Bio:
Ben Sherman is a proud progressive and has been a BOR staff writer since 2011. A current undergraduate at the University of Texas, Ben has worked as the Communications Coordinator of the Bill White gubernatorial campaign and interned for ThinkProgress.
The Texas Senate will vote next week on a bill that would cripple small tobacco companies and violate our state constitution. Texans can expect to see no benefit at all if the bill passes.
In 1998, Texas won a lawsuit against big tobacco companies that manipulated nicotine content, lied about their knowledge of tobacco's effects, and marketed to children. Texas instituted penalty fees on those companies' cigarettes to compensate both the health care costs incurred by the state and the companies' lies.
Since August, three of the biggest tobacco companies - Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Lorillard Tobacco Company - have been pushing the Legislature to pass HB 3536, which would force small tobacco companies to pay the same penalty fees. They've hired a large and well-connected lobbying team to make their case at the Capitol, and that team has been successful since Day One. The bill had 14 cosponsors in the House, including three Democrats (Sylvester Turner, Donna Howard and Eddie Lucio III). The bill passed the House easily on May 7th.
Remember that the small tobacco companies already pay the state sales tax. The big tobacco companies are trying to get them to pay their penalty fees for lying to the state and deceiving consumers. As former Texas Supreme Court Justice Craig Enoch noted in a memorandum on the bill bill, such a move would violate the Equal and Uniform Clause of the Texas Constitution that requires reasons other than nature of the business to impose different taxes on the same kind of business. The Texas Tobacco Settlement clearly meets the "other" reason requirement. Enoch testified in August: "Because a statute that would only tax tobacco manufacturers that were not parties to the Texas Tobacco Settlement (while exempting those that were part of the settlement) has no reasonable basis in the nature of the business and does not apply equally across all members of the class of tobacco manufacturers, it must be rejected as unconstitutional."
Rick Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund has granted $485 million in grants to private companies, allegedly to create jobs in Texas. Many of those companies are owned by the governor's largest donors. Since the creation of the fund ten years ago, Perry has collected $2 million in campaign donations from its recipients. It is a slush fund and crony capitalism at its worst.
On Friday, using a simple voice vote, the Texas House decided to audit the fund. The report is due no later than January 2015. But though the Senate approved an earlier version of the bill, the audit is not yet official.
"The measure must pass a final, procedural House vote. It then heads to conference committee to reconcile the latest version with what the Senate previously approved," the Associated Press explains.
After passing out of the Criminal Justice Committee yesterday, House Bill 2268 is now up for a full vote in the Senate. The bill will allow the government to force Internet providers to hand over Texans' online communications without good cause and within a very short window of time that will put each Texan's private communications in jeopardy. If this bill becomes law, any investigation that can be brought into the Texas jurisdiction would have all the tools of CISPA, in which any private online activity can be easily seized by the government, at its disposal. That is terrible news not only for Texans but for all Americans.
If we don't speak up now, this bill is very likely to become law. But if we show that Texans are paying attention and oppose the bill, we can stop it.
Please call our State Senators and Rick Perry today and tell them to protect Texans' private information by opposing this intrusive law. This easy phone bank tool gives you all the numbers you need and lets you record their responses.
UPDATE: The Senate will vote on its version of the bill, SB 1052, on Monday.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was a U.S. Congress bill that would, as the ACLU described it, "create a loophole in all existing privacy laws, allowing companies to share Internet users' data with the National Security Agency, part of the Department of Defense, and the biggest spy agency in the world - without any legal oversight." Fortunately, it was defeated a few weeks ago.
Unfortunately, a similar bill passed the Texas House last week and is moving fast through the Senate. House Bill 2268 is designed to make sure Texas law enforcement can seize Texans' electronic information held on servers outside of Texas. The bill requires any Internet provider to people in Texas (that is - just about the entire Internet) to respond to search warrants for online communications in 4-30 days. That is an extremely narrow window which makes it difficult for Internet providers to keep users' other information private.
The answer is no. But if the Canada-born Cruz runs for president, as he appears likely to do, he'll be a big ol' hypocrite.
