Finally a Politician with an Idea! Check this out!

Finally a Politician with an Idea! Check this out!

Posted by Ben B.Boothe, Sr.

Someone sent this to us. Finally we see someone running for office with an idea that will be good for our future, good for our kids, and create jobs and industry in a healthy way. We want to encourage this idea and suggest that you pass this one along.

Kids in Classroom

Hecktor Uribe is running for Texas State Land Office. This is what he says:

"We Texans have been blessed. Among the blessings, we have enjoyed the bountiful oil and gas deposits that made our state rich and that our prudent elected leaders invested in the most valuable of our state's resources, our children. Those leaders created a permanent fund for their education."

However, the state has now used up most of the oil and gas on its own land and the revenue flow which used to gush into the permanent education fund is now a trickle. Adjusting for inflation, the value of the money from oil and gas leases on Texas lands in 2010 will have dropped nearly 67% since 1984.

Wind Turbines

According to Boone Pickens, an authority on energy and who is actively promoting the development of wind power farms in West Texas on private lands, one wind-turbine would produce a $20,000 annual royalty to a land owner and as many as 10 turbines could be installed on a 640 acre tract.

Texas owns the submerged lands stretching 10.3 miles into the Gulf of Mexico along its 376 mile coast. I have proposed that the General Land Office aggressively promote the development of wind farms on our submerged lands to provide a clean and permanent renewable source of energy to our Texas cities. I will ask legislators to support legislation that will require that at least 50 percent of the revenues derived from our state lands be generated from clean, renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2020.

Wind farms over Texas' submerged lands would create a new and permanent source of funding for our Permanent School Fund. Furthermore, the installation of approximately 5000 wind-turbines would generate as much value as generated by our mineral leases back in 1984.

The goal of installing 5000 wind-turbines in 10 years or less is achievable.The United Kingdom already boasts of 2906 operational wind-turbines. In Spain , on November 8, 2009 wind power reached its highest electricity production by covering 53% of total demand. Not bad for a country that's as large as Texas and has 15 million more inhabitants.

Solar energy development on our state's West Texas lands could also be a new source of revenue for our education fund but it would require the construction of a new electrical grid to deliver electricity to our major metropolitan areas. This could be a costly and longer-term venture.

My opponent has had nearly eight years to prepare for Texans' future educational needs. How many kilowatts of wind-generated, electrical power have been generated from our Gulf submerged lands during his tenure in office? Not one. He's just beginning to talk about it." That is from a candidate running for Texas State Land Office. We give him a healthy nod. Keep up the good work.