The Texas horseracing industry has given Texans another reason to oppose gambling expansion, as the brother of two Zeta cartel kingpins was sentenced to 20 years in prison for using the horseracing industry to launder gang money.

A World News article details this sobering situation, one that puts the gang responsible for most of the worst atrocities in the Mexican drug wars in the Lone Star state, hosted by the horseracing industry.

The gambling industry is always and everywhere corrupt. People who allow themselves to be convinced by the industry’s weak propaganda, including the notion that our gambling oligopoly is a free market, co-sponsor the defacement of their state that follows.

Thomas Ratliff, desperate to find a way to spin the ugly CSCOPE fiasco he sits at the center of, wrote a press release claiming parents must not care about CSCOPE if they aren’t using their money, time, and vacation days to come to Austin to attend his meeting.

Leave it to a lobbyist to think hanging around Austin is the only measure of political investment. For them it is true.

Not so for parents. Parents have kids and jobs and lives in full swing right now. The last thing they need to do is stop everything to attend a meeting hosted by the same government that has delivered, at exorbitant cost, this public school system that nobody likes.

Yes, parents should subject themselves to a meeting they don’t even know about, and likely to be dominated by the biggest CSCOPE apologist in the state, Ratliff, and a man who probably shouldn’t even be serving on the SBOE due to a conflict of interest.

Or perhaps parents, possessors of a quality exceedingly rare in Austin: sense, prefer to simply replace officials who think their job is to find and protect primo places at the public trough.

Whatever is said about involved legislators, legislators not shy about putting Ratliff and company in their place, trying to attach such a standard to parents is a lot like CSCOPE – so much nonsense.

Corrupt members of the Texas ruling class, including the Texas Tribune, have been targeting UT Regent Wallace Hall for trying to limit influence peddling in Austin.

Hall has recently disclosed information that suggest Texas government officials move connected kids ahead of unconnected kids in university and grad school admissions lines.

Watchdog.org smelled a rat when crony legislators like Jim Pitts and Kevin Eltife started attacking Hall over a lawsuit he didn’t disclose. Texas Watchdog began searching for undisclosed lawsuits involving appointees to state universities or education boards. After finding upwards of nine thousand, none of which prompted calls for impeachment by the trough-guardians currently doing the same to Hall, they declared victory in proving their point.

The Texas ruling class is worried about Hall, but because he threatens to limit their supply of trough feed, not because he didn’t disclose a lawsuit.

The Texas trough newspaper of record, The Texas Tribune, has faithfully published Hall’s attackers and seem to have stayed predictably uninterested in the other side of the story.

Grassroots Texans should be very encouraged. Paul Burka and Bud Kennedy are moaning about Texans rising up and demanding common sense be applied to government. Theirs is the song of the embittered establishment functionary, and it represents real hope in our age of failing government. The story is about another establishment pawn, this time Rob Orr, retiring because of  a Tea Party opponent, and how the Tea Party overestimates our governmental problems.

First, it must be understood who these two men, Burka and Kennedy,  are. In Texas state government, they are the establishment’s media guardians, and they are false prophets. Their job is to read the landscape and direct the state political conversation into safe and advantageous harbors for the ruling class.

In a sense, and there are a couple more of them, we are on their “watch”; they are narrating state politics for the ruling class right now. And, embarrassingly for them, it is on their watch that Texans are beginning to take the game out of the establishment’s hands.

This has never happened before, so one can understand their discomfort. Law abiding citizens have been in a democratic slumber for about 250 years. It has taken that long for a quote usually attributed to 17^th century Scottish historian Alexander Tyler to be shown true. It reads, “Democracy is always temporary in nature. It simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government because sooner or later voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the Public Treasury.”

The quote refers to gifts like academy-regulating government research grants, competition-stifling laws, free schooling, ever-multiplying government jobs, social security, free food, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and socialized medicine, to name a few. This can only be called what it is – socialism – and it has been slipped underneath Americans without us recognizing it very well.

