Standing at the mikes this afternoon outside the House chamber, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) pulled out a bundle of gas receipts from constituents in his Texas hometown. Each one had a note written on the back, and one even went for the heart strings, saying that “sick and dying children” are not making it to cancer treatments because gas prices are too high to make trips to the hospital in some cases.

We at the Retort have done the back of the envelope math to determine that at $4.00 per gallon, workers earning the minimum wage pay about 15% of their income just for fuel. So we know that rising fuel costs most affects those earning the least. That should come as a surprise to no one.

First - this is a totally unsourced allegation. Is is possible? Yes, of course. Has it actually happened? How are we to know? But we think it is crass and unconscionable  that the Congressman would (again) exploit the image of “sick and dying children” for political gain.

Second - How is drilling going to help those children? If you wanted to help those children, sir, today, you would vote to release fuel from the Strategic Oil Reserve.

Honestly, sir, have you NO shame? Any?

Yesterday the House passed, by 247-178, the Paycheck Fairness Act. Every single Democrat voted for it and 14 Republicans– mostly cowards running from their records– joined then. The worst of the GOP ideologues and extremists all voted no. Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro explained why this bill is so meaningful:

“With this resolution, we take up an effort that began more than 150 years ago when visionary women came together to stand up for women’s rights, to better the status of women in our society. In this tradition, more than 11 years ago, I first introduced the legislation that we consider this morning, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and I cannot help but think of all the Aprils we have commemorated Equal Pay Day without legislative movement. But today the legislative inertia we have experienced for years have come to an end. The wage gap is real… Over the course of her lifetime, a female high school graduate will make $700,000 less than the young man she graduates with. Compared to a man, a female college graduate stands to lose up to $2 million in the course of her career. This is true across the board.”

So what does this have to do with Congressman McCaul?

Among the Republicans voting against equal pay for women– daring Republican women to vote against them– were a wide range of Republicans from make believe moderates…to died in the wool far right radicals like…Mike Mike McCaul (R-TX)…

We’re puzzled. The 2008 Texas GOP Platform clearly states that Republicans believe in “Promoting Individual Freedom…” and the “Equality of All Citizens.” “We deplore all discrimination,” it asserts. What is paying a woman less than a man for the same work, but gender based discrimination?

And their third principle asserts that, as Republicans, “We believe that good government is based on the individual, and each person’s ability, dignity, freedom, and responsibility must be honored and recognized. We believe equal opportunity is a right and a privilege…” See? It seems like they would be supportive of equal pay for equal work! “…but equal outcome is not.” Oh.

Well there you go.

Apparently, in Representative McCaul’s mind, equal outcome is not to be guaranteed for equal work. Indeed, we’re guessing that for our wives, mothers, and sisters, being paid a fair wage for equal work is neither a privilege, nor a right. In any case, we await his McCaul Minute explaining his failure to vote for Texas women.

Facts: Rothenberg mentions a polling memo. Rothenberg is critical of the polling company Doherty used, IVR. Rothenberg notes Doherty has about $260,000 on hand. The district voted 62% for George Bush in 04.

Facts Rothenberg doesn’t mention: Ankrum raised around 40K in ‘04. McCaul got 55% of the vote. Doherty is clearly in a better position than was Ankrum. President Bush’s approval ratings are somewhere south of 30%. The Iraq War is unpopular with the electorate. The economy is faltering.

Opinions: Doherty is “crowing” about the poll. McCaul wins if he campaigns.

Reality: The 10th district was gerrymandered to elect a Republican, and is supposed to be 65% to 35% GOP to Democratic. Even with the Representative’s not overwhelming performance last cycle, it’s clear Doherty will have to run hard to win. But Ankrum showed that it is possible, with the right set of circumstances, for McCaul to underperform his district. It’s not unreasonable, indeed, it’s part of the political game, for opponents to create and disseminate positive messages for their campaigns.

In other words, “hype” is the name of the game.

Frankly, we’re not sure the Retort is the most appropriate venue for hyping Congressman McCaul, or tearing down his Democratic opponents.

We’d recommend those who want to hype that particular spin get their own blog. They can get started at blogspot.com, or wordpress.com. You’re more than welcome for the tip TS. And be sure to shoot the Retort a link when the site is live. We might even list you on the sidebar.

News articles:

CNN: ‘Terror’ school turns out to be moderate madrassa.

Austin American Statesman:  McCaul’s rescue effort questioned.

Austin American Statesman:  How radical was school targeted by McCaul?

The Hill:  McCaul under fire for madrassa claim.

Austin Chronicle:  McCaul’s Islamic “Rescue”

Blogs:

Austin American Statesman Window on Washington Blog:  Did McCaul rescue or exploit?

Austin American Statesman Postcards from the Lege Blog:  McCaul held fundraiser Monday night.

Houston Chronicle Texas Politics Blog:  Coffee Break Podcast; Karachi Kids

Letters from Texas:  Is McCaul re-importing possible terrorists into the U.S.?

Off the Kuff:  On McCaul and More

McBlogger:  McCaul Gets Pwn’d

As Jack might say, “it speaks for itself.”

• Congressional High Technology Caucus
• Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus
• Green Schools Caucus
• Public Broadcasting Caucus
• Congressional Songwriter’s Caucus
• Congressional Bike Caucus
• Congressional Arts Caucus

Those are all caucuses that have a certain appeal to voters in Austin. But he forgot at least one Caucus on which he serves:

• Immigration Reform Caucus

We’re guessing that there are voters in Austin would not find his membership in this particular caucus all that appealing.

