Try to act shocked, now, as I tell you another tale of corruption in Texas politics. Meet Todd Smith, good ole’ boy and political aide to Sid Miller. He was indicted Thursday of last week on felony theft charges. He allegedly used his credentials to tell prospective Hemp licensees that they had to pay him up to $150,000 for required surveys and paperwork and such in order to get Hemp Licenses. By spending approximately 6 hours in jail Thursday night before being released on his own “personal recognizance” he has already been punished more than any corrupt Texas Republican likely ever has. At least we have that.

Miller immediately threw him under the bus saying:

“That was Todd, between him and his clients,” Miller said, adding that he would reserve judgment until he could learn more about the situation.

Miller noted, however, that hemp licenses are not particularly expensive for those who want them, with farmers having to pay $100 for a one-year license. Texas Tribune, 5/7/2021

According to the indictment, Smith acquired clients looking for Hemp licenses that cost $100 a year and milked them for $25,000 in “required surveys’ and up to $150,000 each for “campaign contributions” and cash.

According to the Tribune: “The affidavit includes the account of one man who wanted to get involved in the hemp industry and met the middle man at a social gathering in August 2019. The affidavit says the middle man told the license-seeker that he was “working directly with senior leadership at the TDA” and that he “needed $150,000.00 in cash, with some of the money going toward campaign contributions, in order to receive the ‘guaranteed’ hemp license.”

If they aren’t cheating, they aren’t breathing. These crooks spend lots of time bloviating about small business and agriculture and how important it is to the Texas economy and so we can never raise minimum wages for employees while extorting six figures from small businesses trying to get their foot in on the ground floor of a new billion-dollar industry.

This is not the first time Todd Smith has been in trouble for selling access to Sid Miller for campaign contributions. In 2018, the Austin American Statesman reported that Todd Smith solicited a $1,000 campaign contribution from a man named Richard Branson, a physician’s assistant from San Antonio (not the other Richard Branson) in exchange for a position in Miller’s rural Texas health program.

Knowing Miller, the rural texas health program is probably a slush fund for rural texas campaign contributors to be compensated for their political support. But that’s beside the point. The point is, Todd Smith took this guy’s $1,000 and then asked him for a personal bribe loan for $29,000. Branson didn’t get the job, however, nor did he get his bribe loan paid back. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, Branson. He exacted his revenge by taking all of the e-mails and such to the authorities and the Austin American Statesman.

Instead, Miller appointed Rick Ray Redalin to his rural Texas Health Task Force. Redalin had contributed much more money to his campaign than Branson. Do we really want a man on our rural Texas health task force that married his 15-year-old stepdaughter? Did I forget to mention that? It’s buried way at the bottom of the Statesman article, like it’s the least slimy thing this guy has done.

Redalen’s appointment was also questioned by ethics watchers. Redalen is the owner of a health care consulting business that offers telemedicine services and said he has used his position on the rural health panel to advocate for wider use of that technology.

Another reason for scrutiny of Redalen is his history. Redalen has had his medical license suspended or revoked in three states, including once in Iowa for pleading guilty to perjury in a case centering on his 1988 marriage to his 15-year-old former stepdaughter. 

I can’t make this shit up, yall.

Ok, where were we? Rick Ray Redalin, who goes by three names and thus must be an alleged serial killer has married his 15 year old daughter and bought himself a seat on a rural Texas health care task force to make more money for his for-profit telehealth business and he is actually not even the guy this article is about, I just found out about him. We will call him an incidental finding, to use medical terminology.

This is exhausting, really.

Back to Todd Smith. Todd Smith, is the second-highest “paid” lobbyist in the nation, making 5.1 million dollars over the last two years. So, his fancy lawyers will talk his way out of court and he’ll pay them a tenth of what he took in bribes loans and nothing will happen. No worries, I’m certain that our Attorney General Ken Paxton will not stand for this and will absolutely send a harshly worded letter to Mr. Smith.

The latest from the Lincoln Project.

Biden’s speech last night was like a breath of fresh air after we all endured the verbal manure that flowed so freely from Trump’s mouth and Twitterfingers for 4 years.  Biden spoke of a rising America and introduced his trillion dollar American Families Plan that, after decades of decline and neglect, will attempt to make our lives better.

Predictably, the Republicans hate it, all of it, and it’s all predictable.  This morning on CBS News, Rick Scott was given a remarkable 5 minutes of national airtime to spew nonsense and childish attacks against  Biden and the GOP’s other favorite targets.  His lies came fast and furious, blaming Biden for all the ills HIS side caused.

