Rick Perry vs World

27 January 2007

More House committee assignments

It pays to be with the Speaker. Given the Speaker's perilous position, he had to reward the Democrats who voted for him, and he largely did so.

As to the Republicans, you can check the list for yourself. You'll see quite a few Vice Chairs, which is pretty much the best that Craddick could offer his adversaries. It seems highly unlikely to me that Craddick can spare any extra slots on Appropriations or Calendars, and chairmanships were completely out of the question. [Note: there were a few. Elkins stayed on Calendars. Hopson stayed on Approps.]

If Craddick had chosen to reward those who fought against him by giving them chairmanships, would he have been able to make it through the session? That seems like an excellent way to encourage someone to foment rebellion. Craddick only won by a few votes, and with rumors that there was a group of folks who almost jumped to Pitts at the last second, pretty much Craddick voter feels like they were the margin of victory for the Speaker.

We'll see how the media frames it. It's a much easier to write the "Craddick retaliates" lede, but it seems to me that Craddick was an unretaliatory as he could have possibly been.

So, if you click the jump, you'll see a list of assignments for the reps who voted for the speaker, the reps who voted against the speaker, and others who seemed especially noteworthy.

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Posted by Evan @ 01/27/07 12:44 AM | Comments (0)

26 January 2007

House committee chairs analysis

I crunched through the committee chairs, and here's an analysis:

Females: 7.
Ethnic: 4 African-Americans, 3 Hispanics
Party: 10 D, 30 R
Regional: 6 West Texas, 3 South Texas, 11 DFW, 10 Houston, 4 East Texas, 3 Central Texas, 3 San Antonio.

Regional is obviously very rough. I painted with a broad brush; for example, I included Victoria's Geanie Morrison in Houston's count.

Posted by Evan @ 01/26/07 08:48 PM | Comments (0)

List of committee chairs

Speaker Pro Tempore: Sylvester Turner

Agriculture and Livestock: Sid Miller
Appropriations: Warren Chisum
Border and International Affairs: Tracy King
Business and Industry: Helen Giddings
Calendars: Beverly Woolley
Civil Practices: Byron Cook
Corrections: Jerry Madden
County Affairs: Wayne Smith
Criminal Jurisprudence: Aaron Pena
Culture, Recreation & Tourism: Harvey Hildebran
Defense Affairs and State-Federal Relations: Frank Corte
Economic Development: Joe Deshotel
Elections: Leo Berman
Energy Resources: Rick Hardcastle
Environmental Regulation: Dennis Bonnen
Financial Institutions: Burt Solomons
General Investigating & Ethics: Larry Phillips
Government Reform: Bill Callegari
Higher Education: Geanie Morrison
House Administration: Tony Goolsby
Human Services: Patrick Rose
Insurance: John Smithee
Judiciary: Will Hartnett
Juvenile Justice & Family Issues: Hal Dutton
Land & Resource Management: Anna Mowery
Law Enforcement: Joe Driver
Licensing & Administrative Procedures: Kino Flores
Local & Consent Calendars: Charlie Howard
Local Government Ways and Means: Fred Hill
Natural Resources: Robert Puente
Pensions and Investment: Vicki Truitt
Public Education: Rob Eissler
Public Health: Dianne Delisi
Redistricting: Joe Crabb (who gets redistricted now? judicial lines somewhere?)
Regulated Industries: Phil King
Rules and Resolutions: Ruth Jones McClendon
State Affairs: David Swinford
Transportation: Mike Krusee
Urban Affairs: Kevin Bailey
Ways and Means: Jim Keffer

Posted by Evan @ 01/26/07 07:44 PM | Comments (0)

House committee assignments are out

Check here for a quick download (unlike at QR).

Rumors were true: Chisum chairs Approps, Guillen vice-chair, Pitts not on cmte.

Posted by Evan @ 01/26/07 07:32 PM | Comments (0)

The two factors

At dinner the other night, a friend asked me why so many people hate Rick Perry. For background, my friend doesn't follow Texas politics that closely, and would self-describe as quite liberal. Most of the friends that we share would self-describe similarly.

But, my friend said, before voting, he/she looked up Perry's record and was surprised to find it much less objectionable than expected. In fact, even if he/she disagreed, he/she felt like Perry had a pretty reasonable record. So why did so many people seem to viscerally oppose the guy?

Why indeed? I kept my answer as simple as possible -- two elements, that happen to work together.

1. The Austin press corps doesn't like Perry.
2. As Guv, Perry doesn't seem to care much about symbolism.

As to the first point, the Austin press corps doesn't like Perry much, and Perry seems to return the favor. I don't wish to belabor this point, because it's not really something that can be proved. However, I think if you were to survey the press corps and ask them, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you feel that your colleagues in the press feel about Gov. Perry's job performance?" then you would come up with a clear answer.