After the United States started its experiment in democratic republicanism, Europe began to copy us, but took an even more aggressive approach to granting itself gifts from the treasury. We can all see the end of the party approaching. Southern Europe is in the worst shape, but we know that they are only at a slightly more advanced stage of the same disease. It is in this context that the Tea Party was born.

The Tea Party is, in effect, Americans telling the author of the famous Tyler quote that he was smart, but not that smart. He never knew Americans.

And in Texas, since our state was born with an especially stubborn independent nature, we are reminding the other 49 American states who they are. Yes, we’ve grown fat and lazy and entitled as a democratic republican people, but we aren’t proud of it, and we mean to save this system.

The ruling class posts that Burka and Kennedy occupy have existed as long as the media have been a major part of American life. Journalists, though they served some legitimate functions, were watchmen for the socialist part of the ruling class, with aims on getting the upper hand from the corporatist side of the ruling class. At some point they succeeded, and have proven to be twice the tyrannical master the old guard ever was. Their only trick is consolidation of power by moralizing the next set of bribes for vote groups and immoralizing the opposition.

Burka, Kennedy, and company are performing worse than any of their predecessors ever have. This makes them embarrassed and mad.

They still haven’t figured out that using as a measuring stick the spending habits of the other 49 reckless state governments, or of other countries, is useless. It doesn’t matter. Nobody hears it. The Western world is dying of addiction, Texans are busy working on a solution, and the dope dealers complaining is good.

–Burka venting about his own failure

Dan Flynn’s House Select Committee is breaking its own rules in order to deny persecuted UT Regent Wallace Hall his right to cross-examine witnesses the government brings against him.

House Rule 4, Section 3 says, ““… the rules of evidence and procedure in the civil courts of Texas shall govern the hearings and operations of each committee ….” Texas Rule of Evidence 611(b) says, “(a) witness may be cross-examined on any matter relevant to any issue in the case, including credibility.””.

Yesterday Flynn’s committee spokesman said they would deny Hall his right to cross examination because, “This is an investigation, not a trial.” The committee seems either ignorant or is purposefully ignoring that the rule applies to all committee operations, not just trials.

Denial of the right to cross-examine is no small matter. In a story on the same topic, Tony McDonald of Empower Texans noted: Wigmore on Evidence has called cross-examination “beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.” See California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 158 (1970). It has been called “one of the safeguards essential to a fair trial.” Alford v. United States, 282 U.S. 687 (1931).

The Texas ruling class has been trying to impeach Hall ever since he began asking too many questions about potentially unscrupulous activities, such as the children of the powerful having their kids moved ahead of other people’s kids in university admissions lines.

Rep. Flynn, chairman of this committee, is a former grassroots conservative who has quietly turned into ruling class functionary. Flynn operates out of a district not likely to put up with it for long.

-DMN article

Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler) is being challenged by an ex-lobbyist named Skip Ogle who has donated to Democrats in the past.

Schaefer courageously and vocally opposed the moderate liberal Speaker Joe Straus in the last speaker race. Schaeffer ran for his seat when veteran lawmaker Leo Berman had decided not to run again. Later, Berman decided to run again, but Schaeffer won the race and performed admirably.

The establishment has a track record of trying to punish people who oppose the Speaker. Wayne Christian was redistricted out of 80% of his district after opposing Straus. Christian is now running for Railroad Commissioner.

According to the TEC, John Ogle was a lobbyist for Suddenlink in 2013. Ogle gave to Democrat Rene Olivera in 2007 and Democrat Mark Homer in 2005. Olivera is a career “F” on Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s Fiscal Responsibility index. In his last session in office, the 81^st, Homer was an “F” as well.

Schaefer scored a 100% in his first session.

–TFR scorecard

–TEC lobby lists

The newest move by the Texas Democratic Party is a laugher, but one with strong teaching power. The party responsible for over 55 million dead babies now wants to take the “party of life” tag from the GOP in Texas.

In a KVUE.com story Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa debuted the talking point in a “Wendy Davis for Governor” campaign article disguised as a puff piece.  “We really are the party of life, not the Republicans”, said Hinojosa.