Why are Republicans so opposed to anything that makes Americans’ lives better?  Because if people are happy, they won’t keep them in power.  The GOP has raised hatemongering to an art form because they know that if they can keep millions of Americans miserable and pissed off, they can then blame Dems for that misery and drive angry people to the polls.  And it works like a charm.  The GOP base is driven by adrenaline fueled anger, fomented by hate radio, Newsmax, OAN, Fox Noise, and the NY Post where the blame is regularly placed on “socialists, gays, Satanists, Pelosi, AOC, and Bernie.” Instead of focusing on real issues like education, income inequality, job security, and healthcare, they focus on bathroom bills, gay wedding cakes, and now the new target “boys pretending to be girls leering at your daughters in the locker room” accusing trans kids of trying to take advantage by posing as the opposite sex.

If the GOP had to actually face voters over their piss poor performance they would lose every time.  THAT’s why they are willing to inflict generational misery to the populace so they can keep everyone pissed off and insecure so their base will blame the rest of us.  That’s also why they are trying to push through voter suppression bills to make it harder to vote.  They know the truth and are really worried now because Biden rammed through the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that helped to relieve some of that misery.  If we follow that with making airports, roads, and other public infrastructure once again usable, the GOP is terrified that their supporters will like their lives made better and the veil finally lifted on their scam.

And that’s why they have zero interest in doing their jobs and making Americans’ lives better.

As we all could see during the last 4 years, Mike Pompeo is a Jackass with a capital J.  But his behavior as Secretary of State revealed his abject corruption and narcissism.  Good read.

As reported in the Texas Tribune, the Texas Senate is considering a bill that would prevent cities and counties from enacting paid sick leave ordinances. Republican politicians that run on small government and local control, as usual, have no qualms about violating that “principle” of theirs when it interferes with big business. Like when Denton county decided to ban fracking, the state quickly put a stop to that type of local control. Now that Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio require paid sick leave, big government is coming to put a stop to it.

You see, they really know what’s best for us, y’all. The Tribune article quotes a “CEO” of a company that runs Auntie Anne Pretzels and Cinnabon franchises in Texas. According to her, offering her food-service workers paid sick leave would be terrible for them, because if she had to pay sick leave, she couldn’t offer them 401K’s. Which is funny, because the stores owned by her company don’t offer 401k’s at all. Or maternity leave. Or any benefits. As usual, they’re just anti-worker and full of shit. They would rather the employees serve covid pretzels than pay a part-time employee $7.25 an hour for a four-hour shift while they rest and recover.

This is all public information based on employee reviews from Glassdoor and Indeed, by the way.

Employees of these mall stands make minimum wage. They work with food. They do not have health insurance and I imagine they’d have to work 15-20 hours to afford one cash pay doctor’s visit, not including prescriptions. These people have absolutely nothing, and their boss is fighting against offering them sick pay. I hate humanity.

In a pandemic, when we are all told to stay home if we are sick, Texas Republicans want to make sure that we are not guaranteed sick leave. It’s for our own good, really.

Last night at a major GOP donor conference, Trump was in fine form (for him), unleashing attacks on everyone who have not continued to give him full-throated support.  He attacked, by name, everyone who supported the Constitution by certifying the election for Biden.  He attacked all of his nemeses including Nancy Pelosi, “Barack Hussein Obama”, Anthony Fauci, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, the governor who refused to buckle to Trump’s demands that he throw his career out the window by illegally throwing the election to him.  But he saved his juiciest insults for Mitch McConnell calling him a “dumb son of a bitch” and a “stone cold loser.”  He also repeated all the same lies he’s told countless times, even attacking Mark Zuckerberg directly claiming that he spent $500 million on a “lockbox” that delivered every vote for “Saintly Joe Biden.”  He did praise a few, like Jim Jordan and the January 6 protestors, while lamely trying to distance himself from those who sacked the Capitol (even though he incited them to do so).

As he rails against all of his enemies, the GOP continues to struggle for its own identity and direction.  Even this weekend when donors gathered at the nearby Four Seasons, Trump was holding a competing “investor” conference at Mar a Lago for his big donors.  And to get face to face with him, the donors attending the Four Seasons conference had to trek to Trump’s property and pay his club for the privilege.  This weekend was symbolic of the turmoil that is tearing the GOP apart.  Even as his former staffers, including Mark Meadows and career grave robber, Stephen Miller form their own PACs and political operations.  While they all want the enthusiasm for Trump among the faithful, they don’t want Trump himself.  He’s insulted and pissed off all of the establishment Republicans, and has frozen dozens of 2022 and 2024 campaigns, especially for the GOP nomination for president next time around.

As Trump continues his multi-hundred million dollar grift, he’s unforgiving of what he perceives as disloyalty, and future candidates are lined up at the gates of Mar a Lago seeking the blessing of His Orangeness.  Not doing so will draw his wrath and most certainly a primary opponent.  He is desperately clinging to his control of the GOP, even as many maneuver to wrest that control from his iron grip.  In his wake he leaves nothing but toxic waste and destruction.