Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

“We just don’t have enough money, basically, to provide a quality education experience to our students.”

That quote from La Vega ISD superintendent Sharon Shields exemplifies what is happening across public education in Texas: the collision of consistent underfunding, increased mandates, and rising costs have resulted in a budgetary nightmare for public schools. The end result is an education system that is less able to respond to the needs of its students and provide a 21st Century learning experience.

The question was simple: Should the lending practices of auto dealers be regulated?

It was already October and the 42 Democrats and 29 Republicans on the House Committee on Financial Services had spent the better part of the year hashing out the details of a new federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers from dangerous and deceptive financial products.

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry has slammed the health care legislation moving through Congress as a big government, one-size-fits-all boondoggle that mostly costs money and regulates business.

Though Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called this decade "the big zero" -- as in zero wage growth, zero stock market growth, etc. -- it's probably safe to say that the last ten years weren't a complete wash.

Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward.

In February, 2009, Barack Obama rolled out an $800 billion stimulus package. His goal was to spur consumer demand and keep jobs. Rick Perry joined South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sandford on a national tour to condemn Barack’s Bailout, telling all of Texas that the stimulus moved America “toward a “bailout mentality” where we look to government rather than ourselves for solutions.” So, why then does he maintain his own $5.7 billion bailout back in Texas?

Best Town In Texas--North by Southwest

Here in God’s Country, where the northern tip of the Sierra Madres meets the very end of the Rockies, square in the heart of the Chihuahua desert, where Ocotillos and Texas Rainbows mark the trails up the Franklin Mountain State Park, the light is special, and life is good. Here is the “frontier of the future’ where North meets Southwest, where the culture, the people and the beautiful spaces are unlike any in all the rest of Texas.

Best Town in Texas -- The Spirit of Christmas Pass

What’s so special about the Spirit of Christmas Pass?

How about a Thanksgiving Parade where the gift of giving kicks off the Holiday Season? Or, what about luminarias all around the oldest Missions in Texas? Or albondiga soup at Mercado Mayapan? Or just time at home, with mothers, brothers, grandfathers, tias and kids, talking about the “Spirit of Christmas Pass."

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama. Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.

A few weeks ago, Army Captain Ramón Velásquez got his introduction to Ciudad Juárez, ground zero in Mexico's war against violent drug cartels.

At first it looked like business as usual in the early morning hours of Wednesday, Sept. 9. The line of cars on the Del Rio International Toll Bridge stretched back toward Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, as people waited to cross northward. Headlights glimmered in the dawn as U.S. immigration officers waved folks through – all except for vehicles with children, which were directed to exit to the right of the bridge.

The news coming out of dusty border city El Paso, Texas, is usually pretty grim. The metro suffers from 9.5% unemployment, declining high-school graduation rates and inadequate infrastructure. But a closer look reveals an employment picture that, at least in one way, is improving. In the past three years, incomes for college graduates there have steadily grown more than any other major metropolitan area.

Several factors, like increased border patrol activity requiring jobs in intelligence and other white-collar work, and recent expansions of both Fort Bliss, one of the country's largest military bases, and the local University of Texas campus, have boosted pay for educated Texans. Couple that with El Paso's relative protection from the battered housing economy and it's easier to see why pay is inching up.

Copenhagen

I’ve long believed there are two basic strategies for dealing with climate change — the “Earth Day” strategy and the “Earth Race” strategy. This Copenhagen climate summit was based on the Earth Day strategy. It was not very impressive. This conference produced a series of limited, conditional, messy compromises, which it is not at all clear will get us any closer to mitigating climate change at the speed and scale we need.

As the health care debate consumed Congress this month, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison emerged as a visible critic – impassioned but powerless.

One day last week, for instance, she took to the Senate floor to rail against a provision allowing for immediate tax hikes to pay for programs that won't roll out for three or four years. That's an outrage, she declared, arguing to send the bill back to committee.

“Live Strong, Really Care, Let Live”

“Right now, in all Texas, El Paso is the best place to be. One reason is this—each day, we live strong, really care and let live.” Just what does that mean?

Let’s take look at some Texas history. In the 1940’s and 50’s, Texas was the last large Southern state. Across the South, Governors like Ross Barnett blocked black students access to the University of Mississippi, and here in Texas, Governor Shivers ordered Texas Rangers to prevent black students from entering high school. Jim Crow laws systematically discriminated based on race. Here in El Paso, Hispanics were forced to drink from public water fountains that said ‘colored only’.

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush toured New Orleans by air and then met with his Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Chief, Michael Brown. Brown was fairly new not only to FEMA, but to crisis management in general. In 2001—after ten years as the stewards and judges commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association—"Brown joined FEMA":

Republican critics have a fiercely argued list of reasons to oppose health care reform. One that is resonating is that the nation cannot afford in tough economic times to add a new trillion-dollar health care entitlement.

Sometimes your vote counts, sometimes it doesn't.

It's not your fault. It's because voters won't be offered a real chance to change most of the people in the Legislature and the Texas seats in Congress next year. Four out of five state and federal legislators won't suffer any real competition next year in their primary or general elections.

Embedded in sweeping health legislation passed by the House and being debated on the Senate floor is a major new federal insurance program for long-term care intended to help people like Anne M. Rader.

If Dallas' John J. Carona needed a new middle name, we have one already picked out – Relentless.

Some colleagues in the Legislature might suggest Pain instead.