Can you spot the horrible conflict of interest in this story?

[Bouncy Ball]

There is a certain state representative in Texas (not in DC, in Austin). He is a repuke.

He owns a private business that designs and builds prisons (gets contracts to build prisons).

He owns a couple of gun shops and gun ranges.

He has introduced legislation to allow people to bring guns into churches, hospitals, and schools. Fortunately, it hasn't passed. Yet. He keeps trying.

He has never voted for school funding. He has never voted for textbook funding.

He introduced a bill that effectively cut off funding for health care clinics that provide birth control to low-income women.

Anyone who has a vested interest in needing to keep a consistently high prison population (his business) is going to want to ensure that the factors that cause a high prison population, such as poverty, poor education, violence and starting a family before you are able to support it, are KEPT INTACT.

Think about how horrific that is. This state representative has anything but the public good in mind. And to make matters worse, he was caught running that business out of his taxpayer-funded offices in Austin. (Busted by the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.) He even admitted it was true. Apparently the ethics commission is a bit too busy with DeLay to spend much time looking into this little cockroach.

If anyone wonders why things are so bad, you need only to look at "lawmakers" like that.

His name is Ray Allen. He "represents" District 106 in Texas (which has part of Dallas in its area).

Notice this on his webpage:

"Some of the highlights of Representative Allen’s service are legislation which enhanced the Texas private sector prison industries program and created its regulatory authority...Texas’ concealed carry law and revisions to Texas Clean Air Act."

And by "revisions" to the Texas Clean Air Act, they mean "fucking it up" but of course, they couldn't use language like that.

http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/dist106/bio/allen.htm

(Can anyone guess as to his interest in a concealed carry law in Texas, which we now have?)

[mike_c]

1. oink, oink, snarfle, snarfle....

Repig ethics in action.

on edit: 'course, Texans elected this porker. "In a democracy, people get exactly the governent they deserve."

[noamnety]

2. Can you make a demopedia page for him?

That way when he's up for reelection, we have all this at our fingertips.

[Bouncy Ball]

3. I'd love to, I'll go check out how to now.

He's hinted that he won't run again in 2006. We can only hope.

The woman who ran against him (Dem) was truly wonderful, she only lost by a few hundred votes, and they were all straight party repuke votes. But a hell of a lot of repukes went down the ticket specifically to vote against him and told me, privately, that they think he's a world class asshole. I think he's not going to run again because he KNOWS what a slim margin he won by.

And his own daughter endorsed the competition! LOL!!!

[CindyDale]

4. The Joy of Privatization!