Davis calls for inquiry of Abbott’s role in Texas Enterprise Fund; return $1.4M in campaign funds

[TexasTowelie]

AUSTIN — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis called Monday for an independent investigation into GOP opponent Greg Abbott’s role in keeping records from the troubled Texas Enterprise Fund secret, and she called on him to return $1.4 million in campaign contributions he has received over the years from beneficiaries of the fund.

Davis, speaking in Fort Worth, accused Abbott of a cover-up through his 2004 ruling to withhold the applications of companies that got millions of taxpayer dollars from the enterprise fund.

“Greg Abbott used the power of his office to orchestrate a cover-up of the transfer of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to companies who never even completed an application for the funds — blocking the release of applications he knew didn’t exist,” she said.

A state audit released last week found that the job-creation fund was riddled with problems after it was launched in 2003, including lack of record-keeping and the failure to require formal applications from some businesses that received job-creation money. The audit found that the fund distributed $222 million to recipients that didn’t file formal applications for the money or failed to promise specific job-creation targets.

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20140929-davis-calls-for-inquiry-of-abbotts-role-in-texas-enterprise-fund.ece

[merrily]

1. Go, Wendy.

I hereby name her Stands Strong in Running Shoes.

[Gothmog]

2. Greg Abbott is running a nasty campaign

This will be a fun issue to see in the debate tonight

[freshwest]

3. Ah, please report on how it went. TIA.

[Gothmog]

4. Wendy was great

She called Greg out on a half dozen bald face lies and in one case the moderators sort of backed her up

[freshwest]

6. Did he lose his cool or anything? Sorry, but that seems to be gauge to voters on who's honest.

What positions was he pushing on immigration, abortion, regulation, jobs?

[Gothmog]

9. Abbott Got Flustered a couple of times

Here is one of the better accounts of the debate http://www.texasobserver.org/last-gubernatorial-debate-davis-outperforms-abbott/

[freshwest]

10. Favorite tidbit from the article:

Both candidates are anti-Ebola, a devastating blow to the state’s pro-disease caucus.

Well, score one for sanity. Will they tell the GOP in D.C. to adopt that stance?

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/09/gop-house-guts-white-houses-request-for-funds-to-fight-and-contain-ebola/

[freshwest]

5. The 'taxpayer funds' might do some real damage. After seeing the teabags come out to attack Perry's

grand jury indictment, and the massive anti-regulation propaganda, TX is alien to me after growing up with Ann Richards and other good Democrats and belief in good governance.

I cannot recognize my native state, with extreme wingnuts intimidating people, OC movement, the voter disenfranchisement. It took off on steroids when Bush left Perry in charge and DeLay and the rest of the GOP gangsters worked to make TX a one-party state and attacked just about anything imaginable.

Also the extreme religious right there are alien to me. I wonder if the GOP's voting block is energized to come out and vote for this verifiable crook. I hope that Texans will see a different vision than has been presented to them for the last score of years.

Every so often I pop into threads with TX bashers to remind them that the GOP used a progressive state which TX had a reputation for being at least in the urban areas, as a grand experiment. The same techniques have been used in many formerly blue states and people were blindsided by the ferocity of the propaganda and those who believed all the things that have been said by RW media.

I haven't visited lately, but when I did, it felt like a foreign country. It just looked different, more pollution, a lot of wealth in some hands, a sort of colonial feel to it. And I've been amazed to see stuff like the NASA guy who was cheering on default last year. It appears there was no sense of national pride anymore, just divided and conquered is all I saw. And apathy. A lot of apathy from everyone that was not a bagger, a prepper of CTer.

I'm sure you guys are seeing something, but this will be a huge blow to me personally if we can't get Wendy in office over this scalawag Abbott.

[TexasTowelie]

7. Thanks for jumping into the thread Freshwest.

I did not watch the debate tonight since I have limited bandwidth and the live video feeds have breaks. I'm probably going to watch later this morning, but the video of the debate is already posted in the V&M forum. Ethics seemed to be a big issue in the debate from what I've read in the news reports.

[freshwest]

8. Good, I'll stroll over there and take a look. Thanks and BTW, I have a workaround.

When videos are taking too long to load, I set them on download to watch as mp4 files on my Mac. Then I can play them through without getting my browser hung up when youtube is busy or they just take too long to load. That might give you a better quality view without any breaks. Here is the video for you and others here in the group, anyway: