I see what I did there, NPR.
With Big John Cornyn refusing to help Kenny Boy Paxton in his fundraising get at all, as announced last month, The Eyes of Texas, certainly MAGAts Republican eyes, turned to The Donald.
And Trump's PAC has now shoved $10 million in the Paxton ad buy offering plate, the Trib reports. That said, its subhed gets a framing issue wrong. For Trump, this is ultimately not about this race now being an unexpected key to which duopoly party controls the Senate. Rather, it's about his (hedged) backing of Paxton over Cornyn through the GOP primary and runoff. It's personal.
That said, the content of the ad buy looks un-Trumpian bland and impersonal. Attacking Talarico over taxes rather than past statements of his like "god is nonbinary"? WTF?
At the Monthly, Dan Solomon snarks on the Trump official endorsement that accompanied the ad buy.
Elmo just dropped a quarter-mil. Chump change for him, and chump change for what Kenny Boy actually needs.
Meanwhile, Kenny Boy appears to have violated U.S. Senate Ethics Committee wealth and assets disclosure rules. Shock me. Nothing will happen until after the election, if anything happens then. Before the election, the SEC won't even send an official warning letter.
This one deserves an extended pull quote to show how bad it is:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.
Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said.
Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences.
He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value.
The apparent errors and omissions the newsrooms found obscure the extent of Paxton’s income streams, assets and debt, making it difficult for voters to make sense of his finances as they mull whether to support him in November’s election, the ethics experts said.
Shocked? Not me. And I'm certain it's deliberate, not sloppiness, regarding the next paragraph after the pull quote.
It's also stupid, whether stupidity born of sloppiness or of arrogance, because it triggered this story. Yes, as the story notes, if he wins, it makes it harder to track Senate conflicts of interest. But first, he has to win.
But, per the end of the story, here's how you know he's off the hook, other than for stupidity:
The ethics committee did not respond to requests for comment. Candidates or senators who willingly falsify financial disclosures can be fined up to $50,000 or prosecuted for making a false statement to the government, a felony. The committee rarely investigates senators and has not formally sanctioned a member in 19 years.
Bingo. The Senate, contra the House, maintains this level of false collegiality.
No comments:
Post a Comment