Steve Patterson: A Bill Powers crony hire

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

With Steve Patterson on the way out, it's worth remembering how he came in:

In November 2013, Texas took an unconventional tact and hired Arizona State’s Steve Patterson as its athletic director. The move confused officials around college sports, as Patterson’s reputation was unproven in college circles and unpopular in professional ones.

Patterson’s Texas tenure came to an unceremonious and inevitable end Tuesday, with a source telling SI.com that the terms of his firing are expected to be finalized by the end of the day. The 22-month Patterson era—formalized as an error today—provides a cautionary tale of what happens when university officials defy common sense and try to outsmart convention. When it flops, you look that much dumber.

The issues with Texas’ antiquated athletic department, struggling football program and current leadership void can all be traced back to the arrogance, obliviousness and apathy of the school’s administrative decision makers.

....

New Texas president Gregory Fenves, who was hired in June, finds himself having to clean up the errors of his predecessor, Bill Powers. It was Powers and the hiring committee who Patterson charmed with his dynamic in-person interview to prompt them to make the surprise hire. They couldn’t have whiffed worse.

The above report is from Sports Illustrated, a national source.  It does a good job outlining the facts, but it misses underlying dynamics someone more familiar with U.T. politics would catch.  About "Bill Powers' hiring committee":

According to sources, the recommendation of UT's search firm - Korn/Ferry International - was then-West Virginia AD Oliver Luck. Patterson was an outside candidate recommended to former Texas president Bill Powers by Jeff Hunt, a Texas graduate working as the paid media consultant to the Pac-12, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott and the Pac-12 Network.

Hunt used to be a partner with Paul Walker in Pulse Point, an Austin-based consulting group contracted by Powers' office beginning in 2010 (under Walker's name) for a fee of roughly $300,000 per year before Pulse Point was sold in 2013, sources said.

Hunt, not listed anywhere on the UT payroll, is now Patterson's closest confidante and helped plan the 2015 football season ticket renewal package as well as a survey of the media that led to the firing of longtime Texas sports information director John Bianco, sources said.

And who, pray tell, are Paul Walker and Pulse Point consulting; from a letter contained in the appendix to the 2014 Rusty Hardin report:

Bottom Line: If you were looking for a connection between cronyism in the admissions process and the under-performance of the athletic department, here's your smoking gun; at this point, we wouldn't be surprised to learn Joe Straus had written Steve Patterson a letter of recommendation.

Bless His Heart: Rusty Hardin's $1,350 E-Mail

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Isaiah 5:20

Well, it looks like the "bloody, poisoned dwarf" is up to his old tricks:

Rusty Hardin, the attorney who drew up a report on reasons to impeach University of Texas regent Wallace Hall, turned in his first invoice in more than seven months Monday, despite terms of his contract requiring monthly billing.

Hardin stopped submitting bills after his Dec. 6 invoice was widely criticized for its excesses. Newspapers around the state expressed shock that Hardin’s firm had run up more than $200,000 in charges in just 10 weeks from late August through October.

His new bill covers November 2013, and adds another $93,728.66 to the tally, keeping him on pace to bill around $700,000 for seven and a half months’ work. Hardin’s contract expired March 31.

One associate billed 18 hours over three days at $100 per hour for preparing some binders and uploading materials to Dropbox, a file-sharing service. Save the cracks about old dial-up modems. If you estimate the file size for all 150,000 pages Hardin reviewed at around 56GB, it might take somewhere around 18 hours to upload, using a 2G phone connection.

....

Hardin has accused Hall of creating a burden for the University of Texas with his records reviews, but Hall’s five public information requests have generated around 3,000 pages of paperwork. He’s also reviewed some 100,000 pages of paperwork prepared for others.

Hardin, in contrast, has needed more than 150,000 pages, by his own estimate.

 Read the whole thing here.

Rusty Hardin: Joe Straus' (and Bill Powers') "Bloody, Poisoned, Dwarf"

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"
Isaiah 5:20

Marxists follow patterns.  Their power built on lies, they must demonize the truth.  Enemies of the state must be eliminated.  What was true for Soviet Russia in 1937 applies equally to the University of Texas in 2014.  In the 'purifying' thunderstorm of Soviet 'justice' that is the Wallace Hall impeachment, Rusty Hardin is Nikolai Yezhov.

