For some, the enemy of their enemy legislation may be their friend.
2011
Posted in
State Government
Mental Breakdown
Mental health providers are bracing themselves for brutal budget cuts. Erika Aguilar of KUT News reports.
Posted in
Economy
Green House
The biggest caucus in the Texas House is the Republicans’, now with 101 members. Next? The Democrats’, at 49. And then there’s the freshman class — one of the biggest in years — with 38 members. All but six are Republicans, and many of them replaced Democrats. They face some challenges.
Posted in
Energy
The Carbon Conundrum
In Texas, the largest oil producer in the United States, the demand for carbon dioxide is soaring, because it can help squeeze oil out of formations deep in the earth. That’s why the idea of of capturing it and pumping it underground is gaining traction in the power sector. It sounds like an exercise in environmental idealism: Take the heat-trapping gas — belched prolifically from coal plants, which generate 45 percent of the nation’s electricity — and bury it, benefiting the atmosphere and combating global climate change. Of course, it is something of an environmental conundrum that stowing the greenhouse gas underground can also help to produce more fossil fuels.
Posted in
Health care
Discharged?
Advocates for shuttering Texas’ institutions for people with disabilities say they have a big plus in their column this session: the state’s giant budget crunch.
Posted in
Demographics
TribBlog: Proposed Immigration Laws Create Unlikely Alliances
Proposing state enforcement of immigration laws can produce strange bedfellows. “Who would imagine that after 28 years of law enforcement the ACLU would be talking so nicely about me,” Sheriff Richard Wiles joked after being introduced as a common-sense sheriff by ACLU of Texas Executive Director Terri Burke for his opposition to proposed legislation patterned on Arizona’s.
Posted in
State Government
Gonzales on Being a Hispanic Republican
At this morning’s TribLive conversation with three incoming members of the Texas House, state Rep.-elect Larry Gonzales, R-Round Rock, explained why being Hispanic and being a Republican are not incompatible.
Posted inState Government
TribBlog: Straus, Paxton and the Tea Party
Hoping to see a debate between the candidates for speaker? A group of Tea Party organizations recently posed an identical set of questions to Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, and contender Ken Paxton, R-McKinney. The result is not really a debate, but it might be the closest we get.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
On the Records: The Bills So Far
A new word cloud visualizes the bills filed so far according to their Texas Legislative Council assigned categories. After education, which accounts for more than a quarter of the bills, the top categories are elections, criminal procedure, vehicles and traffic, and taxation.
Posted inState Government
The Midday Brief: Jan. 6, 2011
Your afternoon reading: Cameron Todd Willingham, Deepwater Horizon and a rude post-holiday awakening for education employees
