January 9, 2014

Former Texas Association of School Boards official pleas guilty to mail fraud

A former Texas Association of School Boards official has pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges after submitting more than a half-million dollars in claims from a dummy company he created, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Appearing before U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin on Wednesday, Herman G. Wilks, former director of the association’s workers compensation claims administration, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of mail fraud, admitting to taking $514,400 from the association through its risk management fund between April 2008 and March 2013.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas said that he submitted fraudulent workers compensation claims on behalf of Medco Implantable Supply, a company Wilks created for the “sole purpose of carrying out his fraudulent scheme,” and did not provide any services or products for which the claims were made.

Wilks faces up to 20 years in federal prison per count. He is currently out on bail. A sentencing date has not been set.

More at http://www.statesman.com/news/news/crime-law/former-school-board-association-official-herman-g-/ncgmL/ .

January 9, 2014

Two indicted in $4 million BISD embezzlement case (Beaumont)

BEAUMONT, Texas – The Director of Finance and Comptroller of the Beaumont Independent School District (BISD) have been indicted on federal charges in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney John M. Bales today.

Devin Wayne McCraney, 35, and Sharika Baksh Allison, 43, both of Beaumont, were named in a 19-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury today charging them with conspiracy and 18 counts of fraud.

According to the indictment, beginning in 2010, McCraney, Director of Finance for BISD, and Allison, Comptroller for BISD, are alleged to have devised schemes in which they embezzled $4,041,705.27 from BISD by means of 18 separate wire transfers to bank accounts under their personal control.

"FDR famously said, 'The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize'," said U.S. Attorney Bales. "And the truth is that the citizens of Beaumont have heeded that wise advice and have spent lavishly on their public schools for the sake of the city's children. But as this indictment illustrates, there are individuals at BISD who have corruptly embezzled from that generous provision by stealing over $4 million dollars that was intended to underwrite excellent schools in Beaumont. The Grand Jury has alleged that Devin McCraney and Sharika Allison have been caught red-handed and if convicted, they will face justice. In the same way, federal agents and prosecutors will remain vigilant to detect, investigate and hold accountable other so-called public servants who are abusing the public trust."

More at http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Two-indicted-in-4-million-BISD-embezzlement-case-5125410.php .

January 9, 2014

Oil rig worker sues over semen-laced food

An offshore oil rig worker is suing his Houston-based employer, claiming he ate food that a co-worker had ejaculated in.

The Oklahoma man said the tainted food caused serious injuries to his stomach and psyche.

According to court documents, Kirk Sharrock was working on Hercules 120 in the Gulf of Mexico when the November 2013 incident occurred.

Sharrock is suing both the rig owner, Hercules Offshore Inc., and the caterers, Coastal Catering LLC. He is seeking $1 million in damages.

More at http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Oil-rig-worker-sues-over-semen-laced-food-5124426.php?cmpid=hpts .

January 9, 2014

$281M jury verdict in wrongful death suit involving Army vet reduced

Carlos Aguilar Sr. is shown in this military photo.

A Laredo family who was awarded $281 million by a Dimmit County jury in a wrongful death lawsuit had the amount reduced late Tuesday by Dimmit County judge.

The family of Carlos Aguilar, who was killed in 2012, will receive $160 million because of a law that puts a cap on punitive damages.

Aguilar, 31, was a passenger in a work truck driving on FM 133 near Catarina in Dimmit County when a driveshaft assembly of an 18-wheeler ahead broke free and crashed through the window, killing Aguilar.

The remainder of the story is behind a paywall at http://www.lmtonline.com/articles/2014/01/08/front/news/doc52cdf6f69143f268734762.txt .

Here is the underlying story about the court verdict from the San Antonio Express-News on December 7, 2013:



The full story is at http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Shale-company-ordered-to-pay-281M-in-wrongful-5044466.php .

January 9, 2014

Statewide candidates offer taste of Tea Party in McAllen

McALLEN — Two Republican candidates for statewide offices trumpeted their conservative credentials and denounced the Obama administration at a joint appearance Tuesday in the Rio Grande Valley, asking for the votes of about a dozen people at an event hosted by the McAllen/Hidalgo County Tea Party.

Wayne Christian, a candidate for state railroad commissioner who previously spent 14 years as Center’s representative in the Texas House before losing a 2012 primary after an unfavorable redistricting, stressed his early ties to the Tea Party movement.

“I’ve been a right-wing extremist and proud of it for a long time,” he said in an East Texas drawl.

Eric Opiela, a rancher and lawyer from southeast of San Antonio running for Texas agriculture commissioner, joined Christian at Rudy's Country Store & Bar-B-Q on Tuesday. He singled out access to water as a particularly important issue for the next agriculture commissioner that would be made more difficult by meddling federal regulations.

More at http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_3607a132-78cd-11e3-9c0b-0019bb30f31a.html .

[font color=green]Quick, call the fire marshall! They are obviously exceeding the maximum occupancy of the building.[/font]

January 9, 2014

The Money Behind Texas’ Most Influential Think Tank

What do you call a group of ideologues that collects millions from corporations and billionaires and then—through the alchemy of fuzzy math and Ayn Randian levels of free-market wishful thinking—churns out studies and policy papers used by politicians to justify miserly policies? Kick kids off health insurance? Here’s a white paper for that. Create confusion about climate science? Research paper! Propose tax cuts as a means to help West, Texas, recover from the fertilizer plant disaster? You bet. Derail Medicaid expansion that could insure millions and save an estimated 9,000 lives a year in Texas? Done.

