Campaigning And You Pay For It With Your Taxes

Editor's note: This is my own personal pet peeve giving rise to my own personal rant.

For the life of me, I don't understand how public officials tweet during the day about personal matters and do so only to promote themselves for the next election. They are supposed to be working for you (and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt they aren't using a government paid for phone or computer.) They don't tweet to inform the public of the government's business. They do it for name recognition for the next election.

Take for example our insane Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and his son (who first got his district judgeship by appointment.) This happened today. A Thursday. A work day:

Ok, on its surface this is no big deal. Lt. Gov. Patrick posts a link to his appearance on a local TV station.  But that is his official government account he is using and he posts during the day for the sole purpose of self promotion.  It clearly is an official account because clicking on the tweet leads you to this:

Pretty official.

Is it the end of the world? No. Is it a crime? Heck, it might be but what isn't a crime these days? Is it a violation of ethical campaign rules. The answer can almost be "absolutely".  If a sitting official uses a government stamp to mail in his re-election application for a place on the ballot then he's technically in big trouble. If that same official tells his assistant to "be sure to vote for me today", it's a violation. But these guys (and many, many others) just tweet away on government time and everyone looks the other way.

But let's get past our Lt. Gov. and take a look at his son, the judge. Above, he came along to promote himself by retweeting his father's post and adding a sweet memory from his childhood.  The son is an odd bird. He's uses his Twitter account all the time during the day. Sometimes he'll retweet news but he oftentimes uses it for self-promotion by letting us know how hard working he is. He'll tweet that a jury is being picked or a jury is deliberating in an effort to appear to be the hardest working man in show business. You know, I really don't have any problem with that because he is informing us about government business. BUT if you click on his tweets, he makes it clear that he's not on Twitter to tell you about official business. Nope, he is in the ultimate business of self-promotion:

At least he doesn't hide the message of "Vote For Me! Vote For Me!" like his dad does. So he tweets during work days on an account with the above campaign logo. I don't get it.

No one else will care, but I still don't get it.

Edit: Bonus points - What is a "circular hypothetical"?