The first thing to notice is the Texas Democratic weakness this underlines. They are running from their image as the party of abortion, which hangs like a millstone around their neck here. True, they are not switching sides on abortion, but they would like a piece of the moral superiority being “the party of life” provides even if there is no credible way to pull it off. There are 55 million reasons this strategy is hopeless and will only draw attention to the truly monstrous side of their party. There are pictures one would assume they’d rather not have shown during elections that they can call into legitimate use by pushing this line.

The second thing to notice is that the Democratic Party run toward an issue that the GOP bosses run away from. The Dems seem to understand the power of the life vote better than the leadership of the actual party of life does.

So, not only do lobby moderates wear conservative costumes during primary season, the out-and-out liberals are fitting themselves for the same.

The cash value? Conservatives who run aggressive  “real vs. fake” campaigns, like Ted Cruz did, win. Conservatives who run nice, quiet campaigns that please the establishment will, in fact, please the establishment by losing.

And the Dems are hopeless in Texas without amnesty.

–KVUE Davis puff piece

To say western government is mortally hooked on spending is true, but not as true as another statement: western government is hooked on power, growing government-granted fiefdoms is how power is increased, and giving the fiefdoms more money is how you grow them. See the difference? The power is the point. Spending is just how you grow the power.

Why point this out? Because, when conservatives take the Texas government away from the ruling class there will be a decades-long heroin habit to kick. It will feel like Hell.

There are several forms of government fiefdoms. One is bureaucratic. Heads of agencies, commissions, departments (and every other name bureaucracies go by) measure success in only two ways: employees and budget. They are a success if these two things grow and they are a failure if they don’t.

Now, this is frustrating if you think about it with your taxpayer hat on, but imagine you have a friend who becomes the head of an agency. Number of employees and budget would seem a normal way to measure his importance of your friend. There is no focus on efficiency or performance. Laughably, these things are simply assumed.

And this is the struggle of our form of government. We must fight our natural tendencies when they endanger us, and they endanger us at several points. Our ability to salvage our form of government lies in the discipline to correct these things.

This “growth” culture is so entrenched that the very conservative movement that resides in Austin to change these things behaves identically. Think about it. Do communications entities need to grow to be effective? Research entities? Howard Stern has had the same sized team for pretty much his entire career and he makes more money than any talent in the history of communications. Rush Limbaugh has a conservative communications empire that doesn’t “grow” by adding people and budget. But the ruling class “growth” culture in capitol towns is sadly adopted by everyone.

Baseline budgeting is the backbone of government growth cultures. With baseline budgeting is last year’s expenses are always considered sacrosanct; the discussion is only about how much to increase the budget this time. One quickly sees how this is a party ill-designed to last forever. You can’t increase the amount of money and employees to an agency every time. If you try, the government will one day become so large that you can no longer pay for it. When it happens tin Greece and Spain we all get nervous and fidgety. When it happens in China and the United States we will all be horrified.

The point is this: conservatives must put our heroin-addicted Texas government in rehab, and the first 72 hours of heroin rehab look like the movie, ‘The Exorcist’. Conservatives must have the stomach to be hated by the patient for a time, and the relatives looking on must be assured that what is happening is ultimately the difference between life and death for the patient. If they do this they will go down in history as accomplishing a governance miracle in our time. Heroism isn’t dead as is popularly assumed, and this is what it would look like today.

And, actually, for conservatives there is no alternative to this approach for the simple reason that conservatives cannot be as good at trough-filling as the ruling class is and will therefore be hounded out of leadership by the bureaucracy if they try. See, the ruling class is wholly committed to the growth and maintenance of power, and trough-filling is how this happens. As a result, they are sixth degree black belt trough-fillers.

Conservatives can’t compete with the moral resignation and commitment the ruling class has as trough-fillers, especially not with the promises they’ve made to constituents and the commitments they hold dear. They shouldn’t try, and they don’t need to.

If conservatives go in naive, not knowing that the old way that is a cakewalk for the ruling class is a death march for them, their rule will be a wasted opportunity and a disaster. The bureaucracies will simply oppose the conservative leadership, make the state government into a complete mess, and the court journalists will hang it around conservatives’ necks.

