The ethics of Wendy Davis's bond business

Breitbart:
Amid increasing scrutiny regarding legislator ethics, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis profited from government bond work as a co-bond counsel through her law firm Newby Davis PLLC, according to San Antonio press.

 

Just last month, Newby Davis helped float a $201.5 million bond for the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and a $319 million bond for the Tarrant Regional Water District, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The two-person law firm has served as a co-bond counsel for 20 deals since 2010, resulting in $6.3 billion in refinancing cases, according to the local report. The profits made by Davis' firm are unknown at this time.

According to the Express-News, concerns have been raised in relation to the Tarrant Regional Water District's bond--Sandy Newby, the wife of Davis' law partner Brian Newby, is the water district's finance director.

Pointing to the fact that Davis' partner is African American, water district spokesman Chad Lorance told the Express-News that Newby Davis was chosen to float the bond because the firm met the district's minority goals.
...
This practice is part of the minority spoil system many political subdivisions have imposed on the sale of bonds.  These small firms do not have the reputation that would allow them to write the bond opinion on their own, so they in effect free ride on the opinion of larger more experienced bond council from major firms.  It is a political payoff.  The bond markets could care less about their opinions.  It is a waste of taxpayer money.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more