Your afternoon reading: Tea Party weighs in on the Senate race, and Jerry Patterson looks to move up
The Midday Brief: Jan. 14, 2011
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Patterson to Run for Lite Guv?
On the heels of Kay Bailey Hutchison’s announcement that she won’t run for another term in the U.S. Senate and rampant speculation that David Dewhurst will run for her seat, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson today walked up to the edge of saying he plans to run for lieutenant governor in 2014.
Posted inState Government
The Brief: Jan. 14, 2011
The KBH guessing game is over (finally). Now comes the fun part.
Posted in
Health care
The Stroke Belt
The proof of East Texas’ live-hard, die-young culture is in the bread pudding — and the all-you-can-eat fried catfish, the drive-through tobacco barns and the doughnut shops by the dozen. In a community where heavy eating and chain smoking are a way of life, where poverty, hard-headedness and even suspicion hinder access to basic health care, residents die at an average age of 73, or seven years earlier than the longest-living Texans, according to a preliminary county-by-county analysis by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Posted in
Energy
Who Owns Our Water?
Upping the stakes in a long-running debate over groundwater and property rights, state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, filed a bill this week that would give Texas landowners ownership of the groundwater beneath their property. As Erika Aguilar of KUT News reports, the filing comes as the Texas Supreme Court considers a similar issue.
Posted in
Higher Education
The Legal Limit
Texas produces more law school graduates than it has jobs for. But that hasn’t stopped some lawmakers from proposing that the state build a new law school in the Valley.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
Capitol Insecurity
When Andrew Cuomo took office as governor of New York earlier this month, he ordered the removal of the security barricades limiting access to his state’s Capitol. “This Capitol has become a physical metaphor for the isolation and alienation of our people,” he said in his inauguration speech. He could easily have been talking about Texas.
Posted inState Government
Who’s Next?
Kay Bailey Hutchison’s announcement that she won’t run again for her U.S. Senate seat wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it still has the potential to overturn the state’s political apple cart. To separate the would-bes from the could-bes in a 2012 race, we’ve created a guide to certain, likely and plausible candidates — as well a few who are plausible only to us here at the Trib.
Posted inState Government
Interactive: Texas Life Expectancy Rates: 1985-2006
View the most recent county-by-county life expectancy rates and compare life spans over time with our two interactive maps. On the 2006 Life Expectancy map, the darker the county, the longer the life span; on the Rate of Change map, the darker counties have seen the most improvement in life expectancy since 1985. Click on individual counties to get specific life expectancies and rates of change.
Posted in
State Government
Dewhurst: I’ve Got My Plate Full
Minutes after learning of U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s decision not to seek re-election, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst demurred when asked whether he would run for her seat.
