Democrat Bill White said he won’t rely on “Soviet-style budgeting” and “hot air politics” if he’s elected governor, and said the state should make education its first priority and would be better off with a governor who’s got business experience when it comes to economic development.
2010: White Starts the Argument [Updated]
Posted inState Government
The Brief: March 9, 2010
There’s good news and there’s bad news about the state economy. But there’s only a little good news, and the bad news is, well, bad.
Posted inState Government
Farmers in Fatigues: The Texas Guard in Afghanistan
The Texas National Guard is on a five-year mission in Afghanistan to help farmers build sustainable agriculture. In part one of this four-part series for KUT Radio, Douglas Wissing reports on the team’s mission in this complicated war zone.
Posted inState Government
Farmers in Fatigues
In the first of a four-part series for KUT Radio, Douglas Wissing reports on the team’s mission in Afghanistan’s complicated war zone.
Posted in
Health care
DNA Destruction
In the weeks before state health officials incinerated more than 5 million baby blood samples that they stored without consent, privacy advocates, parents and legislators reached a last-ditch accord to save them but couldn’t convince the Department of State Health Services to sign on. A Texas Tribune investigation found that the agency had turned hundreds of such samples over to a federal Armed Forces lab to build a DNA database — and hadn’t been upfront about it with lawmakers or the public.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
Data App: Homeland $ecurity
Loving County, in far West Texas, spent about $1,100 per resident in U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant funds from 2003 to 2008. Compare that with Harris County, which spent less than $6 per resident. Contemplate the disparity — and search for individual purchases with DHS grant money — using our latest data application.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
Starving for Reform
For two months, inmates in a South Texas immigrant detention facility have been on a staggered hunger strike — what the government calls “voluntary fasting” — to protest alleged abuse, lack of medical care and near-nil access to legal resources.
Posted in
Economy
“Big Government Conservatism”
Sound economic policy was sacrificed on the altar of short-term political gain in the George W. Bush administration. This buying of political support with taxpayers’ money brings to mind the words of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
Posted in
Criminal Justice
On the Records: The Census. It’s Happening.
This week, most mailboxes across Texas will get a notice from the U.S. Census Bureau. The message: Participate in the decennial count, which begins next week.
Posted in
State Government
2010: Averitt Resigns
Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, resigned from office Monday, a week after winning the GOP primary for reelection to a seat he no longer wants to hold.
