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.

In a not at all shocking development, Ted Cruz is a grifter who once again did something shady to benefit himself while showing no remorse, respect for the law, or any interest besides enriching his own pockets or getting in front of a TV camera.

I know that’s a hell of a long run-on sentence but I am just so mad that I could spit.

We have all seen this grift before. It’s an absolute cottage industry in the world of Boring Books Conservatives Didn’t Even Write by Themselves. They find a publisher to give them a big advance, and they put out a book. Next, their Super PAC, full of anonymous donations, buys about 50,000 – 100,000 copies of the book. This helps the sumbitch in several ways.

One: For conservatives to believe that their ideas are more mainstream than they actually are by getting the book on some bestseller lists. Fortunately, the New York Times now puts a dagger symbol to denote that the book is only a best seller because of bulk buys like this. Recently, Donny Jr and other conservatives have gotten many social media views with “PROOF THAT NYT IS A LIBERAL RAG THAT HATES CONSERVATIVES.”

Two: The money used to purchase 50,000 -100,000 copies of Fled Cruz’s books has now been laundered. Of course, the publisher has to withhold royalties from these book sales, or they have to at least publicly say that they do. But Ted Cruz is no idiot. A charlatan? Yes. Idiot? No.

Instead, his PAC, using donated funds, purchased “sponsorship advertising” from a company called Reagan Investments, LLC. Reagan Investments, LLC, then purchased his books with those same dollars, netting him his 15% royalties, and effectively laundering political donations into his pocket. How do I know for sure? Well, they wrote “BOOKS” under the “sponsorship advertising” part when transmitting the money. Here’s the full article: Now Ted Cruz may be buying his own books through a mystery company | Salon.com

Are you with me?

Cruz puts out book —-> Voters and Anonymous people give Cruz millions in a PAC ———-> Cruz gives the PAC money to Reagan Investments ———> Reagan Investments buys books, and since they aren’t a PAC the publisher doesn’t have to withhold royalties ——> Cruz personally pockets 15% off the top.

But yall, that isn’t even what this complaint is about. There’s more.

In a completely separate grift, this sumbitch spent campaign dollars on at least $18,000 in Facebook ads urging his supporters to go buy his book. There’s no ability to trace how much campaign money he spent on other ads because that’s not available to the public. So he takes $18,000 in campaign money, runs ads for people to buy his book, and each dupe that buys it nets another 15% back into his pocket which is a violation of FEC rules. 

Of course, nothing will happen because he’ll use his campaign money to pay for a big fancy lawyer and his good ole’ boy buddies way up high will get him out of trouble because even though they hate him as much as we do, they all do the same thing and they like the system the way it is.

It’s hard to explain, of course. But do you know what happens when you piss off a broad with a nice tall glass of sweet tea, steel-toed boots and a love for graphic design? Infographics.  You get infographics.

It’s all so clear, now, ain’t it?

Matt Gaetz has been the loyalist of the Trump loyalists. No matter how low Trump went, Gaetz stood there with a grin on his face and a shovel in his hand to help dig a deeper hole. It all makes sense now that we know the latest accusations about Gaetz and his inability to keep it in his pants.

Here is what they have in common:

Daddy’s money

Don Gaetz made his fortune by convincing the government to allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover hospice services – that his non-profit provided. Once the government started covering these hospice services, he switched the company to for-profit and built the largest hospice company in the country. He made millions using government health care. He then used those millions to buy his son a seat in Congress, which the son is now using to rail against government-run health care. Now he’s using those millions on getting his son a lawyer.

We all know, of course, how Donald Trump’s daddy made his money. Real estate, including government-subsidized housing, like this building in Brooklyn that still nets the Trumps $5 million a year.

Being a Giant Windbag on Twitter

The night before Michael Cohen testified before Congress, Gaetz sent this tweet, meant to intimidate a federal witness:

“Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…,”

There are about a million other examples of Gaetz being a horses ass on Twitter for you to read if you’re a masochist, and I certainly don’t need to prove that Trump is a giant windbag.

Multiple Accusations of Sexual Impropriety

This Wikipedia page lists 26 credible accusations against Trump, most of which you’re already aware, no doubt.

The best proof on this Earth of a devil is that Donald Trump gets away with literally everything he does with no repercussions ever, and the only way that this is possible is that he sold his soul to El Diablo.

Of course, it is this week that the Gaetzgate scandal began to unfold. In my estimation, he just finally pissed off the wrong person. Mr. or Mrs. pissed off leaked the investigation that had been secret from the media for half a year. For six months, the Justice Department has been investigating whether Gaetz flew a 17-year-old child across state lines and paid her for statutory rape. Within hours of the story breaking, GOP Congressmen and women lined up to give the media anonymous accounts of Gaetz sharing naked photos of women on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives.

