No Big Govt; Less Taxes; Stop Subsidies... I mean unless they're agricultural or for the oil industry; squeals TEXAS!!! The lone star state with its hand out.

Farm Subsidies….Gaines County Texas 2^nd largest recipient of Federal Agricultural Funding but votes against Federal Handouts … hmm like farm subsidies…”oh no, we deserve those!”

The political shift hasn’t stopped the flow of payments to the county’s cotton and peanut growers who have relied on aid dating to the 1930s Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Gaines County farmers took $797 million in payments from 1995 to 2010, including price supports, soil-conservation programs and crop- failure compensation, according to a database compiled by Washington-based lobby the Environmental Working Group. That puts it second in the nation behind Fresno County, California, as a recipient of federal funds.

Farmers use the programs mainly to give banks confidence that the loans to finance planned crops will be paid back regardless of weather or commodity prices, says Delmon Ellison, Jr. who farms 4,000 acres of cotton, peanuts and wheat in the area.

Intelligent Design or Natural Selection you decide on Keystone XL (New & Improved)

TransCanada Corp said on Monday it will build the southern leg of its $7 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline first.

Building the portion of the contentious pipeline that would run to Texas refineries from the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub before the northern section would help remove a pinch-point that has led to deep price discounts for U.S. and Canadian crude and forced refiners to rely more heavily on imports.

TransCanada said it wants the $2.3 billion southern leg in service by mid- to late 2013. It said construction would create 4,000 U.S. jobs.

The company also wrote to the U.S. State Department on Monday detailing plans to refile an application shortly for the remainder of line running to Steele City, Nebraska, from the Canada-U.S. border.

USA 80 Mayors Support Same-Sex Marriage.......

Mayors of about 80 U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles to Houston are backing a campaign to remove legal barriers to same-sex marriage nationwide.

Meanwhile, Salt Lake City, Utah is voted gayest city in the USA!!!

Black, Hispanic, or other and poor in the USA = you might be just less than a citizen if you don't wake the *&$! UP!!!

Protesting voter ID laws


Thousands gathering outside South Carolina's capitol Monday heard a message that wouldn't have been out of place during the halcyon days of the civil rights movement a half-century ago: the need to protect all citizens' right to vote.

A similar tone was struck at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King preached from 1960 until his death. There and in South Carolina, speakers condemned the voter identification laws they said are meant to suppress black voter turnout.

For most of 13 years in South Carolina, the attention at the NAACP's annual rally has been on the Confederate flag that still waves outside the Statehouse. But on Monday, the civil rights group shifted the focus to laws requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast ballots, which the group and many other critics say is especially discriminatory toward African-Americans and the poor.


South Carolina's new law was rejected last month by the U.S. Justice Department, but Gov. Nikki Haley vowed to fight the federal government in court. At least a half-dozen other states passed similar voter ID laws in 2011.

"This has been quite a faith-testing year. We have seen the greatest attack on voting rights since segregation," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The shift in tactics was also noted by the keynote speaker, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Last month, Holder said the Justice Department was committed to fighting any laws that keep people from the ballot box. He told the crowd he was keenly aware he couldn't have become the nation's first African-American attorney general without the blood shed by King and other civil rights pioneers.

"The right to vote is not only the cornerstone of our governance, it is the lifeblood of our democracy. And no force has proved more powerful, or more integral to the success of the great American experiment, than efforts to expand the franchise," Holder said. "Let me be very, very clear — the arc of American history has bent toward the inclusion, not the exclusion, of more of our fellow citizens in the electoral process. We must ensure that this continues."

Texas' new voter ID law is currently before the Justice Department, which reviews changes in voting laws in nine mostly Southern states because of their history of discriminatory voting practices. Other states that passed such laws in 2011 included Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Similar laws already were on the books in Georgia and Indiana, and they were approved by President George W. Bush's Justice Department. Indiana's law, passed in 2005, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

Critics have likened the laws to the poll taxes and tests used to prevent blacks from voting during the civil rights era. Republicans, say such laws are needed to prevent fraud.

At the Atlanta church where King once preached, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock said some in America disrespect King's legacy by "cutting off those for whom he died and the principles for which he fought."

He called voter ID laws an affront to the memory of the civil rights leader.

"You cannot celebrate Dr. King on Monday, and undermine people's ability to vote on Super Tuesday," Warnock said.

Hey Rick Perry how about that air quality in Texas...

