Texas wasting taxpayer money

BooneForTexas

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Wednesday April 23, 2014 · 6:22 AM PDT

2014/04/23 · 06:22

Donna Campbell is quite proud of wasting Texas taxpayers’ money. She says so herself.

Republicans in the Texas Senate are also quite proud of passing laws for which there is ample evidence that, rather than saving taxpayer money, actually waste it. From reports around the country, we read of similar laws in Florida, Oklahoma and Georgia.

The bottom line – required drug tests for people seeking assistance benefits ends up costing taxpayers far more than is saved and fails to curb the number of prospective applicants, according to data cited in an ongoing legal battle with the State of Florida. The cost, about $10,000 per failed drug test, seems extremely high. In Florida, 98% of welfare recipients passed the test.

“These programs are expensive and they don’t work,” according to Jason Williamson, an attorney for the American Civil Liberty Union.

This Texas law, SB 21, is a bullying tactic in the classic sense. It is not bad enough to lose a job; now everyone applying for unemployment benefits may be required to submit to drug testing. Then, unless folks can prove they are under medical treatment (not including taking over the counter night time cold remedies), they lose unemployment benefits unless enrolled in a treatment program within seven days.

As we close in on the one-year anniversary of this law, it continues to wreak hardships on those who can least afford them. It is why I will fight to repeal it.

Poll

66 votes Show Results

Who SHOULD we be drug testing to eliminate fraud?

66 votes Vote Now!

Who SHOULD we be drug testing to eliminate fraud?

Corporate executives

1 vote

The Koch Brothers

3 votes

Republican legislators

1 vote

Sean Hannity & FOX hosts

0 votes

All of the above

33 votes

Limited public safety officials

1 vote

The unemployed & welfare recipients

2 votes

No one. It's a 4th Amendment violation

25 votes

We didn't think Abbott's week could get worse .. so we helped

BooneForTexas

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 11, 2014 · 8:00 AM PDT

2014/04/11 · 08:00

Here in Texas, we've got an Attorney General named Greg Abbott whose mamma apparently never had that talk about choosing friends wisely.

First he cavorted about Texas with has-been-rocker-turned-nasty-mouthed-Republican-troll Ted Nugent. Then late last week, reports revealed that at the heart of Abbott's education plan is a guy named Charles Murray, an unapologetic White nationalist who gained fame and fortune "using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics" to sell the inferiority of minorities as an excuse for funneling education monies upward to the children of a chosen few.

The connection of Abbot's "Educating Texans Plan: Pre-K–Third Grade" to The Bell Curve's Murray had the wanna-be Texas governor on the run from the press.

So, in an effort to rehabilitate his flailing education scheme, Abbott reached into the Republican rogue's gallery and pulled Senator Donna Campbell from the line-up for the assist ... we knew, at that point, we just had to give her a hand!

BooneForTexas

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday March 04, 2014 · 11:59 PM PST

2014/03/04 · 23:59

The fight is on.

When polls closed in Texas tonight, our opponent was clear: Tea Party favorite Donna Campbell backed by the entire Koch Industrial-Political apparatus.

In case the name Donna Campbell is unfamiliar to you, she is the Texas State Senator who garnered a “Courageous Conservative” award in 2013 from the Texas Conservative Coalition for calling out the point of order that attempted to end State Senator Wendy Davis’s filibuster that stood up for reproductive choice for Texas women and women across America.

According to the Texas Observer, "Campbell had a quixotic legislative session in which she strongly supported abortion restrictions (she called the point-of-order that ended Wendy Davis’ June filibuster) and managed to accomplish little else." Except, of course, to fail San Antonio, her largest constituency by far, by withholding support on a number of bills because she “didn’t understand it or support it,” according to a Republican state rep.

Campbell then violated her own promise to oppose toll roads by voting for a bill that actually made it easier to build them, a move that has caused her Tea Party loyalists to bend logic into pretzel-like contortions.

These battles are not over, by far.

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Texas wasting taxpayer money

We didn't think Abbott's week could get worse .. so we helped

Ready to fight: "Bring It On!!"