Sign our petition to limit the Big Money in Texas politics!
Kleptocracy (n): A government that extends the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats) at the expense of the population.
I would add to Wikipedia’s definition that kleptocrats are often elected by unlimited campaign contributions. Today in Texas, private citizens can give unlimited amounts of money to their favorite candidate for state office. Corporations are prohibited from contributing to statewide and legislative campaigns but can easily skirt the issue by spending unlimited amounts for “issue ads” that effectively target campaigns without mentioning names.
Sign our petition to limit the Big Money in Texas politics!
In the 2006 campaign season, developer Bob Perry and school-voucher evangelist James Leininger spent millions in targeted races to get their guys elected. All legal.
In answer, Texas House members have filed a number of good bills, including three of our favorites: HB 110, HB 111, and HB 1085. Each of these contains provisions that will make significant strides away from the current system that practically sells state legislative seats to the highest bidder.
We at TCAN feel it is critical that these bills receive a hearing. But those who were elected by our current “system” are less enthusiastic about bringing these matters up for discussion, so it seems a little persuasion is in order. House Elections Committee Chairman Leo Berman (whom you dogged last week with phone calls and emails on another matter) would have to pay attention to a stack of petition forms that urge him to schedule hearings for these bills, particularly if the press is around when we bring it to him.
So we’ve set up a petition form that we’re asking you to sign onto if you agree that something must be done about this corruption. You can customize the wording to suit your own taste. We’ll print out the whole stack of ‘em and hand-deliver them to Chairman Berman of the House Elections Committee.
Sign our petition to limit the Big Money in Texas politics!
Posted: April 1st, 2007 under Legislation, Actions, Campaign finance.
