Ed Ishmael Like most Republican leaders these days, Texas Attorney General, Gregg Abbott, seems scared. He sees the writing on the wall in large urban counties and knows there is little he or any Republican can do to keep those counties from turning Blue. What with Republican corruption, a do-nothing Governor and a Republican controlled legislature that cannot even fund our schools, the only thing the Republicans have left may well be the one thing Abbott is advocating: voter suppression.

In his recent opinion piece, Voter Fraud Must Stop, www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/13819472.htm, Abbott, takes a well-worn page from the Republican’s play book and twists himself in knots setting up a straw man, voter fraud, which he then attacks. He claims we have an epidemic on our hands but, predictably, offers no evidence supporting his wild assertion. His attempt would be laughable, if it did not involve the denial of voting rights to hard working, concerned Texans and if it wasn’t costing you and me $1.5 million dollars.

If you were surprised by Mr. Abbott’s epidemic alarm, you’re not alone. Even noted experts on Texas politics, in general, and on Texas voting, in particular, have no idea what he’s talking about. You see, you haven’t heard about this so-called epidemic before because it does not exist.

If you want to understand the smoke and mirrors trick Abbott is performing you must look no further than his own words. He starts his presentation by listing instances he claims prove voter fraud in Texas .

And what is the first example he references? One - from1948. That alone should tell you how weak his coming argument will be.

He then tries to bolster his case for this massive voter suppression effort by referencing voter fraud instances “the attorney general's office has been involved in.” But what exactly does that mean? Involved how and to what extent?

And if you add up all of the suspects Abbott references in his article as being somehow involved in election fraud in Texas , it comes to 16. In the last state-wide election in Texas 4 million Texans voted. In the last National election, 7 million Texans voted. No matter how you look at this, 16 people out of millions does not an epidemic make.

But that’s not the worst of it. If you wade through Abbott’s carefully parsed words, you see that only three of these suspects have actually been found guilty (all three of them pleaded guilty) and the rest have either been merely accused or only recently indicted so they haven’t even yet gone to trial. So now we are down to three people that Abbott can point to as being guilty of election fraud. Three! How is that an epidemic?

And in another sentence, Abbott states that the counties targeted for this suppression effort, include “14 where my office has previously investigated or prosecuted allegations of election code violations.” So, yet again, in all of Texas ’ 254 counties we’re talking about only 14 counties, and even then, according to Abbott’s own words, we’re only talking about “allegations,” not proven acts, that the AG has “investigated or prosecuted.” And these weren’t even necessarily election fraud cases, but “election code violations.” First, anyone can allege anything against anyone else at any time and it doesn’t mean a crime was committed. And second, have you seen how thick the election code is? The violations cover everything from wearing the wrong T-shirt at the polling place to Tom DeLay’s alleged money laundering schemes. And we already know that in total only three people out of Abbot’s examples have been convicted of election fraud.

So now you understand why Abbott’s claim surprised you—because it was hog wash. You were unaware of this epidemic for one simple reason, there isn’t one. This isn’t about protecting vote integrity. This is about scaring people away from the polls. As a good GOP foot soldier, Abbott is doing his part to insure that some Democratic voters are intimidated into not voting. It’s appalling and a gross breach of his duties as Attorney General.

The mere insinuation of criminal prosecution for simply showing up at the polls is enough to keep some people from voting, not because they are guilty of anything, but because they do not trust uniformed officers or state authority in general. Many aren’t even familiar with the voting process. Just showing up at the polls is a frightening, nerve wracking experience. Add to that a campaign by state officials warning them they could be arrested for voting and you have a recipe for wide-spread voter intimidation. Abbott knows this and the Republicans are counting on this.

His Special Investigations Unit, or SIU, is going to spend $1.5 million dollars preventing Texans from voting at the very time we are in a school financing meltdown. How many school books can you buy with $1.5 million dollars? And if the money has to be spent on criminal investigations, shouldn’t the SIU spend it investigating real criminal epidemics, like the wide-spread and growing cancer of Republican corruption in this state?

Abbott is appropriating State resources for purely partisan political purposes. He is turning the SIU into the Special Intimidation Unit in an attempt to keep honest, hard working Texans from exercising their Constitutional rights to vote. He should be ashamed. And we shouldn’t let him get away with it.

Ed Ishmael is a Dallas Lawyer and President/Co-Founder of the Texas Values in Action Coalition www.TEXVAC.org State PAC established to help elect Democrats in North Texas . He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The accompanying graph (see below) illustrates the trend in 2006 earnings estimates since July of last year. Estimates for the S&P 500 as a whole rose through November and then started to decline. But excluding Energy, estimates that had remained stable through last summer began to weaken in the fall and have started to decline at a faster rate more recently.

However, the fact that Wall Street gets its numbers wrong need not spell doom for the market. Even if negative estimates revisions were to continue apace, S&P 500 earnings would likely end the year up around 6%. That’s not as high as the 11.4% suggested by current consensus estimates, but still in-line with the post-WWII average of 6.2%.

The Dallas Morning News has a front page story by Christy Hoppe on a matter we wrote about on DallasBlog a few weeks ago – the financial woes of the Texas Republican Party.

Nate Crain, the former Chairman of the Dallas County GOP first brought the issue to our attention with an email expressing concern about the poor financial condition of the State Party. The News story confirms Crain’s concerns by pointing out that, while the State GOP had cash on hand of nearly $130,000, it has debts amounting to $277,000, leaving a negative balance of nearly $150,000.

Legal fees have been costly for the Texas Republican Party as it was forced to sign an agreement with the County Attorney in Travis County acknowledging that it had improperly spent corporate contributions. Now, it faces more legal problems (as DallasBlog reported Sunday (link here)) since the Democratic District Attorney of Travis County, Ronnie Earle, has subpoenaed the bank records of the Party from August 2002 to January 2003.

Even more troubling than the poor financial condition of the state GOP are the absence of any communications presence in Austin and the failure to maintain a strong grassroots network throughout the state. When Fred Meyer was State Chairman, Karen Hughes was the capable spokeswoman for the Party. When I was Party Chairman, I had a very able communications director in the late Lester Van Pelt. We were very active in communicating our message a regular basis to the media and to our grassroots activists.

The current state party doesn’t have a communications director in Austin, instead relying on a part-time person with a private PR firm who works out of Houston. The Party also is neglecting its organizational side. When I was Party Chairman, Dallasite Mary Ann Collins was our state organizational director; and she did a magnificent job in building a very effective grassroots network. She even managed to get GOP chairmen in all 254 counties in Texas which was quite an accomplishment back in the mid-90s. Our Executive Director, Barbara Jackson, also had come up through the grassroots of the Party and was very responsive to the needs and concerns of Republican activists. Barbara and Mary Ann made for a great team in laying the groundwork organizationally for the Republican Party to become the majority party in Texas. There is no comparable effort at the Party these days. One of these days, Texas Republicans are going to pay a price for that neglect.

The best thing going for Texas Republicans these days is that Texas Democrats don’t have their act together either.

To read the complete Dallas Morning News story by Christy Hoppe, link here. (Registration required.)