STV was one of six contractors bidding on the project, thus the outcome was not guaranteed as you falsely suggest. Their contribution was legal and ethical as it was publiclly disclosed months ahead of the Metro Bond referendum.
On the other hand the public still doesn't know who funded the multi-million dollar campaign against the Metro expansion, do they?
So it's all okay to give the contract to the crony as long as they hold a "bid" process that takes and rejects without second thought the offers of 5 other non-politically connected firms. Sure mac. And Clinton's visitors to the Lincoln Bedroom just happened to be DNC donors by coincidence.
Their contribution was legal and ethical as it was publiclly disclosed months ahead of the Metro Bond referendum.
Let's test that syllogism:
P1. The contribution was publicly disclosed before the election
P2. That disclosure makes it legal
C. Therefore the contribution was ethical On the other hand the public still doesn't know who funded the multi-million dollar campaign against the Metro expansion, do they?
Your tu quoquery aside, the campaign against Metro that you refer to fell under issue expenditures rather than election expenditures. This type of spending is known as "soft money" and in the form employed by TTM is perfectly legal under Texas law (the law itself says so and the Harris County District Attorney ruled so when your beloved Houston Chronicle filed a frivolous legal complaint against them). Nor can one truly blame TTM much for going this route - it was the only way they could ever have a chance of matching a taxpayer funded multi-million dollar ad campaign by Metro, a government agency, to promote the thing.
So it's all okay to give the contract to the crony as long as they hold a "bid" process that takes and rejects without second thought the offers of 5 other non-politically connected firms. Sure mac. And Clinton's visitors to the Lincoln Bedroom just happened to be DNC donors by coincidence.
Their contribution was legal and ethical as it was publiclly disclosed months ahead of the Metro Bond referendum.
Let's test that syllogism:
P1. The contribution was publicly disclosed before the election
P2. That disclosure makes it legal
C. Therefore the contribution was ethical
Aside from being a classic non-sequitur (meaning your conclusion does not even remotely follow from your premises), your second premise is faulty. Simple disclosure does NOT necessarily make a contribution legal in any sense. Johnny Chung's name was publicly disclosed on several DNC forms yet we all know what happened to him. As previously noted, your argument is faulty in that it permits one to accept absurd conclusions. In the example I gave previously, a candidate could spend $20,000 from his campaign chest on prostitutes yet by your illogic this would be both legal AND ethical so long as he simply listed it on his campaign disclosure form. And why is your argument so terribly flawed as to permit an absurd result like this? First, because it assumes that what is disclosed is automatically legal by act of disclosure, which is false. Second, because it assumes next that what is legal by act of being legal is automatically ethical, which is also false.
On the other hand the public still doesn't know who funded the multi-million dollar campaign against the Metro expansion, do they?
Your tu quoquery aside, the campaign against Metro that you refer to fell under issue expenditures rather than election expenditures. This type of spending is known as "soft money" and in the form employed by TTM is perfectly legal under Texas law (the law itself says so and the Harris County District Attorney ruled so when your beloved Houston Chronicle filed a frivolous legal complaint against them). Nor can one truly blame TTM much for going this route - it was the only way they could ever have a chance of matching a taxpayer funded multi-million dollar ad campaign by Metro, a government agency, to promote the thing.