Don’t look now, but the Texas GOP, the party of budgetary teetotalers, has been piling up debt like a college kid with his first credit card. According to Federal Election Commission reports, this isn’t exactly a new development. The Republican Party of Texas has ended every year in the red since 2001. But lately that amount has ballooned from a low of about $70,000 in 2003 to last year’s high of $624,000. Now — a month out from the state party convention where 14,000 delegates will elect the chairman who will guide the faithful for the next two years — the latest FEC report, for the month of April, shows $556,000 in financial obligations. In contrast, the Texas Democratic Party currently carries about $49,000 in debt.
The Red Party
Posted in
Health care
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Grissom on the transgender marriage conundrum, Hu on the workers’ comp whistleblowers, M. Smith on the Texas GOP’s brush with debt, Garcia-Ditta on why student regents should vote, Aguilar on the tripling of the number of visas given by the feds to undocumented crime victims, Hamilton on the paltry number of state universities with graduation rates above 50 percent, Ramshaw and Stiles on the high percentage of Texas doctors trained in another country, Ramsey and Stiles on congressmen giving to congressmen, Galbraith on how prepared Texas is (very) for a BP-like oil spill, and my conversation with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst: The best of our best from May 10 to 14, 2010.
Posted in
Demographics
TribBlog: Drone Finally Coming to Texas
An unmanned aerial drone will begin patrolling Texas’ border with Mexico next month.
Posted in
T-Squared
T-Squared: Facebook + Trib = Awesome
This afternoon we pushed changes to the Trib site that better and more aggressively incorporate aspects of Facebook into our, and your, everyday lives.
Posted in
Public Education
TribBlog: The Church Board of Education
When they meet in Austin next week, social conservatives on the State Board of Education — some now lame ducks — may be going even further with amendments challenging the separation of church and state, entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, landmark desegregation cases and the work of muckraking journalists such as Susan B. Anthony and W.E.B. Du Bois. Another amendment amplifies a long-running effort to resuscitate the reputation of communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Posted inState Government
The Brief: May 14, 2010
Opposites attract and all that, but Annise Parker and Rick Perry still make very strange bedfellows.
Posted inState Government
TribLive: David Dewhurst, Full Audio
Full, unedited audio from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s appearance at our TribLive breakfast on Wednesday morning. Dewhurst discusses the coming budget crisis, the Arizona immigration law and other current issues in Texas politics.
Posted inState Government
Debt Becomes Her?
Don’t look now, but the Texas GOP, the party of budgetary teetotalers, has been piling up debt like a college kid with his first credit card — and that has put chair Cathie Adams in the hot seat a month before she seeks reelection at the state Republican convention.
Posted in
Economy
Ready, Set, Grow
The economic slump is still being felt around Texas and the country, but industries and data are reporting positive signs. KUT’s Mose Buchele reports on what to make of potential green shoots.
