City of Houston Getting Greener All the Time
Ella Tyler
Citizens’ Environmental Coalition E-Newsletter
The Houston City Council approved a contract Wednesday that devotes at least a third of the city's
energy purchases to wind-generated sources. The contract makes Houston a leader in green power use.
Mayor White instigated the change as a way to stabilize the cost of electricity after Hurricanes Katrina
and Rita disrupted natural gas supplies, causing electricity prices to soar.
According to the Mayor’s office, the city spent approximately $150 million on electricity in the last fiscal
year - double what the city paid in 2004. Wind power is generally cheaper and more stable in price than other forms of power.
The city is also working to reduce its electric usage in a variety of ways. More than 300 traffic signals have
been converted to LED lamps. All new traffic signals will be LED lamps and the city is working now to replace all
signals with LED signals. LED (Light Emitting Diode) traffic signals reduce energy costs by 90% over incandescent
bulbs and have several other advantages.
LEDs last five times longer than incandescent bulbs, reducing maintenance costs. The lamps are made of several dozen
LEDs, so the signal continues to function even if several of diodes stop working, unlike incandescent bulbs. When
the filament of an incandescent bulb fails, the display goes dark, requiring immediate replacement. The lamps are
brighter compared to incandescent bulbs, which enhances intersection safety. Drivers who are going east in the
morning and west in the evening will appreciate that LED signals elimination the phantom effect. Incandescent bulbs
use reflectors behind the bulbs so all colors seem to light up when the sunrays fall directly on these signals. LED
lamps have no reflectors, so the problem is eliminated.
Solar power is used for downtown’s new parking stations and school zone signals and city officials are looking at solar
devices to meet other needs. An innovative use of solar power is being tested at Lake Houston, where devices called
“SolarBees” float in certain areas of the lake to keep lower waters oxygenated all year long, promoting the health of
the natural ecosystem and preventing algal blooms.
Also, the city has completed the first two phases of a program to re-time existing traffic signals to current traffic
patterns and will continue the program across the city. The goal is to make improve reducing the amount of starting and
stopping, and the time spend idling, thereby lowering air pollution from vehicular emissions, and reducing gasoline consumption.
Air pollution monitoring will be easier, since the city has recently acquired a mobile air-monitoring lab. The mobile lab will
increase the city’s ability to identify and characterize air toxics emissions and determine the likely emission source.
It will supplement existing technology such as hand-held infrared cameras that help pinpoint emission sources and a fixed-base
air monitoring station in southeast Houston.
The Houston Power to People campaign was launched in May. Volunteers went door-to-door to homes handing out compact fluorescent
lights and stores set up displays with information about steps Houstonians can take to minimize energy consumption in their homes.
The website
Houston Power to People presents energy-saving options.
Mayor White, City Council Member Carol Alvarado, and State Senator Rodney Ellis are proponents of “pedal power”. On Wednesday, they wielded shovels and broke ground for a new bikeway which will go to Discovery Green Park.
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night
Cragg Hines
Houston Chronicle, July29, 2007
I thought about going quietly, just a couple of sentences toward the end of a regular column noting that after more than three decades of writing about politics and government for Chronicle readers that I was pulling the plug. I decided that approach, however elegant and restrained, was sort of chicken and not actually my style. There would be a summing up, a possibly self-indulgent coda to my current career. I knew I'd have fun doing a wrap-up, and I have.
It's not a bad moment to round off my time in Washington. There's a certain symmetry. I joined the Chronicle's Washington bureau in June 1972, the week of the Watergate break-in. I leave as another Republican administration attempts to hijack the government.
Even if Al Gonzales doesn't have the good sense to step down, I, for wholly different reasons, do. Given my time in the Federal City, I've covered and commented on several extremities of the body politic: an Oval Office resignation, several assassination attempts, an impeachment that, as it deserved to, failed in removing a president from office.
