State Government

If this was a television drama, Gov. George W. Bush might have been ordered to give a deposition to tell what he knew about the Texas Funeral Commission’s efforts to fine the nation’s biggest funeral home operator. But it ain’t TV and he wasn’t so ordered. The state’s attorneys argued that he didn’t have any special knowledge that would shed light on the whistle-blower case, and that was that.

If you’ve ever tried to peel a kid away from a computer game or a Saturday morning cartoon, you understand something about the hold population data has on the average state or federal legislator. We’re heading into that twilight zone known as a redistricting year. That explains, in part, why there are so few open seats in the Legislature right now. It explains why rural lawmakers are fidgety and why suburban Republicans are smirking, and it explains why some of the money people on both sides are probably going to stay out of campaign fights as much as possible next year.

A common explanation of cancer treatment is that they hit you for months with large doses of something fatal, and if it kills the cancer before it kills you, you’re cured. That serves as a nice metaphor for presidential politics: If you survive the examination and treatment by your opponents, the media and the public, you get to live in the White House.

Forget all that stuff about the race for lieutenant governor being quiet, secretive, and completely underwater. Sen. David Sibley, R-Waco, has moved upstage with a whirlwind set of meetings with senators to tell them he’d like the job and to begin to try to build support.

Some retailers will tell you the state’s new sales tax holiday, patterned on similar promotions in New York and Florida, is a pain in the caboose. They have to reprogram cash registers, train staff and make other changes so that their customers can buy clothing under $100 and get a waiver on sales taxes for one weekend.

It’ll take months to know which part of the headline is correct, but however it goes, you have to say that Carole Keeton Rylander took over the Texas School Performance Review with a bang. She returned — uninvited — to the room where she taught high school history years ago to say that she was going to send her staff and a team of consultants over to find out what ails the Austin school district.

With the notable exception of a certain campaign for president, the fundraising season is off to a slow start. You don’t have to believe us — the evidence can be found in the stacks on the tenth floor of the Sam Houston Building, where the Texas Ethics Commission keeps candidate reports on contributions and expenditures, and increasingly, on candidate borrowing.

George W. Bush, who for fundraising purposes can be referred to as Godzilla, ended June with contributions of $37 million for the first half of the year, about $700,000 more than his campaign had estimated a couple of weeks ago. That means, among other things, that he’ll give up federal matching funds and with them, the limits on how much he can spend during the primaries.

Call it irony, call it blowback, call it what you’d like: George W. Bush takes a shot for hauling his state-paid protective detail all over the country during his presidential bid. That story, in the Austin American-Statesman, came within two days of stories about First Lady Hillary Clinton flying between Washington, DC, and New York state, where she has an exploratory committee for a U.S. Senate bid.

If you’ve ever been in line behind someone who loaded up their plate with hors d’oeuvres and left nothing for you, you know how the Republican candidates for president feel about Gov. George W. Bush. Aside from the pure astonishment at the Texan’s fundraising prowess, they have to reassess their own situations. He’s raised so much money they have a hard time explaining their place in the Republican primary for president. It’s probably no coincidence that several of the Republicans began talking in the last two weeks about running as Reform Party candidates or as independents.