GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





From Elizabeth Scott/TV Facts
So sorry I didn't get your message before meeting with Chet. He was, as always, FABULOSO! He actually remembered the conversations we had about CHIPS including the one for an hour and a half when you first introduced us.

He was really interested in what we shared with him - one of his passions. Even though, of course, he is eyebrow deep in trying to get SCHIP passed after G.W.B vetoes it!

He asked if we could start a massive letter writing/email campaign to the White House in favor of this most recent bill. I believe the Senate passed it today, but we all know what Georgie-Porgie thinks about children's insurance!

Please get out the word that Chet has asked the folks that helped get him to Washington to help him ensure the children have healthcare! They can send more than one email from one mputer, but there must be different name attached or they won't be counted. But I'm sure you know more about this than I do, since I'm a novice at all of this. The appropriate email address at NEED healthcare and Texas has one of the highest populations of uninsured kids in the country.





The newspaper says it only takes one sentence to the President - "SIGN THE SCHIP BILL!"

Contacting the White House

Mailing Address:

The White House
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Washington, DC 20500


Phone Numbers:

Comments: 202-456-1111
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E-Mail:

Please send your comments to comments@whitehouse.gov. Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House cannot respond to every message. For further up-to-date information on Presidential initiatives, current events, and topics of interest to you, please continue to use the White House website.

Vice President Richard Cheney: vice_president@whitehouse.gov

The office has a fax machine. If you bring us your letter we will fax it.





Lead, Follow or Move Aside
I hate to say anything good about Wal-Mart, but check this out (from the New York Times via Der Spiegel):

By Thomas L. Friedman

Getting our national climate regulations in order is necessary, but it will not be sufficient to move China.

China today is entering a really delicate phase on the climate-energy issue - the phase I like to call "The Wal-Mart environmental moment." I wish the same could be said of America and President Bush.

The "Wal-Mart environmental moment" starts with the C.E.O. adopting a green branding strategy as a purely defensive, public relations, marketing move. Then an accident happens - someone in the shipping department takes it seriously and comes up with a new way to package the latest product and saves $100,000. This gets the attention of the C.E.O., who turns to his P.R. adviser and says, "Well, isn't that interesting? Get me a sustainability expert. Let's do this some more."

The company then hires a sustainability officer, and he starts showing how green design, manufacturing and materials can save money in other areas. Then the really smart C.E.O.'s realize they have to become their own C.E.O. - chief energy officer - and they start demanding that energy efficiency become core to everything the company does, from how its employees travel to how its products are manufactured.

That is the transition that Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's C.E.O., has presided over in the past few years.

Last July, Mr. Scott was visiting a Wal-Mart in Las Vegas on a day when the temperature was more than 100 degrees. He happened to notice that a Wal-Mart staple - inexpensive Styrofoam coolers - were not being promoted by the store's associates. As Andrew Ruben, Wal-Mart's vice president for sustainability, told me: "Lee walked into the store and said, 'It's 105 degrees. Why aren't we selling any coolers?' The associates said, 'We don't want to sell Styrofoam coolers because of their impact on the environment.' So Lee called us afterwards and said: 'We're going to have to figure this out.' By that he meant innovation of a different kind of cooler" that doesn't come from petroleum-based Styrofoam, which is not biodegradable and usually not recycled.

Wal-Mart on Monday also announced a partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project (C.D.P.) to measure the amount of energy used to create products throughout its supply chain - many of which come from China.

Said C.D.P. Chief Executive Paul Dickinson: "Wal-Mart will encourage its suppliers to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately reduce the total carbon footprint of Wal-Mart's indirect emissions. We look forward to other global corporations following Wal-Mart's lead."

China's leadership is not where Lee Scott is yet. Chinese officials still put their highest priority on growing G.D.P. - their bottom line. But for the first time, the costs of this breakneck growth are becoming so obvious on China's air, glaciers and rivers that the leadership asked for briefings on global warming. Many Chinese mayors are looking to get clean-technology industries - like wind turbines and solar - started in their cities.

At such a key time, if the U.S. government adopted a real carbon-reducing strategy, as California and Wal-Mart have, rather than the obfuscations of the Bush team, it would have a huge impact on China and only trigger more innovation in America.

Mr. Bush will be convening his climate photo op - oops, I mean "conference" - in Washington tomorrow, which will include Chinese and Indian officials. But, as Rob Watson, the C.E.O. of EcoTech International, which works on environmental issues in China put it: "The Chinese are not going to take anything we say seriously if we don't set an example ourselves."

David Moskovitz, who directs the Regulatory Assistance Project, a nonprofit that helps promote green policies in China, was even more blunt: "The most frequent and difficult question we get in China with every policy initiative we put forward is: 'If it is so good, why aren't you doing it?' It's hard to answer - and somewhat embarrassing. So we point to good examples that some American states, or cities, or companies are implementing - but not to the federal government. We can't point to America."

Too bad. "It was America which put environmentalism on the world's agenda in the 1970s and

'80s," recalled Glenn Prickett, a senior vice president for Conservation International. "But since then, somehow, the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet has gone to the back of the line."

Leadership is about "follow me" not "after you." Getting our national climate regulations in order is necessary, but it will not be sufficient to move China. We have to show them what Wal-Mart is showing its competitors - that green is not just right for the world, it is better, more profitable, more healthy, more innovative, more efficient, more successful. If Wal-Mart can lead, and California can lead, why can't America?