Off-hand, it looks to us like the Congressman was trying to look good to the electorate for the November election, rather than give a full accounting to his district constituents. Which is interesting, given what we received came from his House office in Washington, and not his campaign office in Austin.

We’d like to note that we weren’t able to find a comprehensive list of all the caucuses of which Representative McCaul is a member. Other house members are a bit more forthcoming regarding their memberships.

That would be great, in theory. Except the permitting process is not the reason “American has not permitted” new refineries.

In 2005, Public Citizen released a report on the myths and facts about U.S. refineries. Let’s just take a quick look, shall we [emphasis ours]?

1. “From 1975 to 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received only one permit request for a new refinery. And in March [2005], EPA approved Arizona Clean Fuels’ application for an air permit for a proposed refinery in Arizona.  In addition, oil companies are regularly applying for – and receiving – permits to modify and expand their existing refineries.”
2. “The largest five oil refiners in the United States (ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Valero and Royal Dutch Shell) now control over half (56.3%) of domestic oil refinery capacity; the top ten refiners control 83%. Only ten years ago, these top five oil companies only controlled about one-third (34.5%) of domestic refinery capacity; the top ten controlled 55.6%. This dramatic increase in the control of just the top five companies makes it easier for oil companies to manipulate gasoline supplies by intentionally withholding supplies in order to drive up prices. Indeed, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concluded in March 2001 that oil companies had intentionally withheld supplies of gasoline from the market as a tactic to drive up prices—all as a ‘profit-maximizing strategy.’ A May 2004 U.S. Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) report also found that mergers in the oil industry directly led to higher prices—and this report did not even include the large mergers after the year 2000, such as ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips. Yet, just one week after Hurricane Katrina, the FTC approved yet another merger of refinery giants—Valero Energy and Premcor—giving Valero 13% of the national market share.  These actions, while costing consumers billions of dollars in overcharges, have not been challenged by the U.S. government.”
3. A congressional investigation uncovered internal memos written by the major oil companies operating in the U.S. discussing their successful strategies to maximize profits by forcing independent refineries out of business, resulting in tighter refinery capacity. From 1995-2002, 97% of the more than 920,000 barrels of oil per day of capacity that have been shut down were owned and operated by smaller, independent refiners. Were this capacity to be in operation today, refiners could use it to better meet today’s reformulated gasoline blend needs. Profit margins for oil refiners have been at record highs. In 1999, for every gallon of gasoline refined from crude oil, U.S. oil refiners made a profit of 22.8 cents.  By 2004, the profits jumped 80% to 40.8 cents per gallon of gasoline refined. Between 2001 and mid-2005, the combined profits for the biggest five refiners was $228 billion [emphasis in original].

Public Citizen concludes that a competitive marketplace must be restored (since economic theory suggests that more competition means lower prices), and that gutting environmental regulations to streamline the permitting process is not the solution (since the industry is not even submitting requests to build new refineries).

According to OpenSecrets, the representative has received a career total of $107,934 from the oil and gas industry. The Retort has to wonder if Mr. McCaul would seriously seek to to restore competition, acting against the interests (that is, profits) of an industry that has been so generous.

A politician using his office to exploit Americans’ fears about homeland security, radical Islam, and foreign intelligence. Sound familiar? We’re not talking about George W. Bush this time, but instead Republican Congressman Michael McCaul. Since early July, McCaul has been misleading Americans about two young Pakistani-American boys who McCaul claimed were being “held in there against their will” at a international madrassa school, which McCaul says has Taliban ties in this FOX interview.

However, as CNN reported Sunday night, the media-hype surrounding McCaul’s messianic quest to bring these children home is essentially just that: overblown hype about two children who were in fact not being held against their will and not being trained at a radical Islamic school at all.

After hearing about the two Atlanta children in a 2008 documentary called Karachi Kids, McCaul, who sees everything through red-threat-level colored glasses, immediately began exploiting homeland security fears in the name of the two children, as evidenced in this article from the Houston Chronicle on McCaul’s website. He refers to schools like the one the boys were at as “jihadist seminaries” and claims that they are “creating a new breed of terrorist.” However, in his haste to turn this into an election-year fist-bump, McCaul failed to check with his own State Department, the parents of the children or to do any sort of his own research to find out what the situation at the international school was.

As recently as Wednesday, the Austin American Statesman’s Gardner Selby had a mention of the Pakistani-American boys being “released.” When McCaul’s spokesman Geoff Bailey found himself grasping for answers as to why McCaul was MIA on July 4th weekend in his own district, he used the two children as a political pawn in explaining how McCaul has shown “proven leadership.” Communications director Mike Rosen attempted to explain further:

Rosen said McCaul’s personal request to Pakistan’s president that the two boys be released “absolutely” prompted their freedom.

“He’s very much responsible for those boys being home today,” Rosen said.

It makes one wonder that since these children were not being held against their will to begin with, what exactly did McCaul do to catalyze their so-called freedom? Additionally, also taking into account that these children were not being held against their will, what sort of government has the right to bring them back from another country? It sounds as though they’ve lost more of their freedom in McCaul’s hands being brought home — collateral damage, and nothing more, in McCaul’s exploitation of American children and misinformation to American citizens.

This is encouraging news for voters who would like some real change in their elected leadership in November. In fact, the Retort would like to propose a new slogan for Representative McCaul’s campaign; In leiu of “Michael McCaul: Our Congressman,” how about “Mike McCaul: Not Overwhelming.”