At the same time, however, I'll admit that when I showed up for this job, I could never have guessed we'd see history almost take a radical turn on the molecular profile of presidential semen. How ennobling, no? On Capitol Hill, there was the fall of House speakers of both parties. And scandals that testified repeatedly to the allure of sex and money.
It took congressional Democrats four decades to become out of touch. Republicans accomplished the same feat in just 12 grasping years. Watching Tom DeLay's eventual self-immolation was certainly worth the price of admission. Even better, I got paid for it. The real miracle of my tenure is a regular paycheck for an unimaginably satisfying job — both the first 28 years as a reporter and the last seven as a columnist.
For all the jerks and shameless self-promoters, there were plenty of solid, thoughtful people who gave meaning to the oft-mocked phrase "public servant." To pick two current examples: Houston-area Reps. Gene Green, Democrat, and Kevin Brady, Republican.
To observe and write about, for many years, a Senate duo from Texas, as wily and gifted as Democrat Lloyd Bentsen and Republican John Tower was a guilty pleasure. Their differences just added appeal. At the heart of my extended gig were nine presidential campaigns, each in its own way a stunning, if not always surprising, story.
Most rewarding professionally was the rise of George H.W. Bush, a politician I first covered as a college student in the 1960s. I saw a lot of the nation and the world with him, including his beloved Maine coast. Oh, no, White House reporters would tell each other in faux disgust, not another August in Kennebunkport. His precipitate fall at the hands of Bill Clinton, a gifted politician and flawed human, was a good story I took no pleasure in writing. In that vein, I've taken no joy (despite what a lot of readers firmly believe) in castigating his hapless son, the incumbent president.
Cleaning out the office turned up some delicious detritus, including a pair of cheesy sunglasses with the improbable inscription: "Californians for Dole." Hunter S. Thompson was my seatmate on the Zoo Plane at the end of the McGovern campaign in 1972, a perfect start to my lengthy tenure as one of the boys on the bus. Before long, however, many of our fellow travelers had become, in Maureen Dowd's great phase, "the dweebs on the bus," what with all their technological advances. But almost all are treasured colleagues.
Then there were the White House press charters, for which news organizations pay an arm and a leg. Red Square (Ronald Reagan's first trip to the "evil empire" and mine as well). Tiananmen Square (first with Bush-41 in 1989, less than two months before the beginning of the democracy protests that turned deadly for so many demonstrators).
Among the many highlights: landing on the first Boeing 747 with passengers to touch down at Tempelhof (of air lift fame) so we could cover Reagan's Berlin Wall speech.
For pure drama, the first Gulf war, seeing Scuds, aimed rather too close to our position, exploding over Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Whether the Iraqi missiles were faulty or shot down by overrated Patriots was immaterial.
Biggest regret: initially supporting Bush-43's elective war, but I had plenty of company.
Why am I retiring? Because I can.
What am I going to do? Whatever I want to.
Travel more? That would be difficult. But perhaps more leisurely. When colleagues are off early next year in the frigid wilds of Iowa and New Hampshire, I plan to be at a hill station in southern India. I'll hoist a Pimm's Cup in their honor (hold the cucumber strip).
Writing projects? Perhaps.
I'm outta here.
Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C.
Nuisance in the air: All urban areas will be hurt if SB 1317 passes
Mayor Bill White
Dallas Morning News, May 3, 2007
Texas is a proud state with big blue skies and even bigger horizons of economic opportunity. We must clean our skies to preserve these opportunities. Pollution drives away skilled workers and new entrepreneurial businesses.
In Texas, we value freedom and resist bureaucratic interference. But we also understand that "a person's right to throw their fist ends where another person's nose begins."
Texas took a big step backward, in violation of these principles, with the state Senate passage on Wednesday of SB 1317, which limits the age-old right of cities to protect citizens from public nuisances. Two years ago, Houston used this established right to dramatically cut levels of a dangerous carcinogen - butadiene 1,3 - emitted by a petrochemical company.
On some blocks in the mostly Hispanic Manchester area, which had been exposed to this chemical for years, most of the households of long-term residents have experienced cancer. We now seek to reduce excessive concentrations of benzene, another carcinogen, in parts of our city. SB 1317 strips away the power of cities to protect their citizens from toxic substances put into the air upwind from large concentrations of residents.
In frontier times, cities used their misdemeanor authority to regulate public nuisances such as storage of large amounts of horse manure. Leading scientists in Houston identified threats to public health greater than manure. Twelve chemicals are present in the air with the concentrations high enough to be categorized as "definite risk" to human health. Most are classified as "air toxics" by the EPA. Monitors installed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show where they come from.
The refining and petrochemical industry is a vital part of both Texas' and the U. S. economy. We are proud of the contribution of these firms. Reductions in benzene and other pollutants from these plants requires years of operating improvements and investments. Fortunately, these great companies have the technical and economical capacities to cut these emissions to safe levels, as in other states, such as California, Louisiana and New Jersey.
Despite our request, Texas failed to develop standards setting maximum allowed concentrations of chemicals such as benzene. In the meantime, our cities should not have our hands tied behind our backs to protect the public health of our largest population. Should Dallas be left without a means to protect its neighborhoods if a pollution sets up shop immediately upwind, outside the city limits? That's why Houston stood with Dallas-Fort Worth in its recent fight on coal plants upwind of the metroplex.
In the last few years, as we have cleaned Houston's air, this has never been a partisan issue at City Hall, or within the business or medical community. So it's odd that the vote on SB 1317 occurred along party lines. Houston is not anti-business. Our local economy has been the fastest growing in the nation. No one has ever claimed that issuing misdemeanor citations will cost jobs by bankrupting major petrochemical firms. We are a good neighbor to the industries outside our city limits, and they benefit from proximity to the nation's fourth-largest city, home to so many of their executives, workers and shareholders.
But all urban areas in our state will be hurt if cities have no power to protect citizens from health hazards traveling by air from right outside the city limits. The Legislature should defeat SB 1317 for two simple principles: Texans may have a right to start a fire on their property but not to smoke out our neighbors, and all of us need clean air to attract the jobs for tomorrow's economy.
Touchy Issue of Teaching the Bible
Chris Bell
The Examiner (Houston), April 11, 2007
I wish Warren Chisum was Jewish. Or some other religion. Or maybe just not such a zealot. Then I could possibly have some faith that he’s well intentioned. But there’s just something about a right-wing Christian Republican representative from Pampa who has been the driving force behind so many far right initiatives in recent years proposing that the Bible be required teaching in public high schools that touches a nerve.
Taken at face value, I have no problem with the proposal. The Bible is fascinating, and there’s no question that young people, regardless of faith, could gain much by knowing more about it. I know that from personal experience. However, ironically, the person who taught me the most about the Bible was Jewish.
I had the privilege of visiting Israel a few years ago, and the gentleman who served as our tour guide was a Biblical scholar. Being in that special place with someone who knew so much caused the Bible to come alive. My concern is not over the separation of church and state. I’m cynical enough to believe the very reason Rep. Chisum is making his proposal is because he would like to see exactly what concerns the critics: Bible courses not designed to educate about the history contained therein but, rather, courses that will attempt to convert students to Christianity. That’s called proselytizing, and it has no place in our public school system.
We’ve already seen what can happen. More than 20 high schools in Texas currently offer Bible courses. The Texas Freedom Network, a nonpartisan group of community and religious leaders which serves as somewhat of a watchdog over the religious right, did a study of those courses and found only three were really sticking to a truly educational format.