Rusty Hardin's 'report' is an astonishing, though strangely entertaining, act of chutzpah.  Using innuendo and petulance, the $157,000 (and counting) 'report' concludes that Wallace Hall is a big meanie: "Hall acted like a roving inspector general in search of a problem rather than a solution." (2)  Specifically, the 'report' charges Hall with making people work late, 'violating' irrelevant federal privacy laws, being mean to Bill Powers, and demanding basic financial accountability as grounds for impeachment.  We haven't heard a powerful, politically-connected, Texan whine this much since we were last in a room with Jim Keffer.  But at least Rusty Hardin got his 30 pieces of silver.

Hardin echoes Jim Pitts' original resolution that Hall made "numerous unreasonably burdensome, wasteful, and intrusive requests for information" (44)  Waaah!!!  The 'report' shrieks for 30 pages about Hall's supposed misdeeds.  Examples include: making people work late (49), personally visiting campus (55), meeting with the Office of the Attorney General (59), sayin' mean stuff (61), that "have negatively impacted employee morale" (79).  Sounds to us like due diligence.

Hardin's greatest slight of hand, however, concerns Hall's alleged abuse of 'confidential' information while investigating improper relationships between the UT administration and state legislators Jim Pitts and Judith Zaffirini.  At issue is an interpretation of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974.  In the gray area of FERPA interpretation, Hardin uses a convenient standard set by the U.S. Department that contradicts directly with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the 2002 Case Owasso Independent School District vs. Falvo.  The Court ruled unanimously that only an institution, not an individual, can violate FERPA, reducing Hardin's argument to legalistic sophistry.  A conservative lawyer with whom we spoke described this section as "sloppy" to the point "I would be embarrassed to put my name on it."

Of course, Wallace Hall's greatest 'transgression' is that he was mean to poor Bill Powers.  Following revelations about corruption at the UT Law School, "Hall's focus tightened on former law school dean Powers and what Hall perceived as Powers' failings." (117)   This January, following Powers' questionable testimony to the impeachment committee, "Hall sent [former U.T. Chancellor Francisco] Cigarroa a lengthy and detailed critique of President Powers's [sic] sworn testimony." (87)  He even had the nerve to follow up two weeks later!!! (88)  Clearly, Wallace Hall is worse than parents who eat their children's Halloween candy:



UT's most serious malfeasance, however, concerns the $215 million software donation scandal.  In 2007 and 2010, UT's geology department received valuable in-kind donations from a third party, which they counted towards their capital campaign using a favorable interpretation of a legal grey area.  In 2011, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) explicitly closed the loophole.  Caught with their pants down, UT panicked (93).  Hall refused to acquiesce to the cover-up (98).  Hall was eventually proven correct (95).  Clearly, the solution is to get rid of Wallace Hall.

An old legal cliche states: "[W]hen the law is on your side, argue the law.  When the facts are on your side, argue the facts.  When neither the law nor the facts are on your side, pound the table."  Rusty Hardin's 'report' pounds...something.  It combines the precise legal analysis of Joseph Stalin with the rhetorical subtlety of Khrushchev at the United Nations.  But the University of Texas is the biggest special interest in this state, and enemies of Bill Powers and Joe Straus must be punished.  FORWARD fellow comrades!!!

History Lesson: Meet Nikolai Yezhov

"and every spirit that does not confess that[a] Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world."
1 John 4:3

 We know this post seems off-topic, but if readers indulge us it will make sense shortly.

During the purges of the 1930's, Nikolai Yeshov was Joseph Stalin's primary hatchet man:

As a devout Stalinist and not a member of the organs of state security, Yezhov was just the man Stalin needed to intensify the terror and rid Stalin of potential opponents. Yezhov's first task from Stalin was to personally investigate and conduct the prosecution of his long-time Chekist mentor Yagoda, which he did with remorseless zeal. Ordered by Stalin to create a suitably grandiose plot for Yagoda's show trial, Yezhov ordered the NKVD to sprinkle mercury on the curtains of his office so that the physical evidence could be collected and used to support the charge that Yagoda was a German spy, sent to assassinate Yezhov and Stalin with poison and restore capitalism. [Emphasis Added]

From ExecutedToday.com:

From late 1936, when he eliminated his predecessor Genrikh Yagoda (later executed, of course), until his own fall from power in at the end of 1938, Yezhov presided over the apex of Stalinist terror, averaging hundreds of political killings daily — perhaps north of 600,000 for the two-year period, plus a like number disappeared into the Gulag’s freezers. (Just browse this here site’s ’1937′ tag for a taste.)

