Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

If you want to be President…

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then you should probably not be creeping women out or going on rants when you’re caught and kicked out of your hotel.

What?

First, a little background. My state representative is Rep. John Davis (R-129). John’s son, Samuel, is an aspiring young actor in California. As is the case with most aspiring young actors, Samuel works part time to pay the bills while pursuing his dream. It’s the classic American story.

While working the desk at a hotel, Samuel’s manager asked him to do the hard work of kicking a guest out of the hotel because women were complaining about the guy following them around and staring at them. Hilarity ensued and fortunately for us, Samuel recorded the incident and made an interpretive video of it.

Too bad he can’t tell us the jerks real name. But I’m pretty certain that if this clown ever does run for President, we’ll know who he is!

Thanks Samuel! And good luck to you in your acting career. See folks, not everything about politics is boring and dull!

 

 

Rep. John Davis, Rep-elect Greg Bonnen hold leadership town hall

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Delegates to the Republican Party of Texas convention in 2012 added this to the party platform:

Texas House Leadership Town Hall – We call for the Republican  members of the Texas House of Representatives after the November election, leading up to the Legislative session, to hold public town hall meetings in which the voters can express their wishes and thoughts about the leadership for the 83rd Session.

Rep. John Davis (129) and Rep-elect Greg Bonnen (24) fulfilled their requirement Monday evening by holding a joint town hall meeting in the courtroom of Judge Louie Ditta in Clear Lake, hosted by the Clear Lake Area Republicans.

Rep-elect Greg Bonnen and Rep. John Davis
Rep-elect Greg Bonnen and Rep. John Davis

There was a decent turnout, probably below expectations for those pushing these meetings, but decent nonetheless. I’d make an educated guess (heck, even I can count) that roughly 60 people attended – several arrived late and a couple left early. Too bad all those delegates from HD24 and HD129 didn’t include a requirement that they show up. Ditto that for precinct chairs. There weren’t more than a hand full of precinct chairs. That’s a shame, no matter which side of this fight you are on. If you are going to get on the ballot or volunteer to be a precinct chair, the least you can do is show up to a town hall meeting for your own state representative. My precinct chair, Joan McMillan, was there – as always. Some precinct chairs are just better than others.

Rep. Davis gave a brief introduction of how the process of selecting a speaker works and then the two reps took questions from the audience. There were a total of 18 questions – 8 of them were about either the speaker vote or about Speaker Joe Straus in one form or another. The rest ranged from too many signs in Spanish to how do we prevent Sharia law to Agenda 21 to school vouchers to the Affordable Care Act to corporate welfare and beyond.  But let’s focus on the topic at hand, the selection of House leadership.

The first question came from Tanya Robertson (@TanyaARobertson). She wanted to get each representative on record as to who they will support. Rep. Davis didn’t hesitate to declare his support for Speaker Straus, emphasizing his temperament, judgment, and experience – note that when she follows up by asking him if he would consider voting for Rep. David Simpson, he says that he is not impressed and reiterates this by saying that Simpson is someone he is not comfortable with.

John Davis on why he is voting for Speaker Joe Straus

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Rep-elect Bonnen did not commit to anyone but said that he was leaning towards Speaker Straus. He noted that both Bryan Hughes and David Simpson had called him, asking for his vote. Later in the meeting (not in this clip), he stated that Speaker Straus had never called him asking for his vote. Of particular interest is Bonnen’s assertion that a he thinks that a super-majority of Republicans support Speaker Straus because he is so well regarded – that would be 63 reps, eight more than Robert Miller estimated.

Rep-elect Greg Bonnen talks about the Speaker’s vote

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Rep. Davis continued his “defense” or support of Speaker Straus throughout the night. Here is a question I liked because it is representative of the people that hate Speaker Straus – they think that those of us that support Speaker Straus are “uninformed” or not “plugged in” – I didn’t catch the guys name that asked it but if you look at the photos, he is labeled “plugged in” – because, you know, I’m not, and he wants to know what “everyone” is missing, because, you know, he talks to “everyone” and they all agree with him! Go figure.

Rep. John Davis tells an attendee what he is missing

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That was a darned good response. Does anyone really think guys like Rep. Davis, that have been in the legislature through a Democrat speaker, then Tom Craddick, and now Joe Straus, do not know what it takes to run the place? And some folks would like to put it in the hands of a one term guy that has never passed a bill but knows how to get attention in the media? Give me a break. And by the way, “plugged in”, I guarantee you that I’m at least as “plugged in” and “informed” as you are – you might want to expand your circle.

Probably the best question of the night was the one that started, “What I want to know, since Joe Straus is a Democrat… (laughter and correction) …he’s not a Democrat? Oh well, that blows my entire question out of the water. I thought he was a Democrat.” Pretty funny.

Like I said from the beginning, there is no speaker’s “race” – there’s just a bunch of noise from a few noisemakers. Who knows why they don’t like Speaker Straus? One thing’s for sure, results don’t matter to them – if they did, they wouldn’t be making so much useless noise. The numbers are the numbers and Speaker Straus has ’em by a country boy mile. Even though he’s a city feller.

