Donna Campbell: Fired Up

On Friday night, a debate was scheduled for the two major-party candidates for Texas's 25th Congressional District.  Unfortunately, it was well-known that one of the candidates, Democratic incumbent Lloyd Doggett, had no interest in debating or discussing his record, apparently.

KXAN covered Mr. Doggett's refusal to debate here, pointing out that Mr. Doggett, Donna Campbell, and Libertarian Jim Stutsman did all meet together at a candidate forum in Bastrop.  However, my understanding of that get-together was that Mr. Doggett placed severe restrictions on the format of the event, leading to a setup in which he was always able to have the last word, distorted or not, against anything said by Dr. Campbell.  The way it was related to me, it did not sound like a fair debate.

(And since someone will call me on this if I don't say it, I would have liked to see Rick Perry have a fair debate with Bill White as well.  With that said, I still prefer Gov. Perry's policies to Mr. White's.  But I digress.)

In any case, Dr. Campbell's invitation to debate, having not been the "gimmicky, last-minute attempt" that Mr. Doggett portrayed it to be (the invitation was made over a month ago), was pretty much blown off by Mr. Doggett, and so, as promised by the Campbell campaign, the would-be debate became a rally for Dr. Donna.

I got to be present at this rally, and I noticed a lot of people more fired up about an election in which Lloyd Doggett was on the ballot than I have seen, well, ever.  The convention wisdom, of course, says that District 25 is too blue for a conservative to overcome, but these people were excited.  Several people related stories of the responses they were getting in different areas of the district, including here in Austin.

And Dr. Donna, when she spoke, was pretty much radiating excitement (despite being hampered presently by a broken leg) about the campaign, about getting to work for the people of District 25, and about setting the record straight with regard to statements made by Mr. Doggett.

For example, she relayed a story about meeting a student at Texas State University this week who parroted the usual Doggett talking points ("she's too extreme", et al), and she got into a discussion with him in which she mentioned the Doggett Amendment, which will result in Texas losing $830 million in education funding.  The student refused to believe that Mr. Doggett was responsible for Texas losing the education funding in that way, and so Dr. Donna led him to Mr. Doggett, who happened to be on campus that day as well (he appears to be campaigning much harder this year than he usually needs to do), and she asked him whether he voted to cost Texas $830 million in education funding.  As she relayed it, Mr. Doggett's answer was first to try to duck the question entirely, and then, eventually, to turn his back on them while mumbling "it's Rick Perry's fault".  There needed to be more of an answer from Mr. Doggett to this question, which is certainly not as cut-and-dry as he would like to make it out to be.

And, of course, she talked about Mr. Doggett's other education attack, which this blog has discussed previously, that, of course, being his outrageous statement that Donna Campbell is against education funding.  PolitiFact, which has previously come under fire in this space for misrepresenting facts itself, got into the middle of this question, rating Mr. Doggett's statement "mostly true". 

Whatever, PolitiFact.  Let's take a look at Dr. Donna's statement on federal funding, as presented in Mr. Doggett's ad, in answer to the question "Would you vote to end federal funding for education?"

Federal funding for education? Yes.

The clip abruptly cuts off there in Mr. Doggett's ad.  Obviously, then, Donna Campbell wants children to be uneducated!

Once again, the record must be corrected.  PolitiFact presents her answer in context:

Federal funding for education? Yes. Because ... it’s a job of the states. Choices need to be put back in the hands of the parents and state.

Dr. Campbell is not talking about shutting down funding for schools; she is talking about cutting the federal government out of the middle of it.  Her position is this:  why should we send a billion dollars to the federal government, just to get $830 million back (or not, thanks to Mr. Doggett)?  Is education for children any better because we have however many bureaucrats in Washington making rules about how our education monies should be spent, or how our children should be taught?

(And no, this is not just an Obama Administration issue...this blog has previously spoken about the travesty known as "No Child Left Behind", or, as Mrs. Snowed calls it, "Every Child Left Behind".  More federal government involvement is not a boon to education, regardless of who the president is.  Period.)

