Both Texas and the U.S. at large have begun climbing out of the latest economic recession. Now economists have begun looking back on the 2008-2009 downturn to see how it compared to other recent down economies. KUT reports on a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas that puts the most recent recession at the top of the list. Ben Philpott is reporting for KUT News and the Texas Tribune.
Economy
Get the latest on jobs, business, growth, and policy shaping the state’s economy with in-depth reporting from The Texas Tribune.
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Economy
Ranking the Recession
A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas compares the 2008-09 recession to other downturns — and puts it at the top of the list. Ben Philpott filed this report for KUT News and the Tribune.
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Demographics
Let the Counting Begin
Census Bureau questionnaires arrive at 8.4 million Texas homes this week. “Fill that sucker out,” the bureau’s regional director says, “so we don’t have to come and knock on your door.”
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Economy
Read My Lapse
“You have to do a few things when you run for office in Texas,” says one of Rick Perry’s allies. “You have to debate. You have to release your tax returns. And you have to say you won’t raise taxes.” Bill White will surely debate the governor before November’s general election, but at the moment he hasn’t done the other two. The former probably won’t sink him, but the latter could — by declining to drink the no-new-taxes potion, he’s handing his opponent a weapon to use against him. Unless, of course, he’s successful at changing the way the argument goes.
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Economy
The Polling Center: Is Texas a Good Economic Model?
What do Texans think about the fiscal and economic model for the rest of the country? Do they agree with Gov. Rick Perry that the Texas way is the better way?
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Economy
Bamboozled by the Establishment
The big-government crowd in Washington and elsewhere are bankrupting our country. And Republicans are just as culpable as Democrats in treating our taxpayer dollars as “other people’s money” to be spent as they and the special interests decide.
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Economy
2010: White Starts the Argument [Updated]
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.
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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.
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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.”
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Economy
George W. Bush Was No Ronald Reagan
When the George W. Bush administration turned out to be a failure, “conservatism” got the blame — even though Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney (like so many others who served alongside them) had been part of the anti-Reagan wing of the Republican Party.