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round upIt’s Monday, and that means it is time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance’s weekly round-up.

Neil at Texas Liberal writes about the relocation of the National Cash Register company from Dayton, Ohio to Georgia. Treating people like dirt for 200 years gives Southern states an advantage in creating a so-called business friendly low-tax low-wage climate.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is so amazed at the short sighted policies our state and country continue to pursue. Buy American is a path to destruction. Isolationist Trends Protect US From Reality

Lamar Smith wins South Texas Chisme’s asshat of the week award. Hyper partisan Smith thinks all media should be like Fox News.

Who would have thought that an otherwise-obscure bill about granting homestead exemptions to folks who lost their house in Hurricane Ike would become the most controversial issue in the first week post-sine die, including a threat by the Land Commissioner to refuse to follow the law if it gets signed by the Governor? Off the Kuff has the details.

Burnt Orange Report writer Todd Hill has been selected as an Archer Fellow by UT-Arlington and will be headed to Washington DC in 2010 for a semester.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the former Tyler Mayor looking to replace State Rep. Leo Berman.

Over at TexasKaos, liberaltexan argues that even Christians at Liberty U should be able to dissent. What a radical idea!

A Devon Official strongly suspects a connection between recent North Texas earthquakes and the widespread hydraulic fracturing. Devon and other operators are leaving their mark on TXsharon‘s statcounter. She wonders what they are so worried about on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Teddy at Left of College Station reports on the College Station red light camera debate, and covers the week in headlines.

Bay Area Houston has the scoop on Perry calling a special session on Voter ID.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the excellent first session for Williamson County’s Democratic state representative, Diana Maldonado, Freshman of the Year.

The Texas Blue looks at the big winners and losers of this year’s legislative session in Sine Die: The Aftermath.

Robert Reich describes how Big Pharma and Big Insurance plan to kill the public health care option, excerpted at Brains and Eggs.

WhosPlayin has AARP’s call for Michael Burgess to act decisively on health care.

This week, McBlogger takes a look at some fashion advice from Details.

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round up
This week from the Texas Progressive Alliance, emission from drilling are more than cars and airports, women are running things in Denton County, Liberty University Democrats lose their recognition, President Obama’s political coalition leaves out the far-right and the poor, and much more on this weeks TPA Roundup.

This week’s roundup was compiled by Teddy from Left of College Station.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston says Governor Perry signed a bill to stop electricity deregulation in East Texas while we poor saps continue to be screwed with high electricity rates.

On Bluedaze: Barnett Shale operators continued to endanger public health and safety by ignoring the peer reviewed study that showed emission from drilling were more than all the cars and airports in the DFW area. Now the TCEQ data supports the findings. Smog forming nitrogen oxides and volatile organic emissions for the entire 19-counties of the Barnett Shale area are approximately 200 tons per day.

Jesus Hussein Christ, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs agrees with John Cornyn.

Castle Hills Democrats proclaims that, in Denton County, “The Women Are Running Things Now”.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that Republican ambition is messing with Perry, Hutchison and Cornyn. Who cares about Hispanic or female voters?

DosCentavos is not longer a Blogspot blog, we are now at DosCentavos.net, exclusively!.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson points out the important issues that are being neglected as the 81st Legislative Session winds down, Lack of leadership in Texas is painfully obvious.

Teddy at Left of College Station writes about the sexist and racist attacks by the usual conservative voices on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, and on Liberty University’s decision to no longer recognize the College Democrats as an official student organization because of their endorsement of pro-choice and pro-gay rights candidates.

McBlogger takes another look at the dump near Andrews after he finds out it’ll be taking not just radioactive waste, but PCB saturated dirt from the Hudson Valley. In New York.

Off the Kuff takes a look at a wrench in the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary named Leo Berman.

At Texas Kaos, Lightseeker asks the question, What do the powerful do when reform is eminent? (Hint, there’s a lotta money to be made in fake reforms…)

Neil at Texas Liberal says that President Obama’s political coalition leaves out the far-right and and the most poor. Neil also reports that he will be master of ceremonies at a huge punk rock blast in Cincinnati this upcoming August 15.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is appalled at the short sighted vision of of Texas Politicians. If you donate to their campaign, you are free to destroy the land, air and water of a great state. You can have the blessings of all the state and federal agencies you need to pull off a hazardous trick. Rick Perry and Friends Welcome Toxic Burritos

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round upIt’s Monday, and that means it is time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance’s weekly round-up.

