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Archive for the ‘Campaign Finance’ Category

Losers on Election Day in Texas had one thing in common: Opposition to climate legislation

Posted in Campaign Finance, Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2010 |

Two (possibly three) members of Congress in Texas lost their seats in the Republican (and outside money) tsunami that swept the country-Rep. Chet Edwards, Ciro Rodriguez, and Solomon Ortiz – whose race is at this point still too close to call, but he trails his opponent by several hundred votes.  Many in the punditocracy have tried to come up with one common denominator to explain the Republican tidal wave, and some have settled on the vote on climate change legislation, HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) or Waxman-Markey.  Politico jumped (the shark?) to this conclusion: “House Democrats who voted for the 2009 bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions – dubbed cap-and-tax by GOP opponents – had a terrible night.”

But this is widely debunked, first in this piece from Think Progress’s Wonk Room blog: (more…)

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Public Citizen’s website or Tom Delay on trial yesterday?

Posted in Campaign Finance, Consumers, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 2, 2010 |

As the Tom Delay trial got underway, the State’s first two witnesses were Craig McDonald, a former Public Citizen Texas director and now the executive director for Texans for Public Justice, and Austin attorney Fred Lewis, both of whom the defense characterized as being from the left end of the political spectrum which they attempted to capitalize upon.  Twice the defense moved for a mistrial, claiming there was an effort by prosecutors to push political opinions on the jury.  Both motions were ignored by Judge Priest.

Craig McDonald said he focused solely on campaign donations while with Public Citizen and that there were discrepancies between what Texas Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC) reported to the Texas Ethics Commission in terms of its income and what Republican National State Election Committee (RNSEC) reported to the IRS.

The defense, in examining McDonald, reviewed 60 candidate names on Public Citizen’s website — only one of which was a Democrat (gubernatorial candidate, Bill White, and that was from a blog on yours truly, Texas Vox, which showed up on the site through an RSS feed).  DeLay, however, was mentioned 100 or more times on the site. But McDonald maintained political neutrality in his testimony, noting that DeLay’s appearance on the website did not mean he was the only subject of Public Citizen’s research. (more…)

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Delay’s trials and tribulations move forward

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , on November 1, 2010 |

A jury for Tom DeLay‘s money laundering trial was selected quickly last week, but only after the prosecution challenged whether the defense was striking African American jurors without good cause.

The defense cut five African Americans from the jury because, in several instances, he said the would-be jurors appeared angry at him after he had criticized the lead prosecutor, who is black. (more…)

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State Rep Kino Flores found GUILTY, exposes holes in our Texas campaign finance and ethics laws

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 |

From the Statesman:

A Travis County jury today found South Texas lawmaker Kino Flores guilty of multiple counts of tampering with a governmental record and perjury in connection with omissions Flores made on financial disclosure forms required to be filed by state elected officials.

Flores, a 14-year state representative, was convicted of five counts of misdemeanor tampering with a governmental record, four counts of felony tampering with a governmental record and two counts of misdemeanor perjury.

***“This verdict represents the public saying to public officials that they expect elected officials to maintain the highest ethical standards,” Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said. “That accurate and full public disclosure is an important part of public service and that the public will not accept excuses like ‘I was too busy’ or ‘I just didn’t know.’”

Flores was found guilty of two counts of tampering with government records with the intent to harm or defraud the state for failing to report on the forms income that he was accused of receiving from a list of businesses in 2002 and 2003. He was also found guilty of the felony tampering for failing to report his son’s job with the Capitol lobby firm HillCo Partners.

The jury found that he did not intend to harm or defraud by failing to report a list of properties he owned on financial disclosure firms, including a Guadalupe Street condominium. Because of that lack of intent, the jury found the tampering with a governmental record counts related to those charges are misdemeanors.

Flores’ lawyers argued that he did not intend to omit the properties on the forms and dismissed some of the omissions as clerical errors. They argued that he was not obligated under the law to report the income because he was working as a consultant.

