As promised, here’s a thread on #PipelineChip, aka @chiproytx aka @Repchiproy, the stinkeroo of a GOP Congressman currently soiling the carpets in #TX21 (and being vigorously challenged by @wendydavis). This will be long so, as Chip would say, saddle up!
NB: I’m not accusing Chip of anything illegal here. All kinds of corrupt behavior, on both sides of the border, are perfectly legal. Certainly Chip isn’t doing much that @sentedcruz isn’t also doing. Chip is just noisier.
Chip IS guilty of shameless hypocrisy, in his fetishization of cartel violence & his lip service to values like property rights. He has enabled cartels at the highest levels—& jeopardized the life, health and safety of many people —for his personal enrichment & political power.
The much longer version of this, with references, is by @ElParece :
narco.news/los-zetas-inc-…
I’m mainly arranging some key points for the edification of voters in #TX21:
narco.news/los-zetas-inc-…
I’m mainly arranging some key points for the edification of voters in #TX21:
As Mexico opens up its oil and gas reserves in the Burgos Basin to outside interests, opportunists are lining up to take advantage. These reserves run along the Texas border and overlap signficiantly with the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. 
In the catbird seat for this petrochemical grand opening is the governor of Tamaulipas, Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca. He helped craft the Mexican Energy Reform of 2014, ending PEMEX's monopoly and opening the market to private capital.
Cabeza de Vaca is widely acknowledged to be corrupted by cartels: proceso.com.mx/427763/acusado…
There’s much more detail in @ElParece’s piece, but in short, Cabeza de Vaca is doing something a lot of politicians do in Mexico: placating one group of cartels—and thereby gaining their protection, funding, and a measure of relative peace—by attacking their rivals.
U.S. monied interests are fine with pitting rival Mexican cartels against each other provided it allows them to profit. Which is where #PipelineChip comes in. Chip likes monied interests, and it shows. Let us count the ways.
Last year, Roy introduced H.R. 1700, the Drug Cartel Terrorist Designation Act (govtrack.us/congress/bills…) This bill would target “certain cartels”—specifically, Cartel Del Noreste, Los Metros, and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)--as foreign terrorist organizations.
Chip was super proud of this bill, which aligned with much of President Trump’s rhetoric against Mexico. He tweeted about it a lot, and flogged it on FOX News.
The fractures and factions among Mexico's cartels can be hard to keep track of. Cartel Del Noreste is a spinoff from Los Zetas, opposed by an alliance of groups including the Gulf Cartel. Los Metros and CJNG are similarly poised between multiple rivals, including the Gulf Cartel.
Recall that, among other, similar charges, the Gulf Cartel reportedly gave Tamaulipas Governor Cabeza de Vaca half a million dollars when he campaigned for mayor of Reynosa in 2004: mexiconewsdaily.com/news/senator-c…
Chip’s bill ignores other extremely dangerous cartels, such as the Sinaloa Cartel, which US intelligence calls the most powerful drug-trafficking org in the world. But Sinoloa operates on the Pacific side of Mexico, far removed from the Burgos Basin's oil and gas reserves.
Why is Chip providing concierge service to certain Mexican cartels? They aren’t even lobbyists, campaign contributors, or small-business CEOs who can give him positive soundbites for his flailing re-election campaign. Why is he writing legislation that would damage their rivals?
One possible answer lies in Chip’s stock holdings, as reported in his Financial Disclosure Forms filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives:
clerk.house.gov/public_disc/fi…
Check out the oil, gas, and pipeline holdings Chip reported:
clerk.house.gov/public_disc/fi…
Check out the oil, gas, and pipeline holdings Chip reported:
#PipelineChip owns stock in Exxon, Chevron, & Kinder Morgan, the company currently confiscating land & polluting water to build an ill-advised gas pipeline through Chip’s own Congressional district. (KM backstory: )
#PipelineChip owns stock in Buckeye Partners, NYSE: BPL headquartered in Houston, Texas. BPL is a distributor of petroleum in the East and Midwest and manages over 6,200 miles of petroleum pipelines, as well as over 100 truck-loading terminals. buckeye.com/BusinessOperat…
#PipelineChip owns stock in NuStar Energy LP, one of the largest independent liquids terminal and pipeline operators in the nation, and Energy Transfer LP, one of the largest portfolios of energy assets in the United States . . .
. . . "with a strategic footprint in all of the major U.S. production basins, include complementary natural gas midstream, intrastate and interstate transportation and storage assets.” energytransfer.com
In a nutshell: #PipelineChip’s bill would focus U.S. military and law enforcement on one set of cartels, creating breathing space for other cartels, who protect the governor of Tamaulipas, who opens up the oilfieldsfor exploitation by outside corporations, whose stock Chip owns.
Note that Chip’s former (brief) career, before he came to Texas to go to law school and burrow headfirst into Ted Cruz’s large intestine, was as an “investment banker.” You’d think a former investment banker would . . . have a lot of complex investments, right?
But no, apart from some AT&T stock and a bunch of mutual funds, Chip’s investments seem to be concentrated almost exclusively in the oil and gas sector—and particularly, in pipelines, storge, and transport. The safer middleman companies, who only get involved once oil is flowing.
Twitter is forcing me to break the thread here, so hang on for Part 2 as a Reply below.
By what I’m sure is a COMPLETE COINCIDENCE, you see the exact same pattern in the financial disclosures of The Honorable Rafael E. Cruz (efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/an… - 2018 Annual Report). Rafael/Ted discloses a bunch of Goldman Sachs investments and other mutual funds. But…
...all the non-banking stocks seem to be oil & gas, heavy on pipelines & storage/transport: Exxon Mobile; natural gas distributor OGS-ONE; Enterprise Products Partners LP (gas & crude oil pipeline); PAGP-Plains GP Holdings, (transport, storage, terminalling, marketing oil & gas).
So every time #PipelineChip tweets about drug smugglers “lining the pockets of cartels," remember that he has a vested interest in supporting some of those cartels.
Every time he posts grainy video and fevered narration from his sleepovers with CBP, remember that he’s using the chaos and danger at the border to up his odds of a big stock payday.
Every time he uses border violence as a “whatabout” argument to distract from his own disastrous policies, he’s showing that to him, border violence is an opportunity to profit from, not a problem to be solved. ()
(Just this week, he somehow tried to blame the explosion in Texas COVID cases on Mexican drug cartels:
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Let’s be clear that #PipelineChip is a bit player in this drama; a useful tool, a guppy swimming in the wake of bigger, fatter fish. Ted Cruz is one of those fish. Lobbyist Nelson Balido is another.
And Brandon Darby, who as @elparece points out has been pushing stories of cartel violence for years via Breitbart, to Chip’s full-throated approval.
Xenophobes and profiteers have been making bank from Mexico’s tragedies since Day One. But if like me you live in #TX21 and are “represented” by #PipelineChip, you want to know what kind of slime your guppy swims in. And now you know.
(The good news is that Chip’s “Some Cartels are More Terrorist Than Others" bill was referred to Judiciary's the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship and died there. All it did was generate some FOX News time for Chip.)
Here's the link again to the Senate Financial Disclosures search page--can't tell if it came through properly above: efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/an…
