The Artful Return of The Bushes?
Are Democrats taking back law & order from the Republicans? An assessment of Joe Biden's plans
“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.” — John Steinbeck
I am a California and Massachusetts refugee really but I am also a Texas resident — you have to be born a Texan as you are born a Hawaiian and you don’t become one simply by moving there — and I voted in the Republican Primary in early voting. (I split my time between Northern Virginia, Southern California, and the Houston suburbs and I was born and raised in the Boston area. I make the circuit between my business and family ties.)
It was my first time voting in Texas and truthfully I had forgotten I was registered to vote at all but my friend checked and sure enough, I had apparently filled out the material and curiously enough I am a registered Republican. Who knew? Be careful what forms you fill out kids. Did you know I’m also an organ donor? I sure didn’t! (How soon before we donate our DNA before we die?)
Today I identify mostly as an Independent. I really do try to back the candidate I think is best — somebody has to — and I’ll do that again come the general election.
So with that in mind I voted against Congressman Dan Crenshaw — who I will expose in a subsequent post as a total compromised fraud — and for George P. Bush who will be in a run off with Ken Paxton for Texas Attorney General. I don’t know if there’s some sort of law of the universe that Johnsons back Bushes but here I was voting for him.
For what it’s worth I suspect he’s more of his grandfather’s son than his father’s. Jeb’s low energy we know well. I think he will very likely be president someday and I think he will use the office of Attorney General to do unto the tech companies what Teddy Roosevelt did onto the trusts. In this way Bush is a true inheritor of the Roosevelt mantle, unlike say, Attorney General turned U.S. Senator Josh Hawley who sued Google when he was Missouri’s attorney general.
I also voted for and backed my friend, Clint Morgan, who ran for Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, and whose defeat against Abbott-backed but nonentity Scott Walker makes me really wonder about the Republican Party’s bona fides on law and order. (More of that, down below.)
When it comes to Paxton I confess that I like him a bit — I once took him out for dinner — but I do think that the mounting ethics and criminal charges he’s facing are disqualifying. Paxton is a little too mobbed up, I’m afraid, to be a serious figure in Texas politics. What’s more I’m not a fan of people overstaying their welcome.
Paxton cultivated me pretty hard as a would be donor but he lost me when he asked me for a bribe in his office over looking the state capitol. I demurred and I have since spoken to the FBI about it. Apparently I’m not alone and I’m reliably informed that Paxton will be indicted or arrested on federal corruption charges ahead of the runoff in May.
Paxton owes much of his successes to being on the same ticket at Greg Abbott who is without a doubt one of the most cleverly crooked politicians I have ever encountered. Whereas Abbott is clever and subtle Paxton is loutish and obvious. He was nearly defeated by a Democrat in 2018. When he attended a Republican Attorney General Association event he blew a bunch of money on clothes and nice things. It smacked of desperation.
A good friend laid out how George P. Bush was going to ultimately win the GOP primary a year or so ago. His understanding of the hidden politics of Texas was nothing short of extraordinary. He told me that among the more powerful interest groups in Texas is the construction industry and with good reason. (Dallas and Houston metro areas come in No. 1 and No. 2 respectively for new real estate construction in the nation.)
Historically the construction industry backs the Republicans while the trial lawyers back the Democrats. The construction industry has fought with the trial lawyers and appears to have the upper hand. One of the architects of that battle was construction magnate Richard Weekley of Texans for Lawsuit Reform who backed Eva Guzman to the tune of millions of dollars. Weekley’s support of Guzman was a defection from Paxton who he likely knew wasn’t going to make it. Weekley no doubt wanted to block Bush from the office.
Texas has a lot of land which it will happily sell you very, very cheaply. Land and natural resource extraction fund a lot of Texas’s government as there is no state income tax. The Trump tax bill made it impossible to deduct your state and local taxes against your federal taxes and so a lot of Americans picked up and moved to states without income taxes. The coronavirus accelerated this trend with remote work.
Cheap housing makes it easier to have a large family so many people move from all over the country to do just that. It also makes it easy to launder lots of dirty cash. Add to that Texas’s status as a border state and you have lots of people coming and going looking for work and willing to work for cheap.
You aren’t allowed to talk about how the construction industry is very much propped up by the cartels or how a lack of zoning might make this more possible. You tend to think of Miami for that sort of thing. There’s a lot of Texas’s economy that is propped up by Latin Americans and others hiding out in the Houston and Dallas suburbs.
There is, a slight problem with the Texas dream — hurricanes — and the construction industry likes its federal welfare money once a hurricane rolls through. George P. Bush stood up to these cretins — what Bush called “liberal deadbeat mayors” — and saw to it that the minimal amount of federal money was stolen by them. This was, I think, the correct decision though it was deeply unpopular at the time. That’s what leadership looks like. It’s long overdue.
