Texas Democrats called Wednesday for Gov. Rick Perry to cancel a $180,000-a-year state lobbying contract that they contend was used to funnel taxpayer money into Republican campaigns.Pointing out corruption is a partisan attack. Well maybe if a republican would point this out Democrats wouldn't have to. Non-partisan? How many Democrats in congress were ever lobbied by these people?
Mr. Perry's office called the allegations a "baseless, partisan move" and defended the contracts as nonpartisan.
Drew Maloney, a former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, was one of two lobbyists hired by the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations in 2003 to represent Texas interests in the nation's capital.
After he was awarded the contract, Mr. Maloney made more than $75,000 in contributions to Republican campaigns, both nationally and in Texas.
"It's unbelievable to find, in effect, laundering taxpayer money to put in the coffers of Republican politicians in the state of Texas," said state Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, the House Democratic leader.
The Chronicle has more, Abramoff's tangled lobby extends to top levels of state government:
Not long ago, politicians who knew Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff considered themselves the luckiest people. After he pleaded guilty to fraud and become a federal witness, past associations with the former K Street king became political poison that is contaminating places as far from the D.C. beltway as Austin.
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Together, the two deals will hand the pair of lobbyists more than $1 million in taxpayer funds by the end of next year, needlessly embroiling the state in the Washington lobbying scandal.
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Texas House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam called the deals "cronyism at its worst." It's hard to disagree. The target of the lobbyists' efforts was the Texas congressional delegation, a group that should be capable of representing Lone Star interests without expensive prompting by professional influence peddlers.
2 comments:
I dream every night about Tom Delay pulling Perry down with him. The sooner the better as far as I am concerned. I have said this before in other posts. Delay is the person that single handedly got Perry and Bush the right for Texas ( Tx Dot) to do their own environmental impact study. Like the fox guarding the hen house??
While we are on this subject why I am not seeing any of our good democratic candadites coming out against the massive toll projects in this state?
The democratic party needs to get some legs and guts. Myself and like minded people who are vehemently opposed to Perry and his gang of thugs need someone like the ex mayor of San Antonio to run for Governor. Too late this year, but he would cream the repubs. Every hispanic in this state would vote for him, and any financially conservative democrat would as well. The man is what is needed to put this state where it needs to be. Remember, he took San Antonio and turned it into one of the 10 largest cities in the US. Since then, he has done great things with charitable organizations and his own identity with individual and corporate companies. We need Perry to see the light in his private home, so we can turn if off at the Governor's mansion by his defeat.
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