Texas, meanwhile, keeps purring along. The economy is slowing, to be sure, and corporate layoffs are rising, but the state remains in positive territory by most measures. Even construction employment, down 5.2 percent nationwide in the past year, was up 3.6 percent here.

“We’re feeling an impact from the slowdown, but in economics, everything is relative,” says Cheryl Abbot, regional economist with the Dallas office of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The state is holding up especially well compared with the country at large, and so far, North Texas is looking good, too. The Fort Worth-Arlington area added jobs in every category in the past 12 months, even an additional 200 in manufacturing — one sector that’s generally declined everywhere.

Credit three factors for Texas’ (relatively) good fortune:

The housing market has held up better than in much of the country, and as a result, consumer confidence hasn’t crashed to the same depths. That’s one explanation for why retail sales rose 5.6 percent in Texas in the past year, at least three times higher than nationwide.

The energy industry is booming, riding the wave of sky-high oil and gas prices. That’s producing scores of new jobs in Texas and abroad, and bonus checks for landowners in the Barnett Shale and elsewhere. The Texas rig count reached 931 in June, the highest level since 1984, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Texas exports are on a tear, helped by the falling dollar and strong demand for chemicals. The currency drop has helped boost exports nationwide, but Texas exports grew 7.2 percent in April, compared with a 3.3 percent increase for the nation, the Dallas Fed reports.

These trends spill over to the broader economy, insulating Texas workers from some of the forces now squeezing employers. In professional and business services, for example, the nation barely added any jobs in the past year. But Texas companies added 64,500 employees in that category, a 5 percent increase.

Even the financial services business is doing OK here. Those firms have been in a tailspin, after the meltdown in subprime loans and a sharp drop in home sales. The sector accounted for more than 85,000 announced layoffs so far this year, the most in the monthly survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago placement firm.

But Texas added 5,900 jobs in financial activities in the past 12 months, with 4,100 added in Dallas-Fort Worth alone.

Of course, the outlook for the future isn’t rosy in spite of the Texas economy not being totally in the dumps at this moment:

“Texas is going to feel the effects of the downturn, just like other states,” says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “But when people lose jobs, they’ll be able to find something else a lot easier — and maybe without having to move and sell their house.”

I dispute that it will be easier for Texans to find jobs when the economy in Texas finally does its own spectacular meltdown (admittedly, the spectacular meltdown could be avoided with a Democratic president in the White House and new economic policies, but we’ll see), but that’s not the issue that has my curiosity piqued at the moment.

I wonder what impact the economic difficulties will have on the state’s fiscal standing when the 81st Texas Legislature convenes next January.

While higher petrochemical prices only add to the state’s bottom line, unemployment and business closings take away from the bottom line and actually create a greater fiscal burden for the state.

Business closings, obviously, will result in less taxes paid to the state (franchise taxes, etc.). In addition, it will result in less sales tax revenue. Sales tax revenue, of course, funds a pretty significant chunk of the state’s budget.

Higher unemployment, of course, will have a myriad of effects on the state. First, it means less sales tax revenue for the state because the unemployed have less to spend their money on. It could mean less property tax revenue for local governments as the unemployed may not be able to meet their property tax payments. Too, it will mean more state expenditures as families that once had insurance through their jobs find themselves on the wrong side of the economy and end up needing more state services such as food stamps, CHIP, and other health and human services provided by the state.

Of course, it depends upon exactly how bad the economy gets exactly how bad things will be for the 81st Texas Legislature when it comes time to pass a budget. Will social services been in need of a significant influx of new funding as a result of a lot of unemployed, newly impoverished Texans–and will the state have the money to pay for it?

The weak economy and the problems it could pose for the 81st Legislature is yet another reason we need a strong Democratic majority in the Texas House of Representatives. We all saw what happened in 2003 when the state–facing a decicit–balanced the budget on the backs of poor and middle class Texans. We could see a repeat of that (although you’d think Republicans would be smarter than that by now) if Republicans continue to hold on to the Texas Legislature. Or, if Democrats are in office, we may see more sound fiscal policy that doesn’t balance the budget on the backs of poor Texans.