What’s important here is not what he was convicted for, but what he was NOT convicted for.  As the article says, this case basically amounted to “clerical errors” but this still stinks to high heaven.  Unfortunately, (and probably by design) we have a State Ethics Commission which is relatively toothless and whose only major enforcement actions are for paperwork violations. Kind of like this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWBlDC2-ss]

When lawmakers are given gifts or even campaign donations, there are obvious strings attached.  We ought to ban all gift-giving from lobbyists, etc and move to a system of full public financing of elections so the public can be absolutely certain no favors are being traded.

Otherwise, we just have a system where as long as they’re telling us they’re taking bribes and fill out the proper paperwork, it’s ok.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Election spending by outside groups is concentrated and hidden, new Public Citizen analysis shows

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 |

Cross-posted from our mother blog at CitizenVox. We don’t normally cross-post much because we’d prefer you to read their blog just as much as ours, but if you’re not, please add them to your rss feed now!

Of the $176.1 million spent by outside groups using large, often undisclosed contributions to influence the current elections, just 10 groups are responsible for the bulk of the spending, according to a new analysis released today by Public Citizen.

What’s more, 59.9 percent of the money comes from undisclosed sources. Of those contributions that have been disclosed, nearly two-thirds has come from just 0.12 percent of the contributors. The analysis of data from Public Citizen’s Stealth PACs database shows that:

  • Those groups have spent $176.1 million. Of that, $114.6 million, or 65 percent, was spent by only 10 groups.
  • From the 10 groups, money spent on behalf of Republicans has outpaced money spent on behalf of Democrats $79.4 million to $28.5 million.
  • Five groups have spent money on more than 35 races each. Eleven groups have spent money on more than 20 races each.
  • Eighty groups have not disclosed any information about the sources of their money. These groups have spent $105.4 million of the $176.1 million total. Only $70.7 million of the spending – just 40.1 percent – has come from disclosed sources.
  • Thirty groups have entered the fray for the first time in 2010 in the past two weeks.

“Outside group funding is shaking the foundations of our electoral democracy, but the situation is far worse than it seems at first blush,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “A tiny number of organizations, relying on a tiny number of corporate and fat cat contributors, are spending most of the money on the vicious attack ads dominating the airwaves. The vast majority of donors remain hidden behind a veil of secrecy, in many cases of doubtful legality. The biggest surge in funding will come in the next week. And this election cycle’s spending is merely a prelude to something far worse in 2012. The trigger for all this was the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United; the key to repairing our democracy is a constitutional amendment to undo the decision.”

The analysis includes charts identifying the groups spending the most to influence this year’s elections, the groups engaged in the most contests, the races that have been the subject of the most outside spending and the contests focused on by the independent groups that have sprung up in the past two weeks.

The Stealth PACs site allows users to search the expenditures and limited contribution data of independent groups that are intervening in this year’s elections using contributions of more than $5,000 or undisclosed contributions.

The site also enumerates the outside groups’ expenditures on each race, discloses the vendors and other recipients of expenditures of $1,000 or more, and provides links to the FEC filings on expenditure data.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Foreign Oil Companies Fund Climate-Skeptic Congressional Candidates

Posted in Campaign Finance, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, green jobs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 |

We were right when we said the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case was going to have a negative impact on the political system in this country. The ruling has paved the way to make mid-term election campaigns the only growing industry in this economic crisis. The ruling has turned candidates’ focus from the policy to their pockets.

One of the issues that has fallen victim to the mid-term elections is the legislation to address climate change and regulate the energy industry. It was one of Obama’s main objectives on the campaign to cut emissions and provide incentives to renewable energy.  But as election approached, Congress backed out of its commitment to this issue.

A European-based organization, Climate Action Network (CANE) released a report that shows European energy companies are paying contributions to Tea Party Candidates and other Congressional candidates who have denied climate-change is even occuring and have been outspoken against regulating the energy industry.