As to symbolism, I think the Ted Nugent brouhaha makes my point well. Governor Perry seems quite content to just hope the story blows over. He didn't say anything, allegedly his friend said something during the concert, but he's not going to call his friend a racist just because he wore a shirt of the Confederate flag. My guess is he feels something like this: while many who wear Confederate flags are racists, it doesn't make it always so.

But to people offended by Nugent's shirt/Nugent's alleged words, it's a huge deal. So, they're doing their absolute best to keep the story alive, even though Perry is doing his best to let it die. And, because the press doesn't like Perry too much, they're more than willing to cover it: It's an easy story! It's political war! Perry's not being politically correct!

And so, this story has continued on for something like 10 days. There's probably been more coverage of this story in the state's major metropolitan newspapers than there has been coverage of any particularly substantive issue. This is the sort of thing that filters down to the average voter. They aren't paying attention too closely, but this is the sort of drip, drip, drip that affects the collective consciousness.

Posted by Evan @ 01/26/07 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

"Men may construe things after their fashion" - Shakespeare

Over on Paul Burka's blog, I left a comment that:

Patricia Harless also defected and then went back to Craddick.

An anonymous commmenter apparently didn't like my statement of the facts:

The blogger who stated that Patricia Harless was a "defector" obviously has little firsthand knowledge of this woman. She is a rising star who isn't afraid to think outside the box and be a reasonable woman with some courage and statesmanship. The blogger has seriously underestimated her. Look for great things from Patricia.

Here's how I responded:

As the "blogger" in question, this spin is hilarious to me. I made a factual assertion easily supported by the record (eg, Kronberg reported -- on Jan 3, if my often-faulty memory serves -- that Harless had rescinded her pledge). Harless then voted against Geren's amendment.

I fail to see how I "seriously underestimated her" [in this comment] by stating the facts.

My guess is that Ms. Harless has an overenthusiastic supporter or staffer.

It's quite possible that Harless' managed to negotiate for a favorable committee spot in return for coming back to Craddick. If so, then perhaps rescinding was a very savvy Machiavellian move by her. Having no first-hand knowledge, I don't know. However, Ockham's Razor seems to suggest that Harless did herself no favors by pledging to Craddick, rescinding, and then coming back to Craddick.

But like I said, I don't know. I'm not underestimating her, in part because I wasn't estimating her at all! I was just stating the facts as reported by others. Harless did eventually pick the correct side (that is, picking the winner's side is always the correct side in internal legislative leadership races, all other things being equal), and let's all hope -- for Texas' sake -- that Harless has a great session and is a statesman.

Posted by Evan @ 01/26/07 06:35 PM | Comments (1)

25 January 2007

Not today

Kronberg reports that the rumored House committee assignments won't be out today.

Posted by Evan @ 01/25/07 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

24 January 2007

That's what I sound like

R.G. Ratcliffe interviewed Eileen, Matt, Charles, and I about bloggers and journalism.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the podcast yet. I may have further thoughts when I do so.

Posted by Evan @ 01/24/07 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

Remember when I only made snarky comments on gubernatorial races?

Wall Street Journal:

Global trade negotiators hope to restart the Doha round of world trade talks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, but a return to the bargaining table will likely be more symbol than substance.

The key players -- the U.S. and the European Union -- remain unwilling to cut farm subsidies enough to satisfy emerging economies like Brazil and India.

Until Bono's one campaign decides to make Doha a priority, I'll continue to view it as misguided. Why put together a campaign unless you're going to use it when it matters?

Though I'm sure it's not Bono's intent, his campaigns probably do more to allow the Western world to salve its conscience than to fight poverty in the developing world. In that, it's questionable whether they do more harm than good.

Posted by Evan @ 01/24/07 02:05 PM | Comments (0)

Giuliani in town

Rudy Giuliani is scheduled to have a fundraiser in Houston on February 1st at a certain Galleria-area hotel. The Host Committee is Pat Oxford, T. Boone Pickens, and Tom Hicks. That's the national, southwest, and Texas fundraising chairmen for Giuliani, respectively. Those names were all known as Giuliani supporters already.

I continue to be surprised by some of the people supporting him, including the person who sent me the invitation. I never would've guessed that this person would jump on the Giuliani bandwagon.

Because of considerable anecdotal evidence such as this, at times I think about reprising my view that Giuliani has no chance, but I'm not there yet.

For various reasons on each, I'm not sure any of the Republican candidates look like winners right now. The more I think about it, the more I seriously think we should Draft Fred.

Posted by Evan @ 01/24/07 01:43 PM | Comments (1)

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