Oh, Swell
The Dallas Morning News is reporting that newly nominated gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez has $12,000 in unpaid back property taxes. So, not only did the Dems nominate someone who had little chance of attracting any voters outside of the base, they nominated someone who’s going to be framed as a tax cheat. Even worse, Valdez campaign spokesman blamed Greg Abbott for her unpaid taxes.
I can hear the commercials now. Hello, four more years of Greg Abbott.
Jesus.
Do you really think EITHER of the Dem candidates could actually beat Abbott? It’s all about who MIGHT gen up the better turn out.
1All else aside, why wasn’t this known earlier?
2The article made it sound as if she had done something wrong. The Great state of Texas allows anyone over 65 to pay their property taxes monthly or quarterly. They even allow seniors to not pay their taxes at all. The taxes are still owed, along with the interest. IIRC, the interest is 8%. I wouldn’t do it due to the high cost, but it is perfectly legal. She has done nothing wrong.
3Now would I have preferred another candidate, yes. But this article is hitting below the belt.
Way to go Democrats. (Down, down, down, into the Ring of Fire…)
Famed for down to the wire “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” artistry, we’ve now managed to move the electoral implosion up to the very beginning of the campaign. Taking all the suspense and drama right out of it, yeesh.
Abbutt’s armored wheelchair will flatten this pedestrian candidate like he’s driving a 72 ton M-1 Abrams by the end of next week, six months before the actual election.
Doesn’t the Democratic Party leadership do minimal vetting of potential candidates? You know, a little basic self-directed “oppo research” that the other side is going to do in spades (and very early). To uncover, and possibly correct or nix, potentially flawed candidates. WTF!
This massive FU should be just peachy for GOTV in all the other up-down-side ballot offices…also…too.
4Crone says: The taxes are still owed, along with the interest. IIRC, the interest is 8%.
That actually sounds like a reasonable law.
5A (presumably) retired person who owns their home, can forgo paying real estate taxes so they have a little extra money for other things (presumably) health care. Then when they sell, or die, the taxes plus 8% interest are taken out at closing to pay the tax bill. Everybody gets something.
Crikey! Is that all? Compared to what is going on in the White House, this amounts to piffle. And furthermore, this tab can get gone via crowd funding. It would take exceptionally little time.
6Rick that’s the idea. I know a couple people who took advantage of what the state offers seniors. I’m just too stingy to do it. And it took forever to teach one of my kids to never have a revolving charge card due to interest. I can’t do it because she would make my life hell. 😉
My problem is what’s up with the Chronicle for making it sound like she was a crook.
IMO, she should have known this was coming. Being a Hispanic female lesbian is gonna be hard enough in Right wing Baptist Texas. Now, add on being a deadbeat.
Shame on the Chronicle.
7Sounds like typical snacilbupeR lies and distortions.
8Just as a point of reference:
Last night, Rachel Maddow was reporting on erstwhile Texas Congressman Steve Stockman’s 23 criminal convictions. And about how he ran in, and frequently won, numerous Texas elections. Though he’d already been in jail 3 times before.
Why is it that when They go low, we’re the ones who trip all over ourselves?
We’ve already lost too many good people from an excess of scruples. Let’s douse our flaming hair in a bucket, help clarify and correct what sounds like a fairly minor situation, and get the hell on with it. Make the Repugs defeat our candidate, instead of always doing it for them.
9And so it begins….. the Rovian playbook, laid bare, and Texas Dems fall for it every time…… Of course No Dem in Texas should go Vote cause it won’t matter,Dem Candidates subjected to every High school annual editors perceived Impropriety and innuendo all designed to keep you home, Despair and disgust and falling for every Headline the Rethugs put out there, all to make sure your Hopelessness guarantees their victory….. Lemmings, meet cliff…….
10She does sound like a good enough manager to run something as big as the government of Texas.
Sheesh.
I do not live in Texas so I will enjoy 4 more years of him. But I pity you poor Texicans.
11I get really tired of people supposedly Dem, or supposedly mostly on our side, sneering at Dem candidates for a) doing nothing wrong, b) being female/LBGT/not perfect white straight male won’t-bother-a-right-winger-in-any-way and thus “won’t appeal to anyone outside the base” and then c) blaming all Dems for being so stupid.
Anyone with five functional neurons knows that no right-winger will vote for any Dem no matter how close that Dem appears to be to the GOP model. Anyone who “appeals” outside the base (e.g., appeals to GOP voters) is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We don’t need more turncoat candidates. I was fooled once in this country and I won’t be fooled again. I don’t have to like *everything* about a Dem, and I usually don’t–not a purity politics person–but the ones I vote for won’t appeal to Republicans *and that’s why voted for them. They hold firm on essential core Democratic values. We have enough Dems to get ‘er done *if they will actually come out and vote.* (And I really appreciate being able to vote by mail as I’m over 70.)
But dadgumit, folks, let’s not listen to the purity-perfectionist-omigod-candidate-won’t-appeal-beyond-the-base people. THAT is a way to lose elections. Let’s work on getting the entire base to the polls and not flinch at someone with a few dings who is solid on the core values. And let’s point out every indictment, prosecution, conviction, night in jail for all the GOP candidates and laugh in the faces of their scorn. “Yeah, like YOUR guys are shining examples of ethical perfection?” As pointed out, Texas offers that option to defer taxes…and it’s definitely important that we point that out…it’s not “being a deadbeat,” it’s taking advantage of a financial strategy that can work out to the homeowner’s advantage. There are GOP candidates who’ve said (Romney among them) that it’s a DUTY to not pay more than you have to. I don’t agree, but I do agree it’s a legal option and Dallas Morning New needs a smack upside the head. And so do some other people.
