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Apparently a few rideshare apps went down for awhile today, and now every tech blog is smug about how Austin could never live without Uber/Lyft and this proves we need them back right now.
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Mar 13, 2017 06:19
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skipdogg posted:I'm in San Antonio, and while we're not going to get hit head on, it's very possible we could be without power for a couple days. People here aren't taking this poo poo serious at all. I was a kid when Andrew hit Louisiana, and my wife went through Katrina, I know we're not in serious danger where we live, but we're still prepared. I don't even think it was taken seriously enough down by the coast either. We're up in Austin, but my girlfriend's extended family lives in Corpus Christi and almost all stayed down there. I've heard 40% of Rockport stayed in town too.
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Aug 26, 2017 05:18
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Dameius posted:League of Women Voters is always doing non-partisan voter registration and engagement. I worked for them in college organizing and directing voter engagement and registration in college and got several thousands of people registered. They run pretty lean, so just showing up and being willing to do something will get you far. Seconding. I am in LWV Austin area and we are always recruiting for different events. We have voter deputy registrar sign-ups for events though, but if you get on the mailing list it's easy to sign-up. Right now LWV Austin and the Tax Office are trying to get people to do door-to-door outreach (with a coordinated system they have), and their next training is August 4th. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080944a9ad2da4f49-doortodoor1 Indivisible Texas and JOLT Texas (Focused on Latino voters) also do voter registration events. You do have to be a voter deputy registrar for the county of the person you're registering, but getting into a class or testing out is easy. Feel free to PM me for more information.
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Jul 26, 2018 05:51
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I would wonder more about rural parts of Texas and how they would fare under a shift away from oil and gas, rather than looking at the cities. Coming from Oklahoma, what has always struck me as different is that at least the major Texas metropolitan areas have diversified their industries away from just oil and gas. I grew up in an oil town that lost its Big Oil headquarters to Houston, and the whole state of Oklahoma seems to live and die by oil. That's why the state is struggling right now.
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Dec 5, 2018 01:29
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Lightning Knight posted:I'm on track to move to Texas some time next week. Austin goonmeet has existed off and on for years. There's probably other city-oriented goonmeets here and there, but echoing the other sentiments that doing a statewide one would be really hard. It's hard to even keep the momentum going for city-wide goonmeets in Texas, since it can take an hour to cross Austin in bad traffic.
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Dec 29, 2018 06:33
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No Safe Word posted:Honestly, it's not that bad. Most bills are one or two-pagers at most. It gets really weird/hairy when they're replacing large blocks and adding stuff in the middle and ... it can be daunting, but a cursory look at things is pretty quick (I just searched "SB 476" on the state gov site and I assume zoux did too, e: oh yeah the link is right in the post). I don't know, man. My literal full-time job requires me to follow legislation around a specific issue area as part of advocacy, and with 100+ bills coming out a day some days it's really hard to track, and some of them are confusing as hell. You have to train your brain to read some of them and be patient. I've interned at the legislature though, and the process for submitting a draft request felt too easy during the interim. Like, you really could just send a sentence or a news article and expect them to figure it out (didn't do that myself). That said, you would still have a lot of questions, they might not capture what you're going for, and it will take them so much more time to get it back to you. As an advocate during session at this moment though, I pretty much have to show up with a draft of bill language already in hand for an office to even consider my idea. On that note, this Friday is the deadline to get anything submitted to that legislative council, so make your demands now.
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Feb 14, 2019 05:01
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zoux posted:What specific issue is generating 100 bills per day I meant overall bills to filter through. We had 99 bills come out today, 182 yesterday.
