by Gary Polland
The litany of bad decisions, ill advised actions, message-less campaigns, irresponsible spending, and fighting to keep well qualified Republican candidates off the ballot has now been eclipsed by the latest insult to Harris County Republicans – electioneering using the HCRP funds and personnel! Seriously folks, the extraordinary actions by Simpson are appalling.
Never before have such audacious actions been taken in a desperate attempt to hold on to the Chairmanship.
Recently we at TCR have discovered that:
- Paul Simpson is using the party to send out a ballot by mail application to primary voters, even though many campaigns are already sending applications to these same voters. The party typically mails these in November, which benefits ALL Republicans. In this case, the only candidate to benefit from a primary mailing is Paul Simpson.
- Paul Simpson is using people on the HCRP payroll in his campaign; HCRP Field Director, Nathan Gordon is also Campaign Chair for Paul Simpson. In fact, the overreaching was so bad that his Primary Director quit in disgust.
- Simpson diverted the surplus funds from the judges signing party to HCRP coffers when traditionally the money went into the joint judicial campaign fund.
- Paul Simpson had the HCRP produce with HCRP funds a slick annual report that belongs on fiction bookshelves. The most telling thing of all is that Simpson never mentions in his report the historic defeat Republicans in Harris County suffered in 2016; 73 losses and the subsequent failures in HISD and Houston Community College races in 2017.
Are we missing something or is the purpose of a political party to win elections in November?
If so, then Simpson’s grade is an F for being a total and complete failure and worst of all not being honest with Republicans. We can and must do better.
With the Harris County Democrats’ recent victories against an ineffective Harris County Republican Party – you may recall painfully that the Paul Simpson-led HCRP lost everything on the 2016 countywide general election ballot and then followed up by losing the remaining Republicans on the HISD Board of Trustees in 2017 – the Democrats have had little strategizing to do other than field candidates in every race and then sit back and watch the HCRP campaign loss-machine deliver on cue. In countywide races, the Democrat strategy is to just let Simpson be Simpson. The single member districts though are another issue. These more localized campaigns – think Congress or State Representative races – are typically gerrymandered to favor one side or the other and are usually won or lost in their party primaries. The far left may have just happened upon a new strategy, though – conquer from within by running as Republicans. It appears that Congressional District 2, in which voters will replace the retiring Ted Poe, has just such a fox in its proverbial henhouse. In that race, candidate Rick Walker has such an extensive record of extreme left-wing positions and criticism of Republicans, that the conclusion is inevitable that Walker is obviously a Trojan Horse attempting to infiltrate from within.
Walker’s Passion for Green
If you liked the Obama tax dollar vortex Solyndra; green initiatives like Cap-and-Trade and the war on the light bulb and; Bush-bashing, you are going to love Rick Walker and his “green” company Green Efficient. It is obvious from Walker’s GreenEfficient.com website, his own personal blog and prolific Twitter activity that Rick Walker is passionate about the “green” agenda. He loves solar power and the idea of single payer health care, was a proponent of Cap-and-Trade and the Obama stimulus package, but has no love for fossil fuels or the Bush Administration handling of the environment. Yes, Rick Walker loves environmental activism, but loves the movement for another green reason – In the six years since Walker has been feeding at the public trough with government contracts, he has taken in nearly $10 million in taxpayer dollars.
Walker On Board with Obama Policies
In 2009, Walker became an early proponent of carbon trading, a cause that would eventually be taken up by the Federal government in the form of the Obama Cap-and-Trade legislation. According to an April 2, 2009, article authored by Rick Walker, “Carbon trading, though controversial in its efficiency and reliability, has also shown the ability to save money…” and “Now it is easy to go green and get green. They aren’t mutually exclusive anymore.”
In that same year, Walker was an eager booster of President Obama’s stimulus program, claiming the stimulus could create up to 3.5 million green energy jobs and praised the federal government’s “unprecedented support for the value of sustainable construction.” His webpage went on to say, “Green jobs, green construction and green development are the wave of the future. President Obama’s stimulus package has a heavy emphasis on green construction.”
The praise didn’t stop there, adding, “The Obama Administration has invested in the green movement. Government has shown unprecedented support for the value and future of sustainable construction.”
