As the House Ethics Committee decided to extend their review of House Majority Leader Tom Delay's illegal use of Enron contributions for Texas races, a recent study by the watchdog group, Campaigns for People, has found most of the 31 members of the Texas Senate draw on the kindness of big campaign donors to help support rich lifestyles they otherwise couldn't afford. The group's biggest discovery was that only 40% of the senators' campaign funds go toward actual campaign activities. The remaining 60%, the report found, paid for lifestyle, office, or miscellaneous expenses. The study, aptly named "Money in All the Wrong Places," is based on an examination of senators' campaign-finance reports filed electronically with the Texas Ethics Commission. The data covered a three-year time period between Jan. 1, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2003.
This is the kind of thing that would make even the most cynical political observers, including us, cringe.
More disheartening is that this is happening in our home state, illustrating how much our system is hobbled by ineffective campaign-finance and ethics laws and the amount of influence corporate powers have, even moreso than at the national level. But until we stop electing corporate-backed Republicans and Democrats-in-name-only and change the laws, there's never going to be a difference. We must help the Texas Democratic Party and groups like DriveDemocracy to elect better people, from the grassroots to the national level. Let's start by showing Mr. Tom 'Teaching evolution caused the Columbine shootings" Delay that even redistricting won't stop us from keeping a Democratic majority in our congressional delegation and winning as many state races as possible. From U.S. Senator to your local school board, every vote makes a difference.
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