You see, Ted Cruz is a constitutional originalist - a person who thinks the Constitution was set in stone in 1787 and none of it is open to interpretation. On the question of eligibility to be president, the Constitution reads: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Clearly, there are many ways to interpret "natural born". Temple University law professor and expert on nationality law recently explained: "It's a question of how our understandings have evolved over time...[recent examples] all pretty clearly establish that the American people are on board with somebody who was born outside of the United States, but who had citizenship at birth." Recent examples of popular interpretation, that is.
But Ted Cruz isn't a fan of constitutional interpretation.
San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro was re-elected on Saturday with a whopping 67 percent of the vote. Castro will serve his third two-year term as mayor.
"I love being mayor, I love getting up and going to work and I want to thank the voters for giving me the opportunity to go back to city hall," said Mayor Castro.
And what a mayor he has been. In November, Castro campaigned successfully for an 1/8th cent sales tax increase to fund pre-kindergarten classes for San Antonio children. The funding will provide pre-K for 22,400 students over four years. Castro has instituted a car share program in San Antonio, added 108 salad bars in San Antonio schools, and helped invigorate the economy to the point where some have named San Antonio the best-performing local economy in the country.
Read more and watch Castro's DNC speech below the jump.
President Obama is in Austin today kicking off his "Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour". Listen to Todd Park, the United States Chief Technology Officer, explain why Austin is the first stop on the tour (hint: we lead the nation in technology sector job growth):
In his State of the Union address, President Obama laid out his belief that a thriving middle class is the engine of economic growth - one that we can reignite by investing in jobs, skills, and opportunity.
...[T]he President is making his first stop on a series of Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tours, traveling to Austin, Texas to learn more about what's being done there to create stable and well-paying jobs that can support a middle-class family. He'll visit a high school where students are learning real-world skills for today's jobs and meet technology entrepreneurs who are creating the tools and products that will drive America's long-term economic growth.
Burnt Orange Report will have live coverage of the President's visit on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.
President Obama will be in Austin on Thursday as part of his "Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tour". He will start at Manor New Tech High School just outside of Austin, and then he will speak with tech workers to "discuss his vision for ensuring that hard work leads to a decent living." Next, he will meet with technology entrepreneurs and finally, he will visit Applied Materials, "one of the tech companies that has made Austin a hub for innovation and job creation."
Burnt Orange Report will have live coverage of the President's visit on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.
The President's open schedule is as follows.
ARRIVAL: 12:15 p.m. at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport
Remarks at Manor New Tech High School 1:05 p.m.
Manor New Tech High School Gymnasium
10323 US Highway 290 East
Manor, TX 78653
Remarks at Applied Materials 4:40 p.m.
Applied Materials - Building 30
9700 US Highway 290 East
Austin, TX 78724
Below the jump, read Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilbert Hinojosa's email to Democrats about the visit.
They say all politics is local, but Ted Cruz may just be starting to learn that lesson. The New York State GOP is welcoming Cruz as their keynote speaker at a May 29 dinner. But at least one New York Republican can't stand the idea - and it's all because Cruz voted against aid to Sandy victims while demanding it for West victims.
"It's life and death," Rep. Pete King (R-Long Island) told the New York Daily News. "There were really false and phony charges made against the Sandy aid, and if Ted Cruz had prevailed, my constituents would be homeless," he said.
Well, now we know for certain. A National Review article came out yesterday in which insider Republicans reveal that Ted Cruz is thinking about mounting a 2016 candidacy for the presidency.
"If you don't think this is real, then you're not paying attention," one GOP insider said. "Cruz already has grassroots on his side, and in this climate, that's all he may need.
"There's not a lot of hesitation there," said a Cruz donor and longtime friend. "He's fearless."
"We all see a path, and he does, too," a former Cruz colleague said. "This isn't someone who needs to be told the obvious. He didn't run for the Senate to get cozy, so no one who knows him is surprised that he's at least looking at it."
What are Cruz's chances? Read more below the jump.