Walker also said, “Cost at the expense of the environment…no longer makes sense…”
According to a June 1, 2009, article written by Rick Walker, “A new report from sustainable advocate Environment America details a plan to make the country’s commercial buildings more energy aware and efficient. The environmental group states that compliance with its plan by the year 2030 will save enough energy to power all the country’s existing homes, vehicles and businesses for 1.5 years.” And who exactly is this group that Walker bases his rosy outlook for “green” initiatives? According to Google, “Environment America is a federation of liberal state-based environmental advocacy organizations in the United States.” On their home page they declare, “President Trump’s offshore drilling plan makes no sense,” and offers a link to help fund opposition to offshore drilling. Doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of policy that Texans would support considering that so much of our economy is tied to drilling.
And what about Obama’s signature policy achievement, health care? According to a Sept. 28, 2011, post on GreenEfficient.com, “There have been many attempts to overhaul the health care system. These start-and-stop efforts have broken the program up into many smaller parts and left them scattered throughout the nation. The blog post’s conclusion? “There needs to be a single-payer system, eliminating all these unnecessary channels and go-betweens so people can be helped.” Quite a difference six years and a congressional campaign can make – candidate Rick Walker now opposes Obamacare.
Backing Risky “Green” Plays With Taxpayer Dollars
Walker and Green Efficient are also fans of solar technology. In 2009, for example, Green Efficient touted the work of Nanosolar, which produced printable solar cells and was awarded millions in taxpayer dollars under the Obama stimulus package.
According to a Feb. 18, 2009, post on Walker’s GreenEfficient.com, “Printable solar cells have long been a dream of the renewable energy crowd. Just the thought of being able to slap some paper in your inkjet and run off a few hundred solar cells makes even the person with an average interest in “going green” take notice.
And what became of this green energy phenom – funded to the tune of over half a billion dollars by the government and private sector investors and promoted so effusively by Walker and Green Efficient? It went the way of its solar cousin Solyndra…According to a July 12, 2013, Greentech Media article, “It’s official. Nanosolar… which produced little but hype and broken promises, is done. Its assets are being auctioned off.”
So, is the kind of activism we could expect from Congressman Walker – the funding of outlandish “green” initiatives with our tax dollars? Sounds like Walker has his eyes set on more than one henhouse.
Criticism of Republicans
It sounds as though, based on the positive praise for his policies, Rick Walker is a big fan of Barack Obama’s. He’s also a fan of other politicians. On at least one occasion he took time to tweet a birthday message to Hillary Clinton. He’s also a big fan of former Austin mayor Will Wynn, posting on his personal blog, “In the past, the state of Texas has been the hub of the oil and gas industry, but Will Wynn, the Mayor of Austin, Texas has tackled the atmospheric ramifications of this giant machine with some heavy-duty, big-handed resources. Wynn is a dedicated environmentalist.”
But what does he say about Republicans? Well, according to a March 28, 2009, post on GreenEfficient.com, “Plenty of environmental clean-up is on the horizon for new President Barack Obama who is stepping into the toxic waste left behind by the Bush administration. Bold strokes were taken by Obama, one of which is the capping of large giveaways of tax payer dough afforded to monolithic oil and gas companies. Obama’s new budget suggests a limit for greenhouse emissions restricting some of the offenders from the free reign they have been rewarded with over the past decades.” Not so much a fan of President George W. Bush.
And Senator Ted Cruz? In one March 2016 tweet, Walker insinuates that the Texas Senator engaged in marital affairs and then paid hush money to presidential candidate Carly Fiorina saying, “Why did @tedcruz’s PAC pay Carly $500k in June of 2015? Maybe she knew of affairs and he paid her off?”
One can only wonder what Walker must think of President Trump. But then again, his Twitter feed takes some of the wonder out when Walker says about Trump, “@realDonaldTrump is really a great speaker, especially if you give him a teleprompter and put him in a room full of rich Jews.”
Believe it or Not…
…this is just the tip of the iceberg; but readers should get a crystal-clear picture of the real Rick Walker. What is not clear is his agenda. More taxpayer funded government contracts for him and his Green Efficient company? Advancing the “green” agenda? Rolling the dice on unproven “green” technology like Nanosolar with taxpayer dollars. Turning Congressional District 2 from red to blue? Or perhaps it is as simple as old-fashioned opportunism. Maybe Walker calculates this is his time, after making a fortune from “green” activism, to re-create himself and run for office. Unfortunately for Walker, he can run for office, but he can’t run from his record and is probably wishing that all those articles, blogs and tweets weren’t so evergreen.
The Inconvenient Truth About The Republican Party
We wanted to share this PragerU video:
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