A firm hand will be needed. Resolve will have to be proven. Private auditors will need to be hired to compare activities to mandates and to create efficiency. High-ranking heads will need to roll. In short, it will feel like the opposite of business as usual, which is exactly what patriots have begged for for years.

And it is exactly what the moment demands, that is, for any men or women able to meet the moment. Winning control feel not feel like a parade; it will feel like dope sickness. Go to a rehab center to get accustomed to how it will look and feel, if you need to. Only when the addict’s life is being put back together will you become a hero, the enduring kind

The Obama donkeys are in Texas under the name “Battleground Texas”, aka “The Jackass Patrol”, and their tricks are as tired as a jumped-the-shark President.

Their game is to fashion attacks out of what they believe to be the most vulnerable Republican issue. They tailor these attacks to attract the groups the Jackass Patrol thinks are most likely to vote, if pushed, for the abortion queen, gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. Right now they are trying desperately to use voter ID to get senior citizens and women to vote for Davis.

The problem they have is Texans have never wanted to be like everyone else, so using peer pressure doesn’t work very well here.

Case in point: the first issue they thought they could ride to victory was, in fact, abortion. They had their candidate step out for abortion to set up her big gubernatorial win, and boy did the media machine get revved up for the project.

Guess which issue she now avoids like the plague? You got it – abortion. Mark that 1-0 in favor of the state that could care less what New York, DC, and LA think about anything – the state in which the mainstream leftist media has the least power.

The left is also reputed to use voter fraud tactics, and their attack on voter ID is likely more of the same. After all, voter fraud is what Voter ID is designed to stop, and why the left can’t abide it.

It’s very likely an attack on elections integrity in the Lone Star State, but by a Jackass Patrol whose chief donkey is not the beast of burden he once was.

The Jackass Patrol is also trying to make hay out of the “civil war” in the GOP. In truth, the war in the GOP has been hot for a long time, only for years one side was not firing their weapons. The establishment GOP has ridden and abused conservatives for decades. Now that they, and their pals across the aisle, have our country on the brink of disaster, conservatives are returning fire. So far conservatives are performing beautifully. The establishment GOP is being forced to run more and more on who they really are, and less and less as imitation conservatives. This is highly dangerous and experimental for them.

Still, the GOP fight will determine how honest voters force GOP officials to be - nothing more, nothing less. If it results in a third party, it will be establishment characters who are forced to infiltrate the conservative party, not the other way around since they’ll have no voting base. That is, unless Wall Street CEOs and Chamber of Commerce members are allowed roughly 10,000 votes each.

Texas is a conservative place, which means Democrats will never be a better choice for them than Republicans. The same is true for the business lobby. Conservatives love commerce, just not rigged commerce. The left has a very long history of making the business community the main course of their political feast, even after feeding them some drinks and appetizers.

A famous Frenchman once said, “hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue”. What it basically means is as bad as hypocrisy is, it is still better than out-and-out evil. After all, a hypocrite marries himself to doing some good in order to keep up appearances. Texans are smart enough to take a conservative impersonator over a liberal until they can get a real conservative.

Meanwhile, conservative imposters like Mark McCaig, employee of shadow Democrat boss Steve Mostyn, are zipping up their sheep suits to try to blend into the conservative crowd for now. The media are dutifully carrying the phony voter suppression narratives fed to them by the Jackass Patrol, and the Texas Tribune is putting out polls that even fellow liberal journalists have so little respect for that they refer to them as “internet surveys”.

All in all, it is a fun show watching the jackasses and jennies walk around Texas like they own the place, running old plays with a damaged brand.

The establishment narratives in Texas have been fired out of their potato guns, and aren’t any more compelling than they’ve been in recent years.

For instance, Quorum Report reported as bad news for conservatives that bond elections and school board candidates opposed by conservatives won anyway. Nobody tell Quorum Report that the political establishment has, until now, controlled these elections so completely that they got what they wanted with neither attention nor opposition. Conservatives are in measurement mode on both of these fronts, and after yesterday finally have more than theory to shoot at.

