Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Un Abrazo Fuerte!

In our family, public service is the highest calling. Way back in 1846, on Christmas Day, our great, great grandfather fought here near the Rio Grande so that Texas might join the Union, not secede from America. His dreams then are yours and mine now—a more just society for all Texans; great public schools to educate all our children; strong Texas universities to make us proud; super highways to move commerce and create jobs; and fundamentally, government of the people, by the people and for the people, not just the privileged few.

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.

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:

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.

A jury has ordered Houston homebuilder Bob Perry to pay $51 million to a retirement-age Mansfield couple who fought for a decade over a defective house that Perry Homes refused to fix. Perry is the biggest campaign contributor in Texas and a major figure in tort reform championed by Gov. Rick Perry (no relation) to limit lawsuits and cap jury awards against business. Bob and Jane Cull say Perry wouldn't fix their house and so went to arbitration, where they won an $800,000 judgment. The homebuilder refused to pay. He appealed for years through the court system to the Texas Supreme Court, which overturned two lower courts and sent the case back to district court in Fort Worth. Every member of the high court had each received contributions from Perry -- more than $260,000 from Perry, his family and his political committees.