One district reportedly went so far as to offer a PowerPoint presentation titled “God’s Roadway for Your Life” with slides proclaiming, “Jesus Christ is the one and only way.” Just as in government, being in the religious majority calls for a certain level of responsibility, including respect for the views of others. Some are worried about the lawsuits that could be spawned by Chisum’s legislation if passed. And while I’m sure there would be a lot, that’s the least of my worries. I’m more concerned by the opportunity the legislation would create to trample on the beliefs and feelings of others.
Imagine how a non-Christian might feel attending or even just hearing about the “God’s Roadway for Your Life” presentation. Years ago, I attended a local Jewish organization’s luncheon. The blessing was said in Hebrew. I understood none of it, and I felt somewhat out of place. As we sat down, a member of the organization said it should have been said in English as well. Former State Representative Paul Colbert, who is Jewish and extraordinarily bright, was also at the table. He said, “No — that was the whole point.” I’ve never forgotten it. Needless to say, Warren Chisum wasn’t at the table.
Trivializing an Emotional Decision
Chris Bell
The Examiner (Houston), April 6, 2007
Only $500 for a baby put up for adoption? How disappointing! Let's throw in a free toaster oven if the baby is born completely healthy and a round-trip ticket to Las Vegas if the woman can bring forth twins. If we're going to completely trivialize adoption, we can't be halfhearted about it.
But, of course, Houston state Sen. Dan Patrick's bill offering a $500 incentive to those willing to put their babies up for adoption is extremely halfhearted in a different sort of way. And that's why we should all be repulsed by the idea.
The Republican senator seems to believe a little remuneration is all it will take to make a woman think twice before having an abortion. What his bill completely overlooks is the depth of a woman's struggle when deciding the fate of an unplanned pregnancy.
He seems to believe that women in such a situation deal at the basest level and all they're looking for is a few dollars.
Sadly, money has already entered the adoption process, with some potential adoptive parents caught in awful, heartbreaking bidding wars. Numerous birth mothers have figured out that desperate couples will spend a lot to realize their dream of parenthood,
and they take full advantage. In many ways, Patrick's bill would justify such conduct.
If the state's going to get in the money game, why shouldn't a birth mother? Even stringent anti-abortion groups realize such a proposal comes dangerously close to baby-selling.
But what is most offensive about Patrick's proposal is its short-sightedness. Listen to the experience of birth mothers who put their children up for adoption, and the feeling of "guilt" comes up repeatedly and doesn't subside easily. Many report feeling the guilt throughout the rest of their lives.
Now, imagine for a moment what a $500 incentive would do to those feelings of guilt. What if the woman was in such desperate shape at the time of her pregnancy that she actually allowed the money to influence her decision?
One doesn't have to be a psychologist to see how that would increase the guilt exponentially.
Apparently, the offensiveness of Patrick's bill is bipartisan in nature. While it has been sent to a committee, no hearing has been set, and it has zero co-sponsors.
So it appears to be yet another grandstanding effort by the radio talk show host-turned-politician. If he were really serious about wanting to decrease the
number of abortions — a goal shared by both sides of the abortion debate — Patrick would be working to make sure young people get all the information they need to keep from getting pregnant in the first place.
Every study shows that such "abstinence-plus" education, which includes information about birth control and contraception, in addition to abstinence, is actually effective in reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies.
But Patrick opposes that type of educational program. That's too bad. Maybe if someone would throw in $500, he would reconsider.
Former MAD President Bill Galbraith responds to Steven F. Hotze’s Op-Ed piece in the Examiner. Bill notes that Hotze is a “right-wing, gay-bashing "Christian" conservative commentator.” Hotze’s piece is first; Bill’s response is below.
Free enterprise needs some fast resuscitation
Steven F Hotze
The Examiner (Houston), February 6, 2007
Socialism is seeping into the body of our state government through over-taxation and entitlement programs. Texas needs a free enterprise, capitalism revival in order to stop this infection and secure a healthy, prosperous future for its citizens. There are two ways to organize economic activity - either by voluntary associations in a free market, known as capitalism, or through centralized planning by the state, known as socialism.