Remember Oklahoma’s Senator James Inhofe? He thinks Environmentalists are out there to scare people and proclaims that “Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and because of this “special” remark, he qualified to be one of the recipients of campaign funds from Europe’s biggest emitters. Inhofe is not the only one, many others in Congress have made some similar funny comments that got them some money. Montana’s Roy Blunt is another skeptic. made a blunt comment discrediting science on climate change, “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.” this is more ridiculous than Montana’s law which makes it illegal to “have a sheep in the cab of your truck without a chaperone” but despite that, Blunts comments has put him as one of the top ten recipients from two of these companies.

Those companies, Such as BP(who is responsible for the US worst Environmental disaster), BASF (which spent $50,500 to block cap-and-trade), and others generally have two objectives: one is to stall and block climate change/energy reform legislation in the United States, second is to use that as an excuse to tell the European countries not to introduce such legislation. The companies who are funding those climate-skeptic candidates are based in countries  such as Germany, France, UK, and Belgium (so much for those candidates’ being anti-socialist).

In a time when the president has gone all the way to teaming up with Mythbusters to encourage American kids about math and science, our representatives are doing their best at discrediting them.  Climate Change is one issue that should cross partisan lines. I think every human being can agree that we need continue our existence on this planet and maintain it for the next generations. Al Gore says that in order for clean-energy advocates to achieve climate-friendly and renewable energy legislation, they need to get into the lobbying business just as the dirty energy lobbyist.

I disagree.

I think we need to reform the relationship between lobbyist and Congress. We shouldn’t need to write serious checks in order to get things done in this country.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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CALIFORNIA PUSHES BACK AGAINST TEXAS

Posted in Campaign Finance, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, green jobs, Renewables, solar, tagged , , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 |

Supporters of a California law designed to battle climate change are pushing back against money from Texas oil and gas interests that’s helping to fund an initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot in the Golden State that would roll back some of the law’s provisions

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/Wo1wNpza2rM?fs=1&hl=en_US”]

Starring David Arquette – Written & Directed by Matthew Cooke – Produced by Gabe Cowen – Executive Produced by Peter Glatzer and Adrian Grenier.

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Tom DeLay’s trials and tribulations continue

Posted in Campaign Finance, Global Warming, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2010 |

Jury selection begins today in former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay‘s felony conspiracy trial.  In 2005, A Travis County Grand Jury indicted the former U.S. Congressman on charges he helped funnel $190,000 in illegal corporate donations into statewide elections in 2002.  State law prohibits corporations from contributing to political campaigns.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Public Citizen joins League of Women Voters, denounces voter intimidation in Texas at Moody Park, Houston, event

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, Privacy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2010 |

Howdy folks.  We’re doing a press conference at 2pm with the League of Women Voters in Houston at the Moody Park Community Center (3725 Fulton, Houston, TX), one of the early voting locations with the most complaints of voter intimidation.  These activities must stop, and this highlights how Houston is ground zero for the creep of illegal, corporate money into our elections.  Here’s an early taste of our press statement we are making.  We hope to have some video available later this afternoon, possibly also video of other early voting activities.

I early voted on Friday at Buda City Hall, standing in a line that snaked around City Hall for 40 minutes.  Have you voted yet?  Get out!  Do it now!

Here’s our press release:

October 25, 2010

don't let voter intimidation sway the election

 

 

 

 

Last week as early voting for the Nov. 2 General Election got under way, there were complaints of poll watchers interfering with or intimidating voters and other potential election violations in Harris and Bexar Counties.  Our organizations–LWV-Texas, Public Citizen, and Common Cause–condemn any and all attempts to sway this election by controlling who gets to vote.

