For this assignment I ended up reading a blog entry on Empower Texans. The blog entry is titled "Sarah Davis’ Misguided View of Government". I would not recommend this blog for reading and I'll explain why, but first a little about the author, Dustin Matocha.
According to the short bio at the end of the blog, "Dustin Matocha is the Social Media Coordinator for Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility". Browsing through his other contributions to that site show that Mr. Matocha has strong libertarian view points, though it doesn't say what his political leanings are. I would say that his intended audience, especially for this specific post, are religious conservatives based off of the content of the post being about abortion and big government.
The post is an attack on Rep. Sarah Davis of Houston. Rep. Davis is one of only two Texas House Republicans who voted against the recent abortion bill H.B. 2. Mr. Matocha decides to interpret her stance against the bill as a sign that she is against life and for big government. He goes about backing up this belief by showing a "partial list of votes cast by Rep. Davis". This list is a collection of amendments to current bills with an description of what they entailed, by Matocha. A few of the amendments were apparently so horrid that he decided to bold face them. I clicked on the links he provided to see if his descriptions of these amendments were as bad as he described them. What I found curdled my blood, so brace yourselves, amendments tell you nothing useful about the actual bill! So I went and looked up a few of the bills in question.
Matocha states that Davis "Favored increasing taxes on small manufacturers at the behest of big business". The amendment link provided describes some small changes to H.B. 3536. The subject of which is, "Imposing fees on sales of certain tobacco products". The bill is an attempt to level the playing field in the tobacco market, by imposing a tax on manufacturers who weren't around or a part of the states' tobacco settlement agreement. So the small manufacturers that Matocha is talking about are small tobacco manufacturers who have an unfair market advantage. According to the bill, 48 other states already have something similar in place.
Matocha states that Davis "Favored creating unconstitutional requirements on political speech while exempting labor unions from the new rules". The amendment is in regards to S.B. 346. This bill would force non-profits who are not defined as political committees to report any political expenditures or contributions made. It does in fact single out labor unions as being exempt, but does not go into why they are, so I cannot really comment on that. In essence this is a bill aimed at political finance transparency.
I looked up some more, but I don't want to ramble on. Needless to say, Mr. Matocha's writing is the same kind of politically inflammatory rhetoric you would expect from someone like Bill O'Reilly. Not to mention the whole post was just a straw-man for what really bothers him, the fact that a Republican might possibly be pro-choice, or anti-life, depending on what side your on. I also found a statement given by Davis that of the people in her constituency that called her office, 80 to 85 percent wanted her to vote against the bill. Personally, I applaud Rep. Davis.
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