Are Democrats taking the issue of law and order from the GOP? That’s the sort of question I find myself wrestling with and wondering about.
In my darker moments I wonder if the Republicans were ever really law and order, at least since Calvin Coolidge, who argued rightly that there was no right to strike against the common good. For what it’s worth I favor this approach too and would extend it to all public sector workers.
It must be made honorable once more to be a cop and cops have to act honorably. Biden is right: we can keep our liberties and our safety. It’s not a false choice. These are difficult things to keep straight but then statesmanship is an art not a science.
A very good friend of mine — Clint Morgan — is a prosecutor in Harris County. Boy does he have stories upon stories about all the criming going down in H-Town. Never forget that my adopted city gave the world the blessed martyr George Floyd, who like St. Paul, traveled the land with his gospel before meeting his untimely end.
Clint is the sort of person that makes you proud to be an American, having worked his way up from poverty in redneck Missouri to being one of the best prosecutors in Texas. In the spirit of full disclosure I am a donor to Clint’s campaign and I would give him my kidney if he asked (though preferably after we exhausted all other options).
Indeed Morgan was altogether too qualified for the position. His lackluster opponent, Scott Walker, was not. He is an embarrassment who rarely shows up to write opinions and he was endorsed by The Houston Chronicle. He won because Governor Abbott’s political machine backed him and for no other reason. As if to add insult to Abbott appointed Walker’s equally unimpressive son to a judgeship as well. Abbott backed the family Walker back in the days when Abbott and Perry fashioned themselves reformers on criminal justice but really let out a whole bunch of criminals who are plaguing our streets today. We live with that Koch- and Soros-backed insanity.
With 2024 in view, Abbott is now campaigning as Law & Order type. Spare us, Greg. Abbott is a compromise candidate of the Chamber of Commerce and the mob but I repeat myself. His biography includes the tell of having worked for Bracewell & Giuliani way back when.
I am committed to ending his political career though I can’t quite bring myself to vote for Beto. What am I to do? Why did you have to be so cringe, Beto? Why?
I think Biden’s State of the Union confirms that the Democrats are no longer in favor of Defund the Police party but the fund the police party. That was a cynical weapon to get votes. Did you really think Joe Biden of crack bill fame was against the police anyway? After all, all the criminals around Trump were in favor of criminal justice reform, weren’t they?
It’s clear now that the Biden government is planning to use the “please think of the children” attack on Big Tech. The Wall Street Journal makes it explicit with a story today about how TikTok harms American children.
They’re right to because Big Tech — Facebook, Snapchat, Clubhouse, and TikTok — is a Chinese-backed social experiment weaponized against the youths of the West.
We have explored some of the Likud ties of Facebook through Sheryl Sandberg and we will soon address its covert Chinese backing through Founders Fund. Snapchat also owes its existence to Chinese-Australian immigrant Jeremy Liew, who we are told was forced to quit Lightspeed Ventures over his odd China ties. (There’s apparently a cleaning house that’s taking place throughout Silicon Valley.)
And Tik Tok is, of course, explicitly Chinese, and that’s why Congressman Gaetz, alone in his party, called for it to be banned. (Gaetz hasn’t gotten the memo that you’re only supposed to talk about being anti-China not actually be anti-China.)
Rather than take on the problem head on, President Donald Trump elected to gift TikTok to his political allies — Oracle and Walmart. It didn’t take and now we have a new president.
His wife, Dr. Jill Biden, invited Frances Haugen to the State of the Union. We’ve talked at length about Haugen is a construct of the deep state and why that’s a good thing.
Her presence at the State of The Union confirms it. The Brits give out OBEs and we give State of the Union invites. I should know, having once been a guest of my friend Congressman Matt Gaetz.
And yes, I will say the quiet part aloud. I do favor more censorship of foreigners infecting our social media environment. I want to block publications like BuzzFeed and Huffington Post from publishing in the US, especially if they have foreign money backing them. I should have some good news on that front soon.
Let me be clear to the Silicon Valley investors and mobsters trying to be good boys and girls and invest accordingly. I am your ticket out of jail.
It’s time for some de-oligarachization!
Step right up and help us make America great again!
Great piece
After George W I have no interest in any more Bushes. Jeb’s son may manage a career in Texas where the family has tons of favors to call in, and which is for all intents and purposes a one party state (for now,) but I suspect he’ll find that his brand is much too toxic nationally. Even George HW was not terribly popular and he barely squeaked in after the particularly sleazy Clinton years.