Before Dr. Campbell finished, she made a point of wanting to shake the hand of every person at the rally.  I had not met her before (although her team did give my blog its best traffic day in almost a year* by linking to this post), so I welcomed the chance to say hello to her.  She understood that my circumstances prevented my doing much more than writing a fourth-rate blog with only a few regular readers**, and so she personally asked me to write about the rally.

And in return, thank you to Dr. Donna for your energy, your stances, and your willingness to serve this district.  And best wishes for a quick recovery for the broken leg.

Please check out Dr. Donna's website here, and be sure to vote on Tuesday.

*It rather puts my political blogging in perspective when I admit that my biggest traffic day in the past year was due to a hip-hop station biting the dust.

**The author once again takes this time to say hello to his father.

Running Scared

Apparently the projected Republican landslide is affecting the campaign strategies of several Democratic incumbents from around the greater Austin area.  Some of these strategies are pretty much par for the course for some of these incumbents, but for others, they're quite new.

An example of the same-old-same-old strategies in use is District 47 incumbent Valinda Bolton, who has gone negative on Paul Workman, as she does to every challenger.  Her latest ad isn't up on YouTube yet (and it came out most likely too late to get the PolitiFact treatment it so richly deserves), but it appears to say that Paul Workman wants to impose a massive sales tax on everyone.  Haven't we heard this scare story before?

Oh, but Ms. Bolton's story takes the FairTax idea (which no one is actually proposing but some people like) to a new level:  Mr. Workman wants large corporations to escape paying property taxes!  Yeah, that is how a FairTax works.  And guess who else would no longer be paying thousands a year in property taxes:  you, Ms. Homeowner, and you, Mr. Renter.  (Again, see here if you believe renters aren't affected by property taxes.)

At this point, this author expects little else from Valinda Bolton, so let's move on.

Here's something no one would have expected to see two years ago:  Lloyd Doggett has a serious opponent in TX-25!  How serious is this race for Mr. Doggett?  Well, in over ten years in Austin, I have never seen a Doggett television commercial until this year.

The first Doggett commercial seemed a bit like Patrick Rose's first ad as well in that it presents Mr. Doggett as a friend of business:



(Incidentally, this video is unlisted for some reason...I wonder why.)

A couple of things jumped out for me:  first, "I said no to these big bank bailouts."  Well, yes, Mr. Doggett did vote against TARP.  That, at least, was good.  What wasn't so great were his votes later for things like the Porkulus bill and lots of other giveaways of our money.

And this leads to the second thing that I noticed:  "I can actually run a small business. I can create jobs because of Lloyd Doggett."  This was a statement by Michael Kuhn of ImagineSolar, which describes itself as "a world-class solar intelligence company and provider of solar training".  Well, that sounds good, right?

Well, things are not exactly as they appear.  Someone named Facetwitch, who sometimes blogs at RedState, did the digging on this one, and look at this press release they found:

AUSTIN – Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis today announced nearly $100 million in green jobs training grants, as authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). The Austin Electrical Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee (AEJATC), in partnership with Workforce Solutions–Capital Area and ImagineSolar, received $4,842,424 as one of 25 projects selected nationally – and one of only three in the State of Texas.

For those who've forgotten, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was the original stimulus, or Porkulus, which Mr. Doggett voted to support.  That does rather answer why Mr. Kuhn was so eager to appear in a commercial for Mr. Doggett.  (As Facetwitch points out, there is nothing illegal about any of this, but disclosure would have been nice.)


But apparently things are still not going as well as Mr. Doggett would like in this campaign, and so, again for the first time that I can remember, he has gone negative on his opponent, Dr. Donna Campbell.  See for yourself:



Now I think I understand why his campaign ads are unlisted:  to make them difficult to find for bloggers who want to embed them on their sites.