A few pictures from the “required” meeting:

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Raging Elephants takes on Big Jolly

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As they say, all publicity is good publicity. Right? Yeah, why not? So when Apostle Claver T. Kamau-Imani of Raging Elephants sent out an email critical of me for endorsing and voting for State Rep. John Davis, I laughed about it and Tweeted this:

I see that Claver has decided to attack lil’ old me. Dude, what’s up with that? @SpeakerStraus rules. @RagingElephants #txlege

Claver didn’t appreciate the humor, because I poked at him with the “Straus rules” thing and for whatever reason, Claver can’t handle the fact that Joe Straus is a conservative Speaker of the House. After a little back and forth, the Apostle tweets this:

@dpjennings @VoteBeebe @SpeakerStraus #txlege Tx political culture is corrupt and u ain’t helping!!! So just keep nibbling his jock strap.

Sigh. They don’t make Apostles like they used to. Saying something vulgar like that simply because I support Speaker Straus and the Apostle doesn’t.

I got to thinking, I wonder who is paying the Apostle these days? So I log onto the Texas Ethics Commission website to find out. Guess what? Turns out that Raging Elephants PAC (#00066148) hasn’t filed a report since September 12, 2011 and that report only covered their activities from July 1, 2011 through August 31, 2011. But they have continued to receive funds:

Expenditures to Raging Elephants listed on candidates ethics reports.

And both of their websites, RagingElephants.org and StampedeTX.com have donation pages for political purposes. But no reports have been filed in over 7 months, missing at least three deadlines. Shame, shame. Glass houses and all.

Although the Raging Elephants still has a mission statement that claims they are recruiting minorities, most of the Apostle’s work the past year or two has centered on “ousting Straus” and recruiting secessionist candidates like Daniel Miller and Cary Wise.

Back to the original subject, anyone that says that Rep. John Davis isn’t a conservative politician is nuts, of the fruitcake variety. I’ll proudly vote for this man of integrity and honesty. I have nothing against Mary Huls and in fact supported her in her original bid because of her hard work as a candidate and pushing John to be a better rep. But this is now her second campaign and we differ on issues and on Joe Straus. Mary does what the Apostle does, blasts Joe Straus anywhere and everywhere – I saw her recently at the Downtown Pachyderm Club and she said her number one priority was getting rid of Joe Straus. And getting rid of property taxes but when someone asked her a question about that in relation to a sales tax of 20+{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}, she had no answer.

As a reminder, Speaker Straus has presided over two very conservative sessions and is supported by the two major pro-life groups in the state because of the strong pro-life session last year.

So the Apostle can vote for whomever he chooses (except that he doesn’t live in our district) but I’m voting for Rep. John Davis, who will support Speaker Joe Straus as they face hard choices on the budget next session.

 

CD36, SD11, HD129: Mike Jackson, Daniel McCool, John Davis

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Choices, choices. Completing the legislative part of my ballot out here in the City of Shoreacres, I’ll be voting for the following in this year’s Republican Primary:

Mike Jackson

Congressional District 36: Easy one – Mike Jackson. He ain’t a flashy rhetorical conservative like the ones so popular these days but you can count on Mike to vote conservative. Small business owner, very active in the community, and he mows his own grass! My kind of guy. Seriously, I see him out riding his mower every week – I think it is a form of relaxation for him.

Having represented our area first as a State Rep. and then as a State Sen., no other candidate has the broad experience with the issues this new district faces. You won’t see him in front of the cameras with a 7 second sound bite but you will see him meeting with small business owners, petrochemical executives, tourist industry executives, fishing interests, and most importantly, his neighbors. I’m voting for Mike.

Daniel McCool

Senate District 11 – I’d love to see my neighbors vote with me and put a true man of the people in this seat, Daniel McCool.  Daniel is anything but a politician, which is why he faces an uphill battle in this race. State Rep. Larry Taylor has a good, solid conservative reputation. And Dave Norman has deep ties to the community.

But ask yourself this? With Taylor getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from TLR, and Norman getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from StopTLR, don’t you think that either one of those guys will be beholden to those groups? Each side spending half a million or more for a job that pays $600 a month? Doesn’t make sense unless you admit that taxpayer interests will not be at the forefront for either man.

I’ve been to dozens of meetings with Daniel over the past three years and there isn’t a harder worker out there. I hope that lots of folks join me in putting a man of the people in the Senate – he’d be a breath of fresh air for that branch of Texas’ government.

John Davis

House District 129 – Another easy choice – return Rep. John Davis for another term. John is a another guy that isn’t a flashy, rhetorical conservative – you won’t see him jumping up in front of the cameras for the sole purpose of jumping up in front of the cameras. He has a solid conservative record, has deep roots in the district, and is a man of solid character. With John, you don’t to worry about even a hint of a scandal.

One thing that John understands is that we must maintain a business climate that is friendly to business and that we do not put up roadblocks that will impede their growth. That is one of the reasons that Texas House Speaker Joe Straus appointed him as Chair of the Economic and Small Business Development committee. He also has a strong working knowledge of health care laws, regulations, and the impact that Obamacare is going to have on our budget. He is the right man to work with Speaker Straus to address the budget problems that loom for the 83rd Legislature. I hope you will join me in re-electing John Davis.

So that wraps up my ballot on the legislative side. To recap, here are my choices: