Pete Sessions: Answer to Question NOBODY's Asking

"Every prudent man acts with knowledge,
But a fool lays open his folly."
Proverbs 13:16

Cartoonishly, super-terrible, idea:

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions appears poised to make a comeback attempt — but not in his old Dallas-based district.

Sessions, who lost reelection last year, plans to announce Thursday he's running for the seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, according to McLennan County GOP Chairman Jon R. Ker. The announcement will be at the county party headquarters in Waco, added Ker, who said he spoke with Sessions on Tuesday.

Sessions' anticipated run is a surprise development after he spent months publicly flirting with running for his previous 32nd District seat, which is about 80 miles north of Flores' more Republican 17th District.

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Sessions is not entirely new to the area. He was born there and grew up in Waco, where his dad, a former FBI director, worked as an attorney in the 1960s.

We could write a 20-40 page dissertation on everything wrong with this idea, but off the top of our head:

• Arrogance -- More than anything else, this common political trait was Pete Sessions' undoing.  We personally experienced this side of Sessions at a 2015 event, when Sessions quasi-censored (*) our first amendment rights.  Suffice to say, Sessions didn't want a record of the degree to which he acted like a jerk that night.
  
  [* - Had we sued, we would have beaten Sessions in court, but said lawsuit was more trouble than it would have been worth.]
  
  Pete Sessions is the dude who claimed a homestead exemption in Florida while allegedly representing Texas.
  
  To be honest, for Pete Sessions to believe that a place where he last lived over five decades ago is clamoring for his representation tells you everything you need to know.

• Corruption -- Just last year, Pete Sessions was busted for living large off of campaign contributions.
  
  That's just what's publicly reported.
  
  It wouldn't surprise us if there's more.
  
• Loserdom -- Sessions lost to a Democrat less than a year ago.

Sheesh.

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In fairness to folks in the Waco county area, a fair amount of resistance to this idea seems to have sprung up.

Good.

We need more.

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Bottom Line: Pete Sessions is an arrogant, corrupt, loser.  By themselves, any one of those traits should be disqualifying.  It takes a special type of establishment Republican to hit that trifecta....

Florida Man Brings Racket to Texas Republicans

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves."
Matthew 7:15

We had planned to take Independence Day off, then this happened:



Apparently, a single term former congressman who lost to a Democrat wants to be the next RPT chairman.

Your guess is as good as ours as to why.

Florida man's "announcement video," is a hot mess of patriotic cliches.  Apparently, today is America's birthday and the preamble to the constitution uses the phrase "more perfect union."  Florida man spent time in the military.

Beyond buzzwords, however, Florida man offers little rationale for his candidacy.

Florida man seems to be running as Dan Patrick on steroids.  Florida man has twice Dan Patrick's ego with half of Dan Patrick's wits.  Basic algebra thus suggests Florida man is a quarter-wit.

Unfortunately for Florida man, Texas Republicans only consider quarter-wits qualified for agriculture commissioner.

That being said, the biggest shame in all this is the missed opportunity.  RPT desperately needs an intellectually serious discussion about the mess in which our state currently finds itself and the path forward.  Unfortunately, Florida man seems clueless about what genuinely ails Texas.

As one example: During his 'announcement video,' Florida man talks about "defending the spirit of the Alamo" while name dropping William Barrett Travis.  That's all good.  Florida man might get a 'C' in 8th grade Texas history.

Unfortunately, the biggest current threat to the Alamo comes from a Texas Republican.

For Florida man to spout platitudes about the Alamo while ignoring George P. Bush tells you everything you need to know.

Bottom Line: No.

Where does Texas' sharing economy go from here?!? (Also: #TROXROX)

"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”
Mark 2:22

This afternoon, TPPF held a policy orientation panel entitled "Where does Texas' sharing economy go from here?!?"  #atxcouncil member Ellen Troxclair was joined by Senator Don Huffines and representatives from HomeAway and Uber.  The panel touched on past unpleasantness before examining the future for Short term rentals and transportation.

