Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

"We've been doing better than the rest of the country," said Bill Gilmer, senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and officer in charge of the bank's El Paso branch. "But in the last year, we've seen our job growth slow. From January to January, it's been essentially zero (job growth).

The El Paso economy is doing better than that in much of the nation, but some storm clouds are starting to gather, according to a panel of industry experts and economists who spoke Tuesday at UTEP.

Texas transportation officials on Thursday approved a $146 million project to improve traffic flow on El Paso's East Side, authorizing construction of four connector ramps connecting Interstate 10 and Loop 375.

Most of the work will be paid for through the federal stimulus package. In all, the federal program will help finance 29 road projects throughout Texas at a cost of $1.2 billion.

More sensibly, House Speaker Joe Straus has appointed a Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization to develop recommendations on how the state can qualify for economic recovery funds. In early February, Straus and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst asked state agencies to cut spending by 2.5 percent for the 2009 fiscal year but exempted Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

New economic indicators suggest that while Texas is faring better than other states, it is now losing jobs rapidly. And worse for Perry, economists project job losses could peak just as voters go to the polls for primaries in March 2010, when he's expected to face Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in a Republican battle royale.

State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said her bill was "critically needed" to correct abuses uncovered within the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, which operates 13 large facilities, called state schools, including one in Denton that houses nearly 5,000 residents.

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...We can’t do this anymore.

Everybody was there except the one person Democrats really wanted — Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, the GOP go-to guy on matters of vote fraud.
Wayne Slater

Two arguments were prominent in the Texas Senate debate over requiring voters to present a photo ID or other forms of identification. Here's a look at both:

One tool for taxpayers, Crownover said, will be the Texas comptroller's Web site, which will track the stimulus money in the same way it already posts state expenditures.

Democratic and Republican senators skirmished Tuesday over legislation that would require Texans to show a photo ID before voting – but the debate was mainly for show, as the measure was expected to win approval. From the moment the Senate convened Tuesday morning to consider the GOP-backed voter ID bill, it was obvious that any important votes would wind up 19-12, the exact partisan split in the chamber.

A special Senate panel, which includes all 31 senators and Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, approved the legislation along straight party lines in a 20-12 vote.

Authorities say vivid video footage captured on cellphone cameras shows staffers goading young mentally disabled male residents of the institution into physical altercations, then shoving them at each other until fights ensued.

These days, to hear Republicans tell it, the conservative movement’s intellectual and strategic thunderbolts seem to be emanating, instead, from an undistinguished box of a building on K Street, amid the city’s famed corridor of lobbyists. In unmarked office suites scattered across separate floors, some 35 employees divide their duties among a consulting group, two insurgent policy centers, a documentary-film production company and a public-relations firm with only one client. That client would be the man who sits atop this emerging center of opposition, the once-defeated revolutionary who, like Che or Tito, is best known by a single name: Newt.

It's no secret that much of what passes for official politics is more accurately described as political theatre. Next week, for example, state Senate Republicans will raise the curtain on their "voter ID" bill, part of a national GOP crusade against virtually nonexistent fraudulent voting. This pointless exercise not only required bending Senate rules to reach the floor; it is certain to die an ignominious death in the closely divided House. But in the meantime, it will provide a handy rhetorical stick for beating the already powerless, most especially Hispanic immigrants.

The state and federal governments have prepared contingency plans to deal with spillover violence from across the border as Mexican troops clash with ruthless drug cartels terrorizing Mexico.

About a dozen measures that would freeze tuition, limit increases or otherwise restrain boards of regents have been proposed. Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, both of whom supported the so-called deregulation of tuition in 2003 , have expressed support for some sort of cap or freeze.

The importance of higher education cannot be overstated. We spend hours encouraging our children to do their homework, study and make good grades, because we want a better future for them. We stress the importance of pursuing higher education because we know that a bachelor's degree is the key to a more secure economic future and a fulfilling career.

The Senate unanimously approved an emergency measure Monday that seeks to protect residents of Texas' state schools for the mentally disabled from mistreatment. Meanwhile, state officials confirmed abuse may have been captured on the cellphone cameras of employees at the Corpus Christi State School.

Texas lawmakers will go head-to-head today in a heated contest over what is arguably the least important issue facing the state today: voter identification. Yes, amid economic, higher education and immigration woes, state legislators feel that preventing voter fraud — for which less than two dozen people were prosecuted in Texas between August 2002 to January 2008, according to the Austin American-Statesman — should take highest precedence.