Heir Apparent (Texas House District -100)

[sonias]

Texas Tribune 2/3/10
Heir Apparent

When State Rep. Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, bowed out of her reelection bid on Wednesday to plead guilty to lying on a tax return, she handed what should be an easy victory to her opponent, Eric Johnson. It’s a good thing for Johnson, a neighborhood boy turned Ivy League attorney: He faced an uphill battle to defeat her.

In many state House districts, Johnson, an education-obsessed up-and-comer with a passion for improving inner city schools, would’ve had the race in the bag. His opponent was under indictment in a citywide corruption scandal, one in which other Dallas officials had already been convicted. But Hodge, 69, has a long and intimate history with the district and the aging residents who remember her days as an aggressive labor union and election precinct organizer. Her single biggest legislative priority, improving conditions for Texas prison inmates, made her a personal savior to grieving mothers and grandmothers across her low-income, majority-minority district — who may well see the irony now.

Texas Tribune 2/3/10
2010: Terri Hodge to Resign, Plead Guilty
Rep. Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, has agreed to resign her seat in the Texas House and plead guilty in federal court to making false statements on an income tax return, prosecutors announced this morning.

The embattled Hodge, facing a tough re-election against lawyer Eric Johnson, was scheduled to go on trial next month in connection with a multi-count indictment alleging bribery and conspiracy.

Cleaning our own house. I will say that Representative Hodge did always make prison issues one of her priorities and I hope that Representative Johnson will do the same in this district.

Sonia

[white cloud]

1. Birds of a feather

LOL what a pit!!!!!!!

[sonias]

2. Well the good thing is that this is a safe D district

So we'll keep the seat on our side.

Why oh why can't we pick off more Rs in their districts for corruption? The Rs are more "white collar" crime type of corruption - kick backs, quid pro quo kind of deals behind closed doors. We won't catch very many of them in this state because we're a "bidness" state and it's just expected in the good 'ole boy tradition.

Don't think for a second they aren't dirty too. John Coby from Bay Area Houston has the rundown on ethics violations in this state that our lame Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) doesn't bother to really prosecute. :grr:


Sonia

[CoolOnion]

3. Speaking of which, what happened to Tom DeLay's case?

[sonias]

4. Corruption and popcorn

Might as well call it dead. With the Supreme Court ruling legalizing corporate payoffs, there's no way a jury or judge will convict - no matter what the law at the time was.

But this was interesting bit of news:

Baloon Juice blog 1/26/10
Corruption and popcorn

Alex Gibney is an accomplished filmmaker. He won an Academy Award in 2008 for his film, Taxi to the Dark Side, examining America’s policy on torture and interrogation in general.

He has a lot of projects in the hopper at any given moment. A few years ago he began to work on a film about Jack Abramoff and the culture of corruption infecting Washington DC. That film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend (I’m told that scandal players Bob Ney and Neil Volz were there).

Over the years I’ve shared some information and research with Alex and his team and I can hardly wait to see the film. It should be in wide distribution come May.

From the early reviews of Casino Jack and the United States of Money it looks like this film should be a wake up call for Americans of all stripes about the corrupting influence of money on our politics. This graph from a review completely tracks with what I’ve found in my ten plus years of research into the subject:

His partner was Tom DeLay, the most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives — but, of course, DeLay’s fall from grace, and Abramoff’s conviction in the scandal that brought them both down, is old news. What’s astonishing, and important, about Casino Jack is that it lays out how the system of funneling cash for favors that Abramoff turned into a new kind of government machine, with the money often hidden behind fake nonpartisan organizations, didn’t go away; it took over. It was Jack Abramoff who elevated the lobbyist to the status of shadow legislator. Casino Jack is really a look at how, and why, the government no longer works — how the culture of Washington was effectively rebuilt to sell itself to the highest bidder.

:popcorn:

Bob Ney and Neil Volz, two other criminals who are roaming around our streets, free just like that criminal DeLay. :grr:

Sonia