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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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Is the problem here that Ken Paxton is insufficiently prone to using state power for political ends? That Texas does not have conservative legal actors or groups? That some review at some level would prevent the state from enforcing this law, after decades of heavily-enforced policy by other states? I would perhaps believe that such regulations only operate with a large supply of inside-industry whistleblowers, except this example is visible to the naked eye, and many left-leaning equivalents have hit fields facing as or more extreme political filtering against them.

The cynical answer’s that quantity can be a quality all of its own, and one made easier when it's other people's money. As a result, a government hoping to use this pressure must be willing to risk serious harm to its own citizens.

(But, again, Ken Paxton.)

Possibly relevant here is that Texas’s anti-ESG crusade is headed up by Glenn Hegar, who is currently in a feud with Ken Paxton over whether he should receive back pay for the time he was suspended. It is the kind of procedural machiavellianism that Hegar would pull to quietly prevent Ken Paxton effectively enforcing the law in this particular case to as a way of generating dirt on a potential rival(both men are thought to have their eye on John Cornyn’s senate seat).

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