#TXLEGE: (Ex-Senator) Carona's kid Arrested for Child Sexual Assault

"Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."
Romans 12:19

Via D Magazine:

On Tuesday, our sister publication Preston Hollow People broke the news that Kristin and Jeffrey Carona had been arrested in January on two counts of child sexual assault. Jeffrey also faces one count of possession of child pornography. He, of course, is the son of one of the most prominent people in town, a man who has appeared on the cover of D Magazine. That would be former state senator John Carona.

The news is gross and bizarre and shocking. It’s also, after two days, not anywhere else but in Preston Hollow People. Turns out that the best time for news to leak out that you’ve been busted for child sexual assault and child porn is during the early stages of a pandemic.

Jeffrey Carona, in case you've forgotten, is also this guy:

Four years ago Dallas businessman Wallace Hall, a member of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, uncovered evidence, confirmed in a later third-party investigation, of deep-rooted admissions cheating at UT Austin and the UT law school.

....

Reporter Jon Cassidy of Watchdog.org developed a database of UT law grads in 2006-13 who failed the bar exam in multiple tries and came up with the following interesting detail:

“Of nearly 2,700 UT Law grads,” Cassidy reported, “just 197 needed to retake the test. I found 90 who failed it twice. And I found 29 who failed it three times or more.

That last group of 29 included Zaffirini’s son Carlos, as well as Jeffrey Carona, son of Republican state Sen. John Carona, and Ryan Pitts, son of Rep. Jim Pitts, the House Appropriations Committee chairman. It also included these five: a lobbyist who’d worked for House Speaker Joe Straus, a legislative director, the former chief of staff for a congressman, the son of a major Zaffirini donor and state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez.”

Pretty crazy.

Obviously, right now these are still allegations.   Nothing has been proved.  And knowledge is limited to reports in a couple of hyperlocal sources.

We're nervous about publishing allegations like this this early in the process.  But part of this website's DNA is to amplify stories that aren't getting sufficient coverage.  This can't get buried in this so-called "Coronavirus" nonsense (although you do have to love the irony of the overlapping names...even if they're spelled differently).

[Note: Maybe, just maybe, the Dallas Morning News and the Texas Tribune ought to cover this story.]

Furthermore, for the DA in Dallas county to pursue formal charges on something like this against someone from this prominent of a local family speaks volumes.

That being said, for charges like this to follow on the heels of Jeffrey and John Carona's known involvement in the UT admissions scandals of five years ago suggests a level of entitlement often seen in political circles.

Nevertheless, one still hopes that somehow, someway, this is a gigantic misunderstanding.ex
Bottom Line: Yikes.

#TXLEGE: "Behind the Scenes" in the Legislature

"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them."
Ephesians 5:11

Nothing quite like an former officeholder who's now unshackled.

Don Huffines has been speaking about the reality of his experience in the legislature for some time.  He gave similar remarks at Empower Texans gala in December.  His recent appearance at the True Texas Project is, at least to our knowledge, the first time it's been recorded.



Highlights:

• Decided to run for office because the incumbent (John Carona) became a liberal over his time in office.

• Abolished an obscure quasi-educational agency: "A rats nest of crooks."
• "We uncovered the biggest political corruption scandal in the history of the state of Texas."
• "We discovered these people were stealing a lot of money."
• "Over 3000 employees."
• At least 5 employees are currently in prison, with more potentially coming soon.

• "I didn't get a lot of help in Austin."
• "I didn't get any support of the Governor."
• "I got nothing but opposition from the speaker of the house."
• The Lt. Governor wasn't particularly helpful, but didn't actively work against him either.

• First Republican caucus meeting:
• Took the party platform with him.
• Wanted a vote on Constitutional Carry so that voters could hold Senators accountable.
• 3 Senators left..."it was VERY awkward."
• The next morning, he was told to apologize to the other Senators.
• Republican Senators are willing to be held accountable to the media and lobbyists, but not their own voters.

• "I don't know if you know this or not, but they don't like you...As a matter of fact, they hate you."

• "They belittle you, they laugh at you...they ridicule our state party platform."

• "Have you ever seen our Governor talk about our state party platform?!?"
• Likewise the other statewides.

• "They don't believe in what you want."

• "We have never not had a purple session."