Senator Huffines opened with a discussion of economic liberty, explaining "I believe in the free market."  Senator Huffines decried incumbent industries "legislating away their competition" and pointed out that taxi companies did so "decades ago." Councilmember Troxclair echoed the point and reminded that the legacy taxi industry showed no interest in reducing their own regulatory burden during the discussion in Austin two years ago.  The Uber representative stated that, while their primary goal was regulatory certainty for their business, they'd love to takes a "deregulate the taxis" approach but that the taxi companies were the ones who wouldn't come to the table.

On short-term rentals, the HomeAway rep was optimistic about their chances to pass a bill next session.  Because other cities beyond Austin have begun to abuse their authority, she believed legislators who hadn't previously given the issue much thought were coming around.  She also pointed to Florida and Arizona as states with the best short-term rental laws.  For our part, we pointed out during Q&A that the only reason this bill failed last session was because it was referred (and ultimately killed) to a house committee with a Democrat committee chair who had been a previous president of the Texas Municipal League.

Council member Troxclair called Austin's current STR regulations "completely ineffective."  She pointed out that four properties were responsible for an inordinate amount of the complaints under the old rules.  She also explained that STR regulations weren't actually eliminating short term rentals, but simply driving them underground (which means that the spend-a-holic city government loses a source of revenue).

Other obvserstations:

• Uber "very concerned" about potential sick leave mandate from the City of Austin.

• Uber hoping to deploy early stage aerial vehicles in DFW in 2023; will require significant interface with the FAA.

• Last session, lege passed a bill to pre-empt municipal regulations on autonomous vehicles.

• 96% of auto collisions are driver related; autonomous vehicles eliminate almost all of them.
• Note: This is why autonomous vehicles are way, way, way safer than traditional automobiles.

• Uber began to investigate using their platform for search and rescue purposes after Hurricane Harvey.

• Short Term rentals typically have longer stays, and more repeat business, than traditional hotels; this frequently makes STR guests more respectful of the surrounding neighborhoods than comparable hotel guests.

Bottom Line: For as much as it fell short, last session's Uber bill was nevertheless an important signal to the marketplace.  More work remains to be done, but Texas is already an attractive place to do business.  If we can preempt future municipal debacle like the 2016 era unpleasantness in Austin, some really exciting things are going to happen (especially in transportation) over the next few years.

"Economic Development" -- A Debate on Corporate Welfare in Texas

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

This afternoon TPPF hosted "Economic Development: A Debate on Corporate Welfare in Texas."  Speakers included Richard Corcoran (incoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives), Senator Craig Estes, Bill Hammond of the Texas Association of Businesses, and Dean Stansel of the SMU Economics department.  We'll present our thoughts thematically rather than chronologically.

Term Limits:

During his opening remarks, Corcoran made an offhand comment about how eliminating various corporate welfare funds in Florida (including their equivalent of the enterprise fund) only came about because of the churn term limits forced upon their legislature.  The short version is that as the RINO's were forced to retire, they were replaced by conservatives until a critical mass was finally achieved in the past few years.  There's a lesson in there Texas would be wise to learn.

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Texas' "Uncompetitive" Property Tax system and "abatements":

Hammond argued that property tax "abatements" by school districts are essential for "large capital investment" because Texas' property tax system is, in the words of Bill Hammond himself, "uncompetitive."  Hammond was essentially arguing that, because high local property tax burdens eliminate the return on business investment, local jurisdictions (esp. school districts) need to be able to "abate" those taxes.  Hammond cited Louisiana as some sort of vague example of a state that does this successfully.

Of course, Hammond's newfound chagrin for Texas' "uncompetitive" property tax system was amusing to anyone who followed the last session of the Texas legislature.  Last session, alongside Team Straus, Hammond led an effort to obstruct Lt. Governor Patrick's property tax reform efforts. At the time, rather than fixing the property tax system, Hammond et. al. pushed a dopey scheme "alternative plan" to instead cut a sales tax nobody is complaining about.

Thankfully, several other panelists and audience members pointed out that the solution to an "uncompetitive" property tax system was to fix it for everyone, not create new carve outs for politically connected special interests.

In a separate piece of semi-related good news, Hammond announced he's leaving TAB at the end of the year; we'll help him pack.

One final note: Apparently, Hammond was once a Dubya gubernatorial appointee to the workforce commission, which means he's a Karl Rove crony...boy does that explain a lot.

