After the 1998 Texas election, the Dallas Morning News reported that there may have been election fraud in one of the most hotly contested races in the history of the United States. The paper reported that the vote tallying machine in one precinct may have counted ballots twice after they had already canvassed all the ballots.
00:02:29.000Tomorrow we're going to have a chance to speak to the county commissioners about possible election fraud.
00:02:38.000Right after the election, the November 3rd election, we were down there the next week at the County Commissioners, pinpointing a specific precinct, Place 2, with Karen Sunlightner and her good friend, the County Clerk, Dana Dubois, that we thought had a serious problem.
00:02:57.000We played the video clips for you last week.
00:02:59.000We'll probably play them again for you on Wednesday.
00:03:03.000It's important that everybody comes down there and gets angry about this because now the states in December 23, 1998, last Wednesday, did a front page cover story and the Metro had stated about it.
00:03:15.000But let the county clerk babble right off her report that came out the day before last Tuesday.
00:03:23.000And here's the voting session, 12-22-98, and here is the county clerk, Dana Debibois.
00:03:32.000The county judge and commissioners, Janet DuBois, at Janet's request to discuss the
00:05:36.000But it's important every day, in every way, to get out there and to speak to the public and try to wake them up and try to get them involved.
00:05:55.000Don't just watch this show and feel like you're doing a good job by doing that, because nothing's going to get done that way watching me up here.
00:06:01.000You've got to get involved in the political process.
00:06:04.000Go down and give your three-minute speech.
00:06:09.000It'll be scary at first, but it'll definitely make you feel good.
00:06:13.000Now, when we get back, we're going to cover some smart growth.
00:06:18.000The Austin Chronicle, this week, on page 20, calls it the Jones Factor.
00:06:24.000We did one, two, three, four, five paragraphs on our little protest down there Thursday.
00:06:34.000We were actually in there two weeks ago, Tuesday through Thursday, but Thursday we actually had our protest out front.
00:06:43.000And they say in here that I made more than one Cogent point, but they don't make any of the points that I made that were Cogent when they do three pages or four pages over here to talk about how wonderful it is.
00:06:56.000And they talk about how I asked Michael Jell about his China connection.
00:08:01.000It says, now listen to this, The Chronicle of Oak continually does this, and I don't claim to have the best English in the world.
00:08:08.000My family has impeccable English, but I grew up here in Texas, as my family did, but I didn't do pretty well, but I complained the last time they had me using improper English.
00:08:22.000And so obviously this time they were more covert about it here.
00:08:25.000So the sorts of strategies that work for San Jose and Newark, Portland and Minneapolis ain't gonna work here because they generally start with make a law that prohibits or gets the legislature to appropriate money to or create a regional organization with legal authority over.
00:08:46.000Now we sit here and we read this and it says, and even if we could, there's plenty of folks even here in liberal Austin Though for Jones, it seems that any partnership is by definition a conspiracy.
00:08:59.000with ACC and KJFA personality, Alex Jones, who, though he spends too much time relishing
00:09:05.000being the house freak, raised more than one cogent point.
00:09:10.000Though for Jones, for Jones it seems that any partnership is by definition a conspiracy.
00:09:17.000He's right to argue, as he did from the floor at high volume with Carol Browner, that ordinary
00:09:22.000people who live in the suburbs can feel downright threatened by what the elites in the room
00:09:38.000You bet it's for the elites, but it's not for the environment and it's not common sense.
00:09:43.000It's common sense for their bank account.
00:09:48.000Various soulmates, including an on-again, off-again council candidate and full-time slusher hater, Dick Vreeland, were ticketing outside the convention center and indulging in street arguments with attendees, including, memorably, council member Willie Lewis.
00:10:04.000Now, that doesn't against Willie Lewis.
00:10:06.000I ate lunch with Willie Lewis Tuesday at the council.
00:10:08.000I mean, at the, uh, off the convention center, council member.
00:10:15.000Greg Erickson asked a guy a polite question, and that's rare for Greg.
00:10:18.000He's almost as obnoxious as me, at times.
00:10:21.000And Greg says, what about the corruption?
00:10:23.000And Lewis comes across, right in front of us, right in front of 30-something people, and starts shoving him in the face.
00:10:29.000And Greg is backing away in front of three police and does nothing.
00:10:32.000So we weren't engaging in street arguments with him, we did with others, and that's my favorite thing to do.
00:10:36.000Jones also grilled Michael Dell about his Chinese operations, but that was about as hardball as the reverential treatment of Richie Rich got.
00:10:47.000Del, the most eager participant and the highly promoted speaker of the softball questions, tasked to talk about smart growth and new economy.
00:10:58.000Del basically, though not very lucidly, argued that Austin metro area was growing fast.
00:11:03.000Austin should manage itself like Del or something like that.
00:11:34.000Last time I heard it on the mainstream press, mom-and-pop gas stations are going under because they can't afford to put in the new gas tanks.
00:11:42.000And this has been lobbied for very, very heavily by some of the big oil companies in a covert fashion.
00:11:50.000Because it's a great way to shut down people that are engaged in the free market.
00:12:03.000And a lot of people traffic them on and off because they don't like supporting the big corporations and so forth.
00:13:47.000That's the closing down of some 22,000 gas stations nationwide.
00:13:54.000Now on the surface it would seem that these closings were due to EPA regulations originally passed in 1984, changed again in 86, In 88, which gave gas stations 10 years to either upgrade or replace their underground storage tanks or UFTs.
00:14:17.000The cutoff date, doomsday if you will, was December 22nd, 1998.
00:14:24.000Just a couple of days before Christmas this year.
00:14:27.000By that date, all underground storage tanks for gas stations had to either be upgraded or replaced.
00:14:34.000Unfortunately for a lot of gas station owners like this one, the tanks were not upgradable and they had to be replaced.
00:14:42.000Now for different reasons, among them availability of contractors and of course the high price, some $110,000 according to the EPA's own estimate.
00:14:50.000according to the EPA's own estimates, 22,000 gas stations were not able to make the changes.
00:15:00.000That's some 40% of the market, according to some estimates.