Representative Terri McCormick is scheduled to speak at the University of Chicago at the Students for Liberty Conference on October 17^th, 2009.  She will be discussing her new book ‘ What Sex Is A Republican? ‘ and its underlining message,  “It will take all of us to change the way things are in our government and politics.”

Terri McCormick in an inspiring and personal public policy memoir points to the fact that we need ‘integrity leaders’ to replace the career politicians of the past if we are to return to the basic foundation laid by our founding fathers and forefathers.

Pre-order your copy of ‘What Sex Is a Republican’ today!

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Get more information about the Students for Liberty here.

“In August alone we imported 355 million barrels of oil and sent $25.2 Billion overseas – the most spent on foreign oil out of any month this year.”

“We are digging ourselves deeper into a hole every day,
our economy and security are suffering.”

China, Australia, Russia, Romania

Are building CNG pipelines to become energy independent as we speak…

New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act

NAT GAS Act of 2009 (H.R. 1835)

Sets government as the example requiring that at least 50 percent of new vehicles purchased for government fleets be capable of operating on natural gas. Natural Gas is Clean, Abundant, and domestic across the board; NGVs achieve some of the cleanest levels of emissions on the road today:

• Gets more natural gas vehicles (NGVs) on the road faster by extending several tax credits (alternative fuel credit for natural gas, natural gas fueled vehicle credit, and the natural gas vehicle refueling property credit)

• Balances the cost of NGVs on the front end through tax credits for the incremental costs and allows the credits to count against the AMT provisions and be transferable.

• Supports infrastructure investments through tax credits for building refueling stations.

• Newly available technology has given us access to natural gas from shale, extending proven US natural gas reserves to nearly 120 years at current consumption levels.

• Natural gas is available on nearly every street in America through a network of 1.5 million miles of distribution pipelines across the country.

• We import almost 70% of our oil from foreign countries yet natural gas is an abundant and domestic natural resource – 98% of the natural gas used in the United States is from North America.

• According to the EPA, cars running on natural gas cut overall toxic emissions by 93 -95%. Please contact your Member of Congress and ask them to support H.R. 1835. Boone on the issue: “America’s national and economic security depends on moving off foreign oil as quickly as possible. Natural gas is the cleanest, most abundant, most economical domestic fuel to replace imported diesel. The U.S. has enough natural gas reserves to last us more than 118 years – we should turn to it as an immediate replacement for foreign oil in fleets and heavy duty vehicles. A battery can’t move an 18-wheeler-the technology isn’t there yet. Natural gas buys a bridge to the future.”…

• AT&T recently announced plans to purchase 8,000 American made natural gas vans. With the incentives included in H.R. 1835, more business can be encouraged to make similar investments.

The Alternative Energy Plan’s Bi-Partisan Support

Of the 77 cosponsors of HR 1835 the NAT GAS Act; half of them are Republicans. Senator Hatch introduced the Senate version of the NAT GAS Act.  The list of pledge signers can be seen below, they include Governors, state legislators, Mayors.

Click Here To Watch the  Interview with Governor Palin.

By T. Boone Pickens

Posted: 07/21/09 06:25 PM [ET]
I have been coming to Washington for more than 40 years. No matter which party is in power, that party claims it is being bipartisan, and the other group says it is not being allowed into the deal. Once in a great while an issue gets to the point where the usual automatic partisan positions are left behind.

Trade is a good example. In the recent past, 17 bilateral free trade agreements were negotiated by Democratic and Republican administrations with the help of both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate. A trade agreement with Bahrain or Singapore is neither a Republican nor a Democratic idea. Republicans have endorsed them on an open-trade basis; Democrats have used them to insist on stronger internal labor laws being adopted by our trading partners.

A current example of a policy that goes beyond partisanship is legislation to provide incentives for using domestic natural gas as a principal transportation fuel. There are companion bills in the House and Senate named the NAT GAS Act of 2009. The House number is H.R. 1835; the Senate bill is S. 1408.

