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Archive for October 27th, 2010

State Rep Kino Flores found GUILTY, exposes holes in our Texas campaign finance and ethics laws

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

From the Statesman:

A Travis County jury today found South Texas lawmaker Kino Flores guilty of multiple counts of tampering with a governmental record and perjury in connection with omissions Flores made on financial disclosure forms required to be filed by state elected officials.

Flores, a 14-year state representative, was convicted of five counts of misdemeanor tampering with a governmental record, four counts of felony tampering with a governmental record and two counts of misdemeanor perjury.

***“This verdict represents the public saying to public officials that they expect elected officials to maintain the highest ethical standards,” Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said. “That accurate and full public disclosure is an important part of public service and that the public will not accept excuses like ‘I was too busy’ or ‘I just didn’t know.’”

Flores was found guilty of two counts of tampering with government records with the intent to harm or defraud the state for failing to report on the forms income that he was accused of receiving from a list of businesses in 2002 and 2003. He was also found guilty of the felony tampering for failing to report his son’s job with the Capitol lobby firm HillCo Partners.

The jury found that he did not intend to harm or defraud by failing to report a list of properties he owned on financial disclosure firms, including a Guadalupe Street condominium. Because of that lack of intent, the jury found the tampering with a governmental record counts related to those charges are misdemeanors.

Flores’ lawyers argued that he did not intend to omit the properties on the forms and dismissed some of the omissions as clerical errors. They argued that he was not obligated under the law to report the income because he was working as a consultant.

What’s important here is not what he was convicted for, but what he was NOT convicted for.  As the article says, this case basically amounted to “clerical errors” but this still stinks to high heaven.  Unfortunately, (and probably by design) we have a State Ethics Commission which is relatively toothless and whose only major enforcement actions are for paperwork violations. Kind of like this:

When lawmakers are given gifts or even campaign donations, there are obvious strings attached.  We ought to ban all gift-giving from lobbyists, etc and move to a system of full public financing of elections so the public can be absolutely certain no favors are being traded.

Otherwise, we just have a system where as long as they’re telling us they’re taking bribes and fill out the proper paperwork, it’s ok.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Election spending by outside groups is concentrated and hidden, new Public Citizen analysis shows

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Cross-posted from our mother blog at CitizenVox. We don’t normally cross-post much because we’d prefer you to read their blog just as much as ours, but if you’re not, please add them to your rss feed now!

Of the $176.1 million spent by outside groups using large, often undisclosed contributions to influence the current elections, just 10 groups are responsible for the bulk of the spending, according to a new analysis released today by Public Citizen.

What’s more, 59.9 percent of the money comes from undisclosed sources. Of those contributions that have been disclosed, nearly two-thirds has come from just 0.12 percent of the contributors. The analysis of data from Public Citizen’s Stealth PACs database shows that:

  • Those groups have spent $176.1 million. Of that, $114.6 million, or 65 percent, was spent by only 10 groups.
  • From the 10 groups, money spent on behalf of Republicans has outpaced money spent on behalf of Democrats $79.4 million to $28.5 million.
  • Five groups have spent money on more than 35 races each. Eleven groups have spent money on more than 20 races each.
  • Eighty groups have not disclosed any information about the sources of their money. These groups have spent $105.4 million of the $176.1 million total. Only $70.7 million of the spending – just 40.1 percent – has come from disclosed sources.
  • Thirty groups have entered the fray for the first time in 2010 in the past two weeks.

“Outside group funding is shaking the foundations of our electoral democracy, but the situation is far worse than it seems at first blush,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “A tiny number of organizations, relying on a tiny number of corporate and fat cat contributors, are spending most of the money on the vicious attack ads dominating the airwaves. The vast majority of donors remain hidden behind a veil of secrecy, in many cases of doubtful legality. The biggest surge in funding will come in the next week. And this election cycle’s spending is merely a prelude to something far worse in 2012. The trigger for all this was the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United; the key to repairing our democracy is a constitutional amendment to undo the decision.”

The analysis includes charts identifying the groups spending the most to influence this year’s elections, the groups engaged in the most contests, the races that have been the subject of the most outside spending and the contests focused on by the independent groups that have sprung up in the past two weeks.

The Stealth PACs site allows users to search the expenditures and limited contribution data of independent groups that are intervening in this year’s elections using contributions of more than $5,000 or undisclosed contributions.

The site also enumerates the outside groups’ expenditures on each race, discloses the vendors and other recipients of expenditures of $1,000 or more, and provides links to the FEC filings on expenditure data.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Foreign Oil Companies Fund Climate-Skeptic Congressional Candidates

Posted in Campaign Finance, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, green jobs, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

We were right when we said the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case was going to have a negative impact on the political system in this country. The ruling has paved the way to make mid-term election campaigns the only growing industry in this economic crisis. The ruling has turned candidates’ focus from the policy to their pockets.

One of the issues that has fallen victim to the mid-term elections is the legislation to address climate change and regulate the energy industry. It was one of Obama’s main objectives on the campaign to cut emissions and provide incentives to renewable energy.  But as election approached, Congress backed out of its commitment to this issue.

A European-based organization, Climate Action Network (CANE) released a report that shows European energy companies are paying contributions to Tea Party Candidates and other Congressional candidates who have denied climate-change is even occuring and have been outspoken against regulating the energy industry.

Remember Oklahoma’s Senator James Inhofe? He thinks Environmentalists are out there to scare people and proclaims that “Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and because of this “special” remark, he qualified to be one of the recipients of campaign funds from Europe’s biggest emitters. Inhofe is not the only one, many others in Congress have made some similar funny comments that got them some money. Montana’s Roy Blunt is another skeptic. made a blunt comment discrediting science on climate change, “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.” this is more ridiculous than Montana’s law which makes it illegal to “have a sheep in the cab of your truck without a chaperone” but despite that, Blunts comments has put him as one of the top ten recipients from two of these companies.

Those companies, Such as BP(who is responsible for the US worst Environmental disaster), BASF (which spent $50,500 to block cap-and-trade), and others generally have two objectives: one is to stall and block climate change/energy reform legislation in the United States, second is to use that as an excuse to tell the European countries not to introduce such legislation. The companies who are funding those climate-skeptic candidates are based in countries  such as Germany, France, UK, and Belgium (so much for those candidates’ being anti-socialist).

In a time when the president has gone all the way to teaming up with Mythbusters to encourage American kids about math and science, our representatives are doing their best at discrediting them.  Climate Change is one issue that should cross partisan lines. I think every human being can agree that we need continue our existence on this planet and maintain it for the next generations. Al Gore says that in order for clean-energy advocates to achieve climate-friendly and renewable energy legislation, they need to get into the lobbying business just as the dirty energy lobbyist.

I disagree.

I think we need to reform the relationship between lobbyist and Congress. We shouldn’t need to write serious checks in order to get things done in this country.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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CALIFORNIA PUSHES BACK AGAINST TEXAS

Posted in Campaign Finance, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, green jobs, Renewables, solar, tagged , , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Supporters of a California law designed to battle climate change are pushing back against money from Texas oil and gas interests that’s helping to fund an initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot in the Golden State that would roll back some of the law’s provisions

Starring David Arquette – Written & Directed by Matthew Cooke – Produced by Gabe Cowen – Executive Produced by Peter Glatzer and Adrian Grenier.

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