The Truth about Farouk's Plans For Texas

TO:  Texas Media Outlets

FROM:  Vince Leibowitz, Campaign Director

           David Ocamb, Policy Director

           Farouk Shami for Governor Campaign

RE:  The Truth about Farouk’s Plans For Texas

____________________________________________________________________  

Following Monday night’s gubernatorial debate, some media coverage of the event falsely claimed that Farouk Shami had not provided details about his bold, new ideas for Texas. These same plans have been outlined on Farouk’s website for several weeks.

Farouk Shami has presented detailed plans that show how he is going to tackle some of the most challenging problems Texas faces.  Critics are now claiming it cannot be done and refusing to address the actual plans, instead just saying “we cannot create new jobs” or “we cannot lower the cost of energy for Texas consumers.”  This same politics as usual combination of cynicism and inability to recognize that new ideas can exist is the reason our federal, state and local governments are failing and why the population as a whole is voting at far lower levels than 50 years ago, when we had leaders willing to “shoot for the moon.”    

I.  How Farouk Shami Will Create 100,000 Jobs and Ensure Every Texan Who Wants to Work Will Have That Opportunity 

In his post debate press conference, Mayor White addressed Farouk Shami’s 100,000 jobs guarantee by saying the state couldn’t hire that many people.  Only a career politician would assume the only way to create jobs is through the public payrolls.  Farouk Shami has created jobs as a private citizen and knows what the government can do to help put people to work today.             

  • Use the Texas Enterprise Fund to help small businesses grow, expand and hire new workers. Specifically, under Farouk’s plan, many of the jobs created will be green energy jobs. As part of Farouk’s plan to slash electricity costs, Farouk proposes giving every Texan access to solar panels for their homes. This would be accommodated by a simple statutory change requiring utility companies to provide financing for solar panels on a customer’s utility bill. This would naturally create a much greater demand for solar panels, thus creating jobs in the private sector.
  • Use our border with Mexico as an asset to attract new companies to move into Texas to build plants in clusters, with high paying capital intensive parts of the manufacturing process here and low wage low capital parts of the process in Mexico.  Taking into account shipping costs, this eliminates the benefits of outsourcing to China and India.
  • Use increased transportation funds to put people to work today repairing our roads and building new ones.
  • Give out of state corporations tax incentives to build facilities in socially disadvantaged areas and pay a living wage to put the poorest Texans to work.
  • Become the new Silicon Valley by being the world’s leader in the “green energy revolution.”  These jobs include: research, building transmission lines from west Texas to the major metropolitan areas, building solar panels and wind turbines, and operating solar and wind farms.  Plus, with all of this economic activity, every other industry will benefit as well.
  • Install broadband internet access statewide, enabling small businesses in rural areas to grow and farming and ranching to be more efficient and profitable. 

The truth of the matter is any one of these items individually will provide over 100,000 jobs.  Estimates on rural broadband, for instance, say it will create 173,000 jobs (see plan for citation).  All it takes is an outsider’s perspective that refuses to acknowledge the political excuses and knows how to analyze a problem and solve it.   

See Also: Green Energy Plan http://www.faroukforgovernor.com/page/green-energy-jobs; Economic Plan http://www.faroukforgovernor.com/page/economic-plan-for-texas; Rural Broadband Plan http://www.faroukforgovernor.com/page/rural-broadband; Secure Our Border Communities Plan http://www.faroukforgovernor.com/page/the-texas-border--warzone-or-asset-    

II. How Farouk Shami Will Provide Affordable, Reliable and Clean Electricity and Even Eliminate Electric Bills Entirely For Some Families 

During the debate, Mayor White revealed his ignorance on this issue by stating Texans wouldn’t want to rely on solar energy during a hot summer day.  Those hot summer days are actually the single best example of how this could eliminate people’s electricity costs.  Here’s how:  

  • Households would be allowed access to zero percent interest loans from the Retail Energy Providers (REP) to buy and install solar panels on their houses.
  • Those loans would be repaid by selling the energy produced back to the REP.
  • Once paid off, REP would be required to buy back excess energy from each house at 75% current selling level.  Net metering (the REP buying excess power from households) already takes place in Texas today, there is just no uniform regulation mandating they buy it and at what price they buy it.
  • Current selling level is not a flat rate.  It is far higher during “peak” hours (11AM to 6PM, when industrial and commercial use is the highest).
  • Thus, at times when residential use is the lowest (since families are at work and school), these houses would sell back energy to the grid at a cost far higher than they would buy it once they return home and the sun is no longer shining.
  • This would lead all households energy costs to dramatically go down and some households to even sell back enough energy to more than subsidize what they are using.
  • There would be numerous redundancies to ensure an adequate supply of power is always available, no matter what weather conditions we are experiencing.  Furthermore, through fully utilizing the potential of the competitive renewable energy zones in west Texas, we would be able to close the doors on all coal fired power plants. 

See Also: Green Energy Plan http://www.faroukforgovernor.com/page/green-energy-jobs; Wikipedia Article on Net Metering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering  

Texans deserve a dialogue on how do we solve our problems and not merely the same political rhetoric and excuses on how we can’t.  If we don’t dream big, we will continue with the same failed leadership we’ve lived through over the past decade.  Special interests will try to stop us at every turn and Farouk Shami is the only candidate who is able to turn down their money and represent the people of Texas and not the special interests.