Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The health insurer Aetna will pay more than $5 million to thousands of college students across the country who were shortchanged on health care reimbursements, Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general, said Monday.

In the first effort to calculate the national price of methamphetamine abuse, a new study said the addictive stimulant imposed costs of $23.4 billion in 2005. While the authors, from the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., caution that many impacts were difficult to quantify, their study suggests that methamphetamine takes an economic toll nearly as great as heroin and possibly more.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed Rick Perry for re-election, calling him the "true conservative" in a primary election showdown with fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison.

In the letter, the EPA said crucial equipment at the El Paso plant was in need of repair or replacement, and that the smelter might not be able to comply with federal air quality standards if it reopened as is: "Our review (of the Asarco plant) confirms our initial conclusion that, after the lengthy shutdown of nine years, the plant has been 'permanently shut down.' "

"What we see is a muro del odio" -- a wall of hate, said Texas state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, a Democrat from El Paso. "Simply put, it doesn't work. We hope Obama will take the wall down."

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, said the cameras “pander to the most right-wing members of his constituency.” Legislators in 2007 panned Perry's plans to continue the program, but Perry last year dedicated state-administered federal grant money for the cameras, and enlisted the sheriffs to see the program through. The sheriffs contracted with Blueservo.net, a social networking site, to set up the Web site, and hoped it eventually would draw advertising revenue to pay for more cameras.

Bring down that smokestack. Asarco in El Paso is dead. Finally. What great news it was for El Paso and area breathers of air Tuesday when Asarco LLC informed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that it has decided not to reopen its El Paso copper refinery.

Advocates for and against closing Texas' state schools for the disabled agreed on one thing Tuesday: Emergency legislation filed to protect residents of the facilities from abuse won’t hinder either of their efforts.

Those costs include health problems associated with obesity — diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure. But the costs are financial as well as physical. The economic burden of medical problems related to obesity could reach as much as $39 billion by 2040, according to Comptroller Susan Combs.

One of Asarco's chief opponents, state Sen. Eliot Shap- leigh, D-El Paso, said Tuesday that the company's decision signaled an environmental renewal for Texas' biggest border city.

ASARCO managers said they are not reopening because of a slumping economy. However, Shapleigh's office said that the United States Environmental Protection Agency wrote two letters stating that ASARCO’s air quality permits violated federal environmental standards.

"Now, we can move to a new era of better jobs, clean skies and healthier neighborhoods," Shapleigh said. "Since the 1880's, ASARCO has defined our past. Now our talent and aspirations will define our future."

The letters assert that Asarco was permanently shut down under federal standards -- Asarco had claimed it was a temporary shut down -- and would have to rebuild much of its equipment and pass tougher new federal air pollution standards.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, is drafting a resolution that would give legislators the power to bypass the governor and request federal stimulus money. State Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, and Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, filed a similar resolution Monday.

Asarco LLC has informed the Texas Commission on Environmental that it does not plan to reopen its copper smelter in El Paso, company officials announced Tuesday.

State business associations are already supporting one of Shapleigh’s proposals – to exempt from the tax businesses with total revenues of $1 million. Right now, only businesses with $300,000 or less in total revenues are exempt.

“One in five Texas children are uninsured; tuition at UTEP has risen 73 percent; tax cuts for the wealthy have hurt public schools, forcing them to cut key programs,” Shapleigh said. “Texas is No. 1 in dropouts and No. 46 in SATs. When Rick Perry values tax cuts for the wealthy over investments in our future, Texas loses.”

Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, had been removed from that committee by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the 2007 legislative session. Many believed it was political punishment after Shapleigh broke unwritten protocol by supporting the opponent of an incumbent state senator.

“We need the money along the Texas border, when nearly half our children have no health insurance, when our schools are under-funded (and) when we have failed programs in immunizations,” said state Sen. Elliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso. “We want to fund the programs to fix long standing issues in our community.”

As many as 22,000 manufacturing and installation jobs would be created if Texas were to build a utility-scaled solar program and to expand incentives for smaller-scale programs to put solar panels on houses, schools and businesses across the state, according to a report by Public Citizen, Environment Texas and Vote Solar.