Michael McCaul: TX-10 Voters Blog

2008-10-03T22:50:00.001-05:00

Hey, have you heard about the challenger for Texas District 10 in the 2008 election that's barely one month away?

Yeah, me neither.

His name, apparently, is Larry Joe Doherty, and he's running -- I guess -- against Representative Michael McCaul.

I work with an Obama booster, here in District 10, who appeared completely unaware of McCaul's gerrymandered district. He remembered the time the Texas house all left for Oaklahoma, but wasn't really clear on why that all happened.

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government," quoth Thomas Jefferson. I can only assume the inverse is also true.

2007-08-04T23:00:00.001-05:00

Support the Troops... just not here

Saw an item today that Representative Michael McCaul voted against a plan to ensure that leave for military personnel is guaranteed to be commensurate with their time served in Iraq -- hoping to leave the status quo of basically indefinite deployments at the discretion of the President.

Way to support the troops.

2007-07-22T08:20:00.000-05:00

No Justice In Texas, according to Michael McCaul

Representative Michael McCaul has signed a letter agreeing that Western Texas District is little more than a kangaroo court, where guilt and innocence are decided in advance and the trials held in the Honorable Walter S. Smith, Jr's courtroom are shams of justice. I wonder how McCaul can stand to represent such an anti-American region of injustice and lies.

2007-07-13T08:51:00.000-05:00

"No Blood for Oil," says Michael McCaul

Following a vote on HR 2956, which would require an American troop withdrawal from Iraq no later than April of 2008, Representative Michael McCaul is cited by Bloomberg.com as lamenting the effects such a withdrawal would have on "oil markets if U.S. troops left Iraq."

It seems strange that an elected Representative -- from Texas -- would state his "Blood For Oil" philosophy so directly.

2007-07-06T22:10:00.000-05:00

Michael McCaul Richest Legislator in Texas

Representative Michael McCaul of our own District 10 is the richest legislator in Texas, according to a Scripps Howard study of the net worth of the Texas Delegation.

However, most of his wealth is actually derived from his wife and Clear Channel heiress Linda McCaul, pictured at right with her overflowing chests of priceless jewels and convertible bonds.

2007-05-25T00:56:00.000-05:00

Michael McCaul on the Billion Dollar Boondoggle

It was reported today that Michale McCaul, Representative of Texas US District 10, is chairing the subcommittee responsible for writing a bill that would award 500 million dollars and billions of dollars in jobs to one lucky district to be home to a brand new bio-defense research facility. One of the contenders for the exclusive contract? Texas A&M University... which just so happens to lie just 20 miles outside of Texas US District 10.

This is one of those situations that has spin written all over it -- if McCaul manages to secure A&M as the site, well then hooray for him and his constituents, and all that free federal money and jobs coming into Texas, and never mind the fact that the whole project is a massive boondoggle at the expense of (Texan and other American) taxpayers.

On the other hand, if he fails to land the contract for Texas, then gee, he's kind of done all that work for somebody else's federal largesse, and he's not a terribly effective representative. Maybe that's why his quote is so wishy-washy: "Of course I'd love to see Texas A&M selected," he said. "But the fact of the matter is, we are staying out of the selection process." The chairman of the committee has no pull on where this project ends up? Sounds pretty lame to me.

I say, go go McCaul! Suckle at that sweet, sweet Homeland Security teat!

2007-05-24T07:52:00.000-05:00

Michael McCaul secures key "profiteering bastard" voter demographic

In a move to solidify his appeal among the criminal small business community, Rep Michael McCaul of Texas's District 10 voted against a bill today that would criminalize price gouging and short-selling at the gas pump. The bill passed, 284 to 141, though it is unlikely to become law in the face of a presidential veto. "Price gouging and the rape of the American consumer is an essential feature of our capitalist laissez-faire economy," McCaul is not reported to have said, "ennobled by the likes of JP Morgan down through [ExxonMobil CEO] Rex W. Tillerson."

"Record profits for oil companies just haven't been record enough," he didn't add.

2007-04-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

Michael McCaul Accepts Mass Murder As Part of the American Way Of Life

At least, he does according to his quote in the Statesman:

"I don't think there's any law Congress can pass that can guarantee 100 percent protection from a mass murderer."

Guns don't kill people, Congress failing to pass magical laws kills people.

2006-11-21T13:32:00.000-06:00

Michael McCaul is not a Veteran

The Austin-American Statesman is running a story today noting that most members of Congress are not veterans, nor have they ever served in the military:

Central Texas Reps. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin; Michael McCaul, R-Austin; Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio; and John Carter, R-Round Rock, are among the large majority of members who did not serve in the military.

The jist of the article is a question is, are people without a military background qualified to make decisions regarding Iraq or related military issues? Would a veteran like, say, Ted Ankrum have been a better choice for leadership in a time when U.S. interests are tied up with two ongoing military engagements?
Regardless of his military experience (or lack thereof), Representative Michael McCaul did vote to spend $437.41 billion dollars in FY2007 appropriations to the Defense Department (among other incidentals). That's a number most people don't normally get to deal with routinely -- luckily, heres a handy reference which breaks down this cost per person or per average household, which brings this figure down to a number most people can relate to.

2006-11-18T09:53:00.000-06:00

Michael McCaul on Appropriations

As mentioned last time, Representative Michael McCaul voted "yes" on the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act 2007, aka, HR 5441. Now, since this bill has the word "Appropriations" in the title, this yes vote shouldn't be too surprising; over the course of his congressional career, Michael McCaul has voted for 35 of 37 appropriations bills, against one, and didn't vote on one.

