Hey Morris just wanted to get you take on the Gov.'s Trasportation plan and how you think it will go in the House this year.

placeholders for "energy" and "environment."  I'm very interested in both of these topics, and would love to hear your thoughts.  What did you think about the Washington Post story on the Chesapaeake Bay taking decades more to clean up at the current rate of "progress?"

Thanks.

Thanks for joining us here.

Besides Transportation, what important issues do you want to tackle when (not, "if") you get elected.

If elected what would be some steps you would take to make college education more affordable for Virginia's residents? What would you do to ensure a quality education for Virginia's public school children?

keeping in mind we won't have nearly enough time to give, to help your victory?  What do you need especially from members of the blogging community and the netroots?

I just wanted to thank Morris, and everyone who asked questions. Morris will be right with us.

in terms of cash to win against Hugo? I have heard that Senator Saslaw talks in terms of a hundred thousand or more for starters nowadays in a House of Delegates race? Or more?

I'm back from the Climate Project training with Al Gore - battling a upper respiratory infection that I picked up over Christmas in Ohio at my parents.

So glad that its 2007 and so glad for the modern miracle of antibiotics.

I'm very excited about our campaign kickoff tomorrow at 2pm and we'll get to the details of  that in a bit - now for your questions!

--morris

I'm really interested in Gore's Climate Project training.

To change the direction in Richmond, we need to change the folks that we send there. 

One of the reasons that I am running is that Del. Hugo has had five years to address our transportation dilemma - and it is close to becoming a crisis.  In 2010 or 2011 our maintenance budget threatens to overwhelm the construction budget dollars that we must contribute to get matching (VA 10 % , Federal 90%) transportation dollars from the US Government.  This would halt all major construction projects and permanently gridlock our state.

The battle I believe we are going to see is between the doctrinaire Republicans who don't believe that government can be a solution to the pressing issues of our time and their anti-tax, "starve the beast" attitude. 

This is going to collide with Governor Kaine's reality-based solution that we absolutely must treat transportation as a long-term, essential compenent of our government - a second pillar of responsibility if you will alongside education - that is critical to continue our growth and position as the best state in the union to do business.

The Climate Project training was one of the most transformative experiences that I have ever been through.

Open the following picture in your browser.

I walked out my front door January 1st to the crocuses blooming.  On January 1st the cherry blossoms were blooming on the Mall.  Over the Christmas holidays a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan came off of the Greenland ice shelf.

2006 was the hottest year on record, following 2005 as the hottest year on record.  We have lost several Rhode Island size pieces off of the West Antartic ice shelf in 2002. 

I learned because of the earth's properties as a heat engine, that a one degree rise worldwide, translates to a 11 degree rise on the polls.

Over the Christmas holidays we saw an island nation in the Indian ocean succomb to the seas.

And lest we think that this is a problem that someone else far away is going to get hit with, here in Virginia we have already lost 13 islands to the sea since the Civil War and the start of the industrial era.

So why isn't fighting global warming the #1 priority for every governor, mayor, etc. in the country right now?  What if every one of them saw Gore's movie?

Look at that picture again - that is a 20 foot sea rise.  We could get that rise if either Greenland melts into the sea or if the West Antarctic ice shelf does the same or some combination of both.

There will not be a Jamestown 500th year celebration as it will be under water.

And the million or more refugees from Newport News, Hampton, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Baltimore, parts of Washington DC and Alexandria won't be faces from some far off country - they will be our neighbors, friends, family and fellow Virginians.

We have between at 2-year and a 10-year window where if we don't start making substantive changes to the CO2 that we are emanating from our cars and our coal-fired power plants that we will reach a point of no return.

to slash our fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions.  If not, the planet is toast.

right now to fight global warming, in your opinion?

We have the technology to solve this Climate Crisis - individually, institutionally in our businesses and churches, in our communities and finally politically in Richmond.

One final cautionary note before I get to the call-to-action part of this post.

The scariest part of the Climate Project training came when I sat next to a British woman now at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography during the training sessions.

She said that what really worries her is not the air heating up or the oceans heating up (and they both are in very demostrable terms), but in measured increasing acidity in the oceans.

She said that at some point the acid in the oceans will overwhelm the oxygen producing organisms and we will lose 40% of our oxygen producing capability.

I said - you're talking about mass extinction.  And she replied: "Yes, I am"

The question in my mind and the call to action is whether we can rise above our own extinction.

For instance, switchgrass.  I know that Al Weed and others advocate biofuels very strongly. I'm skeptical about using land that could be used to grow food or even - heaven forbid - turned back to wild land, being used essentially to grow fuel for our cars.  Any thoughts on this?

