic Party. Had that happened, gambling and anti-tort reform would have developed significant visible overlap.

Instead the Democrats lost big and Mostyn was cut out, but he is positioned to jump back in if Democrats in Texas ever find their way out of the forest.

Mostyn employs Mark McCaig, the conservative turncoat who runs “Stop TLR”. “Stop TLR” is an effort to weaken TLR  in the grassroots.

In addition, one of Straus’s golden boys, Lance Gooden, was almost entirely funded by TTLA in his initial run for office. Like Hunter’s conversion to the GOP, Gooden has since converted to TLR. Both men have flexible positioning.

Straus’s opponent in the speaker’s race is Bryan Hughes. Hughes has been a supporter of tort reform for the length of his public career. As a trial lawyer Hughes has been a yes vote on every major tort reform gain since 2003.

Plus, Hughes has common cause with pro-tort reform politicians (and against anti-tort reformers) on a host of issues near and dear to his heart, such as  protecting taxpayers, protecting the unborn, and fighting for religious freedom.

The practical result is that Hughes’ connection to tort reform is more deeply reinforced than that of Straus, who wants to expand revenues like the Democrats, was pro-choice like the Democrats until his quiet-yet-miraculous conversion last speaker’s race (he still has a healthy lifetime score from NARAL), and has no history of support for religious liberty in Texas. Top Straus lieutenant Charlie Geren killed last year’s religious liberty amendment in committee. Meanwhile, Hughes the lawyer is fighting for an east Texas town’s right to keep “In God We Trust” displayed and the practice of opening prayer at the courthouse.

Straus keeps the anti-tort reform party on life support.  As a result, Team Straus must go on offense against Hughes to cover their weakness and obscure the strength of Hughes. Nobody with sense will be fooled by this.

In his Monday email, veteran establishment pundit Harvey Kronberg tried to spin the effects of increased accountability in Texas politics, saying recent Texas political happenings, “…all point to another legislative session held hostage to presidential ambitions.” This typifies the sense of ruling entitlement harbored by Austin insiders.

It’s pretty absurd if you pay attention to just what is being said – that voter accountability, which is what presidential ambitions bring on, “holds government hostage.”

First, accountability isn’t higher now in Texas just because of the alleged presidential ambitions of our governor. Accountability has increased because, statewide, a different kind of people are becoming politicos. In the past, 95% of the state-level politicos were special interests of some kind, engaged because, in some specific way, it paid to be engaged.

The real state-level legacy of the tea party awakening is the dramatic reduction of the advantage special interests used to enjoy. “General interests” are finally enough to, by themselves, inspire a significant number of people to engage. Put differently, the Texas we’ve always known is now a special interest for a bunch of people. And once people get bitten by the political bug they stay infected. State level accountability is greater now for many reasons.

Secondly, whether or not he plans to run for president again, Governor Perry is more his own man now than ever. Sure, if he wants to run again he is already performing for the 2016 primaries. If he isn’t going to run again this is his chance to govern as the guy from Paint Creek who first got into politics to improve things. He doesn’t need the kind of help a new governor with an undefined legacy and an undefined future does.

Nevertheless, Kronberg thinks the specter of Gov. Perry performing for the 2016 presidential primary will “hold our session hostage”, and it is a claim worth examining.

In short, the existence of elections is what separates our politics from monarchy and dictatorship. It is the reason government officials can’t act, as dictators do, as if they own states and nations. Elections are citizens’ major political lever, making primary season, and to a lesser degree general election season, the people’s time on the political stage. All citizen leverage derives from elections.

This makes election season the citizenry’s chance to effect government. The lobby traditionally enjoys an advantage the rest of the time.

But Kronberg is right, presidential ambitions change this. Presidential ambition brings so much light on politicians that they are effectively in a perpetual primary season. This gives voters leverage.

It is this reality that troubles Kronberg; it’s what makes him think the session will be “held hostage.”

And how do politicians become popular with voters ahead of big elections?

Simple. By keeping promises. That’s it. Primaries are a faithfulness contest.

In the nature of the case, this can only be a negative thing for people who want Texans governed against their will.

