Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Mark Strama Breaks His Own Law

Blue Dot Blues called Mark Strama's HB 105 "Worst bill of early filing", and I started to look into this shockingly overreaching bill and I found much in it bizarre and hypocritical.

Strama's bill exempts "out-of-state political committee" from limits and places low $500 limits for State Rep contributions. What?!? So a group of Californians can get together and buy a seat with big contributions, but citizens in a State Reps district are themselves limited to $500 each and cannot fight back? Why Strama would put Texas political contributors in the back of the bus compared to out-of-state folks is strange, unless you contemplate that out-of-state is where the liberal money comes. This is a Democrat Out-of-state Liberal Group Power Grab to give them an edge over Texans.

There is another bizarre provision:

A candidate or officeholder who accepts one or more
political contributions in the form of loans, including an
extension of credit or a guarantee of a loan or extension of credit,
from one or more persons related to the candidate or officeholder
within the second degree by consanguinity, as determined under
Subchapter B, Chapter 573, Government Code, may not use political
contributions to repay the loans.
Why can't a political contribution repay another political contribution? There really is no public purpose behind it. Yet didn't Mark Strama take out a loan from his own uncle and himself in order to win his seat initially? He took out more than $100,000 in loans which got him on the map politically. And didn't he pay it back in part with campaign contributions? Is this a "Mea Culpa", guilt complex, or just an attempt to close the door to any upstart who might try the same strategy he tried? I'm thinking the latter. This is an Incumbent Protection Act, designed to create a minefield of impossibility for challengers to unseat better funded competitors.

The final point of irony and hypocrisy from Mark Strama is this. Mark Strama has taken PAC money, special interest money, Fred Baron's Annie's List money. He has repeatedly violated the limits that are in his own bill, certainly well above that low $500 limit, meaning he would be in jail today if his bill was law. Why file a bill with legal requirements that Strama himself will not live up to? Why can't he walk the walk on such a bill? Is "hypocritical liberal Democrat" a redundant term?

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