Sorry to be a downer on a Friday night, but fortunately we have the technology to address the climate crisis today.

At the kickoff tomorrow everyone there will get a compact flourescent light bulb.  Costs about $2 - and it saves you $35-$40 in electricity.

Walmart hopes to sell 100 million per year, making a handsome profit, saving billions of pounds of CO2 and diminishing our need to build more coal-fired power plants (we get 50% of our electricity from pulverized coal power plants).

Every person that reads this should spend $20-$40 to swap out every incandescent bulb in their house and save themselves 30% on the electric bill.

Institutionally each of us can reach out to lobby our churches, schools, businesses to buy green power, switch out bulbs and adopt a host of money saving measures that allows us to keep more of our money and keeps our power companies from building more coal plants.

The key point here is that pollution is inefficiency - waste, and by dimishing pollution we can make our local businesses more profitable and save our world at the same time.

In our communities we can lobby our town managers, city councils, county commissioners and local officials to join over 300 other communities that have adopted the Kyoto protocol accords and pledged their efforts to lower the global warming pollution that is causing the climate crisis.

Finally, and quite importantly for me is that we can send informed Delegates to Richmond and support Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple's renewable portfolio standard.  This is where I come in.

The RPS standard will create incentives to allow Virginians to grow and collect our own power and change the way we power our vehicles, homes, businesses and industries.  We need to join the 21 other states and lead the way to creating  new energy jobs and industries, fostering our own energy independence and keeping our state on the cutting edge of this vital next-generation energy industry.

An RPS standard would include things like offshore wind, incentives for cellulosic ethanol grown from Virginia crops, solar roof incentives, efficiency programs (swap the state to smart bulbs) that foster a better, cleaner and healthier Virginia.

The figure we're looking at right now is about $500,000, but that's just a preliminary number that could change as the campaign progresses. Hugo has never spent more than 225,000, but he has also never faced a tough opponent. In 2005, for instance, he spent just over $150,000 and the only Democratic candidate was a write in. It should be interesting to see what he does now that he is facing someone like Morris.

The fact that he spent so much money in the past shows that we need to raise as much money as possible if we want to mount a good challenge. At the same time, it also means that he realizes that the 40th is becoming bluer and bluer and must attempt to reach out to the voters. He has already sent out an email to people across the commonwealth begging for some money.

We will show $13,500 in fundraising so far at the kickoff and I raised $4,500 in one day over the Christmas holidays.  We just hired out finance director who was recently at the DNC working on high dollar fundraising events for Howard Dean.  We're very excited about this and will be sharing this with you at the campaign kickoff.

Virgina spends about $7,000 per college student whereas California spends over $20,000. 

During our canvassing in December I met a woman in Sully District who's son lost the in-state lottery and had to send her son to school in Oklahoma.  He is an honor student, wonderful grades and activities and came up short in a system that has far too few slots for our best and brightest.

I believe higher education is by far the best investment that we can make in our young adults and will fight tooth and nail to make college education more affordable for Virginian's.

In our public schools I believe that we need to revisit the SOLs that regiment the learning process for our students to give our teachers the flexibility to give our children the rich, diverse education that will prepare them for the real-world rather than a test-taking environment.

We need to challenge our federal government's No Child Left Behind (Short Change Every Child) to fund our school systems rather than use testing an excuse to underfund our schools.

We need to turn 3,000 votes to beat Tim Hugo.

It takes roughly one volunteer hour to turn one vote - whether that is canvassing, volunteer-to-voter phone calls or dropping literature through a neighborhood.

We have a wonderful, energized campaign staff and we've been building our precinct level field team in preparation for bringing our message to the 40th district.

You can go here to volunteer or call our campaign office at 703.543.6339 or email Mike Burns to let us know how you would like to help out.

We realize that field operations is not for everyone, and in any campaign there are *PLENTY* of ways that you can lend your skills and experience.

Glad to see you have a good man there.  Mike, when you get the info you need to define the voter most likely to turn, and where to find them, turn the on line community on the ones we can reach. Keep us posted.

Energy and the environment two of my driving passions, and we'll talk a great deal more about solutions that make our state a cleaner, healthier, more prosperous and beautiful state.

Transportaton is an complex impasse that will first require a shift in perspective and treating our transportation ills as a system.

As a parent with three children in the public schools, education hits home with me in a very real way. I'm proud of our schools and want to keep them excellent and vibrant.  I think I can improve on my opponent's record.

Thank you so much for the questions.  I've got to go up and help get our kids to bed.

Hope we see you at the kickoff.

Warmest regards,

--morris

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