Good Ole’ Boy Todd Smith, Aide to Sid Miller, Indicted for Theft
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.
Nicely said, Jet
1Just curious. Does Redalen own a pizza parlor with a basement ?
2Kids grow up so quick in Texas … Woody Allen waited until the Soon-Yi Previn was 26 or 27 before getting married.
Is there a database that helps track all of the connections to Texas politics, or are we dependent on your human memories for the ties into other oddities?
3I have the distinction of having Elise Stefanik as my Rep, so I am in no position to point fingers.
But damn, that is nasty..
Here is something I wrote for Twitter and send it to holier then thou, right wing, know it all, Trumper when appropriate
I think it sums up today ( & yesterday’s) Republicans.
Things Republicans no longer are.
4Compassionate conservatives, law and order party, constitutionalists, drain-the-swamp, moral majority, religious right, family values. Pro life.
They are however, moral cowards.
That, they are.
You think this is bad, wait until we have gambling!
5Diane, I would add that today’s repugnantican politicians are grifters and delusional.
6I can’t believe how slow the wheels of justice are turning for paxton and der Trumpf.
Meanwhile, on the blue side, the Baltimore DA, who with her husband is under investigation or something (who knows what?), is demanding the FCC scold the local Fox station for hurting her feelings.
7“Sid Miller put ex-doctor with 2 revoked licenses on rural health panel”
https://www.statesman.com/NEWS/20180407/Sid-Miller-put-ex-doctor-with-2-revoked-licenses-on-rural-health-panel
8Under what screwball thought process does Sid Miller get to put *anyone* on a rural health panel?
9I’m ashamed to say the missus and I looked this up last night actually. We were watching an old clip from the Steve Wilkos show and saw a thirty something pervert that had an encounter with a 16 year old and it was deemed legal. Since the encounter was deemed consensual by the authoritative lie detector results (if you watched the show you understand) it was deemed to be perfectly legal.
Well, apparently 16 is the youngest that a teen can legally consent and while this is not universally true, it appears the northeast dominates in this particular department. Who knows what the law was in 1988 but I would have to assume that a parent would have to legally sign off on him marrying anyone under the magical age of 17.
Well, that’s enough for now. I want to rush home and take a shower.
10I was surprised to find that the minimum age of marriage was 21 until 1971. Also surprised to learn that several states do not allow persons over 21 to marry persons under 18.
That was certainly not my experience. The laws must have changed sometime between 1959 and 1971 but a cursory search did not turn up the time or the reason.
When I was 13 one of my playmates married. This was not regarded as unusual or scandalous though somewhat country.
That was in Georgia in 1959.
One of my friends in Hawaii told me his grandparents had married when they were 15. That would have been in the mid-’50s, when Hawaii was still a Territory.
One of my great great uncles ran off with his 14-year-old niece, and while my mother is still scandalized that is only because her family had taken him in as an immigrant (from Italy) and she regards it as ungracious.
We country people are not so touchy about early marriage as city folk.
11I wouldn’t say I have a database, per se, of creepy and corrupt past deeds of Texas Republicans. I don’t think google even has that much storage capacity, to be honest.
I was born with this righteous outrage gene so from the time I was 5 and heard someone call my friend a racial slur, I’ve been mad as hell. This nonsense is unacceptable and I find it outrageous that, in a democracy, we allow this to continue.
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