In fact, about a month ago Kronberg wrote a commentary in the Statesman about the Senate during the 83^rd legislature. The long and short of it is, seeing how conservative the next senate is, Kronberg is doing everything he can think of to sew discord among members. Maybe if he can factionalize the factions he can paralyze this conservative Senate.

As a liberal who evidently favors governing against the will of Texans, Kronberg is right to panic. This Senate is more conservative and more interested in keeping promises to voters than ever before. It is very likely to be conservatives’ favorite chamber next session.

If the session is being held hostage, it is by a House Speaker still squarely on the Kronberg side of this political reality. Without him Texans would be much closer to getting what they are repeatedly promised. The real hostage crisis would be largely over, the one in which government insiders run citizens on a never ending merry-go-round of promise-excuse, promise-excuse, promise-excuse.

On the positive side, there is a pack of freshmen and sophomore representatives who, together with some trailblazers who’ve been there for a while, are doing a different kind of politics. They can’t be made to think that losing an election is something to be terrified of, which seriously reduces Austin’s power over elected officials.

The Senate is coming Texans’ way, too.

Kronberg’s spin is the sweet sound sound of liberal panic.

Texas racetrack owners have begun trying to convince Texans that casinos are a good idea. Actually, this push is about “racinos” (slot machines at the racetrack) not casinos, but “casinos” is the messaging they seem to have chosen.

The destination of this push is likely a “compromise” in which legislators are again pitched on privatizing the Texas lottery. In the privatization process they are likely to push rule changes that make slot machines at the track possible. This would be just the latest attempt to get slot machines without an up or down vote, which they know they would lose. Such is the confusing world of tricky gambling interests.

John Montford is out trying to sell Texans on the idea of “casinos” (racinos). In the early nineties Montford was a leader in the push for our last miracle budget-cure, the Texas lottery.

Remember back when the lottery was passed? Today nobody sees the lottery as a revenues savior, but thanks to its salesmen, we did back then. It was going to cure our school funding woes. (Yes, school funding was doing the political heavy lifting for the cronies back then too.)

Yet today the lottery funds less than three days of public school. On the other hand, the lottery gets a huge share of its revenues from the areas in Texas most dependent on public assistance. It’s less than comforting to think that the lottery creates extra need in districts that use need as political clout to increase taxpayer assistance.

What about the “casino” salesman? Montford has enjoyed a distinguished career. As a Democratic state senator he sponsored the Texas lottery bill that ushered Texas into the distinguished world of scratch-off tickets and lucky numbers. He was then made the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. After that he worked for one of the companies that, year-over-year, spends the most money in Texas on lobbying – AT&T. Montford was their director of legislative affairs – leader of the AT&T lobbyists. Most recently, Montford worked for GM during its new ‘Government Motors” phase.

Montford could easily say, channeling fictional Mets second baseman Chico Escuela of SNL fame, “Government been bery, bery good to me.”

You could bet  that the cronies pushing for casinos and increased gambling will get help from their favorite crusaders, the black-helicopter right. On cue, they will use free market rhetoric to aid and abet another round of cronyism.

Sure, gambling will junk up our state, but it’s all for liberty, right? Wrong.

Track owners are a small crew and licenses aren’t easy to get. Pretending we live under different circumstances is a waste of time. Expanded gambling in Texas would result in the same thing that exists everywhere else there is gambling – an effective gambling oligopoly.

Besides that, gambling spends or destroys more government revenue than comes from the casinos themselves due to greater law enforcement needs, greater social service needs, and depressed productivity. States that have allowed gambling to expand haven’t experienced the budget relief that was promised.  We should know – we live in a state still waiting for our lottery funding bonanza.

We don’t need more gambling in Texas, we need less. We don’t need the budget-busting costs more gambling produces, we don’t need the massive bureaucracy it will inevitably create, and we don’t need the effective oligopoly it will empower.

On Monday FreedomWorks endorsed Bryan Hughes for Speaker of the Texas House. Hughes announced he was running for the post before the primary. Texas conservatives enjoyed major success in the primary.

