The cronies (Rep. Goodlatte) are having a hearing on Capitol Hill today regarding internet gambling. It’s a joke. Tune into C-SPAN if you have time.

A committee of appointed Bureaucrats decides on who gets the grants. You can imagine the cronyism that will result. Just look what happened this past year when Perry tried to force that vaccine on 12 year old girls. One of his aides was deeply involved with the company making them.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1194420305233310.xml&coll=7&thispage=1

About that cancer tax in Texas, Lance Armstrong unleashed a lot of publicity about that thing. Apparently a heck of a lot of dollars donated to his foundation and other cancer foundations went to fund a proposition designed to extract more dollars from the pockets of taxpayers–many of whom had made those donations. Voter participation was miniscule. I understand that his foundation stands to benefit from grants.

I saw very little organized opposition to it. Cathie Adams of Texas Eagle Forum released their opposition announcement only 3 days before the election, based on the fact that there is no prohibition on using the money for embryonic stem cell research.

In my county, the only organized opposition was the Libertarian party and about 5 to 10 of us Republicans. I walked some of my precinct and made calls (finally turning to an auto-dialer) and I am proud to say that Prop. 15 was defeated in my precinct. Also, the margin of success in Travis County was very narrow–despite its adulation of Lance Armstrong.

It is a boondoggle of monumental proportions which will bring the unscrupulous into Texas in order to form companies to lap up the money. I’ve seen it before in my profession. After lapping a while and eating up money, I predict that many of these companies will go the same route as some of the old nursing home chains that lapped up Medicare/Medicaid monies in the past. They will be taken into Chapter 11 by their CEO’s and others at the top–who will then depart with golden parachutes.

Moreover, I think that the promised royalties from patents that are promised will either never materialize or will sink in a morass of litigation over accounting, to be eaten up by attorney’s fees and expenses.

http://soundpolitics.com/archives/009592.html