The right to vote is sacred. People have died for this right, both in our nation’s past and even in our recent history.   Registered citizens should never be turned away from being able to vote.  Our greatest patriots, such as Washington and Lincoln, waged war to insure that taxation without representation did not occur and to protect the notion of government for, of, and by the people. It was a Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who pushed through Congress and then signed the Voting Rights Act which protects the rights of all citizens to register and to vote.

We want to encourage everyone, in Harris County, Bexar County, and across the state, to come out and vote, regardless of ideology, gender, race, income, whether your community is urban, suburban, or rural, and whether your preferred party is Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or Tea.  Do not let tales of intimidation frighten you away.  Instead, let these concerns be a call to action and a reminder of the importance of every citizen’s right to participate.
(more…)

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In Texas, Few Campaign on Renewable Energy, Climate Change

Posted in Campaign Finance, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, green jobs, Renewables, solar, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2010 |

A recent poll shows that voters are more inclined to vote for a candidate that voted for the Federal climate change and renewable energy legislation than for those who didn’t. This is interesting in a time in which many conservative groups are advocating that climate change is a hoax and humans don’t need to intervene to save the planet.  Or, that (even worse) voters just know.. they just KNOW that policies like cap and trade are just a hidden energy tax and they won’t tolerate it at the ballot box.

This poll should be eye-opening to many of the Texas local and federal candidates (and it is worth noting that both of the competitive US House races in Texas are ones where the incumbent voted NO on the American Clean Energy and Security Act). Even more surprising, very few candidates campaign on clean energy in a state where energy makes a great deal of the revenue. And despite how much the governor boasts about Texas leading in renewable energy, Texas is falling behind to a couple of other states, notably California.


Although it seems a scarce phenomenon, a few Texas candidates have climate change and clean energy as part of their campaign. We wanted to highlight the campaigns of a couple of these candidates. *

Last month, Bill White, gubernatorial candidate, announced his energy plan and he explicitly said that clean energy (solar in particular) will be the future of Texas.

Texas can remain the energy capital of the world if we lead in new energy development. That’s why we must educate Texans for high-demand, high-paying clean energy jobs, promote job growth in construction and manufacturing, and invest in science and technology research,” said Bill White in a speech in Lubbock last month.

Mark Strama,  who is running for re-election for his seat in the Texas House of Representatives, has been airing a campaign ad where he says “For the past hundred years, Texas has prospered as the leader of energy, but promising new energy technologies are being developed in other states and other countries.” Strama, who chairs the Technology, Economic Development & Workforce Committee, introduced a couple of green bills in the last legislative session and it looks like he will continue this effort during the forthcoming session. Yesterday, he facebooked about “a promising development” of a Bastrop clean energy park.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9hldvAQ3Cs&feature=player_embedded]
On the Congressional level, Representative Charlie Gonzalez includes clean energy and climate change on his legislative agenda. According to his website, in order to “address threats faced to our country and our planet by climate change, America needs an energy policy that relies on resources that are both clean and efficient.” Gonzalez points out that the issue of climate change is tied to the nation’s energy policy.
Texas needs more politicians to come out for renewable energy and those who tell their constituents that it doesn’t create more jobs and revenue for the state, they are simply ignoring the facts facts. According to a recent report, a robust renewable energy market in Texas can create as many as 23,000 jobs and almost 3 billion in revenue every year for the next 10 years. Strama is right, Texas does have a future in renewables and it is time for Texas politicians to “put solutions above ideology and Texas above politics.”

* Public Citizen does not endorse any political candidate and/or party. Nothing in this opinion blog ought to be construed as an endorsement of any kind. The author’s words are his own.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Foreign Countries and Big Corporations Fund Mid-term Campaigns

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2010 |

By Ali Rawaf and Andy Wilson

This election cycle will be the most expensive midterm in US history. With money pouring in from big corporations and foreign entities, this election has become more about how much can a candidate raise than it is about debating the real issues at stake. It is estimated that more 80 million dollars have been spent this mid-term election with most of the money going into Republican pockets (6 times the Democrats) which is 80 percent more than what was spend in 2006 at this point. 5 billion dollars is the total estimate for the whole mid-term elections. I, and many others, attribute this mess to a recent Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, which made legal for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money without having to disclose any information about the entity which made the contributions.