I’d hardly call this organization a “think tank.” But that’s how the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has been billing itself for many years, even as evidence grows that it’s less a think tank than in the tank.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a conservative policy shop. After all, TPPF has a liberal counterpart, the Center for Public Policy Priorities, that frequently takes opposing stances on issues. The Center for Too Many P’s, as it’s sometimes jokingly called, certainly has an agenda—albeit one that strikes me as considerably more concerned with the well-being of working-class Texans and much less hardline in its policy prescriptions. If anything, CPPP is wonky and nuanced to a fault, perhaps reflecting its staff’s public-policy school pedigrees.

But TPPF is a different animal. The organization got its start in 1989, bankrolled by San Antonio mega-donor James Leininger, who sought intellectual support for his school-reform ideas, which included public school vouchers. TPPF floundered in relative obscurity for years, operating out of a warehouse in San Antonio with two employees. Relocating to Austin, nearer the political and lobby nerve center, helped boost the foundation. So did new leadership and friendly relationships with rising Republican stars like Rick Perry, Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz. But TPPF’s emergence as a place for mainstreaming fringe ideas couldn’t have happened without a funding formula. As the Observer reported last year, the group’s ever-growing budget—$5.5 million in 2011—is flush with donations from the likes of the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, Altria (tobacco), Geo Group (private prisons) and dozens of other corporations, interest groups, right-wing foundations and wealthy businessmen with an agenda to promote.

More at http://www.texasobserver.org/money-behind-texas-public-policy-foundation/ .

January 9, 2014

Federal Studies Announced for Texas High-Speed Rail between Houston and Dallas

SAN ANTONIO — The federal government, Texas and a private company are collectively working on two studies to assess the impact of a high-speed rail line between Houston and Dallas, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx confirmed Tuesday.

Foxx, speaking at the Texas Transportation Forum, an annual conference put on by the Texas Department of Transportation, said the Federal Railroad Administration, TxDOT and Texas Central High-Speed Railway will move forward this year on environmental impact studies related to the project. The completion of such a study is typically a key early step in developing a major transportation project.

“I can’t speak to whether there will be roadblocks or anything down the road, but what I can tell you is I’m delighted to be part of helping get this first step underway,” Foxx said in an interview after his speech. “It’s a big deal for Texas, and we’ll see what happens going forward.”

In 2012, Texas Central High-Speed Railway announced plans to develop a high-speed rail line between Houston and Dallas entirely with private funding. Company officials said the project, which could reduce travel time between the two cities to less than 90 minutes, would use bullet train technology from a Japanese firm that already operates a profitable bullet train line in Japan. The firm is expected to release details of the proposed route for a Dallas-to-Houston line later this year. Company officials have expressed hope that the line could be up and running as soon as 2021.

More at http://www.texastribune.org/2014/01/08/federal-studies-announced-texas-high-speed-rail/ .

January 9, 2014

The Push For Civic Responsibility Is Only Window Dressing

By Carol Morgan

The first installment in the AJ’s {Lubbock Avalanche-Journal} series on civic responsibility was disappointing and shamefully skewed to right-sided thinking. If you want to encourage the citizenry to show more civic duty, first of all, you must define what civic responsibility entails. And then of course, you need to ferret out the real reasons why people fail to participate in it.

Civic responsibility is more than just voting. It’s obeying the laws, paying your taxes, maintaining your property, serving on a jury, donating time to your preferred causes, and most importantly, objecting to injustices that occur in your community.

The problem is this: People don’t rush out to be good civic servants when the systems and institutions are inherently corrupt. People will not line up to run for office, to work hard for change, or even vote when the results have been decided in advance.

The disingenuous rallying cry for getting out the vote, by FORMER Texas Secretary of State John Steen, was supreme irony! It was almost laughable. The best method for getting more Texans to vote would be for the Texas Republican Party to stop their efforts in voter suppression and gerrymandering voter maps.

More at http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2014-01-06/push-civic-responsibility-only-window-dressing .

January 9, 2014

Warehouse where anti-gay Houston leader claims to live lacks shower, refrigerator, TV

The warehouse where Houston anti-gay activist Dave Wilson claims to live has no shower, no refrigerator and no TV.

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan is suing Wilson, alleging he doesn’t really live in the district he was elected to represent in November on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees. Wilson, who led the push to ban domestic partner benefits in Houston in 2001, tricked voters into thinking he was black to get elected to the HCC seat. He also claimed he lived in a large warehouse in District II, instead of at the address listed by his wife outside the district.

The Houston Chronicle’s Lisa Falkenberg reports today that the city’s code enforcement department inspected the warehouse this week and found that it doesn’t meet code requirements as a residence.

Ryan’s office also provided the Chronicle with photos showing the inside of the warehouse doesn’t look like it’s being used as a residence, either. But that didn’t stop Wilson’s two adult children from switching their official residences to the warehouse so they could vote for their father. From Falkenberg:

More at http://www.lonestarq.com/warehouse-anti-gay-houston-leader-claims-live-lacks-shower-refrigerator-tv/ .

[font color=green]There's no place like home.[/font]

January 8, 2014

Texas Railroad Commission to hire quake specialist

The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas operations, said Tuesday that it will hire a seismologist to investigate whether there is a connection between energy production and earthquakes.

The move follows a meeting Thursday in Azle attended by more than 800 residents, many of whom told Railroad Commissioner David Porter and other officials about the damage and disruption caused by a swarm of recent quakes.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded close to 30 quakes from November to Dec. 23.

At a Railroad Commission meeting Tuesday in Austin, Porter proposed that Executive Director Milton Rister add a seismologist to the agency’s staff. The position was posted later Tuesday on the commission’s website.

More at http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/07/5467984/texas-railroad-commission-to-hire.html?rh=1 .