The down and dirty

By G. Romero Wendorf

The Advance is going to start a new program beginning next year with regard to political races. We’re going to get down and dirty and start checking politicians’ trash cans. It seems, at least based on some of the social media posts, people are into dirt these days. Digging it up; making it up; and then smearing it across the landscape. True or not, the gullible are prone to believing it’s all true. Heck with the facts.

I saw a new anonymous Facebook Page pop up this week, which even includes one of the candidate’s sibling’s criminal past, as if we’re our brother’s keeper.

I made a few phone calls, and I heard this response: “One of their candidates has a criminal past too.”

Do I really want to dig into all of that? Not really. If you’re a convicted felon, you can’t run for office(aside from the U.S. Congress), and that’s good enough for me. Misdemeanors don’t count.

I’d recommend that if you run for office,your property taxes are paid up to date though, because people are starting to dig into that.

(Side note: with local upcoming elections just around the bend, politiqueras are already chomping at the bit, looking to trade in that old SUV, last year’s model, for that new ride.)

In this week’s editorial, I wrote about government transparency, or the lack thereof. The process can be pretty maddening. The good news is, however, thanks to the internet, one can access public records with relative ease while sitting behind the desk.

With all the political races set for next year (politiqueras, start your engines), at both the county and local levels, there will be some time involved in checking through all the names, but I think it will serve as a public service, so I’ll make the effort. My wife, Jan, loves research and is very experienced with obscure databases. She can find almost anything about anyone, and she never gives up. So, she’s volunteered to help with this particular candidate-related research. Through personal experience, as company bookkeeper, she’s been aggravated by too many politicians over the years who don’t pay their bills for the political ads they’ve run, or whose checks have bounced…repeatedly.

Since trash cans are placed in front of homes on public streets, the contents contained within are considered public, not private, The Advance will periodically be checking those cans to see if we can’t stumble across inappropriate campaign material, such as a white envelope with a note hand written across its front: “Here’s a thousand bucks in cash for your campaign, but let’s keep it quiet. I don’t want my name listed on your campaign finance report. But just don’t forget about that consulting gig you promised.”

If the candidates are married, The Advance will attach GPS trackers to their vehicles to see if they’re visiting local motels frequently for illicit assignations, preferably with a co-worker since that always arouses a bigger sense of scandal. If the politician can’t be true to their spouse, can we trust them to be true to their constituents? Heterosexual adulterous relationships, homosexual adulterous relationships, makes no difference to us, we’ll cover them all if you’re running for office. When it comes to political scandals, we’ll play the part of equal opportunists.

We’ll check county records to see if the politicians running for office have a tax lien against them. Have they been subjected to any civil asset forfeiture?

We’ll check DPS records for recent DWIs and other assorted criminal activity. But we’ll only go back five years. If you’ve kept your nose clean that long, which includes snorting coke, we won’t expose your past.

Tap their phones to see who they’re talking to. That’s another plan.

“Hey, I got another five grand for you in cash. Meet me at the downtown bar at noon.”

We can match income to property values. If they’re working a job that pays $60k per year and living in a home valued at $500k, clearly something is wrong, and barring a rich spouse or a sizeable inheritance, clearly something is out of kilter. As many former elected official have already proven, some still serving time, there’s money in those elected offices if one knows how play the system.

What else can we check to vet political candidates’ ability to govern? How about IQ? I mean, if they’re going to be in charge of helping draft a multi-million-dollar budget for their respective office which obviously includes the expenditure of public monies, should they not be able to answer the simple question: what is 100 minus 80? It’s not as if we’d be throwing Calculus at them. Just simple stuff. Name the capitol of Texas. The county seat of Hidalgo. Finish the sentence – what large body of water lies to our immediate east: The Gulf of ______.

When it comes right down to it, we probably won’t do any of the above, even though hiring someone to scope out the contents of garbage cans does sound like fun. We might check to see if property taxes are paid though. But if we write about what we find, we’ll attach our name to it. Unlike the anonymous trolls too cowardly to identify themselves, who continue to post things on social media about politicians – some of it true; some if it false -- we’ll attach our name to anything we write. Because with no real attribution, the anonymous trolls can post lies or they can post the truth, and who can tell the difference?