Over on the left, leftist pollsters Public Policy Polling published a poll revealing Greg Abbott with a commanding lead over Wendy Davis. But Battleground Texas, aka “The Jackass Patrol”, is busy celebrating the “internet survey” poll by the leftist funded and operated 501c3 Texas Tribune. This bit of leftist political porn showed Abbott with a mere 5 point lead. (By the way, “internet survey” is the respectful term used by leftist Texas media first-teamer Peggy Fikac to describe the Texas Tribune “poll”.)

At the national level, conservatives are being encouraged to really, really, really focus on New Jersey, since this liberal state just elected a liberal Republican despite the fact that the nation proves over and over and over they won’t do the same.

It’s times like these, with potato cover in the air, that Republicans looking for excuses want to talk about policy and “the direction of the party”  . Somehow they never seem to want to do the same when Ted Cruz is in full voice during his anti-ObamaCare efforts.

As Erick Erickson described well, the Virginia gubernatorial race needed every bit of establishment GOP doubt and neglect it got to beat conservative Steve Cucinelli. By the way, despite nearly winning he was getting trounced in the regular leftist polls, not to mention what any “internet surveys” might have been saying.

Meanwhile, Wendy Davis, who single handedly tried to keep abortion mills open with her backfiring filibuster, still can’t fund-raise in Texas, and is in south Texas trying to claim she is pro-life. Where is the truth-o-meter when you need it? Davis was brought to fame by the same national media who had just finished trying to protect murderer Kermit Gosnell in their fanatical attempts to make all atrocities against babies legal. If Davis insists on calling herself pro-life, she needs to answer for how she can support this (warning: extremely disturbing).

So, the take away for Texas is that conservative up seasons are further up, and conservative down seasons, like right now, aren’t as far down as in the past. Good work.

The assumption that ‘local control’ is automatically good has helped make our state debt a very dangerous embarrassment. The reason is not complicated – bond elections are practically a slam dunk for the establishment. Philosophical devotion to ‘local control’ on the part of the only group that opposes the ruling class feathering their bed with taxpayer money – conservatives - is ensuring there are no real defenses to bond elections.

In our system, most votes are a vote for or against government largess flowing to a group. When a vote is below the ”visibility line” for average voters, as bond elections almost always are, the only people who show up to vote will be those who stand to gain from approval. (A vote being below the visibility line means it just isn't visible enough to break past work, family, church, entertainment, and everything else, and into the life of an average voter.) For these people such a vote is the biggest of the year; they have a more direct effect on their bottom line than who the president is.

On the other hand, votes for State Reps are not below the visibility line for average voters, which is why it would be wise for everything under the visibility line to be added to their profile and scored by watchdogs. If a vote is permitted by the legislature to drop out of sight by becoming a bond election, our state reps are effectively hiding spending from us in an especially cowardly way.

The truth is, legislators who voted to send the water fund to a direct vote were essentially casting the “yes” vote they were too cowardly to actually cast. Let’s face it, these bonds almost always pass, and they do so invisibly for everyone but those who work in and around state government.

Now, the other way to skin this cat is by making bond elections more visible somehow. That has been done with some success here and there in some local bond elections. But until that is happening automatically for every bond election in Texas, they will continue to be the establishment’s best friend, and foolish conservative devotion to abstract principles devoid of context will continue to be an expensive luxury.  

As we said yesterday, the good news is that we are talking about bonds and school board elections finally. This represents advancement for conservatives, a reality that seems to escape Quorum Report, who reported as bad news for conservatives that bond elections and school board candidates opposed by conservatives won. Paul Burka is trying to spin straw into gold in the same way, claiming the passage of Prop 6 means the GOP is back to being free of conservative influence. Nobody tell Quorum Report or Burka that the political establishment has, until now, controlled these elections so completely that they got what they wanted without attention or opposition. Conservatives are in measurement mode on both of these fronts, and after yesterday finally have more than theory to shoot at.