From Cyber USSR:

A complete nonentity, whose name, during the brief period of his administration, evoked horror throughout the entire country and entered history in the word "Ezhovshchina" [a curiously bland term, perhaps "the Yezhov thing" --HSC]. He was raised to power by Stalin for the specific purpose of setting up a bloodbath. In the Soviet press, he was called the "Iron Commissar," but among the people he was named the "bloody dwarf." [Ezhov was only 154 cm tall, about 5'1". Two other famous Russians of comparably short height were Nikita Khrushchev and Alexander Pushkin --HSC] According to those who knew him well, toward the end of his administration, he was totally dependent on narcotics.

More on the Poisoned (or bloody) dwarf:



Yeshov later fell from grace (hard), which was its own story, but for our purposes it's important to remember that he was Stalin's chosen agent for digging up dirt on enemies of the state.

Wendy Davis' filibuster, Wallace Hall's Impeachment, and Joe Straus

"When the wicked arise, men hide themselves;
But when they perish, the righteous increase."
Proverbs 28:28

As a glutton for punishment, we are in the process of reading Rusty Hardin's "report" recommending Wallace Hall's impeachment; so far, the report is as big of a fiasco as one would expect, but one detail stands out:

As you can see from the picture, Joe Straus launched this fiasco on June 25, 2013.

What other event, pray tell, happened at the Texas Capitol on June 25, 2013?!?  (HINT: We were there.)

That's right: Abortion Barbie's filibuster!!!

That Joe Straus launched this crusade in the middle of Abortion Barbie's filibuster tells you everything you need to know about both Joe Straus and this impeachment fiasco....

Joe Straus, Bill Powers, and the Texas Supreme Court: Meet Rusty Hardin

Occasionally, one detail reveals everything.

Over the past few days, Cahnman's Musings has taken an increasingly firm position against shenanigans in Texas Supreme Court races.  Late this morning, we discovered a connection between those shenanigans and the ongoing fiasco called the Wallace Hall impeachment "process."  Meet Rusty Hardin.

Rusty Hardin is a criminal defense attorney from Houston who has previously represented upstanding citizens like Roger Clemens and Joel Osteen's wife.   He's Joe Straus' handpicked choice to cover Bill Powers' backside in various UT corruption scandals.  As the Texas Tribune reported last August:

For help with its ongoing investigation of Regent Wallace Hall, the House Select Committee on Transparency in State Agency Operations has turned to prominent Houston attorney Rusty Hardin, who'll serve as its special counsel.

At the end of the summer's first special session, Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, expanded the committee's authority to allow it consider articles of impeachment against gubernatorial appointees.

....

If the committee determines that impeachment is warranted in Hall's case, Hardin will be called upon to help the lawmakers put the articles together and present them to the House. If a majority of that body is convinced and votes in favor of proceeding with the process, the Senate will convene as a court of impeachment.

Which brings us to the Texas Supreme court races.

The fault line in the Texas Supreme court races is trial lawyers vs. Rick Perry.  One of the trial lawyer backed candidates is Sharon McCally.  Earlier today, Cahnman's Musings received a copy of this advertisement on behalf of McCally that appeared in the LINK letter, a pay-to-play endorsement sheet in Houston:

Mccally and Hardin

It's difficult to see on the full page, but if you click on the magnifying glass icon with the plus sign, you can see that Rusty Hardin is also Sharon McCally's campaign treasurer.

According to records filed with the Texas Ethics commission Hardin got the Campaign Treasurer gig on October 15:

00054943 JCOH McCally, Sharon S. Supreme Court Justice Pl 08 10/15/2013 Court of Appeals Justice Dist 014 Pl 02

In other words, the people promoting 'challenger' candidates in the Texas Supreme court races are also driving the Wallace Hall impeachment.

There's nothing illegal or unethical about this.  Lawyers can represent any client they choose.  But there are clearly overlapping social circles within the business as usual crowd.

Joe Straus and Bill Powers' designated dirt digger on the Wallace Hall smear campaign is also helping trial lawyers unseat Rick Perry's Texas Supreme court appointees.  While investigating Wallace Hall, Rusty Hardin also got the gig with Sharon McNally.  The fact that Joe Straus, Bill Powers, and the people promoting the Texas Supreme court challenger candidates use the same lawyers is VERY revealing.