Okay, we got us some weird going-ons in Dan Crenshaw’s back pocket of campaign funds.

It’s not enough that he spends caboodles of money on election law lawyers, and by caboodles I mean close to $100,000 just this reporting cycle alone …

There’s $16,000 more but I was running out of patience to clip them so just trust me.  Plus, he’s also paying two other law firms.

Then he hired a general purpose law firm in Houston and gave them $4,551 for God only knows what. This particular firm does not show up with any disbursements from any candidate for the past 8 years. I mean, it could be perfectly legit – having a spitting match with a vendor or an employment law issue. It could also be something perfectly weird.

And this last thing probably has nothing to do with Crenshaw but it does have something to do with the GOP’s new motto: Money, Guns, and Lawyers. Out of the clear blue, this person shows up in the Republican National Committee filings.  This is a small practice lawyer (her husband designed her website and there is no possible way he’s a professional in website design) in Austin.

 

Late last month Austin solo practitioner Donna Jean Davidson was paid $15,000 by the RNC. Why, you ask?

I dunno.

Hummm … here’s a clue. On 12/30/20, she was paid $26,550 by the Republican Party of Texas. She did “recount” work for them. Did she work with Paxton on his idiot Supreme Court case as part of the Insurrection?

Maybe this is about the January 6^th Select Committee investigation and not a case before the Texas Ethics Commission.  The RNC may be paying her to fight the Committee’s subpoena to Texas AG Ken Paxton.

Or maybe this. The Travis County DA is sniffing around the Paxton stench.

Whatever it is, it looks like Paxton.

 

Dannie Goeb, a carpetbagger and radio talk show host from Baltimore, known in the Lone Star State as Dan Patrick, has gone all-in on stupidity in his effort to keep his Numero Uno spot with TFG and his crazy base for the 2022 election.  Goeb is already a walking public policy disaster and craven power grabber who’s cowed every Texas Republican office holder in Austin including Greg Abbott who’s also racing him off the far right edge of the Flat Earth.  In that race to the edge, Goeb’s being challenged by 5 Republican opponents who look less like serious political challengers and more like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  They are campaigning on MAGA priorities such as ending all property taxes, outlawing all abortions, and seceding from the United States.

Goeb has responded to his challengers in kind, proposing idiotic policies such as ending all tenure for new professors at state universities and taking tenure away from professors who might dare to teach concepts that he doesn’t like.  Defending himself against massive backlash to this declaration, he tweeted, “I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with Critical Race Theory. We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed. That’s why we created the Liberty Institute at UT.”  Talk about Cancel Culture with two capital Cs.  That tweet caused even greater backlash from academics all over the state who were already wary of the institute, especially after he lied that it was the idea of UT faculty, which it was not.

BTW, he’s starting the Liberty Institute with financing from billionaires Bud Brigham and Bob Rowling.  How much money these two have donated so far is unknown, but we do know that the state budgeted $6 million so far and the UT Board of Regents kicked in another $6 million.  Texas Monthly reported that the eventual annual budget could be as high as $100 million, 75% of which will be made up of your tax dollars and 25% billionaire pocket change.  Among banning university faculty tenure, and banning teaching of actual history, the institute is also intending to promote the ideas of “individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets”.  Apparently, these ideas have to align with Goeb’s own political positions, no matter how bad.

Capping off his big backlash week, Goeb also blundered with a mail in ballot scam that was carved out of the voter suppression bill that went into effect last September.  You’ll recall that the bill made it a felony for local election officials to mail unsolicited ballot applications or even suggest for people to vote by mail.  The carve out allows political candidates to mail out these ballot applications to their voters even pre-filled out.  Goeb did just that, but then shot himself in the foot again by having the return envelopes pre-addressed to the Texas Secretary of State instead of local county voter registrars.  This has caused a delays of thousands of mail in ballots because of the forwarding necessary from Austin to local counties all over the state.  Interestingly, when the story broke the Secretary of State website was suddenly scrubbed of a policy statement that all applications received by the office would be rejected.  When Goeb’s blunder was publicly reported, he said that he had ordered the applications be sent to Austin to protect voters from “blue county” registrars, who, like it or not, have to process all applications in that county.  It’s very possible thousands of Republicans may not get their ballots in time to vote.

That would be hilarious and a faint glimmer of justice.

