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A Proposal to Pay for New Laws from our GOP Legislators in Texas

Sunday, Jul 07, 2013

Politics, Satire

There are certain fundamental rights that every human being should have granted to them, and here in Texas, the GOP is doing everything in its power to trap those rights in the bowels of legislation. In every case, there are, behind the scenes, individuals and businesses that profit from these laws that contribute generously to the campaigns of the GOP party members in question. It has now become necessary that the liberals in this great state embrace the fact that the only way to get laws passed and the constitution amended is to simply pay for those laws.

I propose that we use crowd-sourcing as a way to raise the money needed to buy the laws we want passed. There are enough liberals in Texas that it shouldn't be too difficult to raise a measly 10 million dollars, and it seems quite likely that with that kind of spending power, we can get any law passed that we need.

Rick Perry has a price, and we can meet that price

Our first target, of course, should be the governor himself, Rick Perry.

In 2003, Rick Perry signed into law a fund to be used by the state to invest in businesses that need a little help bringing their products and/or service to the market. Naturally, this fund has been divvied out to many businesses owned by individuals who contributed to his campaign as well as the campaigns of GOP legislators. John McHale, for example, invested a mere $100,000 dollars into Perry's campaign and in exchange his startup received a three million dollar grant. That's an excellent return on investment.

In February of 2007, Perry gave an executive order requiring all girls at a certain age to receive the HPV vaccine which, at that time, was only manufactured by one company. That company, of course, was Merck, and Perry's former chief of staff was a lobbyist for that company. This executive order, had it stood, would have shoveled money from Texans into a New Jersey company's bank. It would have created no jobs for Texans and instead shipped billions of dollars out of the Texas economy. The only benefit (which was a significant benefit) would have been the effect it had on cervical cancer patients in the state. But let's be honest, a Texan woman who has cervical cancer keeps doctors employed, so it makes more economic sense for the GOP to ban the vaccine, or at least not make it mandatory, which is precisely what the legislature did in response to this blatant abuse of power. How much money flowed into GOP campaign war chests over this wonderfully manufactured controversy?

Obviously we need to hit Perry in his pocketbook. We need to make it profitable for him to push a liberal agenda, and that means raising the money to contribute to his campaign. If we can sustainably offer him double the income of the conservative businessmen that currently fund his ongoing re-election campaign, he would have every reason to push a liberal agenda.

What about the legislature?

Obviously we still have to deal with the legislature somehow. The HPV controversy shows us that Perry's power has limits, although it often feels like it doesn't. Our legislature is bicameral, so we'll need to buy both senators and representatives. But we don't have to buy all the conservatives, just enough to change the balance of power.

The total pay for a two year term for any legislator is $35,400. Since our legislators are used to living fairly comfy lifestyles, I suggest we make an offer of $75k for a two year term. Then each legislator will make about $50k/year. That should be sufficient to fund a reasonable lifestyle when you add to it the other bribes they take.

Our senate currently has 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats. If we assume the Democrats will go along with a solid liberal agenda, then we only need to buy 4 conservatives to push the balance in favor of the liberals. To be safe, and to protect against any liberal defectors (which are common in Texas), we should probably look at buying at least twice that number. 8 Senators times $75,000 is only $600,000. That seems a reasonable amount of money.

The difference in the House is much more substantial. There are 95 Republicans and only 55 Democrats. We need 76 for a majority, and probably more like 90 for a solid majority that's safe against defectors. That means we have to buy 35 representatives, for a grand total of $2.625 million dollars.

That brings the total bill for buying the legislators we need to have a solid liberal agenda to $3,225,000. With our previously established $10 million dollar budget, that leaves us with about six and a half million dollars to spend on winning Rick Perry over.

The Proposal

Considering all of these facts, I propose we ask every liberal in Texas to donate $1 to the cause. In the 2012 presidential election, Texas had 13,646,226 registered voters. Studies have shown that only 47% of Texas is liberal, so we can logically conclude that we have a funding base of about 6.4 million voters. If each gave a single dollar to the cause, we'd have $6,413,726 to work with. However, we know that many liberals will be quite exuberant and will be happy to donate $20 or more. If only 15% of the registered liberals in Texas contribute $20 or more, then we have a minimum amount of $18.3 million dollars added to the revenue stream. The total amount of money we can raise, then, would be $24,692,845.

That certainly gives us room to engage in bidding wars for key legislators and still fund Perry's next campaign. It also provides a certain amount of security for keeping these politicians liberal for two terms at a time.

Should we find we need more money than that, even, we can always engage in the age-old principle practiced by all politicians and recently perfected by the GOP: lying to conservatives to get their financial support. There is not a conservative in the state who hasn't somehow helped to fund laws passed that weren't in the general best interests of the state, so they'd certainly be used to not getting the laws they want.

How about it? Would you contribute a dollar to buy a politician in Texas?

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