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Feb 14, 2019 06:04
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TropicalCoke posted:Yeah Confederate wheelchair is in the cafeteria every time I'm in there. Not really sure what hes there for since I never see him in a committee room - to show support for are president I see him in the cafeteria all the time too lately. Apparently he testified in House State Affairs against immigration tonight. https://twitter.com/_RebeccaMarques/status/1118737887028232193
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Apr 18, 2019 07:33
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TropicalCoke posted:The State Affairs committee is always brutal though. They deserve it It's the worst committee. It's where most bad bills originate. And they picked like...at least 4 different controversial topics last night to cover - abortion, confederacy, immigration, and LGBTQ rights. It was a given it would go until the morning. Just pick one infuriating topic at a time, State Affairs. zoux posted:https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1118704805269078016 I have a colleague and friend who advocates for sex trafficking survivors as someone who has survived it, and she's been doing great work this session on the topic. I don't know her thoughts on it, but that's been my fear with the focus on human trafficking this session. I work on mental health advocacy where a lot of legislators (especially senate) only talk about it in the context of school shootings.
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Apr 18, 2019 19:40
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/1126986174260752385 Everything about this vote on Thursday and Friday on HB 2754 was the weirdest thing I saw on the House floor this session. So much misinformation on a good bill.
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May 11, 2019 07:25
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No Safe Word posted:Yeah for me it's I just don't want to support the Cathy family (the founders) because they are definitely anti-LGBT, but at the same time the local joint I go to has really great people and they do an amazing job so I'm happy to still go there on occasion though perhaps less than I might otherwise. I think this bill is just a larger trend of awful "religious freedom" bills that sound innocuous and defensible to a lot of people, or like a small change, but have the power to really marginalize LGBTQ folks. The "religious freedom" foster care bill last session destroyed any progress in DFPS on helping LGBTQ kids, who are disproportionately represented in foster care and in homelessness, but I've seen people outside of foster care who still believe was just about helping individual foster parents who are religious. As a member of the LGBTQ community, I have been more bothered by people who only started loving Chik-Fil-A when the anti-LGBTQ stuff came out, including my mother. I get we all support problematic businesses in some way or another (and the local owner may be fine), but it's hard to be comfortable with Chik-Fil-A now when it's held up as this symbol of "owning the libs". I don't personally spend my own money at the restaurant, but I don't talk about it much either beyond feeling uncomfortable with that mentality. We have lost ground as a community from these kinds of laws, so I don't agree with narratives that this is just political theatre. Religious freedom bills have real consequences. I don't know if this bill was definitely the worst one, but I definitely worry about consequences beyond CFA.
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May 16, 2019 19:43
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It was just voted out of House State Affairs this morning, so I still wouldn't assume it's totally dead.
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May 17, 2019 16:31
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zoux posted:Nothing is until the session is over but when the Speaker of the House says it ain't likely, believe him. Now it has to go to the calendars committee to be placed on the general state calendar, and where it gets placed is going to matter a whole lot. SB 1978 is now on the House's Major State Calendar for Monday. It took one week from the senate committee hearing to the House floor for this bill, and this morning it hadn't even been considered in House committee. If someone with power wants something like this done and the Speaker supports it too, then it'll happen.
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May 18, 2019 05:55
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We're now in an hour plus recess after Stickland called a Point of Order on SB 10. Senate is also taking recess.
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May 22, 2019 01:09
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/lmcgaughy/status/1130991167049478145 Everything about this is weird. Emergency item by governor, every single senator signed on, has $100 million appropriation, immediately moved through senate, languished in House for two months, then was only scheduled for House floor on last day not on the Major State Calendar or at the top of the general state calendar. We were very strongly in support of SB 10. It was extremely important to the mental health advocates/medical community, to the senate/governor's office. We didn't really have student mental health in the budget because the senate was going all in on this. I'm sure they'll find a way to revive this on the senate side somehow, but it's hard to overstate how much of a must-pass this bill was.
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May 22, 2019 03:14
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zoux posted:Im sure you’re watching too but they’re about to stick this on SB 11 over the hysterical objections of sticklord One of my close colleagues worked on that SB 11 amendment (we worked on this bill a lot), so we were terrified about the removal and confused why Rep. Stickland was nervous. Now at least we know the plan. This is amazing to watch in the last hour. Entire House against Stickland.
