You can't cheat an honest man....
Or so the saying goes. Billy Allen Fletcher claims he was an innocent dupe in what has turned into a Federal white collar crime investigation into a "Pump and Dump" scheme allegedly undertaken by Lois Newman and her son in law "Nick" Jarvis. Mind you, Fletcher is a former Sergeant with HPD's White Collar Crime division, so you'd think he would know better right? Fletcher claims that prior to the NuTech deal in May of 2007, he was heavily indebted and had borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a number of people in order to just make payroll at his company, RPM. He also admits that he knew that his business partner had a felony record but that he had no reason to think that he was not legitimate. Apparently Nick Jarvis explained it all away. Oh, and let's not forget that he ran afoul of Nick's brother trying to do the same thing a couple years earlier but wised up and backed out of the deal. Nick's brother also had a felony record too apparently.
I guess this falls under the category of "situational ethics". When you are broke and about to go bankrupt, getting involved with a shady deal might not be so bad after all....
But here is the thing that really gets me: He still owes a lot of people a lot of money that he borrowed back in 2007. And the feds have essentially shut down NuTech, so he can't possibly be making money from there. So just how exactly is it that he managed to fund a campaign for the State Lege, and then managed to keep himself out of bankruptcy while spending six months every other year up in Austin running his mouth? they don't pay legislators squat, so who is paying his bills while he's up in Austin shooting off his mouth?
I guess this falls under the category of "situational ethics". When you are broke and about to go bankrupt, getting involved with a shady deal might not be so bad after all....
But here is the thing that really gets me: He still owes a lot of people a lot of money that he borrowed back in 2007. And the feds have essentially shut down NuTech, so he can't possibly be making money from there. So just how exactly is it that he managed to fund a campaign for the State Lege, and then managed to keep himself out of bankruptcy while spending six months every other year up in Austin running his mouth? they don't pay legislators squat, so who is paying his bills while he's up in Austin shooting off his mouth?
posted by Rorschach at
4/29/2009 04:37:00 PM
8 Comments:
wonder if our good Senator Dan Patrick is paying Fletcher's debts/bills. Or maybe the horse track interests. Or maybe Time Warner. Who knows. Dan Patrick hired a child molester to be his morning talk show host and had to fire him. So his recruiting a white collar criminal to run for the lege is not surprising.
Hey Anon-- That didn't take long to pull the Matthew's card, did it?
Sometimes a person puts trust in the wrong people; backgrounds later seep through. I'm sure that has happened to you before. Do you possess the same scorne for principals and superintendents that hire teachers who then start love affairs with students?
As for Fletcher, Patrick supported him, but did not elect him. The voters in his district did. That they did not know about his past is due in part because we have a local media that does not pay nearly enough attention to events outside the loop, except for the occasiional high-speed chase or wreck. Also, if I recall correctly, he did not have a general election opponent -- only the incumbent in the primary.
You can credit Patrick with support of Fletcher; but to credit him with the man's election makes him a rather powerful kingmaker in Tomball. And to tie this to Jon Matthews is a reach at best, though I lean more toward intellectually dishonest.
Drew, yes, sometimes you put your trust in someone and you find out later that they betrayed that trust. Sort of like how the voters in Tomball put their trust in the words of Dan Patrick that he had selected the right guy to take Corbin Van Arsdale's place, someone who was a fiscal conservative that would help him to cut the State budget, only to find out that he had picked a guy that wasn't smart enough to keep from getting mixed up in an illegal stock manipulation deal despite knowing his business partner had a felony record, or who had run his business into the ground and was in debt up to his eyeballs to everybody and his dog.
But what was his first big "franchise" bill? A bill exempting cops from red light cameras. Not rescinding the business tax, not capping property tax increases,or any other mainstream conservative idea, no, it was a bill to exempt cops from having to answer for running red lights when not on emergency calls.
Dan Patrick DID elect Fletcher, anyone that says differently is not being intellectually honest. He beat Corbin Van Arsdale about the head and shoulders repeatedly on a daily basis on his radio station. Frankly I'm really surprised that Patrick wasn't bent over and spanked brutally by the TEC for all the unpaid in-kind campaign contributions in the form of free radio advertising. But then again the TEC has never really been known to be worth much.
Do I dislike Dan Patrick? No, as a politician, he's probably better than most, but he does have a petty venal streak as well (most politicians do, it is a classic character flaw of politicians). He holds grudges and will stab you in the back with little compunction if he feels like you are derailing his plans. I thought his personal vendetta against Van Arsdale was unseemly and petty. I still do. I've dealt with Van Arsdale on a number of occasions, even though I am not from his district, and he has never been anything but polite and helpful, even when we disagreed. Does that mean he is as staunch a conservative as me? Maybe not, his voting record would indicate that he might not be, but he has always struck me as open minded and willing to listen to the other point of view. I'll take an honest man that disagrees with me on principle occasionally over a crook that votes the way I might want him to for his own obscure reasons every day of the week. At least I don't constantly wonder what is in it for the honest man.
Is Van Arsdale honest? I can't say for sure (Who can?). He certainly seems that way, but I've made that mistake before as well. I've never seen anything that would indicate that he isn't. Not saying that it doesn't exist, just I've never seen it.
It's not as if I had pulled a background check on him and found a felony record or anything.... =D
So far this session, Fletcher voted to increase his House budget, and increase the state budget by billions. When he ran, he promised to cut spending. He's a fraud. Dan Patrick gave Fletcher $80,000 in campaign funding. Dan and his station's talk show hosts gave Fletcher over $1 million in publicity. It was a total hit job. Dan's a conservative, but he is unquestionably the least effective, and most disrespected, legislator in all of Texas. Houston deserves better. Dallas and San Antonio are laughing at us.
Fletcher's job was to lead a task force doing background and investigations and his firm provided security and BACKGROUND checks for Enron
For him to claim he was unaware of convictions, fraud etc by his business partners for his additional benefit - is reeealy stretching
And now this is Dans dance with problem children, this is getting serious - Dan needs to take the time and not just throw caution to the wind.
Van Arsdale will easily defeat this clown and Dan is back at square one.
Corbin should run against Dan.
**but to credit him with the man's election makes him a rather powerful kingmaker in Tomball.**
I think you could make a pretty strong case that Dan Patrick is a mighty powerful Kingmaker in Tomball.
Most of his base of listener support comes from in and around that town, just listen to where he's scheduling all his remote events now.
Corbin might have a hard time fighting Patrick's Radio Deluge strategy. If he were to run against him, he could refuse to sign a waiver to allow him to stay on the air, but that won't keep Hendee and crew from trash talking Corbin at every turn. He could try getting the TEC involved but they are pretty much worthless for stuff like that. A lawsuit might work, but that takes time and money. He could file a suit and try to get the judge to sign a TRO to enjoin them from trash talking him, but that probably won't fly on first amendment grounds. The only way he'll be able to do any good is maybe getting a judge to order that every time Dan or Corbin's name is mentioned in a political context that they have to count that time as a political advertisement and make Dan's campaign pay for it at the going airtime rate. Of course that assumes he doesn't have a huge campaign war chest to draw upon too though.
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