Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Reports and recommendations abound on how to fix things, but significant change has yet to occur.

Federal regulators charged Friday that unknown investors pocketed more than $5.3 million in illegal profits from insider trading before TXU Corp. announced it had agreed to be sold for $32 billion.

Over the decades that politicians have used "the children of Texas" to justify all sorts of political shenanigans, they have taken the child-friendliness out of Texas — especially for the children of impoverished and working-poor families.

Loss of coverage helps spotlight the paperwork errors that ail Texas' child health care system.

Both of our major urban complexes are classified as nonattainment areas for federal Clean Air Act compliance purposes. Guiding Principle No. 1 in this situation should be: When you are in a hole, stop digging.

There are two scandals at the Texas Youth Commission, one involving sexual abuse of minors by state employees, the other a devastating failure of state leadership.

Some Republican members on the House Appropriations Committee are angry that non-profit groups which utilize state funds do not have to verify the citizenship status of the low-income people they are helping.

Bilingual children who learn in their family's language as well as English do better at school, research suggests. Even second and third generation immigrant children with English as their stronger language could benefit.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will be honored by the Texas Legislature Monday for his many years of public service. The Texas House will offer a resolution recognizing the former congressman, U.N. ambassador, and energy secretary.

The use of home-equity loans, lines of credit and cash-out refinancing to purchase automobiles grew in the last decade as interest rates dropped and property values soared.

Immigration officials said they made provisions for the children so none would be left alone. But in the days right after the raid -- as a 7-year-old called a hotline and asked for her mother, and a breastfeeding baby refused a bottle and was hospitalized for dehydration -- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) began to categorize the raid's aftermath as a "humanitarian crisis."

So, what now? How do we fix TYC, especially when budgets have been cut and cut again by conservative law makers? Based on recent successes in Missouri, Ohio and other states, here are seven steps to fixing TYC.

Senator Shapleigh, a continuing advocate for Texas caring for its people, says the underlying problem is that not enough is spent on the front end to adequately fund services like public schools and health care, to help produce productive, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens for Texas' future.

At a hearing in Austin on April 9, 87-year-old federal Judge William Wayne Justice is expected to issue a corrective action plan the state must adhere to in order to improve access to health care for 2.8 million Texas Medicaid children. There has been speculation that the total cost of implementing the corrective action plan will reach $5 billion.

Border lawmakers say the decision by Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins to terminate the state’s $899 million contract with Accenture was long overdue. “The concept here was flawed. Now we've paid the price,” said Senator Shapleigh

Eliot Shapleigh, a state senator from El Paso, recalls growing up under the haze of the Asarco smokestack. "I remember as a kid, going to the Sun Bowl, where the big football game was played every year," he says. "We could see this yellow smoke coming out of the Asarco smelter, and it would rain down little pieces of yellow dust that almost looked like sleet or snow."

Today, I joined my friend, Jane Nelson, and nearly every member of the Texas Senate to co-author S.B. 1292 to develop the world's leading cancer research consortium, the Cancer Research Institute of Texas. For me, S.B. 1292 is “Herbie's Law."

Following an investigation by the Texas Rangers and the FBI in February and March 2005, two of the highest-ranking officials at the school—the assistant superintendent, Ray Brookins, and the principal, John Paul Hernandez—were accused of having sexual relations with several students over an extended period.

The Communities in Schools partnership between business leaders and the state helps prevent school dropouts more than any other program, but legislation to expand it is at the mercy of the state budget.

Some state legislators, including Senator Shapleigh, are gearing up to close those loopholes and strengthen regulation of the payday loan industry, even as the industry launches a major public relations campaign aimed at polishing its image.