'Texas Has The Best Politicians &c' — Rep. Steve Stockman (R) Has Some Secrets

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)

You know the old saying. And Eric Lach of TPMMuckraker outlines a few of Stockman's secrets related to his income in 2011-12, while Will Tucker at the Houston Chronicle's blog Texas on the Potomac exposes Stockman's repeated failure to report his business ties and sources of income as required of members of Congress by federal law. In addition, the few and sparsely filled in forms which Stockman has submitted have been filed nearly a year late. The whole thing stinks. If there's nothing illegal going on, then Stockman is going to great lengths to hide his legal activities, based on just the small amount that has been documented so far. Here's a small snippet from Tucker's blog post (Lach links to a Chronicle investigation, but you have to be a Chron subscriber to read it; the blog post, on the other hand, is open to the public):

Rep. Steve Stockman has failed repeatedly to disclose business affiliations that stretch from Texas to the British Virgin Islands on his Congressional financial disclosure forms, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle shows.

The Houston Chronicle’s latest investigation published Sunday reveals that Stockman, since his bankruptcy in 2002, created a number of businesses, some of which remain active but were not reported on Stockman’s financial disclosure form as required by federal law.

That form itself was filed nearly a year late—Stockman didn’t disclose his assets or business affiliations in 2012, as required by federal law. The form attributes $350,000 earned by Stockman in 2011 and 2012 to “Presidential Trust Marketing,” an unexplained entity with a name similar to one of Stockman’s assumed names in Harris County: Presidential Trust. ...

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Stockman, who is from Clear Lake (think: the NASA area), is back in office in a newly created gerrymandered congressional district after over a decade out of Congress. It is obvious that little about him has changed in the intervening years. Many of us felt back then, and still feel now, that Texas was, and would be again, far better represented in Congress if Stockman would simply vanish into the void. I at least would be just as content to see him vanish into a prison cell.