A campaign spokesman for Wendy Davis said that her description of herself, a radical pro-abortion candidate, as “pro-life” was “taken out of context.” Of course, this was after she was hammered for calling herself pro-life in South Texas.

For those keeping track, this is Davis’s second time bailing on a campaign strategy that has blown up in her face. First she thought she would ride her radical pro-abortion position to victory. That backfired badly. Then she thought she could re-brand her radical pro-abortion position as “pro-life”. Same result.

Now she’s singing her third different tune. She said, in the context of abortion, “I don’t think most people are single-issue voters. I am certainly not a single-issue candidate.” Priceless.

Let’s review. Davis has gone from thinking she can run on abortion, to thinking she can re-brand abortion, to asking people to, pretty please, think about other issues now. Her new position is a tacit admission that she finally realizes something folks not part of The Jackass Patrol – Battleground Texas – could have told her a long time ago: if this campaign is about abortion, she loses, and badly.

Glad these folks are calibrating to the Lone Star state. Maybe next they’ll turn her on to Vladamir Lenin’s statement, “It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.” Yes, they are almost sure to see to brilliance in running Davis on, “Texas has too much liberty.”

The Columbia Journalism Review got into the media bias measurement game, finding a pro-surveillance bias in coverage of NSA surveillance.

Despite this, the nation is overwhelmingly against the NSA surveillance, and the CJR rightly concluded that it would likely be worse without the media bias.

The CJR naively posited this as a "right-leaning" bias, when the pro-surveillance bias is part of a larger pro-power bias the media cultivates, a sad commentary considering that the fourth estate was originally intended to be a check on institutional power  , not its handmaiden.

Media outlets willing to challenge ruling class wishes have found the Obama Administration to be particularly hostile to free speech, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon reporting on the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In Texas, Charlie Geren is currently fighting to limit capitol access to court reporters who protect and promote the powerful.

--CJR piece

--piece on CJR findings

--Free Beacon piece on Obama Administration

--AW piece on Geren situation

Texas Real Estate PAC (TREPAC) is backing a pro-income tax Democrat   named Celia Israel in the House District 50 (north Travis County) special election run-off with Republican Mike VanDeWalle.

During the last primary TREPAC spent substantial resources to take out stalwart conservative incumbent Representative Wayne Christian. While Christian earned high marks on the Fiscal Responsibility Index while in the legislature Chris Paddie, the TREPAC backed replacement, had a failing score of 55%.

In 2012 TREPAC hosted fundraising events for 95 Texas lawmakers at the appropriately named lobby hangout joint, The Austin Club. Texas Ethics Commission records show that 59 Republicans and 35 Democrats benefitted. This is Democrat heavy considering the GOP advantage in the House is just five shy of a 2:1 ratio.

The average score for those 95 lawmakers on conservative scorecards was bad. On Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s Fiscal Responsibility Index they had a cumulative 46%. They did only slightly better on Texas Eagle Forum’s scorecard – they averaged a 54%.

This portends poorly for candidates in upcoming primaries with TREPAC money.

We at AgendaWise spend time and effort pointing out that the mainstream media is manipulative and corrupt, and often acts more like the departments of propaganda we associate with nazi or communist regimes than the old American “fourth estate”.

This morning provided a jarring example.

There was a virtual blackout in major Texas political media on what should be one of the investigative reporting stories of the year – the Obama Administration’s ObamaCare “Navigators” caught on camera encouraging people to defraud the government, and apparently sharing information with Battleground Texas. Battleground Texas is Obama’s organizers from the left here to try to rot out Texas as they’ve rotted out Chicago and other places. Notably, The Texas Tribune and Quorum Report were mum.

The Navigators are the 50,000 people paid by the Obama Administration, dispersed throughout the country to sign people up for ObamaCare.

One Navigator advised an undercover reporter who claimed to be a smoker, “You lie because your premiums will be higher.” Another Navigator advised a low-income university worker not to declare unreported income, saying, “Don’t get yourself in trouble by declaring it now,” while another Navigator chimes in, “Yeah, it didn’t happen. Never report it.”