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May 22, 2019 05:03
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zoux posted:Goddamn they moved the previous question on his rear end That was a work of art. Probably worth watching the whole fight more than once.
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May 22, 2019 05:34
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TropicalCoke posted:Stickland called another point of order on SB 11. Here we go again This was inevitable. And it's been overruled, on the same reason as yesterday.
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May 22, 2019 20:10
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zoux posted:I often wonder that myself but I think it's the same poo poo that a lot of people voted for Trump over: gently caress government. And then just a lot of people who are gonna pull the R lever no matter what. He's not here to pass bills, he's here to be a nuisance and the Empower Texans set loves it, you should've seen them whining on Twitter last night. Also he's appealing to a specific crackpot constituency. In this specific instance, they believe that mental health is an illuminati conspiracy and actually the number one cause of school shootings is anti-depressants, so they love Stickland for his antics. Having worked on these bills all session...if y'all don't follow, "parental rights" and "parental consent" has been the strategy scientologists (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) and "concerned mom" groups have been using all session. They will throw it out there, and fearmongering around medication, regardless of what is in the bill and try to scare everyone, but if a legislator goes out of their way to include parental protections or not talk about medication, it's still never enough. Because they don't actually argue in good faith - they just don't believe mental health issues are real. Rep. Stickland is just leaning into that. And the "90% of school shooters were on anti-depressants" stuff gets said all the time by the scientologists and their allies, to the point where I think more people are starting to think it's real. They managed to briefly get an amendment onto SB 1390, the suicide prevention in schools bill, that would have required teachers to teach children in the health classes that psych meds cause suicide and violent behavior. It was removed in the House, and the scientologists were furious. I get stalling or killing bills through points of order on ideology across parties, but when it's literally just one guy versus everyone else in the government and stakeholders, and his reasoning is based on "gently caress government" and nothing...argh.
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May 22, 2019 20:35
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zoux posted:Lol I just checked to see which Senator put that amendment on there and of course it's Bob "EMP" Hall Yep! That made it a lot easier for it to leave the bill ASAP on the House side.
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May 22, 2019 20:40
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zoux posted:The Chick Fil A bill is like the Platonic example of that phenomenon. I'm fairly skeptical about the real world impact as y'all know but any impact is absolutely dwarfed by the coverage it got. And it's because it's a slam dunk as far as getting engagement: "What did you here the crazy libs are trying to ban Chick Fil A" versus "What did you hear the rethuglicans are trying to make it illegal to sell chicken sandwiches to LGBT people" and then they share the tweet with their echo chamber. So I didn't realize until this week that SB 1978 filed before that city council decision was ever made. The House author of the companion and bill sponsor said as much on Evan Smith's podcast. So it actually wasn't a reaction to Chick-Fil-A so much as just one of a large number of religious freedom bills that were introduced this session. Most of the other bills were moving at one point or another, so it was likely one of them was going to pass. Reading SB 1978, it was definitely not the most dangerous of those bills at this point since it doesn't explicitly say based on the person's beliefs, but it remains to be seen if it will have negative consequences. The other bills that received hearings were about preventing the government from taking literally any action, including denying contracts or licenses, against entities that were discriminating based on their beliefs. That included denying mental health services, emergency or otherwise, based on religious beliefs. Last session, we had the equivalent for foster care for HB 3859, religious freedom for foster care placements/providers. It was made out of simply limit the adoption agency options for gay couples (not great, but not as devastating), but what it really did was strip out rights of LGBTQ youth in foster care and the rights for foster care teens who needed contraception to be able to access it. Not only does a family or group care placement now not have to take in an LGBTQ youth or youth on birth control, the CPS caseworker also can't choose to not place a child with that family or group care placement based on these concerns. And there's no mechanism for the CPS caseworker to fully determine if a family or group care placement have these issues (beyond past experience). That's not theoretical. LGBTQ kids in Texas are disproportionately represented in foster care, and when I worked with them those kids had traumatic histories with anti-LGBTQ families or placements. Girls in foster care are also disproportionately way more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, and there's not really many placements to keep teen moms and babies together in foster care, so them not being able to stay on birth control just repeats the cycle. HB 3859 made it worse for a lot of kids in foster care. So I'd just be cautious to label it as meaningless, especially when SB 1978 is passed after a ton of these kinds of bills were getting hearings. Religious freedom has been the consistent code language now that it's harder to pass explicitly anti-LGBTQ laws.