Now, I realize that it's pretty easy to vote for appropriations bills when your party is the one in power in your chamber and in the White House -- but it seems like it doesn't take a lot of critical analysis to simply vote yes on virtually every spending bill around.

2006-11-15T20:08:00.000-06:00

Michael McCaul on Property Rights

September 29, 2006, was a busy day in the House, at least for Representative Michael McCaul. There was not one, not two, but three bills up for a vote that day. Yet strangely, Michael McCaul only could bring himself to vote on (and for) HR 5441 and S 3930. He apparently doesn't have an opinion on the Private Property Rights Implementation Act of 2006.

While it didn't get a lot of press play, the Cincinnati Enquirer did print a partial transcript of the floor debate. It's kind of a fun read, even though Representative Michael McCaul, having not voted, is unsurprisingly not mentioned in the transcript.

To summarize, critics generally didn't like the bill because allows real estate developers to bypass a local municipality's court system and head straight to federal court if they don't like how a municipality zones the land. Some people feel that this basically removes any real authority a local city or community has in zoning land, while supporters seem to believe that this merely expedites the court process for people who might not want to spend time losing appeals in order to eventually reach federal court.

Cynics, being a cynical lot, believe that this bill was a pre-election cum lame duck gift to land developers, since they're the ones who appear to benefit most from a system that allows them to skip past an unfavorable appeals process.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell what McCaul meant by not voting on the bill. Maybe he didn't mean anytihng -- perhaps he was just worn out from voting on the other two bills that day.

2006-11-14T22:29:00.000-06:00

Michael McCaul on Electronic Surveillance

Not six hours went by after starting this blog concerning Representative Michael McCaul did my onboard network adapter suddenly, unexplainedly, die. I should tell the What Really Happened people about it. But, it gave me an opportunity to go to Fry's and buy a brand new, five dollar Airlink 101 Realtek chipset NIC. I love these guys -- my Airlink 101 wireless AP was about half the price of my crap-ass Linksys AP, is 5 volts rather than the wimpy 3.3 volts, and has a totally ghetto web interface that I adore. God bless 'em.

But enough about my conspiracy connectivity woes, and on to Representative Michael McCaul. I figure it'd be most logical to simply go through his congressional votes in a roughly reverse chronological order, and occasionally break from this format to cover whatever it is that he does when he's not voting "Yes" on whatever is presented to him. (A quick count over McCaul's voting record reveals he's voted affirmatively just about 90% of time.)

On September 28, 2006, Representative Michael McCaul voted "Yes," on HR 2679, Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act. According to CNet, it passed the House, and is on its way to the Senate.

What this law does is basically allow the President to authorize secret wiretapping of either agents of a foreign power or people who are "reasonably expected to possess, control, transmit, or receive foreign intelligence information," for some time after an attack on the United States, or when the President feels that an attack is imminent. Basically, anyone (since anyone might be reasonably believed to receive foreign intelligence information), at any time (since it's up to the President to state that he believes an attack is imminent, and he doesn't have to base it on any external event).

I'm not sure why this law is required, since the President has already stated that he believes he has these powers anyway, at least according to a White House press release. But, regardless, Michael McCaul wants to ensure that future Presidents enjoy the same right of fiat.

And here I thought Republicans were about small government...

Unsurprisingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation doesn't like it at all, but what do a bunch of hippie computer lawyers know -- especially about Section 10, which limits their ability to sue on behalf of victims of alleged electronic surveillance between 9/11 and 60 days after the passage of this law.

In short, if you like privacy, you might want to look at this bill before it becomes a law. If you don't like what you see, you might want to tell Michael McCaul about your displeasure in his vote, or even better, write your Senator and urge a "no" vote if/when it comes up.

2006-11-13T12:43:00.000-06:00

Amazing! You've managed to find the Michael McCaul District 10 Voters Blog, a blog by and for voters in Texas District 10. In fact, this is the very first post.

The subject of this blog is this guy, right here:

Michael McCaul and Vice President Cheney, photo source: http://www.house.gov/mccaul/photos_mtmvp.shtml

Today is just six days after the 2006 mid-terms, when Michael McCaul was re-elected to represent Texas District 10 in a 55 to 40 to 4 vote, beating out Democrat challenger Ted "What's His Face" Ankrum and former/future/forever Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik.

Now, this fifteen-point victory looks pretty impressive, but what it actually means that if eight percent (8%) of voters went for Ankrum instead of McCaul, that would have handed the district to the Democrats.

Given the DeLay-engineered redistricting of 2003, and that the Democrat enjoyed about a zero percent name recognition, this eight percent seems awfully weak.

So, between now and November 4th, 2008, this blog will aim to track the past and current performance of Representative Michael McCaul. To start with, we'll be tracking Michael McCaul's voting record on pretty much every recorded vote he's been involved with -- for a sneak preview, visit his page on Project VoteSmart, which will serve as the primary data source for this blog.

Speaking of data sources, I expect every point of fact on this blog to be backed up by some online reference, somewhere. In other words, they may not be fair, or even correct, but the facts will be properly cited and easily disputed if they turn out to be wrong or biased or what have you.

Comments are encouraged, especially from other Republicans. Please try to refer to our subject as at least once as, "Michael McCaul," and ideally as, "Representative Michael McCaul," in order to boost our Google ranking on his name.

Thanks for reading, and look for a more substansive article tomorrow.