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So my contribution to the NRA (who then gives it to campaigns in key races) is ethically conflicted because a majoirty of Americans think so?

Is the NRA a tobacco company or a plaintiff's lawyer firm?

Thanks for explaining CFR to me professor. I didn't realize you were such a big supporter of restrictions on the first amendment.

Did I ever advocate restrictions on NRA campaign ads?

Waah! my dog at my absentee ballot.

All I am saying is don't accuse me of substituting a failure to defeat the referendum at the polls with other means cause I never had my legally entitled opportunity at the polls no thanks to ballot fraud.

IOW, even though it was a relatively minor contributor to the PAC

Relatively minor? Not at all. STV was the second largest single donor IIRC. The largest was Siemens, another ethically conflicted firm. $27,000 from STV is enough to finance a piece of election mail to 25,000 households. On a vote that carried by less than half that amount a mass mailout of that size is substantial.

and even though you can easily identify much more aggregious, illegal government activity, you chose to focus only on the contactor (STV)

I already made issue of the illegal activity by Metro itself long ago, mac. Perhaps if you read the Texas threads you have been stalking more carefully you would know that. STV is just more of the same style graft on the public dollar. Call it icing on the cake if you will.

who wanted to win the bid should the project move forward.

Misleading. They already had the previous bid and were virtually guaranteed to get the next one IF it moved forward. With that very same knowledge in mind, they did everything they could to assist phase II in moving forward.

Yet, you make it seem like if it weren't for their support the whole referendum would have been defeated.

It's highly likely. The referendum passed on a one percent margin. Shift less than 5,000 votes the other way (a tiny fraction out of 1.5 million registered voters) and it would've failed. As I noted previously, the amount they gave was enough to reach 25,000 households (with multiple voters in each) so the impact of it, and of other corrupt donations from interest-conflicted firms like Siemens, indisputably gave Metro its margin of victory.

You seem to think that you're entitled to pick and choose who shows up and comments on threads you either start or participate in.

Have I ever told you that you cannot participate here or anywhere else? Absolutely not. I have simply raised the issue of your unusual habit for showing up on obscure threads about Texas politics where I happen to be posting on which you make comments to no other individual but me. I honestly don't care if you want to post here but I do think it odd that a non-Texan such as yourself would take any interest whatsoever in a thread such as this, much less repeatedly so, absent some other unstated reason to come here. Since you are not forthcoming about that reason I shall take the liberty to speculate upon it and publicly prod you for it. If you don't desire to answer nobody is making you, but neither will I cease from raising the issue.

As I've told you before, if you can't backup the words you post here then maybe you don't belong.

Let's see - you have now made that assertion to me twice.

You made it here in response to my perfectly valid statement that STV's contributions to the Metrorail PAC at a time they simultaneously held the status of likely contract beneficiaries for Metrorail was unethical. To date I've successfully fended off questions upon that charge and to date your only counterargument is the wholly irrational claim that since it appears on the PAC's contribution reports it must somehow be okay. Taken to its logical end, the same could be used to justify a campaign disbursement to a prostitute as "ethical" so long as it appears on the reports, which is absurd and for which you apparently have no counter.

The other time you made that assertion was on another obscure Texas thread upon which I was having a conversation with another poster about my personal preferences and demands for the amount and level of health insurance I desired. Seeing as health insurance is STRICTLY a decision of personal need and demand, what I have determined to work for myself has neither relevance upon you nor a need for me to "back up" my decision with anything more than the reasons I used to reach it (which IIRC I had stated publicly at the time). In one of your most bizarre escapades to date, you attempted to initiate an argument with me over my voluntarily chosen level of health insurance apparently premised upon your yankee-esque belief that you know my needs better than I do.

And oddly enough you seem at a loss for why I am questioning the strange characteristics of your posting patterns...

[Gopcap]"$27,000 from STV is enough to finance a piece of election mail to 25,000 households. On a vote that carried by less than half that amount a mass mailout of that size is substantial."

From the Oct 3rd Houston Chronicle

Ad blitz will precede Metro referendum; Anti-rail group plans to mount an aggressive campaign

---snip---

"We've bought the four major networks pretty heavy," Begala said. "We bought Jay Leno on Channel 2 and Nightline on Channel 13."

The group is drafting other anti-Metro rail ads, he said. "So far we are at about $178,000 ... including TV," a figure that only covers the first week. But more will be purchased, he said.

"It will be an aggressive well-funded campaign. People feel strongly about informing the public what a bad deal this is."

---snip---

The $27,000 that contractor STV gave to the pro-metro PAC was the equivalent of a single days worth of advertising spending the anti-metro PAC was making a month before the referendum was voted on. Its relative signifigance was very small in comparison to the well funded opposition.

I must say your intellectual dishonesty is on full display again, first with your depiction of this being a tight (1% margin) vote, and second with the specious accusation that the publically disclosed STV contribution to the pro-Metro PAC was instrumental to determining the outcome.

Rather than admit that your side lost decisively (52-48) after a well funded television ad campaign, you post up nonsense about a relatively minor player in the whole referendum. It makes me wonder what other niave ideas and uninformed opinions you might have.