Need help from Texas DU:ers (questions and information)

[Stockholm]

I have heard so much about this ambassador, I think I will have to go and listen to his "lecture".

Any suggestions for questions? You guys might know him from his earlier Texas Senate days. Excellent title btw - opportunity, hope and challenge...

The Second Bush Administration:
A Time of Opportunity, Hope and Challenge

Lecture by:

Ambassador Teel Bivins
U.S. Ambassador to Sweden

Ambassador Bivins served as a republican in the Texas Senate from 1989 to 2004, when he was appointed US Ambassador to Sweden.
In the Senate he served as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and held positions on the International Relations and Trade Committee. For a while Ambassador Bivin was the President Pro Tempere of the Texas Senate.
A life-long resident of Amarillo, Texas, Ambassador Bivins has been self-employed in his family´s four generation cattle, oil and gas business

[EFerrari]

1. Ask him is he's heard of reporter Brett Shipp's work on

unravelling the Texas Worker's Comp scandal.

The series is call "State of Denial" and just won a Dupont award.

In a nutshell, the commission was headed up by an insurance company lawyer and in order to work in the system as a doctor, you had to help them deny benefits. Really, really ugly and Shipp is trying to get it some national attention.

[crispini]

2. Brett Shipp! Only reporter I've ever pissed off.

Nice guy, too. Really. It was kind of a misunderstanding.

[EFerrari]

3. What happened? Did you say "voter fraud"? nt

[crispini]

4. LOL! Although it was kind of related.

No, actually he was doing a piece on the electoral college. I was doing voter registration. He came around and was asking voters how they felt because "their vote wouldn't count" because of the electoral college. Naturally that pissed off me and the other voter registrars and we wrote him nasty notes. I mean, damn, you give up a fuckload of your own time to be a deputy voter registrar and here's this guy TELLING people their vote doesn't count? :mad: Of course most of us hadn't seen the piece (because we were out registering voters) and the question didn't even make it in. So we kinda had to apologize.

I still think that's a shitty thing to say to a voter though. For one thing, there's the popular vote, and for another thing, there's local elections. Migod, we spend so much energy ENCOURAGING them and then you come along and say "how do you feel that your vote doesn't count?" :wtf:

[EFerrari]

6. I see. One of those dumb set up questions.

I emailed him to congratulate him on his award. The series is really well done. He seems like a good guy -- but even they blow it sometimes. :)

[Liberal In Texas]

10. He is a good man.

I used to work with him.

I wish all reporters were like him.

[Stockholm]

5. Ok, how does this relate to Bivins?

Any link?

[EFerrari]

7. Link to Shipp's series.

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/bshipp/stories/wfaa040518_gp_stateofdenial.1d42799e7.html

This would relate to Bivins as someone who is intimately familiar with TX politics.

[montieg]

8. I'm a Dem county chair and an educator

and when Bivins was in the Lege he was--shit, am I really gonna say this?--a friend to public education. Wrote a lot of good legislation. And he quit the Sen. when he saw what his Rethug brethern and sisteren were doing to our state.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

9. Old money Panhandle family

A Bivins-this and Bivins-that all over. Has a house somewhere in my neighborhood (and No, not a lookalike to mine which is a quite nice cottage). I lived in Florida during the great majority of his Lege years, just moved back to AMA a little over 2 yrs ago, so I don't know much about what he did during his time in Austin. Goofy looking guy with that caterpillar under his nose. And thank you for asking Texas DU'ers, Stockholm. :hi: