The Texas Senate on Tuesday rejected all of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to dismiss the articles of impeachment against him, moving forward with the first removal proceeding against a statewide elected official in more than a century.
The pretrial motions required a majority vote. The most support a motion to dismiss received was 10 out of 30 senators.
As someone who live in Texas for thirty years, I am genuinely shocked that the Texas GOP has managed to find someone who is too corrupt even, for them. I wouldn’t have said that was possible.
I wouldn’t be surprise to find out this is some kind of attempt to scapegoat him and draw the eyes away from the rest of their corruption. That’s just the cynic in me thinking out loud though.
No, this is almost definitely it.
Tech companies are already done with texas’s shit with a lot of the companies that tried to shift to texas going back to states where they have working power and their staff aren’t stressed out over human rights violations.
And just look at desantis and the other losers. trump style “masks off” bigotry only really works for trump. Everyone else loses interest pretty fast and start looking at “moderate” republicans. Which is an increasing concern as texas shifts to “purple”. Because texas is not going to elect anyone competent. But they might elect a sinema-esque DINO
So throw a few people under the bus and use that to make people believe “it is getting better” as you continue to smear shit on yourself.
This made my brain generate a picture of someone standing naked before a horrified crowd and moaning out, “It’s getting better!” as they smear feces on their body.
There’s probably a Burning Man joke in there, but since I know that like 85% of attendees are just artists and festival people and not elite tech bros i kinda feel bad for that whole situation
Yeah, it must be a bummer to get rained out like that. I did a bunch of big Maker Faire for many years, and Burning Man had some appeal, but I don’t like being dirty enough to get over that hurdle to attend. And I’m too broke now anyway.
Also I have an old VW camper and the alkaline playa dirt would really hurt it. (In fact I think the previous owner did go there a few times, the lock tumblers were jammed full of fine powder when I got it).
I think it’s simpler.
As things are in Texas right now, anyone he is replaced with will be a conservative republican. There is zero political risk to republicans in removing him. His only constituency within the party is the furthest right loons… but they tend to abandon “losers” quickly and will happily latch onto the newest far right loon. All while keeping him around does represent a political cost to republicans. That cost has gotten high enough that they’re willing to consider removing him.
They can remove him with no risk to their power and get rid of a headache at the same time.
The tipping point is that he tried to get the party to pay for the coverup for his crimes. He was spending their money instead of raking it in, and they decided to turn off the tap.
It’s not that. Something is up. Republicans are ruthless, not benevolent. I have a feeling it’s a lot worse than that. Do we know if the FBI is involved? They turned on him pretty quick and we all know how that goes.
FBI has been investigating him since 2020 with a real estate developer allegedly doing shady shit with Paxton. The real estate developer is under indictment. Federal grand jury heard testimony against Paxton last month. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/10/ken-paxton-grand-jury/