Democrat Bill White hit the mid-year mark with more than $9 million in the bank for his November challenge to Gov. Rick Perry.
2010: The $9 Million Man
Posted in
Energy
TribBlog: Pickens Updates Plan
T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman, updated the presentation today for his Pickens Plan to get the country off of foreign oil. He focuses almost entirely on natural gas, and makes no mention of the wind power he also peddled two years ago.
Posted in
Higher Education
TribBlog: Goodbye, Simkins
The University of Texas System Board of Regents voted unanimously this morning to rename an all-male dorm Creekside Residence Hall after weeks of debate about the man the building was originally named for: William Stewart Simkins, a dead UT law professor and Ku Klux Klan organizer.
Posted in
Politics
2010: Rasmussen: Perry 50, White 41
Gov. Rick Perry leads Democrat Bill White 50-41 in the latest poll from Rasmussen Reports.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: “The Rumor Mill in Austin is Very Efficient”
State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, says he’s talking to the Texas A&M Universtity System about a vice chancellor’s job there, but says the issue is “unresolved,” and that the public conversation about his intentions “is really premature.” That said, he’s already talking about how he’d leave office.
Posted inState Government
The Brief: July 15, 2010
If campaign finance reports are a show of strength, House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, is making a muscle.
Posted in
State Government
Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire
Texas has long been a “tough on crime” state, but there has been a movement in recent years to change the system known more for its executions than for its rehabilitations. Robert Perkinson talked with Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune about the history of the state’s prison system and the possible changes ahead.
Posted in
Demographics
In the Shadow of the Valley of Death
Law enforcement and school officials discuss the changes that have happened in Fort Hancock as its sister city in Mexico, El Porvenir, has been overwhelmed with cartel violence.
Posted in
Demographics
Blood Lines: Valley of Death
For decades, residents of impoverished Mexican border towns have toiled in the cotton and alfalfa fields or in the giant factories of Juárez. Those seeking more than paupers’ wages worked for the cartels. Yet their communities remained peaceful until the horror of the drug war bled into the farmland. As the violence worsens, law enforcement has rushed to both sides of the Rio Grande — but greater security brings little comfort and little hope.
Posted in
Higher Education
Naming Rights
The University of Texas once admired Ku Klux Klan organizer and law professor William Stewart Simkins. Today the UT System’s regents meet to consider whether the tree-shaded all-male residence on San Jacinto Boulevard that bears his name still should.
