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A reader sent in these ads pimping the White Stallion coal plant. They’re running in the local newspapers in and around Bay City.

This is typical Big Coal propaganda, trying to spin a polluting project as some sort-of economic and environmental godsend.

In addition to preying on people’s desperation while mangling the King’s English (“Matagorda County has seen tough times before but you may not have seen better times than those ahead”) the ads contain two ridiculous assertions.

1) White Stallion will “lower electric bills to Matagorda County businesses and residents.”

If you buy that, I’ve got some beachfront property in Lubbock to sell you too.

A power plant isn’t like a new Walmart Supercenter selling cheap goods locally.

If built, White Stallion will be putting electricity into a state-wide electric grid and selling power in a fully-deregulated market. Given the scope of Texas’ power sector, a new coal plant, even a big one like White Stallion, is likely to have a negligible effect on people’s utility bills anywhere in the state, much less in Bay City.

2) White Stallion “will generate electricity cleaner than all other coal plants in Texas.”

Um, no. As I reported previously:

The estimated emissions put White Stallion in the middle of the pack compared with Texas’ 11 other proposed coal plants—better in some respects, worse in others, but still much dirtier than natural gas, wind, solar, or nuclear energy sources.

And as TexasVox notes, White Stallion is so clean that it will increase Matagorda County’s NOx emissions (the key ingredient in smog) by only one-third.

Update: It turns out that Matagorda County Judge Nate McDonald will only support White Stallion if it’s “the cleanest coal plant there is” and does “no harm to our environment and air quality.”

I don’t know about you but a 1,200-megawatt coal plant that’s expected to annually emit about 10 million tons of carbon dioxide, 5,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 4,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, 1,600 tons of particulate matter and 100 pounds of mercury doesn’t sound zero-impact to me.

Nonetheless, McDonald has some ugly words for Matagorda County rice farmers who’ve teamed up with Public Citizen to oppose White Stallion and the South Texas Project’s nuclear expansion.

I do hope that our rice farmers understand that they have aligned themselves with a professional group of protestors in Public Citizen, who oppose anything they are paid enough to argue against. 

Smitty Smith has made a career of protesting against anything and everything that does not fit his Austin group’s views.

I didn’t realize just how spooked congressional Democrats had become following the Massachusetts special Senate election until I read this recent E.J. Dionne column.

Dionne, who usually has his finger on the pulse of D.C. liberals, visited with congressional Democrats and found that many of them had reacted to the Massachusetts election by hiding in the corner.

Dionne writes:

“If President Obama gets to sign a health-reform bill, as I believe he will, one reason may be Rep. Jay Inslee’s difficult experience renovating his kitchen.

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He told his kitchen story at a House Democratic caucus after Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts sent Inslee's colleagues into paroxysms of dismay, chaos and fear. Brown's triumph reduced the Democrats' majority in the Senate to "only" 59, and this led many in both houses to want to give up on health reform altogether. Even Obama was sounding an uncertain trumpet."

Apparently, it took Inslee giving a pep talk about his kitchen to at least partially instill Democrats with some confidence:

And then [Inslee] recounted all the grief he and his family went through while work on their kitchen renovation dragged on and on and on. "During that time, I had blood lust against my contractor," Inslee said. "Six months went by, and he was still arguing with the plumber. Eight months went by, and there were still wires hanging down everywhere, and he was having trouble with the building inspector."

But eventually, the job got done. "And now I love that kitchen," Inslee recalls saying. "I bake bread in that kitchen. My wife cooks great meals in that kitchen. The contractor's now a buddy of mine, and I've had beers with him in that kitchen."

Inslee looked at his colleagues and declared: "We've got to finish the kitchen." His point was that Americans won't experience any of the benefits of health-care reform until Congress puts a new system in place.

And here's the part that will really turn your stomach:

I called Inslee about his kitchen oration after Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) told me it was one of the turning points in calming Democrats' nerves. "Now," Wu says, "people run into him in the hallway, smile and say, 'Finish the kitchen.' "

Oiy. Is it any wonder Bush rolled these people for eight years?

Obviously, this is just a single anecdote. But if it's any indication of congressional Democrats' thinking, you have to wonder if they have the political courage now—or ever had the courage—to pass a major reform of the nation's health-care system.

Because it shouldn't have taken Inslee's kitchen speech for Democrats to realize that the proper response to Massachusetts wasn't do nothing and hope for the best. (Which will likely lead to a well-deserved GOP rout in the 2010 elections.)

Regular readers have already seen my rants about Democrats' bumbling of an historic opportunity—one that may not come around again for years if Obama and his huge Democratic majorities fail to pass a health care bill.

No major policy reform has ever been passed in this country without members of Congress having the political will to do what they think is best no matter the political consequences.

