Congressman Steve Stockman In the News

My congressman, Steve Stockman has been in the news again. Recent stories have spotlighted his missing or inaccurate campaign finance reports and failure to account for personal income in recent years. The latest story is about FEC investigation of $10,000 in campaign contributions from Indian casino backers. Last week it was about an old lady donating three dilapidated houses in Niagara Falls, New York to a supposedly non-profit foundation run by Stockman staffers; the lady thought they were connected to the Right to Life foundation but the check went to Stockman’s P.O. box in Webster Texas.


This story is starting to resemble the old Tom DeLay organization, with a large cast of as-yet-unindicted staffers and associates mixed up with shell corporations, phony non-profits and now, Indian tribes. There's Donny Ferguson, Communication Director and 2012 Campaign Manager, staffer Luther Bradley Lewis, fired staffer (straw donor relative) and 2013 Campaign Treasurer Jason Posey, Friends of Steve Stockman Treasurer and landlord John Hart (his mother donated the houses,) longtime associate and manager at sometimes-nonprofit Ross Center Jeff Van Fleet, fired staffer Thomas Dodd (son of straw donor Jane Dodd,) and Dennis Hayes, longtime Stockman associate and board member at The Ross Center.

This thing is fixing to blow. No wonder Stockman folded his re-election campaign and instead is running against incumbent senator and caveman John Cornyn; he needs a bunch of new voters who’ve never heard of him. Watch for him next on Dancing with the Stars.

Merry Christmas, I think..

 

Juanita Jean today has Rick Perry’s Christmas card today, and it’s muy macho. Not the family picture, which could pass for typical except for the Nixonian figure lurking on the right, but the Bible verse, the first two lines from the 144^th Psalm:

“Praise be to the Lord my Rock,
    who trains my hands for war,
    my fingers for battle.
^“ He is my loving God and my fortress,
    my stronghold and my deliverer,
“my shield, in whom I take refuge,
    who subdues peoples under me.”

-Scary huh? I’m figuring this is some dog-whistle code speak to his end-timer constituency, the folks who want to insure that Israel has a surplus of handbaskets so that we can all go to hell, and soon.

I don’t know why he stopped there; it gets even better:

“Lord, what are human beings that you care for them,
    mere mortals that you think of them?
^“ They are like a breath;
    their days are like a fleeting shadow.

^“ Part your heavens, Lord, and come down;
    touch the mountains, so that they smoke.
^“Send forth lightning and scatter the enemy;
    shoot your arrows and rout them.
^“ Reach down your hand from on high;
    deliver me and rescue me
“from the mighty waters,
    from the hands of foreigners
^“ whose mouths are full of lies,
    whose right hands are deceitful.”

-See? Looks like a perfect message for this fear-monger’s flock of xenophobes, fearful that they’ll be “left below.”

All this sent me back to my inbox to see what Steve Stockman’s Christmas card looks like. His Bible verse is from Isaiah 9:6:

“Unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders.”

-This is truncated; he left out the best part:

“And his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

-But back to Congressman Stockman. Is he trying to say that the government is on his shoulders? More likely the voter’s boot is gonna be on his ass again. Already something to look forward to next year.

Happy Christmas everybody!

 

Stockman for Senate!*#?

In what must have been a surprise to all but the little voices in his head, Steve Stockman, Republican Representative from Texas' 36th District, withdrew his candidacy for re-election and instead filed to challenge Senator John Cornyn in the March Primary election.

This move, no doubt, has incited panic in Stockman's supporters, who know that Representative Stockman is the only thing standing between them and President Obama's plot to seize their guns, gay-marry and abort them.

The second-time one-term Congressman, a back-bencher's back-bencher, must have been convinced that with recent press coverage of his ethical and financial problems, re-election is not an option, if it ever was, and that he must resort to his standard practice of skulking into office.

