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News For March, 2010

  • The Brief: March 22, 2010

    By Morgan Smith

    As the inboxes of reporters across the nation pinged with the sound of press releases, Congress got rowdy last night and passed healthcare legislation with a 219-214 vote in the House. Here's a digest of the Texas highlights. Full Story 

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  • Investing in Efficiency

    By Kate Galbraith

    Texans have always been far better at making energy than saving it. But if a proposal before the Public Utility Commission gets approved this year, buildings and appliances would need to become much more energy efficient by 2014. Electric providers across the state would be required to offset 50 percent of their customers' growth in usage with energy-efficiency measures — well above the current 20 percent requirement set by the Legislature. Full Story 

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  • Spillover Politics

    By Brandi Grissom and Julián Aguilar

    Leaders from one end of the Texas-Mexico border to the other want Gov. Rick Perry to tone down the scary rhetoric and get real about solving problems in their hometowns. And, by the way, they would like to be consulted about security plans that affect their communities. "We know what's going on on the border," says Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas. "Our needs were not taken into consideration." Full Story 

    A screengrab from Perry's "Border" spot.
    Credit: Texans for Rick Perry

  • The First Corporate Ad

    By Ross Ramsey

    The first political ads bought by a corporation in Texas appeared in East Texas newspapers just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended the state's ban on that kind of spending. They challenged the Republican bona fides of state Rep. Chuck Hopson of Jacksonville, a Democrat who switched parties in November and ran in a three-way GOP primary. Full Story 

    The KDR Development Inc. advertisement that ran in the Panola Watchman

  • Data App: Even More Payroll

    By Kosaku Narioka

    We've added 14 school districts (from Aldine to San Antonio) and five counties (Bexar, Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Travis) to our government payroll app — an addition of 140,000 public employees earning roughly $6 billion. Full Story 

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    Credit: Caleb Bryant Miller, Jacob Villanueva

  • That Didn't Take Long

    By Ross Ramsey

    The first political ads bought by a corporation in Texas appeared in East Texas newspapers just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended the state's ban on that kind of spending. Full Story 

  • TribBlog: Liz Carpenter Leaves Us

    By Evan Smith

    The LBJ hand — she was the president's speechwriter, penning the famous 58 words he uttered after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and was Lady Bird's press secretary and chief of staff — died today at 89 after a long illness. Full Story 

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  • TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

    By Ross Ramsey

    Grissom on the 1.2 million Texans who've lost their licenses under the Driver Responsibility Act and the impenetrable black box that is the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Ramshaw and Kraft on nurses with substance abuse problems and rehabilitation that can get them back to work, M. Smith finds it's not easy being Rick Green, Stiles on counting Texans (and everybody else), Rapoport on the State Board of Education's war with itself and the runoff in SBOE District 10, Thevenot's revealing interview with a big-city superintendent on closing bad schools, Aguilar on the tensions over water on the Texas-Mexico border, Hamilton on the new Coffee Party, Hu on Kesha Rogers and why her party doesn't want her, Philpott on the runoff in HD-47, Ramsey on Bill White and the politics of taxes, and E. Smith's conversation with Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heleimann: The best of our best from March 15 to 19. Full Story 

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