News Bits

This article on the oft-spoken of as impending court decision on school finance, Lawmakers anxiously await school-finance ruling. There's some good stuff in here but I thought this paragraph was interesting:

That's because just about any fix to the Rubik's Cube that is school finance and tax reform aggravates powerful constituencies. It's not a matter of whether people will get angry -- but who it will be, and how angry they'll become. "They would probably rather be campaigning than staying in Austin and solving this problem," Kronberg said of state lawmakers.

There it is. Why should a representative elected by the people care what the people think? Your lawmakers don't care if the people don't like it, instead they're worried if "powerful constituencies" will get aggravated. I'm assuming that powerful means the people that pay for their campaigns. Harvey Kronberg has some great commentary in the article and in this News 8 commentary as well, No picnic for Republican legislators in GOP primary.

Good article today, Report targets lobbying money, on a Texans for Public Justice report, Three More Former Lawmakers Fall Into the Lobby's Loving Arms:

Three state lawmakers who lost or surrendered their House seats last year have resurfaced as lobbyists, collectively reporting 17 clients that are paying them up to $1.5 million this year.

Medical interests coughed up most of the money reported by the two new lobbyists who made the biggest killing: Jaime Capelo and Arlene Wohlgemuth. This same industry may have been the leading beneficiary of these lobbyists'’ parting legislative session. In 2003 Rep. Capelo co-authored a Wohlgemuth-backed bill that now caps the damages paid by medical interests that commit malpractice.

That revolving door keeps spinning.

CAMPAIGN WATCH (scroll down), on a challenger in CD 10 and the Statesman article on what was talked about at the Barrientos/Elliott press conference yesterday.