Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Someday historians may look back at Tom Daschle’s flameout as a minor one-car (and chauffeur) accident. But that will depend on whether or not it’s followed by a multi-vehicle pileup that still could come. Even as President Obama refreshingly took responsibility for having “screwed up,” it’s not clear that he fully understands the huge forces that hit his young administration last week.

Although that option is limited, too. It helps Texans find jobs but doesn’t manage unemployment claims. And over the past year, Workforce Solutions has had to close or consolidate six Gulf Coast region locations.

El Paso County Commissioner Veronica Escobar was one of the speakers at a Capitol press conference today advocating an $88.3 million increase in state spending for mental health services.

Texans who had mortgages with Countrywide Financial and lost their homes to foreclosure may be eligible for restitution payments worth $2,300 under a program announced Wednesday.

In a new report, the House Select Committee on Higher and Public Education also called for a new state initiative in middle schools and a new approach to instructional materials that would shift much of the funding now spent on textbooks to technology.

University of Texas officials said Wednesday that they will strengthen their conflict of interest policy to keep researchers from getting too cozy with pharmaceutical companies, a response to federal scrutiny into the drug company relationships of some of their scientists.

The final commission nominee is Houston resident Reed Morian, whose name has surfaced in past commission appointee conversations. Morian is president and CEO of DX Service Company and serves on a number of conservation and preservation boards in the Houston area. He replaces Bob Brown of El Paso.

Too many Texans with mental illness, the officials said, are winding up in emergency rooms and jails because they don't have access to consistent care and medication to prevent crises from developing.

Preservation Texas released a list Wednesday that included the Socorro Mission rectory as one of 11 historic sites threatened by destruction or neglect. Also on the list are the Strand District on Galveston Island, which was damaged by Hurricane Ike in October, and the Governor's Mansion in Austin,

Privatization critics say human services are the absolute last government functions that should be hired out. But in the past decade, the Legislature has hired or moved toward hiring private companies to run call centers enrolling Texans in food stamps and Medicaid, create a Web-based human resources system for the health and human services agencies and monitor the progress of children in foster care, with mixed results.

"This is bread-and-butter services for our citizens," Houston Mayor Bill White said, after meeting at Dallas City Hall with Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief, Austin Mayor Will Wynn, El Paso Mayor John Cook and Denton Mayor Mark Burroughs.

As the bill stands, Texas would get $2.3 billion for highways, $370 million for transit and $277 million for clean-water projects. A portion of federal funds is also slated specifically for our neck of the woods, going to North Texas public schools, highway projects and public transit.

Signing the Child Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Bill, President Barack Obama spoke of the toll that being uninsured exacts on families; of sleepless nights spent worrying and of “the decisions no parents should have to make: how long to put off that doctor's appointment, (and) whether to fill that prescription.”

Shapleigh’s statements came in advance of today’s scheduled press conference, where he will discuss the findings of the fourth edition of Texas on the Brink: How Texas Ranks Among the 50 States. Shapleigh will begin his address at 10 a.m. in the Lt. Governor’s Press Room in the Texas Capitol.

Just as Texas is phasing in new high school graduation requirements that call for more math and science, a new study released Monday indicates that a longtime shortage of teachers in those subjects has grown dramatically worse and will continue to do so.

Commissioned by the Cities Aggregation Power Project, a nonprofit coalition of Texas municipalities, the report found that residential electricity rates rose 64 percent between 1999 and 2007. Before that, Texans paid rates that were well below the national average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In a sign of their determination to reconcile the differences between the Senate bill and the $820 billion House version swiftly, the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and the budget director, Peter R. Orszag, huddled at the Capitol on Tuesday evening with Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada; and other lawmakers.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh said Tuesday he would continue a legal fight to obtain documents from the state's environmental agency over its dealings with Asarco even after the company announced it plans to demolish its smelter in El Paso.

What kind of economy are they trying to protect? Let's talk about that -- and how Texas is on the brink.

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