• "Democrats ran this state for 125 years, for the past 20 years you've had Democrat party switchers running it."
• Note: This point CANNOT possibly be emphasized enough.  The only difference today is that all the local Good Ol' Boys run in the R primary instead of the D.  Texas has NEVER been a conservative state.  It's been a deeply corrupt, crony "capitalist" state for 150 years.

• "We've never had a conservative session."

• "If we wanted a secure border, that border would be secure."

• "Did you hear a whisper on education freedom?!?"

• Election integrity: "We know we're being cheated.  We know dead people vote."
• We know thousands of non-citizens are voting, could be significantly higher.
• Abbott was Attorney General for 12 years and never did anything about voter fraud.
• Paxton hasn't been much better.
• "When I lost my election in '18, there was evidence presented to me that we might have a problem."
• The biggest issue is software manipulation: "If they can program a computer to count the votes, they can program a computer to change the votes."
• Yet it was the GOP who killed the election integrity bill.
• His attorney quit because he didn't want to be on the outs with the Governor.

• Socialism: "The Democrats want to get there today, the Republicans want to get there next week."

#TXLEGE: Phillip Huffines and Angela Paxton are BOTH solid conservatives (and their supporters need to stop acting like Children)

"Folly is set in great dignity,
While the rich sit in a lowly place."
Ecclesiastes 10:6

Sometimes, it pays to stay out of a race.

With the release of campaign finance reports, a juvenile slap fight has broken out between supporters of Phillip Huffines and supporters of Angela Paxton over obscure campaign contributions; neither of the contributions in question should remotely concern anyone.

First, Angela Paxton: On her most recent campaign finance report, Angela Paxton reported $17,500 in contributions from liberal Republican former state senator John Carona.  That seems bad, until you remember that DON Huffines beat Carona four years ago.  Clearly, Carona is still miffed over his loss to Don Huffines, and is using Angela Paxton as a mechanism to get back at the Huffines family.

[Note: It's also worth pointing out that Carona served in the Senate with KEN Paxton; Senate collegiality being what it is, it's also not surprising to see a former Senator donating to the wife of a former Senator with whom he served.]

As for Phillip Huffines: In 2006, he made two donations, totaling $1500, to Dallas Democrat Helen Giddings.  This against the backdrop of two decades as a political donor that have seen him give hundreds of thousands to explicitly conservative causes.  We assume Huffines had a business interest in Giddings' district and, well, it's a little hard to stomach watching people belatedly complain about Republican candidates making donations to Democrats to protect their business interests when nobody seemed to have a problem with this guy doing it.

For those who are interested, they can check out all of Philip Huffines' campaign contributions since 2000 below:

Phillip Huffines campaign contribution history by Cahnman on Scribd

Bottom Line: No matter what happens, Senate District 8 is going to be represented by someone with whom the average Conservative Texan agrees at least 98% of the time.  Neither of the respective political donations about which we've learned changes that fact. People need perspective.

Straus recycles John Carona staffers

"As a dog returns to his own vomit,
So a fool repeats his folly."
Proverbs 26:11

This is two months old, but telling:

Erika Akpan will be Senior Business and Regulatory Affairs Advisor to the Speaker. She is a longtime aide to Sen. John Carona, serving most recently as his Legislative Director. She also worked as a Policy Analyst for the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce, where she specialized in energy and telecommunications issues, and the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security, where she specialized in public safety and homeland security. She is a graduate of Texas State University and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

“Erika is a great fit to work on issues that are directly related to job creation and the success of the private sector,” Speaker Straus said. “Her knowledge and expertise will benefit the entire House at a very important time."

Remember, John Carona is one of the biggest gas tax hike proponents in Texas.

UT admits the unqualified but politically connected

"Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord,
But a just weight is His delight."
Proverbs 11:1

A bombshell report from Watchdog.org about UT Law School admissions:

HOUSTON — Some of the least-qualified graduates of the University of Texas School of Law in recent years have high-level connections in the Legislature, which may explain how they got into the prestigious law school in the first place.

A months-long Watchdog.org analysis of political influence on the admissions process at UT Law found there’s some truth, after all, to the old line about who you know mattering more than what you know. We found dozens of Longhorns who don’t know enough to be lawyers but know somebody important in the Legislature.

Two of those mediocre students are legislators themselves.

Some have connections to the leadership circle of House Speaker Joe Straus, others to powerful state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, who’s already been caught three times trying to pull end runs around the admissions process.

