From the Senator's Desk. . .
March 4, 2010
"The Model Red State"
Texas ranks last among the states in the share of the population without health insurance, one-fifth of our children are impoverished, and we have among the lowest rates of educational attainment in the nation. So, why are right-wing economists, talk-show hosts and politicians hell-bent on painting Texas as the poster child for successful fiscal policy? One economist went so far as to suggest that the U.S. economy should start performing “more like Texas.”
"Duck Lessons"
March 4, 2010
What can Texas learn from ducks? By that I mean Oregon Ducks, that strain of independent westerner whose university's duck mascot comes often to entertain El Paso in the Sun Bowl. From our view here in God’s Country—in a state that is first in those without a high school diploma, last in insured, and about to face a $17 billion deficit in ten short months—we can all learn a lot from ducks.
Letter to Dewhurst
March 4, 2010
Below you will find a letter to Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst regarding the recent proposals to swap the property tax and dramatically increase the sales tax:
The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged
March 4, 2010
No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.