Only time will tell.

An unsuccessful school board candidate filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging that the Irving school district’s system of at-large elections violates the law because it denies representation to Hispanics.

Manuel Benavidez, a Mexican-American who twice ran unsuccessfully for the Irving school board, is the named plaintiff in the suit, which was filed by attorneys for the Dallas firm Bickel & Brewer.

The named defendants are Irving ISD and its seven elected trustees.

Mr. Benavidez filed a similar suit in November against the Irving City Council’s at-large election system. He could not be reached for comment Monday.

The suit asks the federal court to find that the at-large system of elections violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They ask that the school district develop a new single-member district system of electing representatives from individual districts carved out within district boundaries.

No Hispanics serve as school trustees in Irving ISD, whose officials estimate that 67 percent of students are Hispanic. About 42 percent of the city’s residents are Hispanic, according to 2006 Census Bureau reports.

“The voting system puts the election of all school board members in the hands of the white majority,” attorney Bill Brewer said. “It doesn’t give ways for the significant Hispanic majority to have a fair opportunity for representation.”

In 2000, voters elected Ruben Franco the school district’s first and only Hispanic trustee. He served two three-year terms.

The school board was all white until this spring, when voters elected two African-American trustees, Nancy Jones and A.D. Jenkins. Two Hispanics ran against them, Stacey Ponce and Jorge Chac II. Ms. Ponce received about 17 percent of the vote and Mr. Chac, 18 percent.

Perry’s request for the waiver came after a $100,000 contribution to the Republican Governor’s Association by East Texas poultry magnate Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim.

In a letter to the EPA, Culver noted:

As the Governor of Iowa, I stand in opposition to the State of Texas’ request for a waiver of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). Although this position was expressed earlier in a letter I supported with a bi-partisan group of my colleagues from the Midwestern Governor’s Association (MGA), I write today to underscore the importance of this issue. A waiver of the RFS would not cause an immediate or near-term reduction in corn prices or food prices, but it could have a very negative effect on the development of advanced biofuels and on future national energy security.

Critics have been blaming ethanol for the recent rise in food prices, but in fact a complex set of factors have contributed to those increases in the U.S. and around the world. The primary factors contributing to rising food prices include: oil hovering around $140 a barrel; increasing global demand for grain and meat in nations like China and India; adverse weather events including consecutive drought years in Australia; a weak U.S. dollar encouraging exports; and agricultural policies around the world that have limited the productivity of farmers from Europe to Asia.

A recent study from Texas A&M University concluded, “The underlying force driving changes in the agricultural industry, along with the economy as a whole, is overall higher energy costs, evidenced by $100 per barrel oil.” The fact is that ethanol is helping to reduce gasoline prices at the pump. A recent report from Iowa State University’s Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) estimates that the growth in ethanol production and use has caused gasoline prices to be $0.29 to $0.40 per gallon lower than they might otherwise have been.

A variety of causes determine consumer food prices which cannot be easily explained by singling out one specific factor. Responsibly increasing the domestic production of ethanol, and promoting the development and commercialization of advanced biofuels as the RFS does, are critical to controlling consumer energy costs and assuring our national energy security.

I urge you to deny the waiver requested by Texas.

The Associated Press has also picked up on this story.

Now, the Associated Press is on the story. Well, kind of. They are just talking about the number of inaccurate gas pumps, not the fact that you can find gas pumps all over Texas that haven’t been inspected since 2001, 2002, or 2003–although they are supposed to be inspected every four years. Here’s some of what AP notes:

A total of 5,778 pumps – more than 5 percent of the 109,369 pumps inspected last year in Texas – gave the wrong amount of gasoline or had other problems that put them out of service until they were repaired.

Almost 28 percent of the problem pumps – 1,612 – shorted customers beyond a small variance allowed by the state, according to Texas Department of Agriculture inspection data analyzed by the San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle. The information was contained in a report for Saturday’s newspapers.

The percentage reflects only inspection categories that measure gas output, not other problems that can affect pump accuracy and also potentially short the customer.