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May 24, 2019 19:27
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zoux posted:The Chick Fil A framing certainly helped it along. It wouldn't be getting Fox News segments from Laura Ingraham if it was just another RFRA bill. I'm not arguing that sincerely held beliefs/religious liberty bills aren't sneaky vehicles for anti-LGBT legislation, that's demonstrably true. Agreed. My point is that I think they wanted to pass a RFRA bill this session, and this was the only one that both had a narrative and was worded in a way that made it read as safer than the others. I guess at this point it's speculation on if they would have passed another one of these if SB 1978 had not been there and the Chick-Fil-A narrative wasn't available. I've also heard though that the San Antonio decision was largely about not wanting a business that was closed on Sundays due to traveler needs, but then one council member after the fact commented on their charitable giving. The one thing I'm most uncomfortable with on RFRAs is us giving tax dollars or benefits to entities providing fewer services or services to fewer people based on religious beliefs over other entities. HB 3172 was on that hearing schedule too. That ridiculous hearing went until like..8am the next morning. I don't know why they didn't just pick one bad topic and stick to it that night.
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May 24, 2019 20:15
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zoux posted:Like I said, that hearing was for red meat issues for both parties. There were like 3 SB 4 repealers, it was strictly for press releases. The fact that 3172 was on that slate only reinforces my belief that this was not a priority issue or one that was meant to pass. Only one other bill on that agenda even got so much as a vote in committee. I still don't buy that there wasn't a drive to pass one of these RFRAs this session, and it's not really fair to put the blame on Democrats for fighting it. We've seen major national trends towards passing RFRAs, and we easily passed one last session. It gets a lot of press attention and party credibility, but that doesn't mean there's not intentions to see it pass. It was clearly a priority on the Senate side with SB 17 moving it within the week. And not allowing protections for LGBTQ people to be added onto SB 1978 made it clear it was a coded discrimination bill. And I will agree on that the headliner for that story was really misleading because of what he said, when the charities named are not highly political. That doesn't change the implications of this law for everything else. But it's also aggravating that local governments are always having to interact with a highly reactive state government, and then getting blamed for passing any laws that impact their own jurisdictions (the rideshare regulations in 2017, for example). State regulations are fine and good, but we shouldn't be basing all of these major laws on "a city said or did one thing we didn't like, now we need rapid overhaul to take away their power to do x, y, and z." If you're arguing about that specific city councilman, sure. I think considering we now have an LGBTQ caucus fighting this, that hardly seems like a fame-seeking endeavor. And it seems bizarre to target the left on this. The House Democrats have worked pretty aggressively on sound public policy, especially around Medicaid expansion, benefits, and maternal health, and gotten stonewalled because of Dan Patrick's priorities and the Republican need to oppose Medicaid expansion. Passing these flashy anti-abortion, RFRA, anti-PP, anti-election fraud laws are about these Republican legislators getting seen as acting on these culture war issues. I don't buy that they wouldn't seek media attention if it wasn't being given to them, and I don't buy that it wouldn't pass if Democrats didn't raise attention to them or fight them.