COMMENTARY:Patterson: Selling the Christmas Mountains gives us the chance to save them

Jerry Patterson, TEXAS LAND COMMISSIONER
Austin American-Statesman, Wednesday, September 26, 2007

'If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.'
— President Reagan in a speech to the British House of Commons, June 8, 1982

As the editor of President Reagan's diaries, Douglas Brinkley should recognize that quote. As a misinformed historian, he embodies it. In his recent opinion piece, Brinkley has clearly deluded himself in the face of the facts about the Christmas Mountains.

Fact No. 1: The Christmas Mountains tract was never meant to be and never will be a public park. It is surrounded by privately owned land and the only access is via privately owned roads. Both the National Park Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department declined to accept title to the Christmas Mountains.

Moreover, the Conservation Fund never intended the mountains to be a park. The Fund's deed restrictions clearly intend this remote property to be held as a preservation area that would never be fragmented or developed. This remains the goal of the School Land Board and will be legally enforceable on any successful bidder. This is not a "parks" issue.

Fact No. 2: Transferring Christmas Mountains from government to private hands will best achieve the goals of both the Conservation Fund and the School Land Board and ensure the conservation of this land for future generations.

Brinkley should re-read his Reagan Diaries. More than any other American, Reagan understood that government is not the solution to the problem — in many cases, it is the problem. The Christmas Mountains are no exception.

The Land Office has neither the authority nor the funding to restore the land to its natural state.

Consider the mule deer. Despite Brinkley's mellifluous prose, there are no "herds of deer grazing the high chaparral" on the Christmas Mountains. State law prohibits the School Land Board from spending money unless it will result in a return to the Permanent School Fund. Therefore we are largely prohibited from doing large-scale land and wildlife management. When we attempted small improvements, like restoring water wells, conducting brush management and improving access roads, we were blocked by the Conservation Fund.

Unless something is done to improve water resources, manage the invasive plant species and stop poachers, the Christmas Mountain mule deer population will not recover. A private interest will have the financial ability to act.

Private stewardship can be as good or better than public stewardship. If this is not true, then Texas is in trouble since 95 percent of Texas is privately owned.

Of course, Brinkley cannot be bothered with facts. Before his editorial rant, he refused documentation from the Land Office about this issue, and refused to speak with me personally.

As I would have informed Brinkley had he agreed to speak with me, the deed restrictions conveyed to the Land Office by the Conservation Fund will be conveyed to a private owner and will be legally enforceable. This means that they are bound by the original restrictions set forth by the fund, yet will have greater financial means to manage the land.

Also, any bid the board selects under my chairmanship will include an enforceable management plan that will allow for appropriate public access like hunting, backpacking and other low-impact uses — as long as that can be done without negatively affecting the primary objective of preserving the property in its natural state.

Perhaps Brinkley could learn another lesson from history — that unreasonable, misinformed people rarely accomplish positive change. Apart from doing the bidding of the Mellon Foundation, Brinkley's knee-jerk, hysterical tirade added nothing of value to the debate and served only to remove himself as a credible participant in that discussion.

Consider just a few of the lies Brinkley offered up:

Brinkley rants about Land Office attempts to sell off state parkland at Eagle Mountain Lake in Tarrant County, a total fabrication. Eagle Mountain Lake was never owned by the Land Office and was never a park! As a matter of fact, the money Texas Parks and Wildlife Department received from that deal will be used to buy an even larger tract for an actual park.

The confused professor also writes that somewhere I "blamed" former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro for the Christmas Mountains issue. I've actually called Mauro myself to compliment him for acquiring and protecting this land from being divided and developed. Looks like Brinkley also failed to talk to Mauro.

Brinkley's column is pure tabloid trash — using terms like "hellbent," "cronyism," "cash grab," "hubristic gall," "garage-sale stunt," and "cheapjack ploy." He calls me an "untrustworthy double-dealer" and suggests I be "hung up on the wrong side of a noose."

And this guy calls himself a professional?

Contrast this with the calm, reasoned public hearing held by the School Land Board — a meeting Brinkley urged his readers to attend yet neglected to attend himself.

The board heard from about 17 concerned Texans, most of whom have legitimate issues, which we discussed at length. I learned something, and I hope they learned something. That is the purpose of a public hearing.

Yet, in his absence, Brinkley did have an impact. One attendee was so motivated by his column that he drove three hours from Houston to Austin to express his opinion in person. He supported the sale of the Christmas Mountains.

At the meeting, opponents of the sale handed out stickers with the words "Save The Christmas Mountains."

That is my objective. I want to do what is right for these 9,000 acres so that 100 years in the future this property will be in better condition than it is now, and the habitat and the wildlife will be restored.

Given the information before me, I have determined that selling this property to a conservation-minded private entity accomplishes this goal. There may be another answer — I'm open to legitimate alternative solutions.

As for Brinkley, his useless column only makes me more determined to act. He is proof of the saying "there are those who do and those who become college professors."

We will save the Christmas Mountains. Whether it is through private or public means, this piece of Texas will be restored for future generations.





Brazos County Democratic Party
P.O. Box 4568
Bryan Texas 77805
979-779-5600 Fax 979-779-5601

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States of America