Focus on the McCaul e-Slate Relationship

Bob Dacy at InfoWars traces the connection from Clear Channel to e-Slate voting machines through investments managed by Clear Channel vice-chair Tom Hicks, whose capital venture firm Hicks, Muse, Tate, & Furst, is a named player in Stratford Capital Partners. In turn, Stratford’s Co-Managing Partner, John G. Farmer, is listed as a director of Hart InterCivic, the e-Slate maker. So we have a director at Hart InterCivic who is backed by Hicks bucks. And Hicks bucks have been saturated with Clear Channel profits since 2000, when the Mays company buyout of the Hicks company (AMFM) was approved by the FCC (a buyout that relieved the Hicks group of about $6 billion in debt). Read more about Tom Hicks as Bush backer and financial operative at Texans for Public Justice, Common Cause, and BushWatch. On the general tenor of Clear Channel’s political activism, see buzzflash and Vital Source. Attempts to view the Hicks, Muse, Tate, & Furst website at hmtf.com were greeted with prompts for secure login, but we don’t have a password for that. While the Mays family (in-laws to Congressperson Michael McCaul) appears to be closely connected to this chain of influence via corporate relationship to Hicks, it is not clear whether the family is personally invested in either the Hicks fund, the Stratford fund, or Hart InterCivic. With all these clarifications on the record, the original question stands as asked by Alex Jones: Do we want our votes counted by machines this closely linked to influential family and political interests of Congressional candidates? No, we don’t.