YOU are invited

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!

Calling all grassroots conservatives in Texas!  Sound the alarm!  There's trouble brewing in Austin. The "Kings of Texas" are coming for your liberty and your wallets!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jViz0HlZ_0U

Statewide Conference Call with JoAnn Fleming (Director Grassroots America & TEA Party Caucus Advisory Committee Chair) and Terri Hall (TURF Director & Founder - Texas United for Reform & Freedom)

WHEN: Tuesday Night @ 7:00 pm

CALL-IN #: 1-626-677-3000

PASS CODE: 347970

The Problem: Anti-liberty Legislation is ALIVE and WELL in Austin!  Establishment Republicans who do not share our values have plans for you:

• Plans to mushroom state debt with 100 YEAR BONDS. 
• Plans to push debt down to the local level, opening the door for MORE PROPERTY TAX INCREASES. 
• Plans to hand out more taxpayer dollars to well-connected special interests via CORPORATE WELFARE. 
• Plans to SABOTAGE THE TERM LIMITS BILLS in the House and Senate. 
• Plans to build ALL future state highways as CORPORATE TOLL ROADS and sell them off to foreign multinationals (the TransTexas Corridor plan blown up all across the state). 
• Plans to use eminent domain power for PRIVATE GAIN via transportation policy. 
• Plans to continue the ACCOUNTING GIMMICKS and SMOKE AND MIRRORS to "balance" the state budget on paper while running up more debt. 
• Plans to expand Medicaid in the quest for ObamaCare dollars--bankrupting our state in the process. 

The Solution:  YOU ARE THE SOLUTION.  Nobody's coming to save us--but US!

Watch out for liberal and moderate legislators signing up to support Second Amendment and pro-life legislation while stealing your liberty and your children's future!  Don't be fooled!  We must look at THE ENTIRE RECORD -- not just the easy votes.  It's easy to support the 2nd Amendment and be pro-life in Texas...even liberal Republicans can, but they hide a multitude of other sins under those two important issues, hoping you won't look at the rest of their record!  Don't let them get away with it!

Be informed!  Jump on the conference call Tuesday night at 7 PM with JoAnn and Terri.  They are fighting hard for us in Austin!

This is the first of a series of regular calls planned to keep grassroots Texans informed during the session.  Group leaders -- please take this information and get it out to your groups!

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WHY all the cops?

WHY would the Mayor need 5 policemen and cars (one not pictured) to meet with residents in a park?

A couple of weeks ago Mallard Cove residents stood up to city council again.   That was on Tuesday.  On Wednesday the paper wrote an article about it and on Thursday they wrote an editorial.  By Friday some residents in the area were receiving robo calls about the Mayor visiting their neighborhood (for the first time, said many) on Saturday.  Apparently she doesn't travel alone.  Wonder what that costs?

Even with the short notice and bad weather, there was a good turnout.  Some residents took video of the meeting on their Ipad's and cell phones.  Many people asked very pertinent questions, including a boy scout, concerned with compressor stations going in his neighborhood.  There were questions about flooding and the poor conditions of the roads in the area. Mayor Price was asked about an open gate on a well site, she didn't really see the issue with the gate being open. 

If that's the case, why do they fence them in? 

Read the Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial -

The people who live in Fort Worth's Mallard Cove subdivision, on Randol Mill Road just east of East Loop 820, have good reason to be mad at their City Council and the employees on its legal and zoning staff.

Those neighbors have played by the rules, tightly organized themselves, brought in allies from the nearby River Trails and River Crest subdivisions and successfully fought off a natural gas industry plan to locate a huge 15-unit compressor station adjacent to their homes.

Or at least they successfully fought it 15 months ago. But this phoenix of a project keeps coming back to haunt the neighborhoods, and they find themselves still pouring time and energy into fighting it.
They won again a month ago, when the Zoning Commission turned down another industry request to build the compressors. As industry representatives saw momentum shifting toward the neighbors, they pleaded with the commission to give them more time to come up with alternatives.

On Tuesday night, after the neighbors organized yet another large turnout for a City Council hearing on yet another industry appeal, the council members decided to prolong the agony. They sent the appeal back to the Zoning Commission for more work.

The commission is supposed to hear the case again in April, and it's scheduled to come back to the council May 7.

That has to be a big disappointment for the people in Mallard Cove, River Trails and River Crest. It takes a lot of effort to fight City Hall, and most people don't want to spend years doing it.

Councilman Danny Scarth, whose east/northeast-side District 4 includes these neighborhoods, said the council had received worrisome information during a closed meeting about possible legal ramifications of limiting placement of compressors.

Scarth blamed delays partly on the Texas Open Meetings Act, which limits council action to public meetings with agendas posted at least three days earlier.

That scapegoat won't work. State law does not restrict the city staff in its preparation of proper ordinances to lay before the council.