And voters agree:  Our elections are being bought and funded by corporate interests.  And it’s not just progressive activists: folks from the Tea Party are saying almost the exact same things as liberal activists.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-zCXLhZ_qc]

The money is being channeled through individual groups like American Crossroads, run by Karl Rove, Bush’s former political strategist, and Ed Gillespie, former head of the RNC. Rove’s group has committed more than 5 and half million in tc ad buys, which is only ten percent of what the group promises to spend by November 2nd.  And then there’s the nice-sounding but actually shadowy and sinister Americans for Job Security, which has committed 7.5 million dollars so far, 88% of which went to supporting Republicans. Another one of these organizations is American Future Fund which gave every dime of their 6.8 million dollars to Republican candidates.

The Chamber of Commerce is also playing a big role in this mid-term cycle. The chamber is waging a campaign of attack ads against the democrats– but in this case with the Chamber, thanks to some super-awesome gum-shoeing, we know where the money comes from. Foreign entities. That’s right, a report published by Think Progress shows the Chamber of Commerce has received money from Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Bahrain, India, France, and many more countries. To that you should say, “I want my country back.”

Considering the Chamber’s major targets, it’s a worthwhile endeavor to question their motives: they were opposed to health care reform, climate change and clean energy legislation, and financial reform.  Of course, we can understand why the Chamber would protect the profits of Wall St and the Big Banks, and also why they’d oppose measures that threaten the profitability of the for-profit medical industry like, oh, getting rid of pre-existing conditions or placing a cap on the amoutn your insurance company can charge that goes directly to overhead and profit rather than medical care for their clients.  But the stickiest wicket is climate change and clean energy.  Sure the Chamber is protecting their friends in the oil and coal industries.  And birds go “tweet.” But why would they be taking foreign money to do this?  From China and OPEC countries?  Couldn’t be that China would prefer to gain a huge competitive advantage over us in the fastest-growing sector of the worldwide economy: clean energy technology.  Or that the Saudis and the state oil company of Bahrain would prefer that we continue to stay addicted to their sweet, light crude. Or that by opposing financial and health reform they can leave America broke and sick.  Nah.  I’m sure we should just take the Chamber’s word for it that they aren’t using any of their foreign money to fund these ads.

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Perry Banks on Texas Politics through Appointments

Posted in Campaign Finance, Global Warming, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2010 |

If you didn’t think the Governor race in Texas can get any crazier, you were mistaken. Texans for Public Justice released a report today which shows the Governor receives contributions from his political appointees. (This we knew, but in these amounts?) According to the report, Perry’s campaign has received more than 17 million dollars in contributions from his appointees and their spouses since 2001. These contributions come from entities like the A&M Board of Regents to the Texas Tax Reform Commission.

Perry’s hands are in every government agency in the state. His appointees rank from commissioners of big agencies like the PUC or the TCEQ to smaller ones like the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority. The report points out that almost a quarter of his appointees have given money to his campaign fund. This is not the first time news about Perry’s shakedown of his appointees come out, in 2005, the Houston Chronicle published a story about Perry collecting 5 million dollar from his appointees. The contributions averaged about 18 thousand dollars but if you look at the chart below (From TPJ) , you can see that the governor received hundred of thousands of dollars from some appointees.

This explains Perry’s fierce defense of his appointees when something bad floats to surface and it also explains how he has been the longest-serving governor in Texas. In a country that prides itself on a check-and-balance type of government, those kind of reports and numbers should be staggering to people.