In the House, there are 74 bipartisan co-sponsors. The bill was introduced April 1 by Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) with Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and John Sullivan (R-Okla.) as original cosponsors. On that same day 11 other members signed on — Democrats and Republicans.

In the Senate, Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) introduced S. 1408 on July 8 with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) standing at his side.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was also an original cosponsor.

In both cases, members of the majority and the minority are looking beyond partisan advantage for the good of the country.

In the year during which I have been promoting the Pickens Plan, we have recruited 1.6 million members to the “Pickens Plan Army.” We have Army members in every congressional district.  This is not an army of Republicans or Democrats. It’s an army of Americans who are concerned about our dependence on foreign oil.

The most recent figures from the Energy Information Agency show that in June we imported 354 million barrels of oil at a cost of about $24.7 billion. That represented just under two-thirds of all the oil we used. That percentage hasn’t changed in the past year.

About 70 percent of the oil we import is used as transportation fuel in the form of gasoline or diesel. Half of that is used for heavy-duty trucks, largely the 18-wheelers that move goods across and around the United States. Batteries won’t move an 18-wheeler. Neither will ethanol. The only domestic substitute for imported diesel is natural gas.

Over the past year every study has shown that the amount of natural gas we have available in the continental United States has grown dramatically. Last week, in a conference call with reporters, Majority Leader Reid told a story about a major industrialist who came in to visit about five years ago to warn that the lack of natural gas in the United States was going to force him to move his operations overseas.

According to a new study conducted under the direction of the Colorado School of Mines, we have about 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. That means we have more energy in our domestic natural gas reserves than all the energy in all the oil in Saudi Arabia.

We’ve identified the problem: we’re too dependent on foreign oil. We’ve identified the solution: domestic natural gas. We now have the path to get us on our way to energy independence: The NAT GAS Act of 2009.

President Obama has stated publicly that within 10 years we will no longer import any oil from the Middle East. Our largest supplier of oil is Canada. We have a special relationship with them. But, our own oil reserves are diminishing and Mexico (which is our second-largest supplier) is suffering from the same problem.

After those two contiguous neighbors the next eight countries who lead the top-10 list of oil exporters to the U.S. are, in order:  Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Angola, Algeria, Russia and Colombia.

That’s a list of countries that, as a group, are not from stable regions, don’t have the best interests of the United States at heart, or both.

The NAT GAS Act will jump-start the manufacture, distribution, and sale of natural gas vehicles (NGVs) in the United States.  There are about 10 million NGVs in service around the globe; only about 120,000 of them are in the United States. There’s the “chicken and egg” thing of which should come first: building and selling NGVs or building out a refueling infrastructure to support them.

Heavy-duty trucks, and other fleet vehicles, don’t have this problem. Over-the-road trucks tend to run the same routes on a regular schedule. Drivers stop at the same places to rest, eat and refuel. One trucking company said it could get its trucks coast-to-coast with just 10 refueling points. Private industry will handle the natural gas facilities at existing truck stops.

Fleet vehicles like express delivery, utility, and government vehicles that generally go home to the “barn” every night are easily refueled from one central location.

All that is needed is a spark to get this new natural-gas-fueled industrial engine started.  That spark is named the NAT GAS Act of 2009. It is a bipartisan blueprint for action – action that is needed now.

Pickens has worked in energy industries for six decades. He is chairman of BP Capital, which invests in many energy sources, including natural gas, and in energy-dependent businesses.

Click Here to Join the Alternative Energy Team: http://www.capwiz.com/pickensplan/issues/alert/?alertid=13702871&type=CO

Click Here to Contact your House Member:

http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/index.html

Click Here to Contact your U.S. Senator:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

On September 12th in Washington DC – Citizens from across the country attended a march on Washington and Congress to make their voices heard.  They were from Oklahoma, California, Missouri, Michigan, Texas, Indianapolis … with one message. That message was ‘they are unhappy with the spending of government and were given notice that all incumbents need to go!”