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May 24, 2019 21:08
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TropicalCoke posted:Someone earlier called it a paperboy legislature and man are they correct Bringing this back because as I'm finishing up my first session, it's alarming to me how much of that building is run by actual 20-year olds. And how clumsy the process is that a single legislator could kill a $100 million governor emergency item over some information missing in the paperwork for the bill, not even the bill itself, and the only way it was saved was from an amendment added at the last minute (that was actually really hard to get them to agree to add beforehand).
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May 25, 2019 17:35
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zoux posted:Now realize it's the same in every state house and congress too! Hell of a system. Yeah, working on the other end it's aggravating how slow everything is until mid-April (taking weeks to get a response regardless of how often you ask), then how much you get chastised for not getting a bill or amendment through sooner. It also leads to good bills that are noncontroversial and cost-neutral to die for absolutely no reason. We lost a really important data collection bill due to the House running out of time to set bills from the Local & Consent Calendar. We lost another noncontroversial, cost neutral bill because an opposing office took two weeks to tell us they wanted specific clarifying language in the bill that was totally fine with us. I get they set this all up to intentionally kill bills so they don't have to take critical votes or been seen as "too regulatory", but it's so drat stupid and wasteful of everyone's time and money to have to keep fighting for noncontroversial stuff for years. And yeah, the staff do everything, and to their credit the 20-year old interns are sometimes harder working and better informed. I really didn't talk to an actual legislator outside of testimony more than a handful of times all session, and two of our bills that were successful were managed by a 20-year old intern the entire time. Never spoke to any other staff or the legislator. The biggest thing I learned this session was to ignore the advice other folks gave me about only filing bills with established Republicans in leadership roles. If your bill isn't partisan or a major change to law, the key is to just find someone whose office knows enough about moving legislation (freshmen can be okay sometimes if they have veteran staff), without high staff turnover, who cares about your issue, hasn't filed way too many bills, and who doesn't regularly piss other legislators off. Very little to do with party for bills that aren't partisan or major changes. At least, this is what I'm taking away for next session. TropicalCoke posted:I just want my life back I will probably end up coming back in two years in some way. I don't even want to think about it anymore for at least a week though, and don't want to return to the Capitol until the fall.
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May 26, 2019 00:49
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TropicalCoke posted:Out before 10 but I think they deleted the plumbing code by accident I don't know. When it was brought up to them again, they doubled down. I don't fully understand Sunset or that bill, but it was weird to hear claims about how other licensing boards that didn't get bills passed last time were fine. The licensing board for social workers didn't get renewed in the Sunset process in 2017, so it was consolidated with two other mental health licensing boards in HHSC and no funds were really dedicated to it, just like...two staff for the entire state. So if you were trying to get your license, it took a minimum of six months purely waiting on paperwork. And most jobs in your profession require that license. It was a nightmare.
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May 27, 2019 04:55
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zoux posted:When they invented sunset they decided that the best way to do government oversight is to put them all on a dead man's switch that kills them every 12 years unless the Legislature takes affirmative action to continue them. Recognizing this is a dumbass idea, they also pass a sunset safety net bill every session that continues any of the agencies under review for two more years if their bill dies or the governor vetoes it or whatever. In fact, it was that exact bill that Patrick murdered last session to force special on the bathroom bill. They passed it this year. Sounds right. And yeah, they just passed that bill. It's been a fight for at least two years now where all of the mental health professional licensing boards except psychologists were wanting a single board, and the psychologists were fighting tooth and nail against it, for similar reasons to the plumbers bill. So no idea what the compromises ended up being, but glad it finally passed.
