A key component of Empower Texans’ mission to help engage citizens in state and local issues has been the necessary task of helping them be informed. This led to the creation of our print and digital news magazine, the Texas Scorecard.
Why “scorecard”? In politics, someone is always keeping score and we think it should be the taxpayers!
The 20th Century saw the development of a faux class, the “media” or the “press.” The Constitution’s First Amendment “freedom of the press” guarantee didn’t create special classes of citizens; it protected the right of all citizens to engage in political speech and publication.
Thanks to social media, citizens are reclaiming the role of journalist. Everyone can now buy 1s and 0s by the barrel.
All of this is what makes the work of Texas Scorecard so powerful. Thanks to tips from citizen-reporters, we’ve broken stories the MSM wouldn’t touch – like the voting irregularities in Hill County and the investigation in Tarrant County. Our own Charles Blain recently shared a byline in the Wall Street Journal with Jon Cassidy of Watchdog.org because of their coverage of a trial in Houston that saw the liberal SEIU labor union slapped with a multimillion dollar judgment.
Meanwhile, acknowledged tax expert Dave Lieber from the Dallas Morning News recently tweeted that “nobody explains ‘effective rate’ better” than our Ross Kecseg, referring to the taxation of property in the Lone Star State.
While the sycophantic club of professional Capitol reporters did nothing, we exposed House Speaker Joe Straus for his efforts to impeach a whistleblowing university regent. We’ve also exposed the vice chairman of the Texas Ethics Commission for apparently breaking the very laws he had been charged with upholding.
We don’t do journalism to fill pages (or computer screens) with words in order to sell mattresses and used cars, but to help citizens hold their elected officials accountable..
The only way for Texas to be strong is for Texans to be informed and engaged.
