Off The Kuff Is Down

My esteemed colleague Charles Kuffner over at Off The Kuff is experiencing some “site down” problems right now as he changes over to another type of server. Since Charles’ site is totally down and he can’t get that message out, I just wanted to let everyone know. We’ll let you know when he’s back up and running.

Why Is Rick Perry Pimping For A Private Insurance Company?

Somehow I and a lot of others in the TexSphere managed to miss this story last week:

After a Houston teacher was taken aback to find a letter from Gov. Rick Perry enclosed with a pitch from a corporate insurance agency, state regulators are reviewing the mailer to ensure the company complied with a prohibition on implied endorsements.

The company president said Wednesday his business, National Health Administrators, didn’t intend to suggest an endorsement and will mail a clarification to 200 people who got the original mailer.

Perry is “absolutely” fine with the way the company used the letter, originally written as part of a state-federal initiative to promote long-term care planning, said Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody.

She said he hadn’t endorsed a company through the letter, which is publicly available.

Regardless, this seems quite fishy. Evidently, it’s enough for the Texas Department of Insurance to think it was an implied endorsement:

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TX-HD 112: Will Hill’s Retirement Mean Another Democratic Pickup In Dallas?

It came as a surprise to many when Rep. Fred Hill (R-Richardson) announced his retirement last week. And, although there are already rumblings about Republicans clamoring for their party’s nomination, a flip of this district, while not impossible, isn’t a total impossibility.

First, let’s look at Hill’s numbers last time out:

STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 112

    *Hill                            R        21,068   77.9%     77.9%

     Moseley                         L         5,961   22.1%     22.1%

Twenty-two percent for a Libertarian is pretty high performance in a race without a Democrat, I believe. It shows a significant dissatisfaction with the current leadership, at least.

Consider this, as well: most down-ballot judicial candidates in Dallas County polled in the 39-40 percent range in Hill’s district, which isn’t totally awful (the Hill district numbers are the first set of percentages reading left to right):

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Ailing Rep. Buddy West Faces Tough GOP Primary

State Rep. Buddy West (R-Odessa) is in for a bloody primary fight this spring, reports the Midland Reporter-Telegram, and it appears that the GOP strategy of eating its own people who sparred with Craddick doesn’t even exempt a state rep with an incurable kidney disease:

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Texas Progressive Alliance Blog Roundup: September 24, 2007

It’s Monday, and that means it’s time for yet another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance’s Weekly Blog Round-Up. This week’s installment is compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

It’s about one thing. TXsharon at Bluedaze tells us why we have to make it about something else.

Bill Howell of StoutDemBlog, a new member of the Texas Progressive Alliance, takes a look at Kirk England’s recent party switch as well as other recent party switches in Dallas County in Rove’s Permanent Majority Collapses: Now What Do We Do With All These Defectors?

Boadicea at Texas Kaos wonders if MoveOn doesn’t owe John Cornyn a thank you note.

Musings discovers that the lead GOP presidential contenders are too busy for Black and Latino sponsored debates, while the local Harris County GOP claim they are home to Hispanics because of their once a year bike give away.

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News has word on Mayor Manlove of Pasadena entering the race to challenge Lampson for Congress and the mayor’s race it opens up He also has a short colorful digest of Naomi Klein promoting her book on Disaster Capitalism.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson posts on recent news that Gov. Perry and Speaker Craddick - who Krussee excoriated at the end of the legislative session–will appear at a fundraiser for him in Krusee Throws Reagan Over The Wall And Under The Bus.

Mayor McSleaze at McBlogger takes a look at some of the dumber things to come out of the right this week, like Bill O’Reilly’s trip to a Harlem hot spot where he discovered that it was just like a ‘real’ restaurant, you know, like Olive Garden.

Off the Kuff looks at the causes and effects of Kirk England’s party switch.

Refinish69 at Doing My Part For The Left looks at UT football and ask a simple question - UTLonghorns or UT Thugs.

Burnt Orange Report and its diarists are following the Kirk England switchover with enthusiasm. After breaking the story on Wednesday, the entirestaff, welcomes the newest Democrat to the House.

KT at Stop Cornyn shows how Junior Senator John Cornyn is wasting time again. Instead of getting funding for CHIP or getting our troops the armor they need, John Cornyn forced a vote condemning MoveOn.org. Yet another example of failed leadership and Junior John being out of touch with Texas needs.

Evan at the Caucus Blog covered two major stories this week. First, after months of investigation, discussion, and debate, the Houston GLBT Political Caucus has decided to endorse the HISD bond proposal. Second, Evan has looked into the history of the fight for a federal Employment Non-discrimination Act in the post “ENDA Deja Vu.”