City Hall owes everyone in Fort Worth a well-crafted zoning ordinance. But it also owes the residents of these neighborhoods an answer that will allow them to get on with their lives.

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Well, what do we have here?

Seems normal folks aren’t the only ones getting screwed.

Read in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about Ed Bass and others suing Chesapeake over royalties, or lack thereof.  And Julie Wilson had no comment??  What’s the world coming to?

They may want to brush up on their “good neighbor” campaign.

Fort Worth investor Ed Bass and more than a dozen other landowners in southern Tarrant County have sued units of Chesapeake Energy in federal court in Dallas, accusing the Barnett Shale's second-largest producer of cheating them out of millions of dollars in royalties.

According to the lawsuit, the companies improperly deducted production costs, expressly forbidden by the leases, and used "sham transactions" with two other Chesapeake affiliates to set a below-market price on which royalties were paid, also a breach of lease terms.

It's not the first time Chesapeake has been sued over royalty payments.

In September, it agreed to pay Dallas/Fort Worth Airport more than $5.3 million in additional royalties after nearly three years of litigation over the sales price for gas used by Chesapeake and other issues.

In 2010, Fort Worth resident Robyn Coffey sued Chesapeake, saying its royalty payments were based on a "fictitious price" for natural gas produced in the White Lake Hills area in east Fort Worth.

Under the lease terms, Chesapeake is not allowed to pass along "any part of the costs or expenses" of producing, gathering, transporting or processing gas, the suit states.

The leases require the owners to bear their share of certain expenses up to 75 cents per 1,000 cubic feet (mcf) "under certain conditions," but those conditions never applied, it says.

Chesapeake imposed costs on the owners exceeding 75 cents per mcf, the suit says.

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Boom goes Bust

“We’ve done a lot of work looking at tax revenues versus the costs to the community,” he said. “And the real issue is: How does a community cope with what happens after the boom goes bust? You want the drilling for the tax revenue and royalties and jobs it creates. But at some point the impacts generated by the industry — the industrial and social impacts — simply outstrip the benefits of drilling. And for some communities, in the long run, they can wind up worse than they might have been if there had been no drilling at all.”

Read about it in the FW Weekly.

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Texas Bullies

Continuing our series of calling bullies out, this time in Texas. 

We told you about freshman Representative Giovonni Capriglione making a splash by introducing legislation that would require politicians to disclose things they should be disclosing. 

Seems the bullies at the state capitol don't like that.  Seems they don't want their voters knowing about their contacts, or contracts.

Now WHY would that be? 

You can read the story in the New York Times, here.  Another local boy making the big time.  Another set of bullies, another lone voice standing up for the citizens.

Those involve question if this has anything to do with Gio's last campaign.  Knowing Tarrant County as we do, we can tell you, Mr.Ramsey, he's doing this for us.  If you have any other questions, come on down to Cowtown.  We'll make your head spin.  As for the "experts...knowing their kind", that explains why they acted so uncivil and childish to someone trying to pass legislation with integrity.

Those of you living in Spring, Texas, may want to ask YOUR Representative, WHY she took such issue with the bill? 

Representative Giovanni Capriglione, Republican of Southlake, in his first appearance before a legislative committee, got a full hazing as the author of an ethics bill that apparently sounds better to the people who don’t have to comply than to the officeholders it would regulate.

His bill would require lawmakers to report any business relationships between their close relatives and any government entity — to show whether and how they and theirs might benefit personally from the officeholders’ official work. 
      

You would think he had tried to outlaw pecan pie, pistols or pickups.

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Mallard Cove

Well, what do you know?

After the council meeting and an editorial in the paper this week, it appears Mayor Price and Councilman Danny Scarth figured out where Mallard Cove is.  Seems they will be holding a walking town hall there tomorrow, Saturday at 9:00 a.m. in the park, that the industry built. 

Some residents got a robo call yesterday about it.  Some residents did not.

Wonder WHY?

Wonder why Danny Scarth, the one called out by the residents earlier this week, would finally come to this neighborhood when it will no longer be part of his district? 

Wonder WHO else will show up?

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Same old…

We’re talking about the Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial on the local elections.

They haven’t told you who to vote for yet, but you know the drill, they say incumbents…

Isn’t that how we got in this mess?

It’s the purest definition of insanity.  Doing the same thing, expecting different results.

We agree with them on a point, “Voters shouldn’t be misled…”  No, they shouldn’t.  So don’t do it again.

Voters shouldn't be misled: The May local elections are serious business.

Representatives at the city and county levels are closest to people who elected them. They're the officials whom residents and neighborhood coalitions have the best chance of influencing. Typically low turnout means local races are where every individual vote can matter most.

The powerful but obscure board of the Tarrant Regional Water District has seven candidates, including three incumbents, running for three seats.

Here’s YOUR chance to say NO more incumbents.

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