FreedomWorks was an early and influential backer of Ted Cruz in his Senate bid.

Yesterday Joe Straus dismissed FreedomWorks and its chairmen Dick Armey. Since 2009 the former congressman’s group has helped the tea party with infrastructure.

Texans are now familiar with Straus and his efforts to slow the conservative swing we’re rightly experiencing in Texas. The Speaker’s PAC efforts during the primary largely failed. The Texas House Leadership fund spent the majority of its money on losing races.

In its endorsement of Hughes, FreedomWorks criticized the committee appointments Straus made in 2011, specifically the Democrats. Trivializing the importance of committee appointments is an important tactic for the weakened Speaker, since he owes his position to the other party. In 2009 Straus was brought to power by Democrats and 11 Republicans so he appointed Democrats generously. In 2011 Straus had a GOP super-majority in the House, but chose to empower liberals in both parties.

For instance, Straus gave the influential Local and Consent Calendar committee to Democrat Senfronia Thompson. As the head of this committee Thompson could hold bills hostage to compel action. This is a high leveraging appointment given to a liberal Democrat.

The General Calendar Committee, arguably the most powerful committee in the House, was lead by former Democrat and current enemy to TLR, Todd Hunter. At an event after the session, Todd Hunter boasted that his committee is the gatekeeper of legislation. On his watch, spending limits and other conservative bills died in the House.

Straus is sending clear signals that his intention is to continue to marginalize the growing number of genuine conservatives Texans are sending to Austin. Consistently at the top of his to-do list during the upcoming session are water, education and infrastructure. By focusing on important things like this, and by framing all problems as lack-of-money problems, Straus can avoid discussing any of the ways to make our government more efficient.

The fact that the Speaker’s race is being discussed now is good for the insurgent conservative wing of the Republican party.

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Today Rice University hosted a preview of the 2013 legislative session.

The second panel of the day moderated by Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune was comprised of Kate Alexander of the Austin American Statesman and Joe Holley of the Houston Chronicle. Smith asked if either saw Joe Straus retaining the position. Both confidently agreed.

However, during the question and answer period a questioner asked the panel to justify their optimism for Straus. He asked, assuming 55 Democrats want Straus to be the Speaker, does Straus have the 20 Republicans he needs for re-election?

Alexander waffled, saying she had not looked at the list. The other two panelists passed on the question. Their previous bluster proved hollow.

Also, it may be a mistake to assume Democrats are without reservation. Democrats are out of power, which means their only weapon is parliamentary rules. When their speaker broke the rules at the end of the session, mostly due to mismanagement, he damaged their best weapon. If the rules don’t matter the Democrats have even less power.

Mike Villareal (D) rushed to Straus’s aid in a later panel claiming he had the necessary Republican support. It was unconvincing.

Since speaker pledges are made to be brandished, let Villareal or Straus produce the list of 20 Republicans. If they can’t, they don’t have them.

Since the Tea Party Awakening, conservatives in the Texas Legislature have been steadily gaining ground. The Awakening has been a high-beam spotlight, showing Texans which legislators keep the promises they all make.

As it turns out, many in the bipartisan clan that runs the Texas House make promises to Texans during campaign season then legislate primarily for the lobby, doing just enough to stay off the people’s radar.

They routinely sandbag issues they made promises on. Somehow they always run out of time and claim they’ll “do it next time”.

Other issues are unseemly, contra the sensibilities of party blue-bloods. These sentiments, though at odds with the values in states outside the northeast, are alive in capitol cities all over the country – especially Austin.

In the end, the Tea Party Awakening didn’t change Texans’ politics. It simply made Texans demand they get what they’ve been voting for. And it’s working.

In running for Speaker of the House last session, Ken Paxton gave a face to conviction conservatism in the House. In a caucus vote, thirty conviction conservatives stood when Straus, in bully fashion, asked his opposition to stand up. Thirty conservatives stood.Of those, half voted with the caucus on the floor of the House. In the end 15 conviction conservatives voted for Ken Paxton. It was modest, but only a fool despises the day of small beginnings.