Stockman's last minute filing puts him into a crowded field of unknown loons who hope to outflank Paleo-Conservative incumbent John Cornyn on the extreme-far-out fringe of the right wing, as Ted Cruz did to establishment Republican plutocrat David Dewhurst in 2012. This is a popular move this year, with six of twenty-four Texas Republicans facing tea-party primary challengers in their otherwise-safe districts. The Chronicle reports that the tea party Conservative Senate Fund tried to recruit Congressman Louis Gohmert to primary Cornyn, but that Gohmert declined. Get that?, Gohmert's not 'that crazy.' Conservative Senate Fund's Matt Hoskins said: "Cornyn has voted to increase the debt, raise taxes, bail out Wall Street banks, and fund Obamacare. He's become part of the problem in Washington." Yeah, I'll go with the 'problem' part but Cornyn a liberal? The American Conservative Union calls him the second-most conservative Senate member. The Club for Growth gives him an 87% score on his voting record, and after Cruz's election he has swung even further to the right, voting against Republican Chuck Hegel's appointment as Defense Secretary and against disaster aid after Hurricane Sandy.

Stockman's m.o. is the stealth election. He came out of nowhere in 1994 to defeat long-serving Jack Brooks of Beaumont after East Texans were angered by his vote for the assault weapons ban, only to be turned-out after one term, probably because even his East Texas constituents were creeped-out to his association with the Michigan Militia after the Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, including nineteen children. In 2011 he managed a second-place finish in a crowded field seeking the newly created 36th District seat, and won the Republican nomination, which was tantamount to election in the Republican-drawn district, with votes from right-wing latahs who remembered his name but forgot why they remembered it.

Could Stockman catch tea-party lightning in a bottle like Rafael Ernesto Cruz did? Hardly. Cruz got an ivy league law degree, married a Goldman Sachs executive, and worked for right-wing Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He ran for an open seat with money from South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund, the Club for Growth, and Goldman Sachs. Cornyn has headed the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which doles out money to Senate candidates nationwide, and has $7 million in his own war chest. Stockman reportedly has $30,000 in his, (if you can trust his numbers, the FEC is probably looking into that now.) He is so broke, he's had campaign volunteers living in an old motorcycle shop, (now condemned) eating MREs and sleeping in sleeping bags, and has had to fire two staffers for writing him phony checks in the name of 'straw donors.'

Stockman may not have a prayer in this race, but he probably knows that. He may be taking a cue from Newt Gingrich, who showed that being a losing candidate can still generate good cash flow. As blogger Charles Kuffner said of Stockman: "Once a grifter, always a grifter." For once, I wish Mr. Stockman success in his latest endeavor, I hope Republicans nominate him for the Senate race. It could be a boon for Democrats, like having Caribou Barbie at the top of the ticket.   

Well, after three front-page stories in the past six weeks, the Houston Chronicle has spent a lead editorial on Steve Stockman, Republican from Texas’ 36^th district. I’m thrilled to have somebody shining some light on this cockroach, but I suspect that the Chronicle is doing it because they’re ashamed of only endorsing Democratic candidate Max Martin a week before the election, when half of the votes were already in.

Now they’re on Stockman like white on hockey. He “seems to spend most of his time and energy crafting absurd anti-Obama tweets and news releases.” –But that’s what passes for mainstream Republicanism these days in Texas; witness Rick Perry, Greg Abbott or most any member of the GOP Congressional delegation. Why do you think Glenn Beck and Ted Nugent moved here?

The rap on Stockman, other than that he’s a lunatic who thinks he can make hay by wrapping himself in a flag while clutching a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other, is that while he has called himself an accountant since even before he took a degree; he has been unable to prepare and produce satisfactory financial disclosure and campaign finance reports that we require of our congressvarmints.

The good news is that if, as Phil Gramm said, “ready money is the mother’s milk of politics,” Stockman’s cow has gone dry. Hopefully this bad publicity will make him toxic to even paleoconservative moneybags.