Republican skepticism about public education spending joined with the governor’s determination to hold the line on spending, including on public education, is likely to carry the day — whether it takes a few hours or 30 more days.
Texas Democratic Party
Posted in
Politics
Guest Column: My Lege in a Box
Call it the Justin Timberlake Treatment: The Legislature has found itself boxed in as it searches for a way out of the budget divide.
Posted in
Congress
Ricardo Sanchez: The TM Interview
Three years ago I interviewed the apparent 2012 Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate — then a retired lieutenant general hawking a memoir — for Texas Monthly. You can read the nearly 2,700-word Q&A here.
Posted inState Government
TDP Chair Boyd Richie Will Not Seek Another Term
Today, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie announced that he will not seek another term.
Posted in
State Government
TribLive: Thompson on Gambling, Race and the Democrats
For our most recent TribLive conversation, I interviewed state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, about gambling, how Democrats can regain their mojo and whether being black and being Republican are incompatible.
Posted inState Government
TribLive: Thompson on the Democrats
At last Thursday’s TribLive, State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, talked about what her party needs to do to regain its electoral mojo.
Posted in
Economy
Democrats: “Dangerous” Cuts Ahead
Democratic state lawmakers warned Monday of the “dangerous” cuts to public and higher education that are likely as the Legislature prepares to address a massive budget shortfall.
Posted in
State Government
The Reformer
As a gift to Trib readers this holiday week, we’re pleased to reprint Calvin Trillin’s New Yorker profile of 1972 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Frances “Sissy” Farenthold — one of a dozen and a half articles and poems that will be published early next year in Trillin on Texas, a new anthology from the University of Texas Press. A staff writer at the magazine since 1963, Trillin has long seen the state as a rich source of material; elsewhere in the anthology are meditations on subjects ranging from Texas barebecue to the fictional film critic Joe Bob Briggs. He also considers Texas to be a part of his ancestral narrative, as several members of his family arrived in the United States by way of Galveston. “Yes, I do have a Texas connection,” he writes in the introduction to the anthology, “but, as we’d say in the Midwest, where I grew up, not so’s you’d know it.”
Posted in
Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Ramshaw on how hard it is to sue over emergency room mistakes, Galbraith on paying for roads in an era of fuel-efficient vehicles, Aguilar on a disagreement about gun regulation, my interview with tort reformer Dick Trabulsi, Grissom on Perry’s parsimonious pardoning, Hu and Chang interactively look at House committee chairs, M. Smith on an election challenge and who’ll settle it, Ramshaw and Stiles on Dallas County’s blue streak and Hamilton on a Valley school district that leads the nation in preparing kids for college: The best of our best from Dec. 20 to 24, 2010.
Posted inState Government
Interactive: Committee Chairs
All the schmoozing and strategizing involved in seeking the job of House Speaker is worth it come February, when the leader of the lower chamber gets to choose the chairmen of committees, who have the power to stop, slow or speed legislation through the process. Click the tabs on this interactive table to see what the chairmanships looked like in 2009 and who’s coming back to the House in 2011.