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Sen. Craig Estes:

Senator Estes appeared genuinely torn.  We kept an eye on his body language throughout and he looked like...a guy legitimately wrestling with the issue.  A cynic might argue that he's an incumbent reading the writing on the wall in Dan Patrick's Senate.  An optimist could say that he's recently gotten wise to the issue.  Either way, we always welcome movement in our direction and encourage Senator Estes to discuss the issue with Konni Burton.

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Impact on Florida:

Corcoran pointed out that no company, or professional sports team, or film production outfit that threatened to leave Florida following their elimination of various corporate welfare programs has actually followed through and done so.

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Bottom Line: Corporate welfare leads to the politically directed allocation of capital, which serves no positive economic purpose but undermines credibility for other aspects of economic liberty; Texas cannot eliminate all of it fast enough.

#NoRePete: SESSIONS claims Homestead Exemption IN FLORIDA!!!

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

Befuddled by the Clowns is a North Texas based conservative blog whose proprietor lives in Pete Sessions' district; apparently, she's been doing some digging:

By contrast, here's the property tax listing for Sessions' home in Dallas:

Bottom Line: Activists in Dallas County have suspected Pete Sessions was playing fast and loose with his residency for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.  Now there's a smoking gun.  If Pete Sessions wants to stay in Congress, the time has come to run in Florida.

Where does Pete Sessions live?!?

Some intrepid Tea Partiers in North Texas snooped around the address Pete Sessions listed on his Congressional filing form, results aren't good:



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Read our endorsement post for Katrina here; donate to her campaign here.

Why Obama Just Can't Win: Gov Rick Scott "Romney's going to win Florida

I haven't posted on this topic in awhile, but Gov. Rick Scott's interview with Breitbart News is a must see:

Video streaming by Ustream

Why Obama Just Can't Win -- Interesting Jewish ##'s

Politico has this story about Jewish Voters today.  Money quote:

A new poll of American Jews, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute, finds that 62 percent of Jewish voters prefer Obama over a generic Republican.

This is progress, compared to the 78 percent who voted for him in 2008.

Slow and steady wins the race....

On Treyvon Martin, Manufacturing Outrage, and Chaos

"The first step in community organization is community disorganization.  The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization.  Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displaced by new patterns that provide the opportunities and means for citizen participation (*).  All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new."

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, Page 116

*Keep in mind, for Alinsky 'Citizen Participation' is a euphemism for ginning up an angry mob.

If you haven't heard about the Treyvon Martin story this past week, you're living under a rock; something about this story stinks. 

The main thing that bugs me about this story is the speed with which it's taken off.  Over the past week, I've seen it go from obscure websites, to Think Progress and the Huffington Post, then to ABC News.  Each time the story has moved forward, it's gotten posted on more Facebook pages.  Considering everything we know about Media Matters, something doesn't add up.  I can't shake the feeling that we're at the beginning of another Tawana Brawley Yankel Rosenbaum episode.

So, what's going on and why would anyone advance something like this?!?

In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky said: "Before men can act on an issue it must become polarized" (78). I've believed, for some time now, that some VERY powerful forces are deliberately sowing anger and chaos in America.  If you're looking to polarize the nation to sow anger and chaos, this story is perfect.  Consider:

• Is the story racially charged?!?  Check
• Does the story demonize gun owners?!?  Check
• Is the story friendly to straw man arguments?!?  Check
• Does the story lend itself to an easy villain?!? Check
• Is the Villain tailor made for an angry mob?!?   Good Grief, Check

Saul Alinsky's eleventh rule teaches: "Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It  and Polarize It."  George Zimmerman is the perfect demon for this sort of campaign.  Based on media reports, George Zimmerman does not seem to be a good guy.  He's easy to demonize.  This is key, because if you're looking create an escalating series of demons to gin-up anger and chaos, then the first demon has to be someone or something indefensible.  Remember, long before Barack Obama demonized Jews and Catholics, Michael Bloomberg demonized smokers.

It's an old saying, but a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. That's why I don't trust stories that appear out of nowhere on the internet.  A year ago, you had this phony Arab Spring take off out of nowhere on the internet, we now know that was a lie.  A month ago, you had the #PhonyKony internet video, we also know that was a lie.  This Trayvon Martin story stinks worse than those other two, and I cannot shake the feeling that it's sophistocated twenty-first century cyber-astroturf.    I've tried to start viral campaigns on the internet, and it's hard; it's a lot easier if you have powerful people helping you behind the scenes.