At Bluedaze, TXsharon asks: What are the chances that an industry in charge of conducting its own testing to determine waste disposal methods will find toxin levels too high if that means disposal of the waste will be more costly? Landfarms: Spreading Toxic Drilling Waste on Farmland. With VIDEO.

BossKitty at TruthHugger sees lessons never learned … it is NOT about religion, ya’ll! How does it fit that US Military crusader evangelists want to save these souls right before we blow them away. How can we justify putting Mulims on death row, by their own people, just because we convinced them to become APOSTATES?! General Order Number One, Forbid Proselytizing – Evangelists Cannot Protect Murtads Wars fought using 12th century religious mentality means that civilization has made two steps backwards!

Mean Rachel is reminded on Mother’s Day of children, the lack thereof and why The Pill should be available over the counter.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know how can Rick Perry brag about how well Texas is doing when over 22% of our children face hunger every day?

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News showed a video from the Texas Freedom Network of our own Texas Department of Miseducation in action.

WhosPlayin covered the Denton County Democrats’ election of a new County Chair, after previous chairman Neil Durrance resigned to run for U.S. Congress in District 26 in 2010. (more…)

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Smitty MugSustainLane, an on-line “people powered sustainability guide”, recently wrote an in-depth profile piece on Public Citizen’s own Tom “Smitty” Smith.  For an excellent glimpse of the man behind the machine, our very own white-hat-wearing fearless leader and official “American Changemaker,” check out the following:

‘Smitty’ Wrangles Texans for Environmental Battles

by Amy Linn, SustainLane Staff

Tom “Smitty” Smith is one of the leading lights in the environmental movement, in his home state of Texas and beyond.

A large part of wisdom is awareness; another is putting awareness to good use. Taking both those skills—and using them to win countless battles for people and the planet—has made veteran activist Tom “Smitty” Smith one of the leading lights in the environmental movement, in his home state of Texas and beyond.

For 24 years, Tom “Smitty” Smith has been the Texas director of Public Citizen, a consumer and environmental watchdog group that weighs in on nearly every eco-issue, whether it’s fighting the construction of new coal-fired power plants (an ongoing struggle), pushing for renewable energy (one of the group’s major success stories), or combating global warming. Name a progressive battle in Texas, and Smith’s been there, won that.

It’s a path he says he was primed for by his childhood amid the farm belt of Champaign, Ill. In his 20s—before the word “green” meant anything but a color—Smith fought for anti-pollution laws; after graduating college, he stayed on the eco front lines.

What sparked his interest in this tough (and, on bad days, Sisyphusian) line of work?

“My parents,” he says, without hesitation. “When I was a kid we went for walks every Sunday. And they taught me how wonderful nature was, and how little damage it took to the balance of our ecological system to turn a pure little stream into a muddy slough. And they taught me about the impact of pesticides on birds and animals.” (more…)

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Didn’t make it out to the Old Settler’s Music Festival?  If so, I hate to say that you missed out big time — on four days of the best bluegrass, Americana, and and acoustic jazz & blues, camping, late night camp fire jam sessions — and of course the bright shining faces of Public Citizen’s best.  But never fear, as sponsors, we worked up a video of the weekend to entice y’all to come out next year:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWD_ABh0glo]

Only 345 days until OSMF 2010, April 15-18.  Save the weekend 🙂

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Election day for Austin municipal elections (city council and mayor) is May 9th, but early voting is going on NOW through Tuesday, May 5th.

Election day you can only vote at your specified location, but during early voting you can vote at any polling location.  A list of Travis County voting locations can be found here.

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social-calendarThere is too much fun going on in the next few days… I can’t handle it.  I wish I could be multiple places at once… and influence climate change legislation by sheer will power.. and attach documents to e-mails telepathically.  Ah well, if wishes were horses, I’d have gotten that pony when I was six.

Here’s a quick breakdown of all the good stuff going on over the next couple days:

Old Settler’s Music Festival, Thursday March 16 – Sunday March 20

Old Settler’s Music Festival is a nationally known music festival featuring the best in roots and Americana music. The festival is held in the gorgeous Texas hill country, at the height of the Bluebonnet and wildflower season. Old Settler’s Music Festival offers great music and activities for the whole family.

The Festival is held at Salt Lick Pavilion and Camp Ben McCulloch, just minutes from Austin, located 11 miles south of Highway 290 West on Farm Road 1826.