In a free enterprise system, the principle which determines the distribution of income can be stated as "to each according to what he produces with his effort, equipment and property." The individual is accountable for his own actions and reaps the results. The free enterprise system of capitalism allows him economic liberty, without which there can be no personal or political liberty.
Milton Friedman stated it succinctly: "Competitive capitalism is the organization of the bulk of economic activity through private enterprise operating voluntarily in a free market. It is a system of economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom." Socialists proclaim "to each according to his ability, to each according to his need" as the way to determine how income is distributed.
Redistribution of wealth is accomplished through government coercion. The hard-earned money of the producers is confiscated and redistributed to bureaucrats who run bloated entitlement programs for the non-producers.
Socialists talk a lot about fairness when they tax productive people in order to redistribute their income, which they use to buy the votes of the non-producers, keeping them weak and dependent. By using the word "fair," socialists feel they can justify their endorsement of state-sponsored theft and violate the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," with impunity.
According to the Texas comptroller, the projected 2008-'09 biennial budget is $158 billion. Compared to $99 billion in the 1998-'99 budget, there has been a growth of 60 percent over the past 10 years. Health and Human Services and Education consume 90 percent of this budget and provide uniformly mediocre results. Under Republican leadership, billions of dollars are being confiscated from the hardworking citizens of Texas and transferred to the coffers of the state.
Republicans claim to be supporters of free enterprise on one hand, yet they are presiding over a dramatic growth in state government. Under the leadership of Gov. Rick Perry, they passed the largest business tax bill in the history of Texas during the 2006 special legislative session. So much for free enterprise. Expansion of state government should disturb anyone who values political freedom.
The private economic sector, which provides an essential counterbalance to the state and provides us with economic freedom, is being crippled. The state's power to confiscate your money through taxation, forcing you to finance entitlement programs, erodes political liberty. Listen to Ronald Reagan explain the difference between capitalism and socialism using the allegory of the Little Red Hen at www.texansfornonewtaxes.org/videos/Reagan.mp3
Bill Galbriath’s response:
Welcome to Glorious People's Socialist Soviet Republic of Texas!
Steven F. Hotze has discovered that Texas Republicans are actually Socialists! ("Free Enterprise Needs Some Fast Resuscitation," Examiner February 8, 2007) Since Socialist Republican takeover Texas has achieved:
100% Single-Party control of government, like in Soviet Union! Remember when Democrats were responsible for everything bad? Relax! EVERY SINGLE STATEWIDE OFFICE has been Republican for years now! Governor, entire Supreme Court, both the Texas House and Senate- all controlled by Republican Party! Even more so in Harris County. And these aren't your California tree-hugging Republicans... they're real red-meat Texas conservatives. So please to relax and enjoy this ride!
Universal Healthcare, like in Cuba! Middle-class home-owning taxpayers foot the bill for every dollar of medical treatment the State doesn’t cover. They just pay for it locally! Remember: 25% of Texans have no health insurance (we are number one in nation!) Need treatment? Go to nearest emergency room!
Filthy air, filthy water: proof positive of industrial progress! We are telling big companies, Please to move to Texas with your huge booty tax base. Your employees will love big open skies here which we have improved with toxins! Mmmmmm.. smells like money to me! The water is no worse than in Moscow, so why is it to complain?
No money wasted on slackers! Poor? Disabled? Don't look for help from State of Texas! In spirit of true Scientific Socialism we have eliminated backward Christian notions of helping our "non-producers" as Comrade Hotze so charmingly calls them. Remember the bumper stickers that said, "United We Stand"? That is all so yesterday!
Education- Thousands of Texas children cannot read at all! Since 1986, 2.2 million students have dropped out. Texas schools lose a student every four minutes! This will have absolutely no impact on our crime or unemployment rate! And who pays for education? Homeowners! Who keeps electing Socialist Republicans? Homeowners! So there is no problem!
