EoT: Pete Sessions’ Political Miscalculations

Eyes on Texas, a roundup of news, columns and features about the state, from media around the world.

Pete Sessions needs remedial math.

The Republican congressman from Dallas claimed during a budget debate on the House floor that ObamaCare will cost $5 million per person. The Daily Kos said Sessions must have used “Magic House Republican Math, the kind that eschews numbers in favor of loud yelping noises.”

Using what he called “simple multiplication,” Sessions claimed that if 12 million signed up for ObamaCare, which cost the government $108 billion, that would equal $5 million per person. “It’s staggering,” he said.

Had he used a calculator, he would have realized that $108 billion divided by 12 million is only $9,000.

Even that math is wrong, however. The Washington Post reported that the actual cost is $95 billion, working out to $4,130 per newly insured American.

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So much for brotherly love.

Douglas Durst compared his older brother Robert, a real estate investor charged with murder in Los Angeles, to O.J. Simpson, the former NFL star acquitted of double murder in Los Angeles in 1995, the New York Post reported. “I think if he got to trial in Los Angeles, he would get off,” he told the Post.

Robert Durst, whom the Post described as “creepy and as cuddly as a mangy puppy,” was tried in Texas in 2003 with killing and dismembering his Galveston neighbor, but was acquitted when jurors bought his self-defense claim. Police suspect he also may have killed his first wife, who disappeared without a trace in 1982.

No surprise, Douglas said he’s terrified of his brother. “Everybody thinks that it’s so strange that I’m scared of him, this man who tried to kill me, who’s twice tried to kill me,” he said.

Douglas said he hopes Robert is brought to justice for the California killing, but he’s not confident about the verdict.

By Lucia Benavides