And if Democrats can't realize that—and summon the guts and the votes to pass a health care bill in the next few months that will insure 30 million Americans—they shouldn't be running the country.

Zoila Molina, 44, is on her fourth day of hunger strike in front of the Port Isabel Detention Center in South Texas. Suffering from diabetes and having recently undergone surgery, her health is fragile but she’s willing to risk her health to draw attention to the plight of her 24-year old son Ronald.

Ronald has been in the immigration detention facility for four months. He was sent from Miami, Florida, because of a misdemeanor for possession of a gram of cocaine. He served his time and paid his fine. But now he is facing deportation to Nicaragua under the Department of Homeland Security’s “Secure Communities” policy, which started in 2008 under Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At least 150 detainees, including Zoila’s son, Ronald, are on hunger strike at the facility near Brownsville. This is the second time in less than 12 months that detainees have resorted to starving themselves to get attention from the U.S. government. In the old days the PIDC, which is a federal facility, was considered a temporary facility. These days it is brimming with detainees. Some have been there almost a year.

The Secure Communities program identifies people who are legal permanent residents in the United States that have committed crimes. They are placed in detention. Most are deported. Whenever ICE touts the program it emphasizes that the agency is going after dangerous criminal aliens – arrests involving national security, homicide, kidnapping and assault.

It’s hard to argue with that. Who wouldn’t want dangerous sexual predators and murderers deported back to their home countries? Where things get fuzzy is with people who have committed lesser offenses like charges for possession of small amounts of drugs or a violation for trespassing on private property during a spat with a neighbor.

Does a man like Ronald, who has two children and another one on the way, deserve to be deported to Nicaragua for the equivalent of a ¼ tsp. of cocaine?

ICE says it has a risk-based model to analyze each case so that its resources are spent on deporting the most dangerous criminal aliens first. But in reality many small-time offenders – the low hanging fruit — like Roland are caught up in the system.

A recent report by the Migrant Policy Institute states that instead of murders and rapists, most detention facilities hold immigrants that have drug possession charges or traffic offenses such as Driving Under the Influence.

With no lawyers to represent them, little money, and far away from home detainees like Roland can be held for months in legal limbo.

I spoke with Zoila Tuesday about her son. Zoila was granted political asylum in the eighties after escaping the C.I.A.- funded civil war in Nicaragua. She has five children.

Last month Ronald turned 26 in jail. He has been in the Port Isabel Detention Center for four months. His wife is about to give birth to their son at any moment. They have two other children. With the primary breadwinner in the family locked up things are getting desperate. The only thing Zoila could do was fly to Texas and join in the hunger strike to try and bring some attention to her son’s plight.

“I’m not leaving here until they give me my son,” she told me with determination. On Sunday she was allowed to visit with Ronald for the first time.

“He cried,” Zoila says. “He cried and begged me not to leave him. He said ‘it’s horrible and depressing in here.’”

Ronald left Nicaragua when he was an infant. The only family he has left lives in the United States, Zoila says. She fears that he will be harmed or killed if he returns.

The few immigration lawyers that practice in Brownsville can’t keep up with the paying cases let alone those who cannot pay. There are more than 4,000 detainees being held in their county alone. The organization Pro Bar that does pro bonos cases – and does an admirable job—only handles asylum cases. So most detainees like Ronald are out of luck.

On Monday Zoila met with U.S. Congressman Solomon Ortiz who represents the Brownsville area in Congress. Ortiz recently signed on as the primary author of Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation in the House.

Zoila says she has the utmost faith that Congressman Ortiz will help her and her son. “I could tell he has real heart and is someone who cares,” she says.

But with the crumpling of healthcare reform and the upcoming elections it will be some time before Congress tackles the emotional and divisive topic of immigration reform. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security announced that there were at least 100,000 detainees that could be released with ankle monitors or other monitoring devices. The caveat is they need Congress to pass a bill to authorize them to do it.

So which is a worse crime: Possession of a small amount of drugs or deporting a man with a wife and three children?

When I tuned in to Monday’s debate between the two main Democratic primary candidates for governor—Bill White and Farouk Shami—I wasn’t expecting fireworks or Lincoln-Douglas or even Perry-Hutchison-Medina.

But, good lord, I didn’t think it would quite that dull.

In the Austin area, the debate preempted PBS’ airing of the quiet, quaint Antiques Roadshow. Television doesn’t get much sleepier than that, but damn if White-Shami didn’t make Antiques Roadshow look like 24.

