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from Full Focus:
Texas explosion
An explosion tore through a fertilizer plant and leveled dozens of homes in a small Texas town, killing up to 15 people, injuring more than 160 and spewing toxic fumes that forced the evacuation of half the community.
from MacroScope:
Texas-sized jobs growth turns puny? Don’t y’all believe it, Dallas Fed says
Is the pickup in U.S. jobs growth over before it even started? That’s the conclusion you might reach if you checked out the latest Texas employment update from the Dallas Fed , which shows the Lone Star state added only 4,000 jobs in January.Texas, as boosters like Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher never tire of pointing out, has been an enormous engine of job growth for the United States since the end of the Great Recession.
The state added 335,000 jobs last year. For it to generate a paltry 4,000 jobs in January – well, that sounds like bad news.
from The Great Debate:
California v. Texas in fight for the future
It is not a national election year, but the “red state versus blue state” wars continue. Texas Governor Rick Perry's recent foray into California, to lure away businesses and jobs, signals more than a rivalry between these two mega-states. The Texas-California competition represents the political, economic and cultural differences driving American politics today – and for the foreseeable future.
Texas and California are robust political and economic competitors. We don’t know which will be the template for the future. As California emerges from its economic and fiscal doldrums and some of Texas' vulnerabilities become evident, it is now far from certain that Texas will emerge the victor.
from MuniLand:
Texas takes the lead on public pension transparency
Texas Watchdog.org explains how Texas is mounting the transparency pony:
A quartet of the most powerful legislators in Texas filed bills Thursday to make available to the public detailed financial information from most local taxing entities and pension systems across the state.
Senate bills 14 and 13 and their identical House counterparts establish, at the request of state Comptroller Susan Combs, new requirements for the posting of public debt, unfunded liabilities, borrowing and project costs on websites maintained by state and local agencies.
from The Great Debate:
Dems shouldn’t mess with Texas
There has been much ado lately about the Democratic Party’s new project to turn Texas blue. What’s lost on the liberals in D.C., California and Manhattan who will throw money at this futile effort, however, is that the Texas Republican Party is different and far stronger than its counterparts in other states. And it’s not just because the Lone Star State under Republican control has become the envy of the nation in terms of job creation and economic growth.
One reason Democrats think the GOP’s hold over Texas is so precarious is demographics. Latinos make up 38 percent of the state population, a portion that is projected to rise to more than 50 percent by 2030. Since GOP nominee Mitt Romney got a dismal 27 percent of the Latino vote in November, it seems intuitive that a growing Latino population would spell trouble for Republicans. Yet Texas Republicans have done far better with Latinos than Republicans nationally because their approach to immigration has not been the antagonistic sort offered by Republicans in California, Arizona and other states.
from The Great Debate:
The inter-state job search migration
The Internal Revenue Service created a bit of a kerfuffle last week when it announced that it would no longer publish data on interstate taxpayer migration and the income they take with them. This would be a huge disservice not just to economists and policy analysts but to all Americans.
This IRS migration data provides the best evidence that low-tax, limited-government states attract employers, families and individuals, while states pursuing the same policies as the White House – higher taxes, bigger government and more onerous regulations – drive businesses and taxpayers away. It’s not hard to fathom why the Obama administration, despite its promise to be the most transparent in history, would want the IRS to stop publishing this damning evidence.
from The Great Debate:
Where Karl Rove was right
Give Karl Rove a break. His meltdown on election night may not have been entirely about Fox News prematurely calling Ohio for President Barack Obama. After all, the poor guy had every right to get upset while watching the Republican Party nominee’s campaign crash and burn.
For all intents and purposes, Mitt Romney trampled on Rove’s once vaunted GOP playbook -- and leaves a weakened GOP in his wake.
from MuniLand:
The shining Fourth Estate and the theme park
Cynthia Calvert, the editor of The Tribune of Humble, Texas, is restoring community journalism to its rightful place in the Fourth Estate. She has written a series of articles challenging the actions of the East Montgomery County Improvement District (EMCID), which funded a now-bankrupt theme park called EarthQuest.
Payments from a 2009 municipal bond offering, and possibly other East Montgomery County sales tax collections, have been paid to various "consultants" on the EarthQuest project, most of whom appear to have left. The land on which the project was to be built, the only asset other than the intellectual property, is being foreclosed upon by the local bank that lent the funds to purchase it. The 500-acre theme park was an enormous gamble for a county improvement district to support, and the district appears to have lost the bet and the taxpayers' money.
from Tales from the Trail:
Rick Perry lags in home state of Texas
Tuesday only got worse for Texas Governor Rick Perry whose comments about Turkey in a debate last night got him lambasted by foreign policy experts, the Turkish press, and the Turkish government in Ankara.
Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas history, polled only third in a survey of his fellow Longhorn Republicans, according to a poll released Tuesday.
