What Are the Top Issues Empowered Communities Have in Common
Fairness for the average citizen?
Do you ever get the feeling that Texas government is so complicated that it just doesn’t make sense? This is not by accident. Unless we build the capacity for public policy analysis in our communities. Even if we elect good people, we must ensure that our communities understand that public policy is an ongoing process, beyond elections. That is why we are using the notion of building self-reliant communities, a concern that average Texans get the “square deal squared”. Texans will have the opportunity to find a factual framework that not only makes sense but has the potential to build structural changes into the present and our common futures. There is a big reason that we can expect a different result every election: we will collectively activate our collaboration weapons to build a common language, a new family of Texans. We do not need to have an ongoing message of “they did it to us”, reactive to its core; we need to build a new power paradigm of common cause.
Spend Texas resources on issues important to Texans?
The first step of empowering communities will be the same basis for finding those issues and resources important to Texans. They are not hard to figure out; these are the same issues that the right-wing Republicans have dulled our senses with for decades, and most ruthlessly, during the last 4 years, during our first Pandemic in 100 years. It will weigh heavily on them in the future history books that they cut access to Medicaid expansion that would have cost Texas nothing because that expansion would have been paid for by that federal government that they so despise. As 2024 approaches, we will have the opportunity to take advantage of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) benefits, both as citizens and as local governments to save money and make for long term options for our children. We need to shake ourselves off, roll up our sleeves, and get to work on universal education, better jobs, and more empowerment for every community, every city, every neighborhood in Texas! Join us! Let us embrace the present and the future!
Robust, Secure, and Weatherized Power Grid?
The power grid seems to roll out of some sort of mythical board room: but the only people at the table are a select cabal of right-wing Republican legislators, the Governor’s campaign contributors, and the secret grid of the members of the Public Utility Commission, Railroad (i.e. Gas Regulation) Commission, and ERCOT (with its incredible growing library of planning documents). It is important to keep in mind that a bunch of Texas energy owners oversee a “fossil fuel dinosaur system”? Should we instead start rolling out our future energy system now with economies of scale in mind? If the new energy backbone of solar energy panels is constructed on our rooftops, paid for by public bonds to be authorized by the 2023 Texas Legislature, the new energy grid will also reflect our common power. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides many opportunities to save money and our future.
Education that is affordable for Texas children and adults?
There is no doubt that Texans need good, even great, public schools, from pre-K to post-graduate work, and the funding for this system should be transparent, public, and affordable. We do not need to test the children; we need to test the system. Public education is the most American of world institutions. When Texas was starting, back before the Republic, we began with our public schools. Compact election districts would anchor the notion, for the present and future, that public education is the most important first step, and the most important continuing step, to our future world. This future world will be one that they, and we, will love and thrive in, as we are making our new and future families. Our families are depending on us.”