Public Citizen is an official sponsor of the event, so keep your eyes out for our table, banners, and slide-shows in between sets.  We hope to live blog the festivities, so be on the lookout for artist interviews and sneak peaks of shows.  And don’t forget your sunscreen, that hill country sun can be brutal!

Fighting Goliath screening, Thursday April 16

When: Thursday, April 16 at 7:00pm

Where: St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, 14311 Wellsport Drive (one block west of the Wells Branch exit off of I-40).

Narrated by Robert Redford and produced by The Redford Center at the Sundance Preserve and Alpheus Media, FIGHTING GOLIATH: TEXAS COAL WARS follows the story of Texans fighting a high-stakes battle for clean air. The film introduces the unlikely partners-mayors, ranchers, CEOs, community groups, legislators, lawyers, and citizens-that have come together to oppose the construction of 19 conventional coal-fired power plants that were slated to be built in Eastern and Central Texas and that were being fast-tracked by the Governor. (34 minutes)

Public Citizen’s Ryan Rittenhosue will do a short presentation on Texas’ current coal threat and have a Q&A session afterward.

Environmental Justice & the Multicultural City: The Transformative Role of Urban Planning City Forum, Friday, April 17

People of color and low-income communities have disproportionately suffered from the environmental burdens generated by consumption and production choices made by others. Responding to these injustices, neighborhood activists have been fighting for over 30 years for the right to live, work, and play in healthy environments. In this City Forum, the panelists will share their insights from research and activist work, and discuss the potential role of planning educators, students and practitioners in addressing environmental justice concerns. (more…)

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voteThe City of Austin’s municipal elections are coming up May 9th, which means that throughout the following weeks there will be lots of candidate forums and opportunities to question our potential leaders.  From our friends at PODER, here are two upcoming events:

East Austin Candidate Forums

What do this year’s Mayoral and City Council candidates have to offer East Austin?  Ask them yourself! By attending these upcoming forums, you’ll find out what the candidates plan to do about quality of life disparities in East Austin.  Hear how they respond to tough questions from the community about unemployment, housing, stimulus funding for neighborhoods, and minority representation.

TUESDAY, APRIL 14 AT 6 PM

Southwest Key‘s Mayoral and Place 1 Candidate Forum

6002 Jain Lane, Austin

512.462.2181

*Childcare and refreshments provided by AARP

*Habla Español

THURSDAY, APRIL 23 AT 6 PM

PODER’s Mayoral and City Council Candidate Forum

Space 12 located at 3221 East 12th Street

512.472.9921

*Sponsored by PODER, Space 12, Rosewood & other East Austin Neighborhood Associations & Muntu: Reflections in East Austin

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austincityhallWant to vote in the upcoming City of Austin Municipal Elections?  The deadline to vote in the May 9th elections is this Thursday, March 9th.

Says the Statesman:

To be eligible to vote for mayor or city council members or ballot initiatives in Travis County communities, you must mail a registration application to the Travis County Registrar. Those already registered to vote in Travis County do not have to re-apply.

Residents of Austin and other Travis County cities can find a registration application at the Travis County Tax Assessor/Collector’s website or by calling 238-8683. Some parts of North Austin are actually in Williamson County; those voters can obtain applications at www.wilco.org or by calling 943-1630.

To vote in Texas, you must be a U.S. citizen, live in the county you register, be at least 18 years old on Election Day, not have been convicted of a felony, and not have been declared mentally incapacitated by a court of law, according to a release from the City of Austin.

Want to see where the candidates stand on environmental issues?  Come to a candidate forum focused on sustainability issues this Thursday, March 9 at 5:30 pm at City Hall. (more…)

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Yesterday the House Election Committee heard invited testimony on the House version of the notorious Voter Suppression (ID, if you must) bill.  Today the committee will hear public testimony on the bill (that’s your cue).  Remember, if you don’t want to wait around to testify, you can always sign up in opposition to the bill.  A clerk will be there at 10 am to help you sign-up. The actual hearing is expected to start sometime between 12:00 noon and 2:00pm, upon adjournment of the House in Room 120 of the Reagan Building (on the Capitol Grounds, just a few hundred yards NW of the Capitol. Exact address is 105 W. 15th St.)

Still not sure why a Voter ID bill would be bad?  Oh, how quickly they forget

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fighting-goliath-texas-coal-warsLive in the Houston area? This Wednesday, April 8, at 11:00 am, Houston Community College will be showing both FIGHTING GOLIATH: TEXAS COAL WARS and FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER as a part “The Reel” Series, a culture film/speaker series of learning enrichments.  Public Citizen’s own Ryan Rittenhouse will be on hand after the screening for a Q&A session and to give an update on the Texas coal fight.