Then, the conservatives were systematically ridiculed and marginalized all session long. The crony crowd was determined to punish them for their attempt to win the House back for Texas voters.

This was unsurprising behavior from Team Straus. When dealing with Democrats they meekly proclaim they are “fair to everyone”.  Then, they are extremely vindictive to members of their own party with the temerity stand in earnest for the GOP platform they all claim allegiance to.

That was the hard part of last session.

The great thing about  the 82^nd Legislature was how incredibly influential the conviction conservatives were despite being daily made to feel like they had wasted their time running for office.

This band of brothers was a standing reminder that the emperor had no clothes. Because they wouldn’t play along, they forced everyone else to legislate much more conservatively than they had planned to. These truth-tellers created a situation in which misbehavior from the crony crowd became fuel for primaries. Courageous conservatives kept everyone’s level of misbehavior lower than ever.

This is exactly what Jim DeMint has done with his band of brothers in the US Senate. DeMint’s crew are treated identically – like useless scum who should just go home.

In turn, they have the same effect on the US Senate as their Texas House counterparts. They make the other guys more honest than they want to be.

This is why the crony crowd never forgets to scowl at the conviction conservatives – the conservatives are an annoying part of every decision they make.

Paxton is now strolling into a Senate seat.

Even with the improvement, however, slimy budget gimmicks were used to cover up our over-spending and many conservative bills were sat on by leadership.  The TSA bill was killed by parliamentary tricks, any and all immigration legislation was stuffed, school choice got nowhere, spending limits got nowhere, zero-based budgeting got nowhere, homeschooling parents still can’t make use of the public school athletic teams they pay for, and much else besides.

In addition, gambling legislation Texans manifestly do not want was maneuvered all session long.

The crony crowd then punished conservatives in redistricting. They were only successful in ousting stalwart conservatives Wayne Christian and Jim Landtroop after drawing them out of 80% of their districts.

Even still, these two men could decide tomorrow to take their case to the new district and it would only be a matter of time before the district figures out they were deceived.

In the end, the conviction conservative crew grew considerably.

In truth, Team Straus was lucky more of them didn’t draw primary opposition. The speaker lost six of his committee chairs (committee chairs should be untouchable), and conservatives fared very well in open seats.

Conservatives again demonstrated the striking “conviction discount” alive in Texas politics, in which people telling the truth need much less exposure to gain the trust of voters.

In short, the effort of Texans to win back their legislature is working. Everything else we hear is spin.

However, there is another dynamic at play in the conviction conservative crew. It can, with relative accuracy, be characterized as the difference between the old guard and the new guard.

The Texas House was never without conviction conservative representation. Before the Tea Party Awakening they were small and seemingly insignificant, but they were never extinct in Texas.

The Awakening has created a need for an attitude change in conviction conservatives. Before the Awakening it was appropriate for conservatives to be resigned to losing. These legislators stood up for what was right, but knew Texans weren’t engaged deeply enough to give them the support they needed.

The Awakening changed all of that.

The new guard has a path forward, sees it, and is ready for battle. They know it will require toughness and faith, but they’re determined to follow it. The new guard recognizes the advantage of a much larger, more deeply engaged, and increasingly savvy grassroots.

Happily, most of the old guard have adjusted to the post-Awakening reality, showing the boldness the moment requires. Ken Paxton is an example. Bryan Hughes is another. Bill Zedler is ever the happy warrior.

But there is another kind of old-guard conservative, exceedingly rare, who has trouble adjusting to the new reality. This type is head shy, a posture more acceptable in an previous political age.

Decision making for this type is dominated by fear of upsetting the ruling clan and revulsion at being in the legislative wilderness again.

It’s a shame because, while the band of brothers is on the march, fear threatens to cause the moment to slip away for this type.

The 101^st Airborne Division’s Easy Company of World War II was depicted in “Band of Brothers”, a popular HBO mini-series.

Easy Company was at the tip of the spear in Europe, leading the way the entire time. Their heroism is legend, their sacrifice was huge, and their place in American history is secure.