He is accused of having a sex contest when he was in the Florida state legislature involving . . . Harry Potter. Lawmakers got points for sleeping with married women, sorority girls, and virgins. The ultimate prize of this contest was one specific woman who they nicknamed “The Snitch” – as in Quiddich, whoever got her to sleep with them won the game outright.
Alright, alright, the Daily Mail reported the last bit there but it’s too damn juicy not to talk about at the beauty salon.

They each have a Creepy Predator Wingmen

Trump’s long documented and often photographed friendship with Jeffrey Epstein allowed him free and full access to many of these women who later accused him of sexual assault. Epstein died in prison after being indicted for running a sex-trafficking ring wherein he abused dozens of underage girls, flying them on his private plane to his private island where they could be abused without the fear of authorities coming to the aid of the children.

Gaetz’s Epstein is named Joel Greenberg. Joel Greenberg is under indictment for a whole host of unbelievably nasty crimes, from posing as a student and writing a letter that he hoped would disgrace his political rival, to using Florida state government offices to print Fake IDs for the underage girls he was sleeping with so he could fly them across state lines. That sounds familiar.

There sure is an awful lot of smoke around these folks.

Alright, jury, I’ve presented my case. Gaetz is Trump’s biggest defender because they’re the same guy. Given every advantage in life, able to purchase anything they’d ever want from women to political office, they openly flaunt their crimes and laugh at the dummies around them that play by the rules and don’t have nearly as many followers on social media as they do. They’re both full of horse shit. We can only hope that the Feds take down Gaetz before he becomes the next President Trump.

“I took her love at seventeen

A little late these days it seems
But they said heaven is well worth waiting for.”– Robert Plant/Jimmy Page

Those of you that have been paying attention to the news have undoubtedly heard about the controversy surrounding Matt Gaetz. The embattled Florida congressman always seems to find himself in the center of some controversy. A lot of this is self-inflicted. The details are a bit circumspect at this point, but I’ll do the best I can.

At the center of it all is a report that he had a sexual encounter with a 17 year old girl (thus the Led Zeppelin reference). Gaetz is currently in his late thirties, but I’m not sure when this sexual encounter supposedly happened. Unless it happened when he was 18, he is in the same hot water politically. Legally, it might be a whole other matter.

Meanwhile, Gaetz is spinning yarns about a blackmail scheme that is at the heart of it all. He is defending himself of charges that haven’t even been levied. I’m sure the psychologists among us will opine about what that fact means. I have had some psychology training, but I’m going to leave that nugget to the professionals among us.

Oddly enough, I find all of this to be a huge Rorschach test. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to those nebulous ink blots that we are supposed to interpret for the therapist. Supposedly, our answers say a whole lot about us. In this case, I think they say more about our particular feelings for these individuals than it does about us specifically.

Gaetz is a polarizing figure. Conservatives love him and everyone else seems to hate him. So, it makes perfect sense that those particular groups would handle these allegations differently. When I look at Matt Gaetz I see a jackass. So, it isn’t that difficult for me to imagine him doing anything like this. The fact that he is awkwardly defending himself tends to be icing on the cake. Still, there is always the possibility that everything he is saying is true.

We can see no greater contrast than looking at the situation Andrew Cuomo is in right now. We could throw in the likes of Al Franken as well. The level of sympathy we feel for any of these guys is directly proportional to the level of animus we felt for them before their controversies. In plain English, if we like them we tend to believe them. If we hate them we already see them as guilty.

Make no mistake. Matt Gaetz is a jackass. I’m sure in a proud moment he would admit to that. He might not use that exact word, but he has made his bones acting in an obnoxious fashion. Maybe he would call himself spirited or a gadfly. Then again, he might not be smart enough to get the gadfly reference. Either way, he already has one foot in the jail cell for many Americans. It will be hard to resist the temptation to push him in. However, we must do it if we ever expect anyone we like to be given the same consideration.

You have to ask yourself –  what the hell is it about Trey Gowdy and his hair?  Is it just me?  Or does he have more hair styles than Cher?  Not only is this one of the goofiest sumbitches on Capitol Hill (not quite as goofy as Screwy Louie), he takes the cake for multiple goofy haircuts.  He goes from early Monkees one day to full on racist Nazi “high-n-tight” the next, to Gordon Gekko the following day.  Jesus, pal, pick a lane.

Here are some of my favorites:

All of us are aware of Trump stupidly supporting arming teachers in public schools to supposedly protect little children from mass shooters who have easy access to weapons of war.  NOW, his irresponsible budget slashing is placing the same requirement on healthcare workers, counselors, and teachers working in federal prisons.  Mindless budget slashing (while handing out over a trillion dollars of tax cuts to billionaires) has created a critical shortage of prison guards in facilities housing our most dangerous criminals.

The idiocy of this cretin infesting the White House is destroying lives, dragging down the economy, and now putting professional healthcare workers and teachers in harms way, just because.

There’s a time for anger, and this is it.