To win a campaign, it takes four things. A quality candidate, a winning issue, a professional campaign organization, and enough money to bring it all to the people.
We have a quality candidate in Tx-19. Robert Ricketts is a professor of tax policy, a CPA, and operates a horse stable in Lubbock County. Robert's strong community ties make Lubbock County a possible win in a county where Prairie Dog Randy has underperformed every other Republican by a significant margin - particularly since the Prairie Dog actually held office in Lubbock County. Robert Ricketts is a throwback to the Jeffersonian idea of a citizen-lawmaker who is qualified to hold office because he knows the needs of his constituency and isn't afraid to fight for them.
The battle against Prairie Dog Republicans has begun! There can be no retreat, no surrender! There is only our honor and dubious web-skills standing between our beloved state and total abject destruction of Biblical proportions!
Click the prairie dog and learn how a Prairie Dog named Randy became a cookie-cutter Congressional critter. Then click through to Act Blue and help Robert Ricketts smoke the Prairie Dog out of his hole forever!
A case far from District 19 has implications for electrical power availability here on the high plains. South and east from here lies Robertson County, where TXU wants to build a new coal-fired electrical power plant. The reason TXU wants to use coal is simple: It owns nearby coal mines. It simply wants to maximize its profits - which is what corporations do.
Two administrative judges are recommending to the Tx Commission on Environmental Quality that the permits for building this coal plant not be approved. Why? Because the pollution from the burning coal will not be contained based on the plans currently submitted by TXU. This is not news to TXU - it isn't news to anyone. TXU certainly has the engineering know-how to submit a plan that would meet environmental standards, but they just don't want to. They'd rather try and see what the minimum they can get away with is.
They come in all shapes and sizes. Tall and short, fat or skinny, and occasionally they will vary their pasty white complexion just a bit. They are more often than not to be male, though the occasional female does slip out of the burrow to demonstrate how to take orders in public.
They are the Prairie Dog Republicans - scattered from Mexico to Cananda and often found in "Middle America" (I looked on a map and couldn't actually find a "Middle America"). Like the varmint from which they take their name, they started out in small groups of whistling, chattering, cackling Prairie Dog towns and quickly multiplied to become a national nuisance.
As Blue 19th has documented, Prairie Dog Republican Randy Neugebauer has been totally AWOL on fighting for drought relief. In 2004, Randy helped hold up the farm relief bill so he could shave $100,000 million from it and make sure that farmers didn't get relief for more than a single year. He made sure that losing a third of your crop still wasn't enough to qualify for assistance. Then, just to add insult to injury, he voted for a bill that funded drought relief by raiding land conservation funds. Now he's having coffee throughout the district, all but breaking out the fiddle while West Texas burns to a crisp.
But Randy couldn't wait to vote for the Sensenbrenner Immigration Bill that would have extravagant costs. It is estimated to cost $7 per person over the next four years - that's more than $2 billion! Where will this money come from? Why is Randy throwing open the checkbook on Immigration but sitting on it hard and heavy for farmers?
Give Randy Neugebauer the boot - give to Robert Ricketts today!
The Abilene Reporter-News' Sarah Kleiner writes the bare facts:
''Our representatives for this area have been AWOL,'' said Robert Ricketts, the Democratic candidate for the District 19 seat in the U.S. House, held by Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock. ''We needed aid months ago.''
The breech of public trust is astounding. Kleiner gives us the details:
Texas agriculture officials estimated crop and livestock losses total $4.1 billion so far this year, according to a recent Associated Press report. The previous worst agriculture loss was $2.1 billion in 1998.
Texas is forecast to produce 5.2 million bales of cotton, down from 8.5 million bales harvested last year, according to the AP report.
Fridays are great days for political news. Anything and everything that politicians DON'T want you to know comes out on Fridays. That way it's forgotten by Monday. It's generally referred to as "taking out the trash".
But the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal manages to dump the trash within the trash. Tucked away in a story with the headline "City considers taking in Strip for tax revenue" is this little gem:
Also on Thursday, the council considered the possibility of raising fees for city services, such as Citibus, civic center rental and library late fees.
Citibus hasn't raised its fare in 10 years and recently lost much of its federal funding.
To make up the difference, General Manager John Wilson said he was considering cutting Saturday bus service.
Council members said they would prefer raising the fare from $1 to $1.25 rather than cut weekend service.
"You've got to have public transportation," said Councilman Gary Boren. "We've got to find a way to help them."
There's no better way to mess with the National Republican Party than to target Tx-19. That means you have to actually give a bit of cash to help Robert Ricketts make this a competitive race.
To look forward, we have to look behind - slightly. Everyone who has followed a Presidential election for five minutes has heard the term "swing states". Those are the states that will supposedly swing the election - but it is also a term used to describe states whose electoral votes are not assured from the beginning of the election. Basically, you are either a "safe" state or a "swing" state. Typical political strategy puts money in swing states and moves it away from safe states. Why waste money paying for votes you're already going to get?
Cowboys used to laugh at duded-up city slickers with the comment that putting a hat on a man doesn't make him a cowboy. Apparently, electing Randy Neugebauer from the 19th District didn't make him a "Representative", either.
The Lubbock Avalance-Journal is finally reporting on this issue. Hank Gilbert, who is running for Texas Ag Commissioner, joined Robert Ricketts in voicing outrage over the lack of support West Texas farmers are getting in Washington:
Ricketts, who will face U.S. Rep. Randy Neuegbauer, R-Lubbock, in November, said $4 billion designated by the U.S. Senate for disaster relief in an emergency appropriations bill in May should have been used by the House to help farmers.
"That money was cut out by the House leadership and no one stood up ..." Ricketts said.
Looking over at the farm links at Blue 19th, I found this article on wind power. Republican State Representative David Swinford is pushing for expansion of wind power in the western Panhandle. The problem holding things up is the lack of a connection between the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the grid that serves the panhandle, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which serves the rest of Texas. This brings up a couple of issues where there is a distinctive lack of leadership in District 19.
First - where is the voice calling for greater use of wind power in this District? Is Amarillo windier than Lubbock? Actually, as I write this, the average wind-speed around the Lubbock area is actually higher than in Amarillo - 12 mph vs. 10 mph. That's a significant difference because most wind-power experts see 12 mph as the "cut-off" line where wind-power actually starts to get a mathematical edge for generation of electricity. A 2.6 mph increase in windspeed actually doubles the output of a wind-powered generator.