There was a character in Band of Brothers named Captain Sobel. He trained Easy Company in boot camp. By all accounts, he was as good a trainer as the United States Army had at the time, and deserves credit for the vital role he played in preparing Easy Company to make history.

However, leadership in the field was not Capt. Sobel’s gifting. In fact, in his brief time commanding Easy Company in Europe he got a lot of good men killed with his deeply anxiety-ridden, nearly-paralyzed leadership style. Captain Sobel was eventually relieved of his command.

Everyone has a role to play as Texans’ take back their government. Time shows us the shape of that role.

Mark Jones of Rice University’s Baker Institute previewed the 2013 Texas legislature with a blog post on the Houston Chronicle’s Baker Institute blog.

Jones correctly predicted that the Texas Senate will be very conservative in the 83rd legislature. Lt. Governor Dewhurst yesterday announced his new, more conservative committee chairs. The discussion before appointments was whether or not the Lt. Gov. would appoint any Democrats to committee chairs.

This will create a situation in which Texans see more clearly than ever that Joe Straus and moderate Republican House members are not conservative, and are standing in the way of the grassroots, the Gov., the Lt. Gov., the Senate, and the good Republicans in the House.

Keep in mind that this will be after a campaign season in which GOP House members, as usual, campaigned as conservatives. In all likelihood, they will be even more exposed ahead of the next primary season than they were in the one they just struggled through.

With much less contrast Straus’s closest allies had big trouble in the 2012 primary season.

House members trying not to stand out today could find their strategy backfiring in under a year.

–Mark Jones blog piece

School choice will have enough allies in the 83^rd legislature for it to pass. Past attempts may have suffered from overwrought strategy. The good news is that past mistakes are easily fixable.

Three sessions ago school choice failed because the final legislative form it took wasn’t particularly conservative. Liberals don’t generally want school choice, yet  a common strategic mistakes was made in this push – that of wooing enemies more than allies.

In Texas, the more Texans get to know conservative legislation, the better chance it has of passing. However, there is a common political reflex alive in older generations of Austin Republican and conservative insiders. They often think that, somehow,  liberals secretly wield the real power and therefore require the lion’s share of the tender-loving-care in any significant conservative legislative push.

This attitude is similar to the Nixon-Kissinger détente foreign policy of the late 1960s and 1970s in which a powerful but inferior rival was given too much credit, and as a result grew in influence. President Reagan promptly and decisively reversed this foreign policy, reminding the stronger power of its superiority and the weaker power of its inferiority. The USSR was gone in a decade.

Last session a much better school choice bill was presented, one all conservatives and many liberals could get behind. The bill would have left alone the public schools but would have allowed parents who wanted to send their children to private schools a roughly $6,000 tuition voucher. This system did not compel schools, public or private, to accept students just because they applied. They still had to earn admittance. Neither did it demand private schools accept public school mandates, recognizing that well-meaning but disastrous liberal social policy in public schools has created much of the demand for school choice.

The practical effect would likely have been private schools emerging in all areas to provide a more parent-conscious, better quality alternative to the public school. Eventually this could create competition between the old public school and the new private alternative, improving both and creating a natural division of labor.

The strategic problem with this bill was that passage was attempted the insider way – at the last minute, with as little publicity as possible.

The obvious problem with this strategy is that the two power sources in politics – special interests and voters – provide the clout for legislation, and they often oppose one other. Special interests know about their own legislation and often would rather as few Texans knew about it as possible. For this reason, the quiet passage of a special interest bill is often optimal. It ensures that only a bill’s power source knows about the legislation, while its opposition stays blissfully ignorant. This is why insiders pass bills in the dead of night.

The other power source in politics, voters, are engaged by advertising campaigns – the earlier and heavier, the better. The public only wins when it overwhelms the insiders opposition, and it only overwhelms insider opposition with wide publicity.

In the case of school choice, its opposition is the massive public school bureaucracy and its many legislative lackeys. They are petrified of the accountability and declining market share school choice would deliver the public school system.

If the big, public campaign of three sessions ago were married to smart policy like that of last session, the 83^rd legislature could pass a school choice bill.