Craddick Comes Through With the Payola

You have to give the man credit where credit is due. Texas Speaker Tom Craddick delivers on a promise, and the 15 Craddick D’s got exactly what they paid for . . . I mean paid their votes for.

The Big Losers are Dawnna Dukes and Eddie Lucio III. No Chair or Vice Chair positions went to them, although they both rated Chairman for Budget Oversight (CBO) jobs. Geez, guys, hope it was worth it.

I have a talent for data analysis that I utilized in a previous existence. What I want to do is show you two spreadsheets that list each Courage members and each Craddick D member, and their committee assignments. I got the data from here. The first column is their names, the second is the committee they chair or vice chair, the third is any CBO job, the fourth is a Craddick appointment, and last are seniority appointments – that is, the only one that Craddick doesn’t have control of – I think . . .

In other words ordered from left to right are highest Craddick repayments to lowest (none). The results are quite startling in the way they so clearly show how he rewards his friends and crushes his enemies. By the way you can download these spreadsheet images by clicking on them. Hat tip to Susan who showed me how to do this.

Then you also want to look at the number of Craddick D’s that got seats on the powerful Appropriations committee: five out of fifteen. How many Courage 27 got on Appropriations? One. Rick Noriega.
How many Craddick D’s got on the more choice committees by Seniority? three out of fifteen. How many Courage 27? Eighteen.

And finally how many Craddick D’s got on the Agriculture and Livestock committee (aka Siberia)? None. How many Courage 27? Two. He’s really sticking it to Juan Garcia, although putting him on the Defense Affairs committee was a no-brainer and it would have been too darned obvious if Craddick kept Naval Aviator Juan Garcia off that committee.

And the biggest data anomaly on this is the Government Reform committee. How many Craddick D’s were assigned to that committee? None. Nope, nada. Government reform implies giving up the percs and advantages of power. How many Courage 27s were placed on Government Reform? Three.

That’s like putting them in charge of selling air conditioners to Eskimos