So, what does this all mean?!?  It's impossible to know at this point, but if the following events happened, it wouldn't surprise me:

1. Several months from now, we learn this is a massive Overton Window.
2. We start seeing gun owners demonized as racist
3. George Zimmerman ends up being the first person dragged into the streets and killed by Occupy Wall St.

Again, caution is in order, because we don't know the full facts.  But something about this case stinks.

It stinks BADLY.

Why Barack Obama Wants Chaos

Barack Obama and the Hard Left are laying a trap for the next President.  Unless the Republican nominee recognizes and prepares for this trap, he risks walking right into it when he assumes office next January.  Barack Obama and the Hard Left are currently sowing chaos that they hope will overwhelm the first year of the next administration in order to entrench the "Fundamental Transformation" he's already got written.

To prepare for this trap, the next President must understand Barack Obama's real agenda.  Barack Obama's actions over the last year reveal a man clearly uninterested in re-election.  For example, Catholics are swing voters in traditional swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida; why would any politician interested in winning an election in those states issue a mandate that offends the deepest moral beliefs of The Catholic Church?!?  Clearly, a politician interested in those states would NEVER take such an action.  Thus, one must conclude Barack Obama is uninterested in re-election.  What, then, is Barack Obama's real agenda?!?

Barack Obama's primary agenda, at this point, is to ensure the legislative changes he has already accomplished go fully into effect.  To secure his fundamental transformation of America, Barack Obama and the Hard Left will sow chaos throughout the United States and the World in 2012.  Expect that chaos to spillover into 2013/14 and the first year of the new administration, regardless of the new President's identity.  Barack Obama and the Hard Left understand that, in American politics, major changes in policy occur almost exclusively in the first year of new Presidential administrations.  Thus, Barack Obama and the Hard Left understand that if the new President spends 2013 reacting to National and Global Chaos, this window for major policy changes can pass without unwinding Obama's previous legislative victories.

Barack Obama's allies in the #Occupy movement have clearly stated their intention to "Recreate [the chaos of 19]68" in 2012.  To understand why recreating 1968 benefits the hard left, one needs to properly understand the events of 1969.  In 1969, Richard Nixon assumed the Presidency following the Biggest Expansion of Government (prior to Obama) in American History.  Nixon's inauguration was followed shortly thereafter by Leftist Campus Takeovers, the Emergence of the Weathermen, Homosexual Attacks on the NYPD, the Manson Murders, and the Marxist-inspired 'Days of Rage.'  Against this backdrop, and a continuing War in Vietnam, conservative efforts to unwind Medicare and the War on Poverty floundered.  From the perspective of the Hard Left, which seeks to expand government and does not particularly care who holds elected office at any given time, 1969 (and Richard Nixon's entire Presidency) was an unqualified victory.

At CPAC 2011, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said the left "need only play good defense.  The federal spending commitments now in place will bring about the leviathan state they have always sought.   The health care travesty now on the books will engulf private markets and produce a single-payer system or its equivalent, and it won?t take long to happen."  Conservatives MUST remember this fact as we move forward into 2012 and beyond.  Between Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and Automatic Defense Cuts, Barack Obama's fundamental transformation of America is already law.  During the coming chaos, whether it's in the form of #Occupy Related Violence, Drug Cartel Violence, a shooting war in the Middle East or any other source, the Federal Bureaucracy will continue business as usual.  Under current law, business as usual will entrench Barack Obama's fundamental transformation.  That's one of the reasons we should expect the coming chaos to continue (at least) into 2014 which is, NOT coincidentally, the year Obamacare goes into full effect.

Fortunately, the coming chaos is a surmountable challenge.  The key, for conservatives, is to recognize the coming chaos for what it really is and act accordingly.  That means electing to Congress committed conservatives who will enact conservative legislation NO MATTER WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING IN THE WORLD.

The coming chaos is deliberate, and Barack Obama and the Hard Left are behind it.  Their goal is to distract and confuse the new administration in 2013 the same way the hard left did to Richard Nixon in 1969.  Forewarned is forearmed and, as long as a conservative Congress is willing to move forward no matter what, they will fail....