James O’Keefe, who made his name exposing ACORN, is the investigative reporter who caught this and more. He also visited Enroll America, a group started with federal grants to sign people up. Daniel Clayton of Enroll America claimed that Enroll America is “purely non-profit. It’s non-partisan, non-political.” Then, when Clayton is introduced at a speaking engagement, Enroll America is described as “the official group for the DNC (Democratic National Committee).”

What’s more, O’Keefe reports that Enroll America seems to be sharing information with Battleground Texas, whose stated goal it is to “turn Texas blue”.

It goes without saying that not reporting something as newsworthy as this is a cardinal sin   against any pretension to doing journalism, much less journalistic integrity. It goes against the ethics taught in journalism school, and supposedly held to at places like The Texas Tribune and the major Texas newspapers.

The question is, do members of the mainstream Texas media admit to themselves that they live on the end of a leash held by the very power they pretend to be checking, or is this just another delusion they maintain by silent agreement, like the one about unborn children not being human beings? Only they know.

The Texas Tribune even did a roundup of important stories this morning, purporting to give the newsworthy highlights for readers on the go; trust them, they’ve got you covered. They put in their "must-read" section a link to an article about how Harris County isn’t rushing to figure out what to do with the Astrodome, but they left out the Navigator bombshell.

Chances are good they’ll eventually say something about this story – it’s simply too big not to (though we shouldn’t put it past them). But we can bet they won’t open their mouths about it until the left’s machine distills the talking points designed to defuse this debacle. And what does this say about these “newspapers” – are they journalists or bona fide stooges? It's a national embarrassment.

Journalism happens when accurate witness is borne to something newsworthy, and as soon as possible. Such obvious sycophancy as the Texas political media engaged in this morning with its virtual blackout of the Navigators story shows the true nature of these organizations, and it’s about looking like journalists, not being journalists. Theirs is a socially defined group, not a group defined by standards, as it once was.

-National Review story on Navigators

It seems the left is having trouble spinning James O’Keefe again. One trial balloon reaction to the Texas media blackout of the Navigators scandal is that James O’Keefe is an unreliable source. This attempt is both weak on its face and false.

It’s weak because even if O’Keefe had released false information, which he hasn’t, he’d be no different than any number of mainstream media sources who did the same or worse and are still in the mix. Such selective application of trust and leniency by the media undermines this excuse for ignoring news that hurts their political patrons.

It’s also weak because the video speaks for itself; it is the kind of coverage that asks very little of the viewer in terms of trust for the journalist - trust O’Keefe deserves, by the way.

It’s false because it’s false. O’Keefe has never released false information – not once. He has repeatedly caught the left being shamefully corrupt. O’Keefe once gathered information illegally, but while this may be a sin against good citizenship, it does not put the accuracy of his information under a cloud.

In fact, the left is often on the other side of this conversation. An article in the American Journalism Review called “Testing the System” asks if journalists who break the law gathering information should even be prosecuted. This debate has been a big deal in the UK, and the ACLU has advocated that journalists need a federal shield law. Calls for liberalization of these laws and/or their application most commonly come from the left, but don’t hold your breath waiting for this conversation to surface when the topic of James O’Keefe is in the vicinity.

The media may think it’s flexing its muscles in a naked power play of silence concerning O’Keefe, but every time they don’t cover uber-newsworthy reporting because it hits powerful people, they lose more pull with the shrinking pool of people who still trust them.

In short, O’Keefe wins again. His investigative journalism creates opportunities for the media to do what has led to the folding of news source after news source - reveal to normal people their lack of trustworthiness. Well done, James.

Gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Greg Abbott has come out against tax-funded lobbying in the case of school districts, their boards, or their associations. This is an excellent step in the right direction. Tax-funded lobbying is a moral hazard in which government uses tax money to lobby government for more government, and it should be completely illegal. Some of the worst offenders are municipalities and counties. School boards are a good start, but the entire practice needs to go the way of the dodo bird very soon.

--Abbott campaign opposition to tax-funded lobbying by school districts

The primary election is only months away and Texans need to evaluate candidates. With words and promises clouding the picture, it can be difficult to get a clear read on candidates, most of all when they don't have a measurable record to reference.