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May 27, 2019 18:18
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Wax Dynasty posted:That's because it's an obvious ploy to minimize or eliminate the distinctions between the different mental health licenses, with the ultimate effect of driving down health insurance reimbursements. Meanwhile psychiatrists will never have to worry about other therapists gaining prescription privileges like in Louisiana or New Mexico due to the medical lobby's vice group on the legislature. I know the non-psychologist provider advocates who were fighting for this, and the Medicaid reimbursement rates for all professionals, but especially LMFTs/LPCs/LCSWs, are pitiful. There's no evidence seeing a psychologist for counseling will result in objectively better outcomes than other licensed providers. The distinction is just used to justify bullshit reimbursement rates to a good majority of the mental health providers, which means they are more likely to go out-of-network and not take Medicaid. It objectively makes sense to regulate similar professions that provide similar services under the same board, and if you have complaints about a provider you shouldn't have to reach out to multiple entities to file a complaint. I don't represent providers at all, so I honestly don't have a dog in the fight beyond having a strong mental health workforce. But I haven't heard a good case for reimbursement disparities beyond the superiority every profession argues it holds over others. Mistaken Frisbee fucked around with this message at 05:37 on May 30, 2019 |
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May 30, 2019 05:02
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zoux posted:The left hates her because she torpedoed the Timothy Cole bill in a couple of sessions, she's L&O as gently caress (former prosecutor and judge), but she ain't Tea Party. She's generally good for certain criminal justice issues, like human trafficking and sexual violence, from what I've seen so far. She's nowhere near the worst of the Senate. I'm still annoyed by Dr. Donna Campbell responding to public health concerns surrounding SB 22 (banning cities from working with Planned Parenthood) with something like "I am not looking at public health". Only annoyed because I know not to expect better, but it still feels bizarre as a policy nerd to hear a doctor say they refuse to consider public health ramifications of a policy. And honestly, with Dan Patrick and the tariffs, I would have been more amazed if he hadn't endorsed them. I don't think that guy is driven by literally anything other than national ideology or that he has any vested interest at all in improving the state.
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Jun 6, 2019 05:36
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zoux posted:He barely beat the D last election and he obviously doesn't think he can beat him this cycle. He was the only GOP rep returned to the House with less than 50% of the total vote. Also, no one could possibly be worse than Sticky, he's the worst ever. I assumed any R who replaces him would do better than he would have done, so I'm disappointed that he's leaving. I would have loved to see him lose. On the other hand, I always saw him as the comical villain of txlege, like the heel in wrestling. When he wasn't trying to kill important mental health bills, he was our biggest form of entertainment.
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Jun 24, 2019 19:11
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Badger of Basra posted:Certainly no better way to protect LGBTQ people in Texas than *squints* disrupting a pride month movie screening I'm sure LGBTQ people are nowhere near their agenda, unless weaponized to claim superiority over another leftist group. These groups tend to reduce everything to class warfare.
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Jun 29, 2019 21:15
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I can't tell if this is good for me or not. My fiancee is at ACC and finishing an associates in the fall, and went to UT-Austin over a decade ago. I don't know if this applies to non-traditional older students or if it's highly conditional, but we definitely can't afford UT-Austin for two years (if she got in) without her going into much more student loan debt. Also not sure if this will hurt her chances of transferring back. All that said, still fantastic for the next generation of lower-income college kids.
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Jul 10, 2019 01:37
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As someone who didn't grow up in or go to college in Texas (instead went to a quirky liberal arts college with no football team in Arkansas), the cult following of Texas A&M really throws me off. My fiancee's cousin got married and the wedding included a bizarre circle of aggies doing a bunch of chants. One of my fiancee's uncles jumped into the circle to throw a hook 'em, and was pretty angrily pushed out of the room. Apparently at a different family wedding, some family members messed up the bride's Longhorn cake out of rivalry. It seems to go well beyond the scope of playful rivalry. I did go to to UT-Austin for grad school though, so hook 'em.
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Jul 12, 2019 18:04
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zoux posted:You think the interim is gonna stop state lawmakers from sticking their nose into poo poo they can't do anything about? Listening to the txlege hearing so far, at the very least I'm learning a lot. The Republicans were also whining about it, to be fair, but I am so tired of all the stupid grandstanding in these federal hearings. They were trying to not waste time with bullshit grandstanding, but apparently they're never allowed to be strategic and not waste time. We can't have nice things.
