Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Enacted in 2006 as part of a school property tax swap, the revised business tax expanded the number of businesses subject to the tax. For most qualifying businesses, the tax is 1 percent of their total revenue minus one of three options: the cost of goods sold, employee compensation or 30 percent of total revenue.

After six years of bold plans, big talk and fierce pushback, the Texas Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that the Trans-Texas Corridor is dead, burying with it Gov. Rick Perry's visionary but controversial idea to string the state together with some 4,000 miles of highways, toll roads and rail lines.

Nearly every immigration expert, including Arizona's governor, has stated that a wall is not the answer — that more, better trained border enforcement, coupled with aerial and technological surveillance have proved to be better and most cost-effective security solutions. For our country to prosper, we must lead the way in the safe, fast and secure movement of people and products in a post-9/11 world.

Since deregulation, tuition has increased an average of 112 percent on Texas campuses, 164 percent at UT. Some important lawmakers are screaming about it. UT said it would add more grants, loans and scholarships to offset the increases, but that hasn't helped a seriously squeezed middle class. So there is a clamor for the Legislature to reclaim tuition-setting power.

In a year of history-making national elections, two young El Pasoans made some history of their own with surprising victories over a longtime incumbent politician and a well-heeled local businessman.

"All of us have long supported Speaking Rock, you have an $800 million gaming industry that used to be in the valley of El Paso,” Sen. Eliot Shapleigh said.

The competition to lead the chamber did not end Sunday, though. Some of Craddick's closest allies said they would support conservative state Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, and not state Rep. Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, the candidate Craddick's opponents have rallied behind.

Straus, flanked by both Democratic and Republican state representatives, announced a list of 94 names supporting his bid to become the next Speaker of the Texas House. The list includes all five El Paso House delegation.

The legislators, all Democrats and led by state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, each made brief comments in which they touched upon individual goals. But they all opened by saying they agreed upon the importance of UTEP.

The five state representatives and one state senator that represent the county in Austin on Monday revealed their united list of priorities for the 81st Texas Legislature, and making the University of Texas at El Paso a "Tier 1" institution is on the top of that list.

Everyone wants to attend Craddick’s funeral, but the corpse is still breathing—barely. One more nail in the awaiting coffin: The Democrats published their names. It’s vital, as January 13 approaches, that the insurgents do everything possible to bolster their credibility, and the best way to do that was lay out the names. The most important thing about this list is that the D’s won over the five members whom I had previously identified as the most likely new recruits for Craddick: Heflin, Marquez, Olivo, Quintanilla, and Rios Ybarra. The pool of members from which Craddick can plausibly seek votes has shrunk.

"Students are in the cross hairs, being bombarded by very sophisticated and, to some extent, ethically marginal lenders," said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), who sponsored legislation passed this year that will require lenders to provide more disclosures on fees. "My fear is that we are developing a predatory market, just like we have had in mortgages."

More and more middle-class families use the loans “to put off the day of reckoning,” she said: “Too many families live with no cushion, so when something goes wrong they turn to payday lenders.”

All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”

Which play? The one where gasoline prices go up, pressure rises for more fuel-efficient cars, then gasoline prices fall and the pressure for low-mileage vehicles vanishes, consumers stop buying those cars, the oil producers celebrate, we remain addicted to oil and prices gradually go up again, petro-dictators get rich, we lose. I’ve already seen this play three times in my life. Trust me: It always ends the same way — badly.

In January, 72,000 fewer children could be enrolled in Medicaid than in December, according to preliminary numbers from the Health and Human Services Commission.

For those in poor urban neighborhoods and isolated rural areas, including Indian reservations, the clinics are often the only dependable providers of basic services like prenatal care, childhood immunizations, asthma treatments, cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

The regulation, known as the Clean Air Interstate Rule, had been the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s re-engineering of the Clean Air Act. It set significant targets to reduce pollution around the power plants and in the downwind states whose air quality was affected by the emissions.

No modern American president would repeat the fiscal mistake of 1932, in which the federal government tried to balance its budget in the face of a severe recession. The Obama administration will put deficit concerns on hold while it fights the economic crisis.

Our current healthcare system is a “sick care system” with over 70 percent of the health costs occurring in the last year of life. In 2007, as a country, we spent over $2.3 trillion dollars on sick care or over $7,600 for each person living in our nation. What do we get? We have one of the most sophisticated sick care delivery systems in the world, yet we rank 37th when our health outcomes are compared against others such as Cuba at 39th and Costa Rica at 36th.