This ad completely misrepresents the opinion of Dr. Campbell about education funding.  Yeah, let's cut those darned schools off entirely!  Come on.  There is a world of difference between cutting the federal government out of the middle of school funding (thus eliminating a lot of bureaucracy) and not funding schools at all, but Mr. Doggett hopes that you don't notice it.

And while we're discussing silly attack tactics, how about Patrick Rose lookalike Mark Strama in District 50?  Of all the things to say about his opponent, Patrick McGuinness, Mr. Strama says he blogs under "a fake name" (as if this is a very shady thing to do...insert your favorite insinuation about me here).  From there, Mr. Strama pulls items from his blog (The Travis Monitor) way out of context in an attempt to paint him as wild-eyed and hyperpartisan.  Mr. McGuiness, of course, had a very easy response, which I like to call "context":

My opponents [sic] is painting a false picture of where I stand on the basis of a few snippets, but the internet has the best memory and you can be the judge of where I really stand and what I really said. I have put links below of the items he went to.

It's worth a full read.

This season has seen lots of Democrats wondering if their seats are still safe and turning out lots of attack ads, lots of scare tactics...basically, a lot of junk.  Is it any wonder that I am ready for Christmas commercials after a season full of stuff like this?

Update:  Thanks for the link, Dr. Donna!

Doggett, BOR Take Cheap Shot at Retired Lady

Austin's tolerant left has set their sights on...a retired lady in Fayette County.

The backstory, as has been reported at statesman.com and elsewhere, is that Fayette County Judge Ed Janecka called Chris Boyle, VP-Secretary of the Fayette County Taxpayers Coalition, to ask her not to protest the opening this week of a Veterans Administration clinic in La Grange, an event at which Rep. Lloyd Doggett is scheduled to appear. Ms. Boyle, as might be expected, is protesting Rep. Doggett's support of HR 3200, the so-called Obamacare bill; she also added in a statement that Rep. Doggett had nothing to do with having the clinic in La Grange.

Rep. Doggett of course, said that he had everything to do with it, saying "With meetings in both Washington and Texas, I have been working on getting this clinic to La Grange since 2006. Last year, I invited the VA to a meeting with veterans at the Fayette County Courthouse to involve them in the planning for this clinic." (Figuring out how much holding meetings had to do with the actual placement of a clinic in La Grange is left as an exercise to the reader, but given that he didn't claim credit for getting the money appropriated in the first place, I'm gonna guess it happened before La Grange became part of his district.)

Then, with his usual grace, Rep. Doggett added, "These Teabag extremists have every right to protest my unwavering commitment to health insurance reform anywhere that I go..." One gets the feeling that he's making a sly reference the same unfunny euphemism to which people losing the public-relations war have clung since April, "teabagger". (Finding out the definition of this phrase is also left to the reader, with the caveat that the definition is NSFW.)

In reporting this, as might be expected, the Burnt Orange Report threw the offending term right into the title of both its two posts covering it. Along with this, the writers there have no problem coming right out and calling Mrs. Boyle "crazy", telling her to "seek psychiatric help", and so forth, while also making up viewpoints for her, such as that she wants Congress to "[s]top meddling in the lives of those veterans and giving them medical care." (Yes, it was probably hyperbole. But yes, it was also disrepectful.)

Until both sides can have a discussion without resorting to names and insults, expect this sort of behavior to continue.

Sidenote: And why would people feel the need to protest Lloyd Doggett at this event? Possibly because some of them were refused entrance into his townhall meeting Saturday, as shown:

"He told me, 'This crowd would not want you in there anyway.'"

And why were there so many people who would not want a dissenting opinion about health care? According to Ramparts 360, MoveOn.org members were bused in from Dallas and elsewhere to pack Rep. Doggett's meeting. As for those people against the current health-care bill, there are reports that people were verbally and physically intimidated by people up to and including the senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Austin.

With this sort of behavior by Rep. Doggett's supporters, is it any wonder why people have taken to protesting?