For fairness sake, many would say Bill White is just the same, he also receives contributions from his political appointees. According a Texas Tribune article, they are right, but the scale is entirely different.  Since White started being in public life in the 90’s, he has collected about 2 million dollars. This is on a much lower scale than the 17 million dollars Perry received in less than ten years, and the fact that this 17 million represents between one-quarter to one-fifth of the money raised by Perry.

It is dangerous to our state that our governor is banking on the shaping of policy in Texas. But here in Public Citizen, we always say, “the only thing that beats organized money is organized people, ” so it is our turn to look at the facts, learn about the issues, and reject the status quo of money having an undue influence in politics.  We call on all candidates for public office to support REAL reform of our campaign finance system, including bans on raising unlimited money from appointees and especially by moving to a system of public financing for all offices.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Three steps forward, two steps back on campaign finance in Congress today

Posted in Campaign Finance, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2010 |

Today, the US House Administration Committee voted the Fair Elections Now Act out of committee.  San Antonio Representative Charlie Gonzalez cast a decisive vote in favor of the bill, putting a bill that would give optional public financing to all Congressional candidates for further than it has ever gone before.

Tell Charlie Gonzalez how you feel– thank him for his vote and leadership by calling his office at (202) 225-3236 (DC) or (210) 472-6195 (San Antonio).

Unfortunately, in the Senate, Republicans continued to filibuster the DISCLOSE Act.  They did this a few months ago, too. At the time Public Citizen’s Craig Holman had this to say about it, and we think it’s still apt.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsCSjRslmm4]

Texas Senators Cornyn and Hutchison voted in favor of corporate special interests who want to hide how they’re pulling the strings in Washington, and I think you should tell them so.

And because no punchbowl for Fair Elections would be complete without some corporate tool laying a dookie in it, enter Texas Rep. Joe Barton, who you may remember apologized to BP, feeling the oil-spilling giant had been mistreated by Congress.  Well, he’s still apologizing to corporations, now saying that his committee should hold hearings on Fair Elections Now, which he’s already made up his mind on (hint:  he ain’t fer it.) This is nothing more than a massive delay tactic, just like the time he made a rule that all amendments to Waxman-Markey be read aloud in committee, so the committee hired a speed-reader.

In any case, we still have a lot to be happy about.  There is some possibility we could get a full vote on Fair Elections Now before the end of the year in the House– if your member of Congress hasn’t publicly stated they will support it, they need to hear from you!  And if they have stated their support, call them anyway and thank them for standing up to special interests.

By the by, I’ll be at the National Coffee Party Convention in Louisville the next few days, where I’ll be presenting on a couple of panels about these very issues.  If you want to participate virtually, you can!  From Coffee Party’s email:

The big news today is that we are LIVE STREAMING the convention from Louisville starting at 8:30 AM ET tomorrow (Friday). Convention participants, both in person and via webcast can interact via Twitter (#CoffeeParty), Facebook, on our convention website, main website and on our newly created Ustream channel.

CLICK HERE for today’s press release about added speaker John Avlon, and HERE for Monday’s release about Lt. Dan Choi and Fair Elections Now.

We are especially excited about livestreaming the Mock Constitutional Convention on Saturday from 10:30am-4:30pm co-chaired by Lawrence Lessig and Mark McKinnon.

To read about the speakers, CLICK HERE. To review the schedule of events, CLICK HERE. To read about the break-out sessions, CLICK HERE.

You can still REGISTER online. You can also register in person at the registration desk when you arrive at the Galt House.

We are currently raising funds for the following purposes: $5,000 for Audio/Visual expenses, including production and live-streaming costs that are allowing us to document as many workshops and panel discussions as we can, which will become on-line educational tools available to the public.

It would be tremendously helpful if you could donate for this. $5, $10, $20, any amount would help.