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Jul 12, 2019 22:21
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zoux posted:You put a mic in front of a Rep, state or federal, and that's your afternoon. 150/435 people running for Senate twenty four seven Add a time/number limit to invited oral testimony too. I did public testimony at an interim hearing where there were an absurd number of invited witnesses to talk about the evils of medication and how mental illness is fake. They were all allowed to come up for multiple charges with zero time limits, and the government agency had to wait until 6pm to speak.
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Jul 12, 2019 22:35
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zoux posted:Senate does time limits at least. It's not like uninvited personal public testimony (I'm a taxpayer a mother and I'm representing myself and my three wonderful, vaccine injured children) has ever changed a vote. Maybe on some highly technical stuff that the witness has intimate knowledge of the topic, but rarely. It's different if you're repping an org, but if you say “I represent myself” you ain't doing poo poo but jerking yourself off. Oh look a billion people from Austin are here to testify against the GOPs latest bullshit, I'm sure that Rep. Dumb gently caress from Sundown Texas will take your views into consideration I don't know, man. A lot of us backed off from organization public testimony because we were told it wasn't needed, then I started hearing legislators repeat some crazy poo poo they overheard from personal public testimony that shows up every time. Enough public testimony repeats the myth the scientologists came up with that 90% of school shooters were on antidepressants, eventually you hear rational enough people start repeating it. You spend hours hearing the same message over and over again, it's going to impact you in some way. But people who go to testify to just yell "Shame! Shaaame!" need to just stop. Smug bullshit there.
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Jul 12, 2019 23:24
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Blotto_Otter posted:Yep, he hosed up and arrogantly got into the wrong election, he could've made a second run at Senate, helped boost turnout again for all the down-ballot races, and stayed a rising star in the Democratic party win or lose; instead he's already an also-ran has-been embarrassing himself on a vanity project. To his defense, no one would shut the gently caress up about getting him to run for president once the senate race ended, and even before. I never liked the idea, but a lot of people inside and outside of Texas, especially the media, were constantly asking him and being impatient about when he was going to enter the race. I think Dems should just stop encouraging every candidate we halfway like to run for president.
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Jul 17, 2019 15:09
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zoux posted:If MQS is telling the truth. But until I see evidence I’m not taking the word of the biggest scumbag in state politics. Did you read Chris Hooks’ take? That’s pretty much where I’m at Speaker Bonnen just came out and said "Mr. Sullivan, release your recording. Release it in its entirety.” Rep. Stickland earlier alleged he'd already heard the tape, but nothing about what's on it. Rep. Clardy said he'd listen to it tonight. This is all the more interesting because MQS is the one making the accusation. He has no credibility and he's a poo poo-stirrer, but it's just been an odd situation so far.
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Aug 1, 2019 03:33
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zoux posted:Why would Bonnen bring Burrows in as a witness and then swear him to secrecy. It could just be his obstinance, he is the kind of guy who actually doesn't dignify things with a response. And then MQS issues those three hyper-specific questions. If he's bluffing he's bluffing big. I kind of feel like who ever comes out on the wrong side of this is done. Yeah, Rep. Toth is now alleging he heard the tape and it's really bad, but he also received money from Empower Texans. So agreed, if this isn't true then MQS is taking out some representatives with him. None of the allegation makes sense though. Why would Bonnen trust MQS? Edit: Rep. Clardy is now verifying the tape is accurate. He has not received recent or significant funding from ET, so this is a big deal now. Mistaken Frisbee fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 05:00
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Blotto_Otter posted:So aside from the targeting of fellow Republicans, there's other bad stuff they said on tape that they don't want Dems/the public to know about, huh? Is there some Texas-specific equivalent to Wikileaks that can just get this over with?
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Aug 1, 2019 21:27
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