Congressman Doggett, Meet Reality

Congressman Lloyd Doggett seems to be doing a good job of milking the attention he's gotten from his August 1 town hall meeting at Randalls (see here and here for examples), but apparently he has not taken the time to get his facts straight about the controversial Obamacare bill before speaking about it publicly.

Case in point: at a meeting at a local Holiday Inn today (as covered here by KXAN), Rep. Doggett responded to a "what's the rush?" question thus:

"Maybe it was a rush when Harry Truman proposed it," responded Doggett. "But, it's not a rush anymore. We have been working on this bill since last year."

To the credit of at least some of the audience, he was rewarded with a fair amount of jeering laughter. It is obvious that the Democratic leaders are trying to rush this bill through. If nothing else, their own words say so, as shown:

"This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they can’t afford to wait any longer for reform."

[...]

"Number one, I’m rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs. And they ask me, can you help? So I’ve got a middle-aged couple that will write me and they say, our daughter just found out she’s got leukemia and if I don’t do something soon we just either are going to go bankrupt or we’re not going to be able to provide our daughter with the care that she needs. And in a country like ours, that’s not right. So that’s part of my rush."

--Barack Obama, 23 July 2009 (courtesy the Wall Street Journal)

"Now — with Americans strongly supporting health insurance reform, with Congress reaching consensus on a plan, and with a president who ran and won on this specific promise of change — America is closer than ever to this century-deferred goal.

"This fall, at long last, we must [emphasis mine] reach it."

--Nancy Pelosi & Steny Hoyer, "'Un-American' attacks can't derail health care debate", 10 August 2009 (courtesy USA Today)

Afterwards, [President Obama] told reporters that what he heard only strengthened his conviction that health care reform is needed now.

--"Obama Steps Up Campaign for Health Care Reform", 20 July 2009 (courtesy Voice of America)

It is time for Rep. Doggett to step up and be truthful with his constituents. It would be a lot more productive than continuing to complain.

What Now, Time Warner?

I'm not sure what Time Warner Cable is playing at, but my basic cable package got an unexpected addition this week on channel 7. Unfortunately for my political tastes, it's MSNBC. It may be an error, as the picture quality is a little grainy, but I have no way of knowing. Time Warner's channel lineup webpage, as might be expected given my previous posts, is no help; it still thinks that the basic package includes channels 19 and 20.

Again, since it's MSNBC, this doesn't really add a lot of value for the Snowed family. As an example of the fine quality programming now added to our system, I got to watch Lloyd Doggett and Rachel Maddow complaining about the reception he got a couple of days ago at Randalls, followed within about five minutes by the biggest display of cheerleading for a political party as I've ever seen on a "news channel", by Ms. Maddow, of course. (But, of course, only Fox is biased. Whatever. If you want to see real mob rule, check out the examples cited by Michelle Malkin.) But I digress.

A few of my readers (who now number well into the single digits, I think) might recall that I was about ready to dump Time Warner last year and may be wondering why I haven't done so. There's an easy answer: this is the cheapest package we could find anywhere. Plus, WGN America has vastly improved its program library. To each his own, I suppose.

(Shameless plug: if you would like to help me made the switch to another provider, please feel free to visit the tip jar, conveniently located to your right.)

Update (8/22/09): I'm not sure if Time Warner is reading this blog, or if they discovered this story on their own, but last night, MSNBC has disappeared from channel 7, replaced by, of course, nothing. Such is life with a cable provider such as this.

Doggett Gets an Earful...Again

It seems that Lloyd Doggett (D, TX-25) can't go anywhere without hearing from people not happy about the health-care bill. As most people heard Saturday (except me, because I was apparently not keeping up with anything that day), Rep. Doggett was met at his town hall meeting at a local Randalls by such a group. As I'm two days late with this news, I'll simply refer people to Michelle Malkin and Robbie Cooper. And, I'll go ahead and post the video everyone's already seen (or not, if they stay as well-informed as I did this weekend).



