Tag: flores

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Top Trump Donors In The Houston Area

A firestorm erupted recently after Rep Joaquin Castro(D-TX) shared on his tweeter feed the names of prominent Trump donors who come from his home city of San Antonio, Texas. Republicans swiftly fired back at Rep Castro, accusing him of among other things, endangering the lives of the said Trump donors given the fact that emotions in Texas are still raw after the racist El Paso shooting. Sen John Cornyn(R-TX) led the assault on Rep Castro lashing out with this angry tweet.

Naturally, Rep Castro’s move left Yours Truly wondering. “Hmm–I wonder who are Trump’s biggest donors from the Houston, Texas area”. A simple google search led Yours Truly to this October 9, 2018 Houston Business Journal piece aptly titled, “See which Houstonians have donated the most to Trump’s 2020 campaign.” The Houston Business Journal piece has a slide listing some 25 prominent Houstonians, their business ties, and the dollar amounts they have contributed towards Trump’s 2020 campaign–excellent work.

It would be an exercise in redundancy to go through all the names listed in the slide and Yours Truly will certainly not do that. However there are some very prominent Houston personalities that deserve a separate mention chief among them, Jeffery and Melinda Hildebrand of Hillcorp Energy Company. Businessman Farouk Shami, a Palestinian-American and a staple in Houston’s hair products industry also caught Yours Truly’s attention. James Brookshire of S & B, one of the largest construction companies in the world is also on the list. As the article correctly points out, Ivanka Trump visited S & B’s offices in Baytown, Texas in September 2018 as part of her initiative to promote industrial craft training (a testament to S & B’s clout in the construction industry). Last but not least, Jim Flores, a big name in Houston’s oil and gas industry also caught Yours Truly’s attention.

It is fair to assume that because Rep Castro was severely criticized for sharing the names of Trump’s San Antonio donors, Yours Truly will also face similar criticism. For the record Yours Truly totally agrees with the reasoning given by Team Castro when defending their actions. Team Castro correctly pointed out that this is already public information that can be easily accessed on the FEC website so nobody is being “outed”. Yours Truly is further insulated from attacks by the fact that he is simply referencing a Houston Business Journal article that has been out there since 2018. If nobody raised an “outing” issue with the Houston Business Journal piece, then nobody should raise similar issues with this blog post.

Aside from the fact that this is already public information and therefore no donor is being “outed”, reasonable people will also agree that the Trump Presidency has led to the rise of hate groups–especially White Supremacy groups. Some of these groups have openly expressed support for Trump. Reasonable people will also agree that Trump has not done nearly enough to totally disavow the kind of politics that divides Americans along racial lines. As a matter of fact several paid TV pundits have come out and openly accused him of running a presidential campaign based on racism. It is therefore very important for people, certainly Houstonians, to know who is funding his campaign. Whether the people funding his campaign endorse the attendant racism is a different question altogether. The point is, it is in the public’s interest that people know who is funding him.

Bottom line as we approach 2020 the public needs to know where this President stands in regards to these hate groups. Unless and until he comes out and forcefully condemns these hate groups both in his deeds and his words, then the list of prominent Houstonians who continue to send him large donations will remain a topic of great interest and they will quite frankly be viewed by many as sponsors of hate.

For those of you very happy with @Emolclause’s activism don’t shy away from the “tip jar” below on your way out.

You may reach the author via email at author@grassrootsdempolitics.com or author@emolumentsclause.com

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Unverifiable Votes Played Huge Role In GOP’s Upset “Win” In Texas



A shocking upset “win” by GOP’s Pete Flores in Texas Senate District 19 has again brought to the forefront the troubling debate as to why in 2018, with all the fears of Russian hacking, Texas is still using unverifiable voting machines to conduct its elections. Election integrity advocate Jennifer Cohn went behind the numbers of Pete Flores “poll defying” win and as is always the case with GOP’s upset election wins, there appears to be some chicanery involved. Jennifer Cohn’s excellent thread goes into the details of Pete Flores’ upset win, but it all boils down to this one Tweet.

17 Texas counties voted in the Texas Senate District 19 race. GOP’s Pete Flores received 23,576 votes to the Dem’s 20,911 votes(a 2,665 vote margin).


But here’s where it gets really fishy. Turns out that 2 counties out of the 17 use totally paperless, unverifiable voting machines. It is from these two counties(Bexar and Brewster) that half of the roughly 44,000 votes cast came from. Even more importantly, the GOP candidate “defied the polls” in blue Bexar county garnering 10,215 votes to the Dem’s 11,915 votes–and therein lies the GOP election chicanery you must not miss.

Folks if you miss everything else do not miss this because this is how the GOP “defies the polls” using unverifiable voting machines. Bexar County is a reliably blue county(San Antonio area). As Yours Truly warned you in a previous post, the GOP “>has packed Bexar and many other blue counties with unverifiable paperless voting machines. So in “poll defying” GOP wins like the one that happened in Texas Senate District 19, most people just look at the fact that the Dem candidate carried Bexar County and overlook the more important question as to how the GOP candidate got so much votes in this blue county. And there’s the trick–nobody knows/can verify just who in reliably blue Bexar county voted for GOP’s Pete Flores in his “upset” win. Think about that folks, the GOP candidate for Texas Senate District 19 won the election by a 2,665 margin but the 10,215 votes he got in blue Bexar county, a strangely high number, cannot be verified. Folks this is exactly why we must have election machines that leave a verifiable paper trail.


This trick is also very effective in Texas statewide elections–for Governor and U.S. Senate races and Texas High Courts. As Jennifer Cohn correctly points out, Dems should be very concerned about the upcoming Beto v Ted Cruz U.S. Senate race.


In Texas it is well known that when it comes to statewide races, “it’s the metroplexes stupid.” Whoever performs very well in the metroplexes–Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio wins the statewide races. The Texas metroplexes vote overwhelmingly for Dem candidates but the Texas GOP has figured out a way to deal with that– pack the metroplexes(Dem urban counties like Harris, Dallas, Tarrant etc) with unverifiable voting machines. After that it just becomes a game of numbers.

A Dem statewide candidate for example almost always wins in counties that house the big cities like Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. The fact that is often overlooked however is the number of votes the Republican candidate got in these metroplexes–usually unverifiable due to unverifiable voting machines. In other words when the election results come around most people just look at the fact that the Dem candidate won say Harris county(Houston area) but forget to ask the more important question which is, “how the hell did the Republican get so much votes in blue Harris county?” We just witnessed this scenario in Texas Senate District 19. The Dem won blue Bexar county as was expected with 11,915 votes but nobody knows/can verify how the hell GOP’s Pete Flores got 10,215 votes in blue Bexar county leading to his 2,665-margin upset “win”. Sadly as it stands right now there is no way to answer these questions–a totally unacceptable standard for deciding very consequential elections in 2018.

Bottom line, Texas’ unverifiable voting machines present a clear and present danger for Dems in the 2018 elections and beyond. How/why the DNC continues to remain silent on this grave issue is at this juncture, a serious dereliction of duty. These are questions the DNC could easily take up with the Texas Secretary of State and indeed other state Secretaries of State nationwide but will not do so. Strange indeed!!

For those of you very happy with @Emolclause’s activism don’t shy away from the “tip jar” below on your way out