....

Watchdog.org found a pattern of overlapping political influence and underwhelming performance on the bar exam. Any single one of the cases we describe could have an alternate explanation, such as personal problems that derailed studies.

Taken as a whole, however, they offer clear evidence that political influence is the reason dozens of students who are unable to pass the bar are getting into the state’s top law school.

....

Normally, almost nobody who gets into UT Law fails the bar. Watchdog.org found 90 students who had failed it twice or more. That should be reason enough for university officials to double-check their grades and Law School Admission Test — or LSAT — scores to see which students actually earned admission, and who benefited from a political favor.

We found additional reasons to scrutinize 24 names on that list:

• At least 15 of the students are politically connected, either through office, personal relationships, or campaign donations to officeholders who have figured in the fight over UT’s leadership. 

• At least 12 of the students have roots in Laredo, home of state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, who is known to have pulled strings on behalf of other applicants. As Laredo has just 2 percent of the state’s population, it’s highly over represented in this sample. 

• A half-dozen of the students have connections to state Rep. Joe Straus, his close allies, or a lobby shop that rose to prominence with Straus’s ascendance to speaker in 2009. 

• Two of the students are known to have LSAT scores well below UT standards. James Ryan Pitts, son of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, has now failed the bar exam three times since graduation after scoring a 155 and a 147 on the LSAT, which is scored on a scale of 120 to 180. Those scores rank in the 64th percentile and 33rd percentile nationwide, and are well below the scores in the mid-160s that UT usually requires. 

• Another 2012 graduate with three LSAT scores in the 140s failed the bar exam twice, but because we don’t yet have scores for most of these students, we’re not singling her out and naming her.

....

Two recent UT Law grads already were elected officials when they were admitted.

State Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, like Zaffirini a Democrat from Laredo, who was first elected in 1992, failed the bar exam in 2007 and 2008, and is not a member of the Texas bar.

State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, first elected in 2002, failed the bar three times between 2010 and 2012, and is not a member of the bar, either. One of Rodriguez’s senior staffers, also a UT Law grad, failed the bar three times between 2009 and 2010.

Rodriguez works for the law firm of Brown McCarroll, which dove deep into lobbying during the 2008 election cycle. When Straus led a post-election coup to unseat Republican Speaker Tom Craddick with his “Gang of 11” Republicans and the support of the Democratic caucus, Brown McCarroll was one of the biggest beneficiaries, according to Capitol Inside.

Thanks to the former Straus staffers and the Democratic officeholders it employed, Brown McCarroll was suddenly the second most influential law firm lobby shop in town. Among its employees were state Sen. Kirk Watson, a critic of Regent Hall, and former state Rep. Pete Gallego, now a congressman.

....

Of the nearly 2,700 UT Law students to take the exam since 2006, only 29 have failed it three times or more. Thirteen made our list for closer inspection, and seven of those have ties to Laredo.

Among the 13 are Carlos Manuel Zaffirini Jr., the state senator’s only son, and Jeffrey Carona, the son of Republican state Sen. John Carona. Sen. Carona has donated some $31,043 to Zaffirini’s campaign in recent years, in addition to undisclosed sums his company paid her as a “communications consultant.”

As of the February 2014 exam, Ryan Pitts, son of the outgoing Appropriations Committee chairman and one of Straus’ Gang of 11, has failed the bar three times.

Read the whole thing here.

John Carona throws a tantrum

Ouch:

One thing we've learned from experience is that the candidate throwing a hissy fit tends to be in trouble; this is especially true when the candidate in question supports a new $4 billion electricity tax....

Has John Carona gotten lost?!?

HILARIOUS find from Empower Texans:

Carona certainly got a spike in Facebook activity and new likes during the Christmas season, but he still seems to be struggling with where exactly his Senate District is. Carona’s Christmas campaign brought in most of his new likes from Houston.

....

Come to think of it…we haven’t seen that much forethought from Carona or his team. Carona—like the other candidates pulling these advertising schemes—is simply a career politician whose team is “astroturfing” his social media in order to make it appear he is more in-touch with the grassroots. 

What this reallshows is the incumbent senator will spend this primary season trying to buy his way back into his seat—which he obviously finds very comfortable. It must be all the cushioning he gets from the lobby and corporate interests.

Houston isn't Dallas; Read the whole thing here.