Commenter "Sara" at Robbie's blog had an interesting fact to add:

It actually started after he decided to cut his “office hours” short by 40 minutes and leave in a huff.

It doesn't appear from that as if Rep. Doggett was interested in hearing what people had to say. And while the Stateman's writeup of the event indicated that the crowd was angry and yet respectful (according to someone present at the event), Rep. Doggett felt the need to issue a statement denouncing the protesters as a "mob, sent by the local Republican and Libertarian parties". (Writeup, again per the Statesman, may be found here.)

And after that note of camaraderie, Rep. Doggett apparently held a press conference today on an unrelated matter. I say "apparently" because the KXAN report I saw covering it had more to do with his complaining about the protesting, complaining that they don't want anyone else to be heard, blah blah blah. It should be noted that KXAN reporter Jenny Hoff stated that she did not observe any protesters at the event today. That report is right here:



So I guess the question at this point is: why complain about protesters if no one was there today protesting, Rep. Doggett? Is it because you want people opposed to the health-care bill to shut up, as you accuse them of wanting of you? And if so, doesn't that seem the slightest bit, well, hypocritical?

And, more importantly, if this was so organized, as you claim, why didn't I know about it?

What Hath They Wrought?

As expected, the $825,000,000,000 (give or take) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1) passed the House today. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I think very little of this bill. And why is that?

Well, for starters...

• $1 billion for Amtrak
• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
• $400 million for global warming research (no word on whether any of this will be directed to finding out why it snows every time Al Gore shows up to talk about climate change)
• $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects
• $150 million for the Smithsonian Institution
• $6 billion for mass transit

That's all well and good, but how about...

• $81 billion for Medicaid
• $83 billion for Earned Income Credit payments
• $66 billion for education (My guess: none of it will be spent to determine the efficacy of incredibly large federal block payments into state education programs. Actual truth: this money is prohibited from being used for vouchers.)

Are these new, incredibly large, payouts justified in any meaningful way?

Oh, and finally...

• $30 billion for road/highway projects
• $40 billion for other infrastructure projects
• $20 billion for business tax cuts

And those three items are arguably the only payouts that will lead to any meaningful job creation. The rest seems like Democrats rewarding their donors to me.

(These are just a few of the items pointed out by the Wall Street Journal.)

Rather unexpectedly (at least to me), every Republican voted against this thing, including Michael McCaul and Lamar Smith (for people in my local area). Lloyd Doggett ignored my call pleading with him to vote against, unfortunately (but as I figured he would). Full rollcall vote is here.

My take on this bill: a disaster. I (like most of us, I would think) would like to see the economy improve, but I cannot believe that this bill will do it. I do, however, think that the Democrats will use this bill to take credit for the natural cycles that will turn this economy back into an upswing.

TX-21 and TX-25 update

With five days to go (and thank God for that!), TX-21 and TX-25 pretty much remain the way the conventional wisdom has called them: fairly safe seats for their incumbents. Lamar Smith, who still doesn't have a campaign website, and Lloyd Doggett, who still doesn't have much of one, seem content to coast through November 7. Mr. Doggett, in particular, was painted by the American-Statesman (in this article) as having no "real opposition".

However, to win, the incumbents (or anyone, of course) must receive over 50% of the popular votes in their district; otherwise, we get another month of ads and a runoff. Most sources seem to paint both districts as safe for their incumbents, but we'll see soon enough.

Neither incumbent, however, seemed to help their causes with their rather pompous statements in declining to debate their challengers. Both of them basically stated that since they are set to win at this point, they did not want to bother possibly upsetting the tea cart. (That was pretty much a paraphrase of the Smith campaign statement; Mr. Doggett's statement of not debating because he hadn't seen his opponents really just sounds lame.)