Comments heard were;  “We love our country and we are here to restore fiscal responsibility and limited government.”  “ I want smart capable people to have the ability to earn a living.”   “Many people are here with no party affiliation whatsoever …  it started under George Bush and it is escalating under this current president.”    “I am an independent …. I turned in my republican card.“

The overriding theme of the ‘Citizen March’ can be summed up with “Most people are so sick of the two party mess and the corruption that it has caused —- And they don’t want a part of either party anymore.”  “If I could vote for Thomas Jefferson I would,” said a frustrated American determined to preserve her constitutional rights.

Terri McCormick, former State Representative and Wisconsin Truman Scholar has granted a series of local interviews pre-launch of her new book, “What Sex Is a Republican? Stories from the Front Lines of American Politics and how You can change the way things are.”

The article below was issued by Insight Magazine on September 8, 2009 on their digital magazine site.

Terri McCormick, who served in the state Assembly from 2000 to 2006, was appalled by the “front row politics” of partisan extremes while in office and after she lost her primary bid for the 8th District Congress. The president of consulting group McCormick Dawson talked with Insight Editor Margaret LeBrun about why she wrote her new book, What Sex is a Republican?

When I was running for the 8th Congressional district in 2006, individuals were surprised that someone who looked like me was running in Northeast Wisconsin. I heard comments like, “Oh, you’re conservative leaning and you’re a woman? We’ve never seen that combination before.” I was taken aback by that because I had not understood that there were any barriers to gender or ethnicity or religion in this country.

After the race in 2006 I decided it was time to take a look at the political system itself and see what I could do to transform it back to where it was intended – and that is to be a representative democracy of the people. I decided to write What Sex is a Republican? – Stories From the Front Line in Politics (And How You Can Change the Way Things Are).

Certainly, in my political party, the Republican party, there is a belief in limited government, the Constitution and the civil liberties that Abraham Lincoln was a leader for, as well as sound money policy and free market competition. Obviously in 2006 and 2008 the people believed that the GOP had shifted away from its roots and it needed to go back to its foundations.

The title could just have easily been, What Sex is a Democrat? The case I make in the book is that we have two political silos that have been acting dysfunctionally and shouting at one another, rather than listening to the people they’re supposed to be representing and finding the solutions.

I think in 2006 the voters of Northeast Wisconsin had a rude awakening that the primary elections weren’t necessarily owned by the people. Some people would call it election engineering by the party elites.

The majority of individuals today don’t identify with either political party – I’ve seen that 18 percent of the public identifies with Republicans and 27 percent identify with Democrats and everybody else is identifying as independent. And perhaps that’s a healthy position to be in.

What is broken in the political system today can be summed up in one word: Greed. Greed on the part of both political party elites, who want to stay in power at all costs, greed on the part of the regulators in Washington that believed that they didn’t need to oversee the banking institutions, greed on the part of the housing industry with the hyperinflation of home valuations that’s now leaving individuals with mortgages that are more expensive than their homes are worth.

We have a clash between the free market system and the ideological system which believes that we need programs to help people in crisis. Somewhere in between is the truth.

In the book I talk about political theater. It’s about the glitz and the sound bites and hiring the best spinmeisters we can possibly hire and advertisers where you have entire ranks of communications lieutenants that are out there either on the blogs or orchestrated feeders in the form of tea parties, town halls or other groups. If we want to be savvy consumers of our government and politics, we need to understand that there is political theater out there. It’s going to be up to all of us to discern what the difference is.

In terms of the health care debate, we have two completely different views of how to resolve the crisis. But, if that debate and those ideas are not allowed to be heard and they’re overwhelmed by the political theater from both sides of the aisle that don’t really care about the solutions because they’re too focused on generating campaign dollars, then the American people will continue to lose in every debate, not only health care, but manufacturing, jobs and everything else.

This issue illustrates how important it is to fix our political system, to make sure we elect integrity candidates in office. We need people who have a core set of values that they draw from, not be so vulnerable to manipulation.