12Ah, the “you hate women” strategy. No, I don’t sneer at Dem candidates who are “female/LBGT/not perfect white straight male”, and I certainly didn’t say “right wingers” would vote for a Dem, and I didn’t say all Dems were stupid. I said the Dems once again nominated a candidate who can’t get within 13 points of the Republican. AND, and this will piss you off, like Hillary and her emails adds fuel to the fake outrage fire by doing something stupid. You don’t run for governor owing back property taxes, legal or not. “Legal” doesn’t matter. What matters is not being stupid. Valdez loaned her own campaign $20k. She should have used that for the taxes. Her partner gave her a new Tesla for her birthday. It’s not like Valdez doesn’t have access to the cash. It’s that she (and whoever the hell is managing her campaign) is STUPID for giving Abbott yet another issue with which to bash her. The GOP base is about 30% of voters. The Dem base is about 30% of voters. That leaves about 40% of voters who are not political and are generally worried about who’s going to win The Voice rather than about their local school. You have to have a candidate who can attract THOSE voters, not right wingers. Anyone “with 5 functional neurons” understands that.
13Elizabeth Moon – That’s what I was trying to say in my post. You said it better.
El Jefe –
I didn’t think Elizabeth’s post was aimed at you.
But you seem to think that it’s addressed to you.
And you responded by expanding your criticism of candidate Valdez in the harshest and most unforgiving terms possible.
So yeah, maybe it is about you.
14So exactly to whom do you think she was aiming the comment? She mischaracterized my post. I directly responded to those mischaracterizations.
15Most of you commenting here are clueless as to what it takes to win Democratic victories.
You seem to be stuck in that utterly failed “high road” mentality that has given near absolute power in the US to the evilest group of people ever in American politics. The worst of Obama’s failed legacy.
Wake up, being nice will get you nothing but more defeat.
These people, even if they are your family, ‘friends’, or neighbors, are your sworn enemies; and will see you destroyed without flinching, if and when their masters command them.
It has nothing to do with a minor “tax issue”, it has everything to do with ‘framing’ that issue in the worst possible light, which the Repukes have already done as early as possible.
How the Democrats could allow such a thing to happen is mind-boggling. This little problem could have been resolved, safely and legally, long ago. Valdez probably got in the tax mess because she’s likely an honest, basically modest income working person. Somebody could have anticipated this issue and worked out a neat, clean solution to it. Nooo, instead we get a fatally-flawed major candidate right off the blocks.
The Repukes control ‘framing and messaging’ x1000 times better than the Dems, game over, unless… Wake up.
(PS: I spent-wasted untold hours trying to deal with early RWNJ’s, starting in the ’90’s with WJC and Gore. Gore was slammed for that “internet” thing, totally misleading and fake as this tax thing is. I knew the ‘frame/message’ was wrong. Nothing, no facts (as a geek who was in the biz), that I used would penetrate their brainwashed skulls.)
Please read these two articles linked below (and w/’short’ excerpts), everything thing is covered in detail about this titanic, final struggle we are locked into.
This November is it, about the very last chance we’ll have. And the Texas Democratic Party is off to a real great start. :[
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/25/1767124/-The-Invention-of-the-Invention-of-the-Internet-The-Weaponization-of-Ridicule-and-Why-It-Matters
“When Robert Mueller comes out with the results of his investigation, it won’t matter if the number of indictments is five counts or five figures: Trump won’t pay any attention. He’ll just call it fake news and his treasonous, rubledrunk, lickspittle minions in the Republican party will shuffle along behind him, along with all the rapture-ready racists, tea-party troglodytes and Fox-fueled fuckwits that constitute his base.
*** —I have no idea what awaits us after that, but if we have the rule of law and justice on our side, and all they have is lies, bullying and ridicule, trust me: we’re goners. — ***
I like taking the high road as much as the next guy, but we’re dealing with fascists now, and historically the only place the high road takes you is the staging area where they load you onto boxcars.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/28/1767584/-Evangelicals-fear-a-Blue-Wave-but-Democrats-should-fear-evangelicals
“As excitement grows on the Left for an anticipated “Blue Wave” in the upcoming midterm elections, — *** it is apparent that what has transpired over the past few election cycles has the very real potential of happening again – the left gnashing its teeth and wailing over another disappointing election. For those who have not been keeping track, every couple of years while the left was prematurely celebrating the impending demise of the Republican movement and its theocratic aspirations, evangelicals were planning to flock to the polls to preserve and advance their progress for a theocratic America by 2020. —***
If there is only one constant in every recent American election, it is that every religious right sycophant will show up at the polls to vote for the candidate who promises to save the fetus, save guns, increase control over women, punish gays, and impose god and the Christian bible on every American citizen. Many pundits have already claimed that the increasing number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation informs that the religious right, like the Republican Party, is fundamentally finished; but that claim has proven abjectly false over the past three election cycles as evidenced by the evangelical extremist ascendancy and complete dominance in government despite predictions of Republicans’ electoral defeat.
The upcoming midterms are no different than the past few cycles and anyone who believes otherwise likely gloated while predicting that dumb Don Trump would be the death of the Republican and evangelical movement in 2016.”
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