Bradley at North Texas Liberal discusses how Washington, D.C. almost had the vote, but lost it due to greedy Senate Republicans. Only eight Republicans could be bothered to vote for the legendary bill that would have allowed the District a voting member of Congress.

The marriage of the Republican party to theocracy is no accident. Right wing investors like Richard Mellon Scaife are molding US churches, notes CouldBeTrue at in “What does an El Paso Church have to do with the right wing” at South Texas Chisme.

It was quite a week for Senator Box Turtle; he led the Senate charge against free speech, voted against habeas corpus, and against adequate down time for our soldiers. As PDiddie at Brains and Eggs points out, he now owns the war on terror — in addition to the war on the Constitution and all Americans. But he did unwittingly sponsor a successful fundraiser for MoveOn.org, so he wasn’t a complete failure.

WhosPlayin joins a local Republican activist in opposing tax abatements for speculative real estate development in Lewisville.

Vince at Capitol Annex has been keeping tabs on the Texas Conservative Coalition and its town hall meetings across East Texas in which they propose to eliminate property taxes in favor of an expanded sales tax, and points out that at least one new candidate has already started drinking their Kool-Aid.

Hal at Half Empty was at a campaign kickoff fundraiser for Ron Reynolds who is running for State Rep in HD 27. He took videos and did a series. Links to the series is at his summary posting: Ron E. Reynolds is Running for State
Rep in HD 27.

Blue 19th notes that Randy Neugebauer can’t hide his contempt for veterans from everyone. So which party was it that supported our troops? Oh yeah, the one that doesn’t start with “Republican”.

In No? No! Yes? Yes! Trinity Vote Trickery, The Texas Clover Leaf notes that confusing ballot language and campaign slogans cloud the upcoming Trinity Toll Road vote in Dallas.

TX HD-04: Betty Brown Draws A Primary Opponent Who Swerves From Right To Left

[Thanks to Keeping Terrell In The Loop for bringing this to our attention!]

The much-bally-hooed potential primary opponent for State Rep. Betty Brown (R-Terrell) has finally made it official and announced his candidacy.

The opponent, of course, is Wade Gent, who ran against Brown and lost the ‘06 primary.

The interesting thing about Gent, however, is that he’s trying to simultaneously run to the left and right of Brown.

Like some kind of hybrid zebra, Gent is running against Tom Craddick and the “far right wing” of the party while supporting the far right wing’s proposal to repeal all property taxes in favor of an expanded sales tax:

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We’re Back!

Ok, ok, ok. You can calm down now.

Capitol Annex is back. We just had a very busy week and simply could not do much blogging. Thanks for all of the emails wondering where we were. And, in response to the numerous questions we received about where we were: no, we are/were not:

1. Sick
2. Dying
3. Dead
4. Switching parties and becoming Republicans
5. Fatigued (well, maybe a little)
6. Taking care of sick animals (the dogs are fine, thanks for asking)
7. Suffering from carpal tunnel
8. Hit by another spam attack (no, thank God, no)
9. Suffering from that “diarrhea bug like the one that’s been going around El Paso” (especially since we don’t live in El Paso)
10. Marching for the Jena 6  (though we support the cause).
11. In Las Vegas to blog the OJ case.
12. Just too lazy to blog.

While we’re on the subject, we thought we’d reprint a couple of emails asking where we were (with the author’s permission, of course):

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Busy Week!

It’s been a busy week for us here at Capitol Annex. We do expect to be back to full blogging strength sometime Thursday, though.

Republicans Want To Eleminate Property Tax In Favor Of Expanded Sales Tax

We’ve told you about the little tour that state legislators in East Texas are doing to tout the new ideas of the Texas Conservative Coalition. Now, it seems as though the Republicans are using this little “tour” to try out some of their potentially disastrous legislative proposals for the next session, including a plan to eliminate all state property taxes in favor of an increased sales tax:

For one thing, the Texas Conservative Coalition intends to push for legislation to eliminate all state property taxes.

John Colyandro, the organization’s executive director, says he has a better idea of how to fund public schools.

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Filed Under: 2008 Texas Elections, Texas Public Policy & Taxation
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Dee Margo Won’t Run

September 18, 2007 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment 

Via the El Paso Time’s Vaqueros & Wonkeroos, Dee Margo, who challenged Sen. Elliot Shapliegh last year, won’t be moving and won’t be running for any public office in 2008.

Interesting.

Filed Under: 2008 Texas Elections
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