Texans For Texas || Action Update - Issue 74

Action Update - Issue 74 :: July 3, 2006

dollars

Flamboyant Giving

Compassion is not measured by government spending
By Mary Katherine Stout

Texas Public Policy Foundation

Preeminent economist and social commentator Thomas Sowell once described the welfare state as “the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.”

Sowell’s words were brought to life in recent weeks by the United States Government Accountability Office’s audit of the FEMA hurricane disaster relief boondoggle. Indeed, it seems that government’s flamboyant generosity was matched only by the flamboyance with which it was exploited by recipients.

According to the June 2006 audit, debit cards provided to those displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were used to purchase all manner of adult entertainment, jewelry, vacations, spirits, and the services of a divorce lawyer in Houston, among other things. The auditors add their seemingly deadpan conclusion that such expenses were “not necessary to satisfy legitimate disaster needs.”

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YOU WON'T READ THIS IN MANY MAJOR NEWSPAPERS
Ronnie Earle's Case Falling Apart

(Read it on the back page of the classifieds!)
From the Lone Star Report:

Indictment of Texas Association of Business quashed!

District Attorney, Ronnie Earle, could not even get his campaign finance indictment of the Texas Association of Business past state district court in Travis County, normally a friendly venue for Earle’s political prosecutions.

Travis County Dist. Judge Mike Lynch quashed the indictment of the Texas Association of Business June 29. Quashing the indictment means Travis County Dist. Atty. Ronnie Earle cannot prosecute the Texas Association of Business. Lynch ruled that Earle had not alleged a violation of the penal code in the indictment of the TAB.

Earle sought to prosecute the TAB for using corporate funds to conduct a voter education campaign that did not involve “express advocacy,” words that ask a voter to vote for or against a specific candidate.

TAB conducted this voter education campaign in the 2002 primaries and general elections. The mailers praised incumbents with good voting records on TAB’s issues and bashed candidates who opposed TAB’s positions. But it stopped short of calling for the election or defeat of a candidate.

Earle called this a back-door corporate contribution to the 2002 election. TAB argued its actions were protected by the First Amendment.

In the end, Lynch decided criminal court was no place to resolve this campaign finance issue. “The District Attorney, as he eloquently stated at multiple hearings, fervently believes the Defendant has unfairly attempted to subvert the free electoral process,” Lynch wrote.

“It is not this court’s job, nor does the Court in this decision reach any judgment on that view. Even assuming he is correct, these statutes and this indictment aren’t equipped to do the job. You simply cannot make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear.”

This is yet another example of Earle’s political prosecutions collapsing in court. Almost all of the elected officials whose careers Earle ended, folded before Earle took them to trial. Like Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas Association of Business chose to ask for its day in court.

Group's 'issue ads' legal, judge rules