Their hour-long discussion barely qualified as a debate. There was no back and forth. In fact, the candidates barely disagreed on anything. After an hour of talk, I counted three disagreements: raising the gas tax (Shami says yes, White no); moratorium on the death penalty (Shami yes, White no) and moratorium on drilling for natural gas in the Barnett Shale (again, Shami yes, White no). In fact, one of the tidbits we learned about Bill White is that he doesn’t like across-the-board moratoriums of any sort.

Instead of actual debate, we watched two men stand awkwardly behind podiums and dutifully talk about various public-policy issues for an hour. Or, in Shami’s case, talk mostly about ideas. The hair products magnate skipped through his answers, bounding from one generalization to the next and providing scant details for his ideas despite repeated attempts by the questioners to nail him down. (At one point, Shelley Kofler, of KERA in Dallas, got a tad condescending while quizzing Shami on his plans for the budget, “You understand that you wouldn’t introduce the budget bill, right?”) Still, Shami offered little more than a pledge to balance the budget in his first year, which isn’t much of a pledge since the state is constitutionally required to balance its budget every year. But I digress.

As for Bill White, he was, well, Bill White: Steady, articulate, obviously more informed on state issues than any of the questioners, ernest, wonkish and utterly lacking in charisma.

The two best lines of the night—perhaps the only lines of the night—came from Shami. He responded to the obligatory question about “securing the border” (for the last time: it’s a federal issue!) by saying, “Without Mexicans it would be like a day without sunshine in our state.”

Another nice one came in his last answer, when Shami said that after Americans elected Barack Obama, “This state is ready for a brown governor named Farouk Shami.”

I also liked White’s response to a question about how a Democrat could possibly win the governorship after a 20-year losing streak: “The New Orleans Saints had never won a Super Bowl since expansion, and at the beginning of the season, no one thought they would do it.” That was good. I will note, however, that it took the Saints more than 40 years to win the big one. Texas Democrats are hoping they’re not wandering the desert that long.

To say the candidates have vastly different styles is an understatement. That came through in their exchange over electricity prices. Both endorsed a rollback of electricity deregulation (one of the many, many things they agreed on). Shami talked of fantastical ideas, like a 10-year goal of increasing renewable energy to the point that Texans wouldn’t pay electricity bills, but would instead sell power back to the grid and make money.

White, by contrast, talked of small sensible programs such as weatherizing homes, putting solar panels on public buildings and increasing natural gas production. He said renewable energy has its place, but he wouldn’t want to rely on it during a summer heat wave.

Meanwhile, the questioners didn’t distinguish themselves. White dispatched a nonsensical question from Kofler about whether he would allow Texas to participate in national health reform. He noted that, based on the bills currently in Congress, we won’t have a choice. I also give White credit for being honest during a question on the economy. He was asked by a single mother in the audience what he would do to help her find a job. White stressed the need to improve job training. When he was pressed by moderator Karen Borta about how he would solve the recession, White refused to make empty promises. “I do not think the governor of Texas has control over the global economy.” But, he said, the governor can ensure that Texas workers are well trained.

In the end, this felt like a practice debate—the political equivalent of a spring-training game. Few pundits think White will lose the primary. So, unlike the GOP debates of recent weeks, there was little at stake on Monday night, and the debate lacked any tension.

Rather, those who tuned in probably wanted to take a measure of White, the likely Democratic nominee. In that sense, White was the political winner on Monday. He made no major gaffes. He stayed above the fray, refusing the criticize his underdog opponent on anything. (Shami took some swipes at White, but nothing that stuck.)

The viewers who watched the whole hour—and God bless those who did—saw a man with a deep understanding of the policy issues in this state. They saw a man who could sure use a charisma transplant, but who also looked calm and thoughtful. On this night, that was good enough. Riveting, though, it wasn’t.

The Observer is offering a selected few items for online bidding. We will accept bids every day from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Central Time.  Online bidding closes on Saturday afternoon, Feb. 13, at 5 p.m.

E-mail your bids to the business office at [email protected] You will receive notification if someone places a higher bid than you so you may raise your bid if desired.

At 4 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 14, when the Silent Auction opens at the fabulous Valentine’s Day Rabble Rouser and Fat Cat Schmoozefest at the Barr Mansion in Austin, Texas, the highest bid received online will be the beginning bid for these items.

In order for you to continue bidding until the auction closes at 7:30 that evening, the Observer will provide a proxy for you who will be in attendance at the event. You and your proxy can work out what maximum amount you are willing to bid and any other strategies (within the bounds of legality and decorum, of course) you may wish to employ. Shipping, if required, is to be paid by the winning bidder.

If you have questions please call the Observer business office at 512-477-0746.