That said, KEYE has the best voter's guide I've seen for Texas, allowing you to find the races for your address. It also has position statements for many of the candidates, allowing you to compare two candidates at a time. I know it does leave out some races, particularly the judicial ones, but it's better than what Texans have been getting to determine which races apply to them. (California, I'm told, sends out a sample ballot to voters; why can't Texas take this online voter's guide and allow people to view their sample ballot online?)

Oh, I did promise earlier to have more on Jim Strohm in TX-21, even though the race remains basically Smith vs. Courage, as it was before the redistricting. Mr. Strohm wants to introduce articles of impeachment against the President...as his first act. At least he's honest about it.

TX-25 Update

I actually meant to post this, oh, about a month and a half ago. Now I've taken so long that the Statesman article I referenced to get the candidate information has disappeared. However, Politics1.com has pretty much the same stuff, which rather helps the procrastinating blogger.

Our candidates:

Lloyd Doggett (D, incumbent): A lot of people in Austin really love Mr. Doggett. I appreciate that his staff did answer a question I sent him years ago (don't remember the subject), but that said, his website now is rather uniformative. It used to have placeholder links for items like "Issues", but these have disappeared. Now, the only mention of issues is his statement in which he says he has worked "to encourage economic growth and job creation, improve our public schools, provide retirement security to our seniors and veterans, keep our communities safe, and promote affordable housing and child care." Specifics would help here...can anyone come out against these generalities? Oh, and his site touts his seniority.

The rest, in alphabetical order:
Barbara Cunningham (L, oil engineer, Caldwell): her website mentions three issues (immigration, education, and taxes). On immigration, she has a long, single-spaced, and rather difficult-to-read essay about how none of the current ideas will work. She seemingly likes a consumption tax to replace income taxes, but she specifically dislikes the FairTax. Her education idea is to remove all federal funding for schools. Apparently she is not courting the teachers' votes, then. (Her endorsements page, as well as her campaign blog, are sadly empty.)

Brian Parrett (I, systems analyst, Austin): I could not find anything about positions on any issues, but hey, he's got a picture on his site. He also invites questions via e-mail, but who's going to take the time?

UPDATE (24 Oct): Mr. Parrett's website now includes ideas on "Protecting America", "Reducing Our Tax Burden" (which doesn't spell out specifics, but his ideas smell a little like a FairTax...), and "Winning the War on Drugs".

Grant Rostig (R, computer programmer & chiropractor, Dale): recently endorsed by Ron "Dr. No" Paul, Mr. Rostig, like Dr. Paul has Libertarian-leaning views. (Ms. Cunningham, who has very similar views herself, showed up when Mr. Rostig dared to run as a Republican during the open filing period in August; previously, he had been the Libertarian candidiate.) He is against the idea of open borders (and pro-Minutemen, drawing criticism from Mr. Doggett) and pro-FairTax.

TX-25 is still majority-Democrat (albeit less so than it was before August), so it appears that Mr. Doggett will have smooth sailing at this point.

What are our defining issues for TX-21 and TX-25?

A couple of weeks ago, this blog attempted to interview by e-mail several TX-21 and TX-25 candidates. Should I have expected any answers? Who knows; this blog isn't that old. Anyway, the interview was a rather short four questions:

1. What are your opinions on President Bush's fiscal policies? His foreign policies? In what areas, if any, would you like to see changes made?

2. In which areas are your views most different from those of your opponents?

3. What should the federal government's role in public education be?

4. How should the United States resolve the Iraq situation? What is the best way for the US to handle the War on Terror (assuming, in your opinion, that
such a war exists)?

The rationale behind these questions was something like this:

1. I cannot believe that the Republicans are going to march in lockstep with President Bush on every issue. Of course, the Democrats surely aren't, either. Clarifying the differences between the candidates' ideas and the president's, rather than either saying nothing or issuing blanket statements slamming the president, would help. (Or, if no differences exist between the candidate and the president, articulating those positions would help also.)

