I'm really addicted to this Texas Tribune thing now (www.texastribune.org). What a wealth of information all in one place!
Brandi Grissom has written several initial pieces for the site and I was reading a piece that is tagged as being on their "blog," but it looks like a normal article. You can go read it HERE.
Here's one of Rep. Norma Chavez's quote from the piece:
“Obviously, I had the worst press this summer and the end of the (legislative) session, which complicates the issue,”
When she says things like that, I'm sure that she has a severe personality disorder that doesn't allow her to see her actions as we see them. I had the same disorder until I was about seven years-old. I finally figured out that when I was the only one in the entire world saying that I didn't do anything wrong, I probably did something wrong.
Norma chalks her bad behavior and questionable ethics up to "bad press." I guess she thinks getting into juvenile cat fights in public is okay as long as it's not reported in the papers. That's where she is wrong.
Her inability to square herself with her actions means that she is incapable of learning from them. In severe cases of the personality disorder you will find people who will repeatedly burn their hand on a hot stove because they can not rationally assign the cause of their pain to their own actions.
She may also live in a world where she thinks that she operates out of the public view like a mob boss or secret CIA agent. She is completely unaware that her actions are seen by many and thus reported to many more. Her delusion that she operates covertly only serves to fuel her surprise that anyone would question her actions. You have to remember that when she first went to Austin as a representative 13 years ago there wasn't the kind of instantaneous media that there is today. With the advent of blogs and other means of community gossip, legitimate news sources have been forced to cover the bitchy exchanges between two of their delegation members. Norma no longer gets away with having a force field around Austin.
I'm not sure that Chavez has the ability to calculate right from wrong. Using her per diem to attend classes in Austin is something that most of us would know was wrong. Not for her, though. She saw it as a right given to her through the privilege of service. On a smaller scale this happens in the workplace when company travel funds or stationary privileges are abused. The worker often believes that their sacrifice of time and effort warrants more reward than the pay they are receiving. If you have owned a business, you have more than likely run into this attitude. It is no different with whatever psychological ills Chavez suffers from.
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Another interesting part of the piece is that Grissom points out that Naomi Gonzalez has said she is running for Chavez's seat. We kind of missed that here in town. Actually, we completely missed it.
I don't know much about Naomi other than her run against Rep. Emma Acosta. She lost to the midget, which was bad. Hopefully she can make a mark in her next effort.
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Hope to see some good info on Newspaper Tree later - make sure you drop by.
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