DONATE

The convention and the web cast will wrap up Sunday night with a viewing party of MTV Networks’ television world premiere of “9500 Liberty.” This is the film that Eric Byler and I co-directed that documents how the extremists dominated the debate over immigration in Prince William County, VA in 2007 & 2008 and how the silent majority organized and restored balance to the government. On Sunday, the film will be broadcast to 100 milion homes across America.

This video explains how the lessons of 9500 Liberty inspired the creation of the Coffee Party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8sQUYarTig

See you in Louisville, or, we’ll see you online! And, thank you so much for being part of the Coffee Party community.

Good night, good luck, and see you around the coffee pot.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Texas and Dirty Energy Money

Posted in Campaign Finance, Coal, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2010 |

Recently, I learned about a good website that tracks the flow of corporate energy money in Congress. The website is a great tool for someone who is interested in knowing who gets what from who and if you are a Texan you will get to see your state initials in many places in the website. The website ranks Congressmen according to how much money they receive from dirty energy corporations but unlike Texas’ football rankings, these rankings don’t make me proud.
There are six Congressmen and women who rank among the top recipients of dirty energy money. Three of them are from Texas, two of which occupy the top two ranks on the list. The top recipient is John Cornyn, next is (Guess who) Joe Barton, and also on the list, the former Republican Governor candidate , Kay Bailey Hutchison. It would make sense why Texas was one of the loudest states in voicing opposition to the offshore-drilling moratorium and it make sense why a guy like Joe Barton would apologize to BP in front of the whole nation while maintaining a straight face.

There are many key findings in the website and the numbers are staggering. Besides listing the “dirtiest politicians,” Dirty Energy Money lists “Dirtiest Congresses,” and “Big-Spending Companies.” So far, this 111th Congress has only collected about 14 million dollars in contributions from dirty energy companies which are much less than the 22 million contributed to the 110th Congress but 2010 is not over yet.

Dirty Energy Money also compares the funds received by both parties from the different energy industries. It also compares votes on major energy legislation while showing how much money the Yeas received verses the Nay’s.

Visit the website, you will find many revealing facts about the two parties, Congress, companies, and the politicians involved. It is definitely a good resource for you to look at before you cast you vote in November.

By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Texas’ Dirty-Energy Money Affects California’s Clean Air

Posted in Air Quality, Campaign Finance, Energy, Global Warming, Good Government, green jobs, Renewables, Toxics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2010 |

Not only does the pollution of dirty energy companies extend across other states but so does their influence. Not far from Texas, California is fighting two big Texas oil companies to keep its air cleaner. To give you some background, California passed historic legislation in 2006 that mandates the state to cut 25% of its greenhouse emission by 2020. A legislation such as California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 would cost oil companies extra bucks to get their facilities to comply with the requirements of the law.

The two Texas oil companies, Valero and Tesoro own 4 out of California’s 15 most pollutant facilities. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the California Environmental Justice Alliance issued a report that contains details on several environmental violations in the state and sheds some light on illegal spews of toxic chemicals. But just like what oil companies do, Valero and Tesoro have become primary funders of California’s Proposition 23 which would suspend AB32, if it passed. The two companies have spent big bucks to get the legislation passed just like what they do back home in Texas. Combined, both companies have spent over 2 million so far.

Once again, the Republican Party is selling this legislation as an incentive for jobs. It suspends AB32 until unemployment in California dips back to 5.5% for 5 consecutive quarters. To simplify, Republicans are blurring the line between employment and public health and it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, many jobs can be created by using green energy and these jobs will not pose any health risks to the employees or the residents of the area. The Republican party has to get a different energy plan than, ”work and get sick or no work at all.” It is 2010 and we can employ many more better resources in the United States than the dirty ones we have been using for the past century. I must add that even California’s Governor, a Republican thinks this proposition is ridiculous.  Schwarzenegger said in July that, “the move would seriously undermine California’s efforts to attract new investment and create thousands of new jobs in green technology.” His Republican opponent for the governor seat, however, is vowing to suspend the law for at least one year, if she takes office.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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