Is there a better way? Oh, some crazy Democrats insist that we can reform school finance and improve education - that cleaning up environment will actually attract jobs - that we can save money currently wasted on the Governor's slush fund, on prisons and more. But not while voters keep electing Socialist Republicans! So we are thanking voters, especially home-owning voters, for our great Workers Paradise! Thank you Steven F. Hotze! Thank you all!
It's All Bill Clinton's Fault
Gene Lyons
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 17, 2002
Ed. note: Lyons is a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Don't let the paper's name fool you; he's the only Democrat writing for what is actually a right-wing Republican paper.
Let's see now, just short of a year into a Republican presidency, and we've got a war, a steep economic recession, a return to budget deficits for as far as the eye can see, and the biggest financial scandal in U.S. history just heating up. Thank heaven it's all Bill Clinton's fault. Every bit of it. Indeed, we at Unsolicited Opinions, Inc. propose a secret Supreme Court tribunal to enact the Blame Apportionment Act of 2001,effective retroactively to the date of the Bush II Restoration.
Under its provisions, former President Clinton would assume formal responsibility for every bad thing that happens in or to the United States of America from January 21, 2001 onward, in return for a codicil limiting Republican editorialists to attacking him no more than once a week. Now that our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over, as The
Onion put it, it's the least Clinton could do to serve his country. With the former president manfully serving as an all-purpose national scapegoat, everybody in Washington would be off the hook. And we might be spared grotesque items like the recent Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial sneering at Clinton upon the occasion of his dog's death.
Next time you hear some GOP crybaby bleating about the Washington media's left-wing bias, try this one out on them: Amid the accelerating Enron scandal, George W. Bush did his dim-bulb best to deflect attention. Last Thursday, the president told reporters that his single most generous political benefactor, former Enron CEO Ken Lay, was really somebody else's problem: "He was a supporter of [Texas Democratic Gov.] Ann Richards in my run [against her] in 1994," Bush said "and she named him the head of the Governor's Business Council. And I decided to leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that's when I first got to know Ken, and worked with Ken, and he supported my candidacy."
Not to put to fine a point upon it, but this is a barefaced lie. Or would be if you didn't suspect that Bush's overweening sense of entitlement is such that he honestly can't recall which of Daddy's friends bought him what when. With its online advantage, the mediawhoresonline.com website began correcting the record on Friday. By Saturday, the Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle weighed in. Then Salon. True, Lay did donate \$12,500 to Ann Richards' campaign in 1994. Except that he, his wife, and Enron execs gave Bush more than $146,000. Last year, Lay told PBS's "Frontline" that he supported Bush in 1994, unanimously confirmed by Texas political operatives.
In June 2000, the Enron honcho Bush calls "Kenny Boy" told the New York Times that the two first became friendly in the late 80s when they both raised money for the George H.W. Bush presidential library. They got closer when Lay chaired the host committee for the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. Altogether, Lay steered \$650,000 in Bush's direction
over the years, more than twice the amount involved in the Whitewater real estate investment of legend and song. For eight years, the press scrutinized every syllable Bill and/or Hillary Clinton spoke about that like Bible scholars poring over the Dead Sea Scrolls-all to no end.
So you'd think Bush's big whopper about a man at the center of a corporate flameout involving roughly \$90 BILLION, thousands of defrauded employees and stockholders, and rife with evidence political cronyism would get the left-leaning Washington press all hot and bothered. You'd be absolutely wrong. To date, the Washington Post has not seen fit to report
it at all (and neither has the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.) The New York Times stuck Bush's falsehood back in the business section, perhaps a reflection of what columnist Paul Krugman says is the disgust of establishment-oriented business reporters at the massive sleaze they've encountered.
When the bigfoot newspapers soft-pedal a political story, of course, so do the TV networks. For all intents and purposes, Bush got away clean.