Auction Items:

• Portuguese Villa
• Sunday Morning Behind the Scenes of CBS News’ Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer
• Caribbean Beach House
• Storm from Jewel’s Camp by James Evans
• Kingfishers, Divers and Risers By David Hefner
• Peace Sign By Dick Leverich

 

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PORTUGUESE VILLA (Sleeps 10)

Monchique, Portugal
(Please redeem within one year)

You may bid for TWO WEEKS
Value $7,000 (2 weeks)
Minimum $4,000 (2 weeks)
or
You may bid for ONE WEEK
Value $3,500 (1 week)
Minimum $2,000 (1 week)

Highest per-week bid for two weeks wins! If high bid is for one week, other week will be offered at same price to that bidder or next highest bidder.

This fabulous villa, the vacation home of Observer readers Allan and Louise Hirst, is one of the nicest properties available in the area of Monchique, Portugal. Nestled in five acres of beautiful gardens, the villa, which is called Quinta das Nascentes Atlas, has five bedrooms and can accommodate up to 10 people. This southern region of Portugal, called the Algarve, is a popular destination for tourism, primarily because of its beaches, Mediterranean climate, safety, and relatively low cost. Recently remodeled, all bedrooms have double doors opening onto the terrace with spectacular views to the coast. Modern kitchen, swimming pool, telephone and fax, Wi-Fi, satellite, TV, housekeeping services.

Click on this link to see more photos

Click on this link to read a testimonial from last year’s high bidder

BID NOW: [email protected]

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SUNDAY MORNING BEHIND THE SCENES OF CBS NEWS’ FACE THE NATION WITH BOB SCHIEFFER

Washington, D.C.
Minimum bid $400

For the past 18 years Bob Schieffer has interviewed the week’s top newsmakers live from the Washington set of “Face the Nation.” Here’s your chance to meet the legendary anchorman and enjoy a front row seat to the live broadcast of the second oldest show on television. You and 3 guests will be seated in the control room during the show and then treated to a tour of the studio by Bob Schieffer.

“Face the Nation” broadcasts live from the CBS News Washington bureau in downtown Washington, DC Sunday mornings at 10:30 am. Please contact Kaylee Hartung to arrange a mutually acceptable date at (202) 457-4429 or [email protected] (Please redeem within one year of purchase.)

Schieffer is one of the few American journalists to have covered all four of the major Washington national assignments: the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress. He was born in Austin and grew up in Ft. Worth and is a longtime admirer of the Observer.

BID NOW: [email protected]

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CARIBBEAN BEACH HOUSE (Sleeps 6)

FOR ONE WEEK
Playa del Carmen, Mexico
(Please redeem within one year)

Value $2,500-4,000 (depending on season)
Minimum $1,500

Casa Cho Hom, a resort home in Playa del Carmen owned by Observer friends Russ and Renee Graham, has breathtaking Caribbean views that can be enjoyed from the rooftop terrace. Only one block from the newly restored beach, this three-bedroom, three-bath fully equipped split-level villa accommodates up to six people spaciously and privately. The large living room opens to an inviting swimming pool. Maid service is provided six times a week as well as linens and towels. The house features satellite TV, VCR, wireless internet, air-conditioning, 2 ocean-going kayaks, a laundry room, and a modern kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances. Cancun is 40 miles north, the island of Cozumel can be seen from the rooftop terrace and is 40 minutes by boat across the channel, and several archeological sites are nearby. This villa is a ten-minute walk from town where you can find shopping, restaurants, beach bars, and the ferry to Cozumel.

Click on this link to see more photos

BID NOW: [email protected]

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Storm from Jewel’s Camp

By James Evans
Value $1300
Minimum $600

James Evans has been photographing the Big Bend region of West Texas for over 20 years, documenting the vast and rugged landscape and the intriguing animals and  individuals who inhabit it. This silver gelatin print captures the drama of a lightning-filled storm coming over the Chisos Mountains into the high desert. It is a one-of-a-kind original vintage print, the same likeness that appears in his highly acclaimed book Big Bend Pictures (UT Press: 2003). The photograph is framed and measures 25” x 25”, including the frame.

BID NOW: [email protected]

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Kingfishers, Divers and Risers

By David Hefner
Value $450
Minimum $225

David Hefner, Ph.D., teaches art education and studio painting at Texas State University, San Marcos. He incorporates form into the abstract design of wood grain in this beautiful woodcut print of brightly colored kingfishers diving and rising with their catch. The framed print measures 33” by 30.”

BID NOW: [email protected]

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Peace Sign

By Dick Leverich
Value $400
Minimum bid $200

Dick Leverich, Austin physician and welder, crafts these wonderful peace signs of recycled steel tubing. The sign has a 52-inch diameter, metal stand, and is outlined in bright white outdoor LED lights. The photos show how this sculpture is a beacon in the dark.

BID NOW: [email protected]

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