“Every place in Texas suffered worse air quality this year, but Dallas was a particularly extreme case,” said David Allen, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Texas who also directs a state air-quality program.



A number of major metropolitan areas, including Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin and even Waco, exceeded federal limits on ozone on more days this year than last. In the greater Houston area, which includes Galveston and Brazoria County, the number of bad-ozone days dropped slightly, to 29, but the pollution was especially severe on certain summer days. On June 6, an air-quality monitor in Galveston measured 112 parts per billion of ozone — the highest reading in Texas since 2008.


Scientists are still trying to understand the reasons for this year’s statewide spike in ozone, which is largely a summer phenomenon. Possibilities include wildfires, drought and the summer’s extreme heat, all of which can contribute to ozone formation.


Amid shale booms across the state, questions are increasing about the effects of oil and gas drilling on air pollution. Trucks carrying drilling materials emit nitrogen oxides, as does equipment like compressors. Natural gas escaping from pipelines or storage tanks emits volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Nitrogen oxides and VOCs are known as ozone “precursors” because, aided by sunlight, they can react with each other to form ozone.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and are sorry you are hungry...Facts of Child Hunger in America that Rick Perry should study if he wants to be President

•Nearly 14 million children are estimated to be served by Feeding America, over 3 million of which are ages 5 and under.

•According to the USDA, over 16 million children lived in food insecure (low food security and very low food security) households in 2010.

•20% or more of the child population in 40 states and D.C. lived in food insecure households in 2009. The District of Columbia (32.3%) and Oregon (29.2%) had the highest rates of children in households without consistent access to food.

•In 2009, the top five states with the highest rate of food insecure children under 18 are the District of Columbia, Oregon, Arizona, Arkansas, & Texas. iii

•In 2009, the top five states with the lowest rate of food insecure children under 18 are North Dakota, New Hampshire, Virginia, Maryland, & Massachusetts. iii

•Proper nutrition is vital to the growth and development of children. 62 percent of client households with children under the age of 18 reported participating in the National School Lunch Program, but only 14 percent reported having a child participate in a summer feeding program that provides free food when school is out.i

•54 percent of client households with children under the age of 3 participated in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).i

•32 percent of pantries, 42 percent of kitchens, and 18 percent of shelters in the Feeding America network reported "many more children in the summer" being served by their programs.i

•In 2010, 16.4 million or approximately 22 percent of children in the U.S. lived in poverty.

•Research indicates that hungry children have do more poorly in school and have lower academic achievement because they are not well prepared for school and cannot concentrate.

•In fiscal year 2009, 48 percent of all SNAP participants were children

•During the 2010 federal fiscal year, 20.6 million low-income children received free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program. Unfortunately, just 2.3 million of these same income-eligible children participated in the Summer Food Service Program that same year.

Three of the five metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of very poor people in 2010 were in Texas.

On Monday, December 12, 2011, the USA celebrates the 220th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights and the highest concentration of extreme poverty since the Great Depression!!! How’s that for progress?


US taxpayers (Citizens not corporate taxes) help pay for $10 billion in government subsidies to the oil, coal and natural gas industries each year.

The number of Americans living in neighborhoods beset by extreme poverty surged in the last decade with the poorest areas growing more than twice as fast in suburbs as in cities.

At least 2.2 million more Americans, a 33 percent jump since 2000, live in neighborhoods where the poverty rate is 40 percent or higher, according to a study released today by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

When people are concentrated in very poor neighborhoods, they face a host of additional problems from worse schools and fewer job opportunities to poor health, she said.

The report follows the release of data by the Census Bureau in September that showed the number of people living in poverty was the highest in the 52 years since the agency began gathering the statistic. U.S. household income fell to its lowest level in more than a decade in 2010 and poverty rose to a 17-year high.

Extreme poverty doubled in Midwestern metropolitan areas from 2000 to the period of 2005-2009 and rose by a third in the South, according to the report.

In another reflection of the impact of the slump, those living in extremely poor neighborhoods in the latter half of the decade were increasingly likely to be white with a college or high school education, homeowners, and not receiving public assistance, the Brookings report said.

Three of the five metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of very poor people in 2010 were in Texas. The College Station-Bryan metro area, home to Texas A&M University, had the greatest concentration of very poor people in the nation, with 16.4 percent of its residents earning less than half the federal poverty rate.

It was trailed by the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area, where 16.2 percent of people live on less than half the poverty level; Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, with 15.7 percent; and Brownsville-Harlingen, with 15.6 percent.