Campaign consultants are an excellent starting point to measure the honesty and integrity of a candidates' inevitably conservative campaign promises  .

We've given general consultants a grade by averaging the grades of their clients on important conservative indexes.

*Data contained in this post was collected by searching the TEC database for expenditures during the year 2012. Conservative indexes averaged to compile this report include Texas Eagle Forum, Young Conservatives of Texas and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility.

Texans for Lawsuit Reform spends millions on candidates who harm the agenda of conservatives in the state of Texas, a review of Texas Ethics Commission data reveals.

In 2012 TLR gave just 3% to lawmakers receiving an A rating on an average of conservative indexes. The PAC gave nine times that amount to lawmakers who failed the indexes. Of the 53 failing lawmakers, 33 of them are Republicans and 20 are Democrats.

The bulk of money they gave went to B and C level legislators, and these grades aren't as good as they sound. Scorecards don't measure behind-the-scenes agenda-setting, which is a huge part of making the laws we live under. Legislators who lack the devotion to make "As" on the tailored agenda that makes it to the floor are almost sure to be on the wrong side of agenda-setting.

TLR came to Austin for lawsuit reform, but, as often happens, have realized the advantages of having inside access to legislative spending. They protect incumbents who support tort reform no matter how bad they are on other issues. This despite the fact that there is no shortage of support for tort reform in any quarters.

For as long as they got away with it, TLR pretended to be “movement conservatives” but this political fog-generating myth has fallen to the ground.

*Data contained in this post was collected by searching the TEC database for donations made during the year 2012. Search terms used include "TLR," "Texans for Lawsuit Reform," and "Lawsuit". Conservative indexes averaged to compile this report include Texas Eagle Forum, Young Conservatives of Texas and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility.

The would-be hysteria drummed up by the ruling class over YCT’s illegal immigrant round-up publicity stunt is predictable and quite funny.

First, it is a sad state of affairs when law enforcement has become so politicized and selectively neglected that groups of Texans must hold law enforcement reenactments. Before government controlled most of it, drama used to express popular longing. This was, from YCT, a kind of popular drama. Like war re-enactment, law enforcement re-enactment is now necessary just to remember what it was like back when the ruling class allowed law enforcement to properly enforce the laws.

Secondly, the willingness of so many ruling class team players to jump on the pretended-shock bandwagon at this event is evidence that The Jackass Patrol - Battleground Texas - have now chosen immigration for their empty skirt to run on. This is after various failed versions of running on abortion have shown them to be out of their depth. They so badly want their radical pro-abortion candidate not to be a radical pro-abortion candidate in this election.

Responses of faux-outrage from some offices are evidence of a dangerous spine shortage. In Austin, sadly, the rule is when in doubt, be a coward.

Also, YCT basically said this was always a publicity stunt, designed to bring the issue to the fore.

It is precisely here where The Jackass Patrol would do well to pay close attention. See, unlike TJP, YCT knows Texas. YCT knows Texans don’t care that much what the media peanut gallery is trying to get us all to chant in unison. Texans don’t really do “unison” all that well.

But Texans do think the non-enforcement of our very reasonable immigration laws, driven not by normal Texans on any side of the aisle but by a combination of crony-fied big business and welfare hustlers, is a statewide embarrassment. It seems that, in order to take  a principled stand, YCT was willing to give up their nameplates at the Austin Club, their UT football season tickets in Bill Powers’ Presidential Suite, and the love and admiration they so regularly receive from the media chorus.

Oh, wait a minute. YCT never had those things in the first place. Thaaaat’s right, they have the word “conservative” in their title and actually mean it, which means they consciously waived access to the social climbing class a long time ago. Smart bunch, that YCT.

So YCT is busy teaching The Jackass Patrol a lesson they can’t understand because they have a patented playbook created in Chicago that they think always works. YCT has Texas remembering the sad state of immigration affairs, and whatever they have to do or say as a result of this thing is just fine with them. Pretty good stuff.