It started innocently enough. Someone on Astros twitter innocently enough claimed that it cost them 75 dollars to fill up their tank with gas. They apparently drive a larger vehicle with a larger tank. In the end, they thanked Joe Biden.

Some people continue to blame Biden for expensive gas. Others defend Biden’s moves and assert that things will get better. The third group simply point out that presidents don’t have as much control over market forces as people would like to think they could.

Then, the author of the opening tweet chimes in with the money line. I’m not going to torpedo the person here, so I’ll paraphrase. Essentially they said that 75 dollars seemed to be the price some are willing to pay not to have mean tweets.

Naturally, the hounds of war descended on that person. I’m somewhat ashamed that I was one of them. I’m ashamed because I know the person likely wasn’t completely serious and was just fishing for a reaction.

Still, a larger point needs to be made. To put things very simply, there is a minimum bottom level of humanity necessary for leadership. It isn’t about mean tweets. It isn’t about insulting of women, minorities, disadvantaged, handicapped, or struggling nations. It isn’t about a craven disregard for the suffering of others. It isn’t about personal discretions so depraved that all sense of shame has escaped.

One could almost look past those things. Except those things become markers for all of the other stuff. How could someone gleefully lock kids in cages? How could someone skimp on hurricane relief and insult those that need it? How could someone demagogue entire groups of people and compare them with racists and xenophobes as if they are the same? Finally, how could someone gaslight an entire pandemic and spread misinformation until a million Americans wind up dead?

Well, it takes someone with such a deficiency in character on those first things that they become capable of doing those other things. One of the things we used to collectively understand is that whether we are miserly or generous, conservative or liberal, religious or not religious, there was a foundation of humanity necessary to lead. No one that fails to meet that bar need apply. Except this last time someone did apply and they won.

No political victory big or small is worth human depravity. No economic or social plank is worth it. Gas may cost an extra 20 or 30 bucks a tank. There could be a hike in income tax or maybe supply chains are slower. Those things may be under the president’s control, but usually they aren’t. The president is usually just a piece of the machinery that makes the world turn and life to run smoothly. He or she can’t do it alone.

Even if we were to disregard all of that, there is a minimum measure of humanity needed for the job. We have certainly elected men with character flaws before. We’ve had huge battles over which flaws were worse and which ones were acceptable. Those are usually worthwhile discussions until we happened on a man without character flaws. He didn’t have any character flaws because he has no character. No one has ever successfully put a price tag on character, but I’m positive it is worth more than 20 bucks in gas.

By now I’m sure that you’ve heard about the Catholic priest who has resigned in shame after the Church declared all of his baptisms invalid because he used the word “we” insted of the liturgical “I” as in, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  It blew up last week, after the Diocese of Phoenix announced on its website that everyone  baptized during the career of Phoenix priest Father Andres Arango has had their baptisms invalidated by the Church.  What that means is that their subsequent first communions, marriages, and all other liturgical events in their lives are also invalid.  The announcement even included a form to fill out to get a corrective baptism done.

To a post-christian infidel like me, the entire issue seems absurd, but this judgment by the Church has thrown thousands of people’s lives into serious uncertainly, and only God knows how many of those people who had died since Arango’s invalid baptisms are now burning in hell because of one wrong word.  I’m sorry, but this “scandal” is complete bullshit.

So what’s really going on here?  Well, as explained by another priest, actually former priest, Father Nathan Monk, it’s a diversion from an actual scandal in the Church.  In a Facebook post a few days ago, Monk explained the absurdity of the Phoenix Diocese’s claim that the baptisms are invalid, noting that the only requirement is that the baptism should be in the name of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”, the traditional Trinity in Christianity.  He explained further that even laypersons (not ordained) can baptize a person in an emergency, and those baptisms are considered valid.

In that same post, though, Monk drops the bombshell, which actually should have been obvious….The Diocese of Phoenix invalidated these thousands of baptisms on the orders of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which is the enforcer of rules in the Catholic Church.  So why would this agency inside the Vatican do such a thing to a local priest way out in Phoenix?  Monk explains it this way –

“Because the decision came down from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and this absurd story broke right after Joey Ratz aka Pope Emeritus Benedict the 16th was called to the carpet for how he handled another scandal within the Church. And guess where he was in leadership before being appointed pope? The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith! And guess which story we are talking about instead of that? The one about a priest saying ‘we’ instead of ‘I.'”