The screening will be held at the Town & Country Center in the “Eagle” room at 1010 W. Sam Houston Parkway N. 77043.  The event will be free and open to all HCC students, faculty, staff, and friends.

APRIL 8 Films & Speaker: “The Public Commons: Access to Water/Clean Air”

  • 11:00 a.m. FILM: (84 min) FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER The World Water Crisis is what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century. “Flow” takes us to Bolivia, South Africa, India, Michigan and beyond, and introduces us to issues of water wars, privatization, pollution and profit and the people who are being harmed by corporate tyrannies that are claiming the water of their land. Award-winning, 2008.
  • 1:00 p.m. FILM & SPEAKER: (30 min) FIGHTING GOLIATH: TEXAS COAL WARS Narrated by Robert Redford, the (2007) film follows the story of Texans fighting high-stakes battle for clean air. Film centers around unlikely partners — mayors, ranchers, lawyers, cities, citizens, green groups, and CEO’s — who came together to oppose the construction of 18 coal-fired power plants in Texas.

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Happy Monday everybody!  Check out the latest from our friends at Alliance for a Clean Texas.  Original post can be found here.

earthdayhouston1This week, ACT is happy to bring reports from two organizations doing great work on behalf of their local communities. In Houston, the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP) is presenting Houston Earth Day – the City of Houston’s official Earth Day celebration – this Saturday, April 11th. This FREE day-long festival focuses on green-living and features hands-on activities for everyone. There will be an Earth Zone (highlighting air, land, water and renewable energy), an Environmental Education Zone, Kids Energy Zone, and Farmers’ Market. Additional information about Houston Earth Day and Mothers for Clean Air’s Earth Day 5k is available here.

Print

The Hill Country Alliance reports that they support HB 3265 which will be heard in House County Affairs on Monday April 6. This bill represents the culmination of 18 months of collaboration between 15 rural Hill Country counties; it provides this sensitive area with a set of tools to handle growth – particularly the stress placed on water resources.

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A-list on Austin360.com is having a poll entitled: Which local blog is best?

Somehow we didn’t show up on their radar.  Don’t worry, our feelings aren’t hurt — we know we’re still pretty new.  Please give us a hand and go to their site and write us in! We’d be so honored to be a contender.

Voting ends Tuesday, the 17th (tomorrow) at 11 p.m. You can vote once every hour, as many times as you want. Show your love and help us hype Texas Vox!

UPDATE: email your vote in directly to: austin360contests@statesman.com

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We caved.   Public Citizen Texas is on Twitter.  Follow us here!

twitter-logo

Don’t worry though, we at PublicCitizenTX will be careful to use our Twitter powers for good, not evil.  We’ll use tweets to keep you updated on new blog posts, legislative action alerts, and the occassional inside scoop from a city council meeting or committee hearing.

Speaking of which, be sure to check in tomorrow morning for updates from the much awaited Austin City Council meeting.  You’ll be the first to know if Austin Energy gets the green light on the proposed Webberville Solar Plant.

No tweets on what we’re having for lunch, we promise.  Old Man Stewart won’t be shaking his fist at us, I can guarantee you.

While you’re at it, be sure to follow our friends at Alliance for a Clean Texas, Texas League of Conservation Voters, and of course the big boys at Public Citizen in Washington, DC.  Its okay, we know you like adding followers just like kids in the ’50s collecting baseball cards.  No shame.

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lobby4If you missed the Alliance for a Clean Texas lobby day last week, you missed out on a great opportunity for some face time with your representatives and their staff members. But that doesn’t mean that your chance to catch your legislator’s attention has passed. Here’s some advice from our lobby day training session for next time:

If you’re meeting your representative in person, dress nicely. It may be square and an outdated standard, but your rep is more likely to take you seriously in a collared shirt than that old Metallica tee. Stinks, but hey – that’s politics. Niceties go far.

Speaking of niceties, Be Respectful. Is it that surprising that you’re more likely to get a positive response from your rep if you are polite than if you enter the room in attack mode? Regardless of your legislator’s stance on the issues, they were, in fact, democratically elected and for that at least deserve some respect (at the very least, try not to cuss them out). Plus, you know the phrase… you catch more bees with honey.

It is also a good idea to research your rep a bit before you make an appointment or call. How have they voted on your issues in the past? If they helped pass a good bill last session, take the opportunity to thank them for it. (more…)

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