2. Same thing, basically. I want to know what each candidate sees as a strength that distinguishes them from the others. This is especially helpful in 21 & 25, where we now have seven and four candidate, respectively.

3. What can I say; I have kids. I want to know what to expect from my representatives: will it be more mandates, more money, or a whole new paradigm.

4. Hey, guess what...every candidate is going to say let's support the troops and bring them home as soon as possible. Let's have some details.

Future entries will explain candidates' positions on these issues.

And what should the other important issues be for these districts? (aside from bringing this area a cell phone throwing contest, that is...)

Maybe someday Texas will get it right...

How nice...thanks to the third redistricting process in Texas since 2000, I now longer find myself in TX-21, but in TX-25, in which my new Congressman is the same as my old one before I moved, Lloyd Doggett. Not a great development...Mr. Doggett has not shown himself, in my experience, to be as responsive as Lamar Smith was with regard to inquiries from constituents. (Not that I won't continue to try...) As shown here by the Club for Growth, Mr. Doggett scored a whopping 7 out of 100 for being pro-growth. But then again, this is Austin, the home during the 80s and 90s of the "if we don't build it, maybe they won't come" mindset regarding infrastructure, or lack thereof. (Drive I-35 or Mopac at 5:15 any weekday afternoon and tell me that's not true.)

Mr. Doggett's opponent, before the redistricting, was to be Grant Rostig, who was running as a Libertarian. Since the redistricting, it was decreed that there would be an open election, with a possible runoff in December. In the meantime, Mr. Rostig's name has mysteriously disappeared from the Libertarian Party's list of candidates. (However, I did notice a FairTax-supporting Libertarian in TX-21...check out his website.) Mr. Rostig's site now lists him as a Republican (though the state GOP site doesn't list him there either). In any case, Mr. Rostig is a FairTax supporter who is in favor of limited government, so at this point, if in fact he is still running, I know who is getting my vote.

My assumption is that the candidates for the redrawn districts will fall into place pretty quickly, so that we can get on with the usual three months of annoying advertisements (followed by the two months during which signs remain up on Mopac). But we'll see.

Pork: the only white meat...for Lamar Smith

After having lived in the Texas 21st Congressional District for a few years, I thought I had a handle on Lamar Smith. I appreciated the fact that he faced a generally angry mob last year just to hear his constituents' comments. I definitely appreciated his listening to my comments on the FairTax, and I appreciated his (office's) writing to me to explain why he didn't support it. (The short answer apparently involves his not having read the bill, it seemed to me.) I also appreciate that he hasn't rubber-stamped the immigration amnesty proposals swirling around Washington at the moment.

And, as it turns out (from the Club for Growth, he scored a 57 out of 100 for being pro-growth. About what I expected, in that regard.

Maybe that's why I'm so disappointed that, per this article, he voted in favor of 19 pork barrel projects ranging from a swimming pool in California to tourism development in Kentucky (I'll save them the money on that: there's this horse race in May...). Each and every time an amendment came up to strip a pork project from a bill, dear Mr. Smith voted to keep it in. Apparently he believes our government isn't already wasting enough money as it is.

And, while I expected Ron "Dr. No" Paul to have the best score, out of the Austin-area Congressional delegation, on these 19 amendments (which he easily did, voting yes on all 19), I would have expected Mr. Smith to have a better score than Lloyd Doggett, the neighboring Democrat. Yet, as it turns out, Mr. Doggett voted yes on three of the amendments, which is three more than were supported by Mr. Smith. Pathetic.

Of course, his November opponent, John Courage, really doesn't provide much of an alternative in that respect. Content to watch Social Security slowly run dry, Mr. Courage also seems to support throwing money at other problems (of course, without mentioning how he intends to fund it), most notably education, in the hope that somehow it'll help, this time. Somehow that doesn't seem terribly pro-growth either.

Sadly, TX-21 seems stuck with no really good choices and another two years of more of the same. But just in case something actually changes, we'll keep an eye open.