Now we get it.  Monk contends, and it makes more sense than any of us would like, that the Roman Catholic Church willfully and knowingly destroyed the life long career of a devoted bilingual priest and turned the lives of thousands of people on their heads to distract church attention away from the actual villain, who is Ratzinger, in an effort to protect his corruption.

This sordid tale explains perfectly how, and more why, the Church as we know it is dying. And that death can’t come soon enough.

People often want to trace the origin of things. It may just be the full extent of my personal timeline, but I vividly remember the 1980s. Lifestyles of the rich and famous was always lingering in the background. Lotteries started popping up around the country. The Ronald Reagan revolution was in full force. It’s difficult to fully appreciate all the impact that it had on society. So, I’ll try one little corner of the world.

Baseball players have one of the more vibrant unions in professional sports. The first work stoppages actually began in the early 1970s with some minor skirmishes here and there before then. Everyone knows the Curt Flood story and the story of his sacrifice is told and retold to the point of folklore.

Somehow, in the intervening decade, athletes and the union went from being the little guy fighting for their rights to being greedy cry babies that weren’t satisfied with all they have. People started siding with ownership. People would exclaim that they’d be willing to do anything for a million dollars. Those players are just too greedy.

No one bothered to question how or why our outlook on these things changed so dramatically. Players are well compensated and there is no getting around that, but they are employees. One of the things we used to believe as a country is that when businesses make money then everyone should grow with that business. Yes, the business owner (or stock holders) should benefit, but so should the people that did the work to help the business grow.

Between World War II and 1980 we saw a virtual renaissance for the middle class. The GI Bill helped millions go to college. You heard all kinds of tales about people being the first in the family to graduate from high school and go to college. A progressive income tax helped build perhaps the most vibrant middle class in the entire world.

That was then. The Reagan years and in the intervening decades have taken that all back. Just remember, 2020 is the same distance from 1980 as 1940. A look at baseball salaries is an interesting place to start. In 2015, the average big leaguer was making 4.25 million per season. In 2021, the average big leaguer was making 4.17 million per season.

More than 60 percent of players at the big league level were making under a million dollars last season. Fans somehow see Mike Trout, Alex Rodriguez, and Albert Pujols and assume they represent the union. They represent the union about as much as the typical owner represents society at large. No one begrudges them their right to earn huge dollars. I’m sure the union members just wish a few dollars would trickle down to them at some point.

Obviously, MLB is big business and their big business operates about like all big businesses operate. The biggest problem in every single labor negotiation is in how to share revenues. The devil is in how they couch it. They want large market teams to curtail their spending so smaller market teams can compete.

Owners have never opened their books to the public. Yet, in a sport where revenues are exploding (with the obvious exception of 2020) and have been exploding fairly regularly for the past 30 years, baseball owners want you to believe they are somehow hurting financially. This is supposed to be true while average salaries have actually declined since 2015. They are losing money and the players want to bleed them dry.

It’s a bunch of bullshit. Yet, while they are shoveling this nonsense, fans are usually siding with the owners. Remember, more than 60 percent of players are earning a million dollars and that’s just in the big leagues. The tale of what happens to minor leaguers is much more stark. Yet, most owners today are worth north of a billion dollars. Franchises grow in value by more than 500 percent annually. If you stop and think about it, none of this adds up.

I know it gets hard to force yourself to care about millionaires fighting with billionaires over huge profits. That’s especially true if you aren’t a fan. Yet, this battle is essentially the same battle as the battle over minimum wage and wages in other industries. The rhetoric is the same. If they raised wages then the costs would swallow them whole or make the cost of a burger outrageous. Neither is true. That’s just what they want you to believe.

The TFG and his spawn lost big time today when a New York Supreme Court judge ruled against their effort to quash subpoenas by NY AG Letitia James to give testimony in her civil fraud investigation where they are suspected of overstating values of their assets for banking purposes and understating them for tax purposes.  The case came to a head earlier this week when long-time TFG accountants Mazars resigned and said their financial statement audits for the last 10 years were not reliable and couldn’t be depended on.  TFG will appeal, of course.  If he ever gets in front of James, expect him to take the 5th, because otherwise he’ll lie because he can’t help himself.

The slow plod towards justice continues, as slow as it is.