Twenty-seven percent of the problem pumps, or 1,575, provided a bonus, providing more gasoline than they should have.

Of course, Todd Staples offers this tidbit that makes him sound like anything but a weights and measures genius:

“Half of the time it may be tilted slightly in favor of the station owner, but the other half of the time, it’s tilted slightly in favor of the consumer,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples.

Such sheer brilliance from Mr. Staples.

This week, Comer filed suit (lawsuit, .pdf) against the Texas Education Agency and Education Commissioner Robert Scott alleging she was fired over the forwarding of an email about a lecture critical of the movement to promote intelligent design in science classes (email, .png).

Interestingly, Comer claims that she was fired for her disagreement with a policy that she alleges is unconstitutional. The policy required that employees be “neural” on the subject of creationism. While it will be a while before Comer’s suit makes its way through the courts, she is probably correct. It simply doesn’t seem that any policy requiring state employees at TEA be “neutral” about a subject would pass constitutional muster since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching creationism as science in schools is illegal.

The policy was in force, according to the suit, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching creationism as science in public schools is illegal.

Yes, you read that right: Warren Chisum will author a bill in the 81st session of the Texas Legislature creating a two-year waiting period before a divorce can be finalized. If you happen to be a math genius, then you’ll quickly note that Chisum’s proposed waiting period, if passed, would mean you can go out and buy a handgun quicker than you can get a divorce in Texas. How appropos.

Of course, all of this is part of the Republicans’ endless crusade to defend marriage (except their own). From what they’re trying to defend marriage, we’re not sure. First it was gays. Now, it appears that they are trying to defend marriage from divorce altogether.  Here is what Chisum has to say on this:

“The deal is, we need to take marriage more seriously,” said Chisum, who in October will celebrate his 51st wedding anniversary.

(Of course, if Chisum is subscribing to the Pat Robertson Theory on no-fault divorce, i.e., “You go back to the various laws that took away the difficulty of getting a divorce, and the people leading the charge were homosexuals, way back in the ’70s. So we have no-fault divorce,” then I suppose this still falls under defending marriage from gay people.)

Now, it’s wonderful that Rep. Chisum has been married 51 years, but I’m not sure why the folks at the Austin American-Statesman thought it was relevant to include that. Either way, the “we need to take marriage more seriously,” is a bit, well…how shall we say….”bogus?”

At present, it takes 60 days to finalize a divorce in Texas. Given that most people who divorce have already tried to save their marriage in some way, shape, or form, I’m not sure why it is a good idea to make the state “big brother” in this situation with a two-year waiting period.

Of course, though, this is a big pet-project of the right-wing Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institue. Chisum is president of the Institute’s board.

Before we get to more reasons why this is wrong, let’s consider something else this is about: money.

While I honestly believe that Rep. Chisum is sincere in his desire to save marriages and prevent divorce, some of those pusing the issue–and using Chisum’s bill to do so–are not. Regardless of claims that groups like Marriage Savers (a group quoted in the Statesman article that helped change Maryland’s divorce law to require a waiting period of up to two years) make about marriage, they are all about the Benjamins, not saving marriages.

Consider this: the complaining about “no-fault” divorces has existed for many years, but it didn’t really ramp up and move into high gear until after George W. Bush became president and “faith-based initiatives” became a huge buzzword (not to mention cash cow) for a lot of folks. Enter the no-fault divorce opponents, who can garner fat government contracts for their programs or mega bucks off the fact that clients are refered by courts.

Michael McManus, the co-founder of Marriage Savers, has already benefitted from government contracts for his work. How many half-assed right-wing mini-Marriage Savers are there in Texas? How many “Christian Counselors” want to line up and be listed on sheets handed out in the local District Clerk’s office as an approved service provider for whatever mandatory counseling program the bill might ultimately include? The answer? A lot. A hell of a lot.

Once again, the right wing and the Religious Right see a money-making opportunity so they cloak it in something like this to make government swallow it and then shower it all over the people.

All of that, of course, doesn’t even begin to address the other problems or complications with legislation such as that Chisum proposes. The bill from last session (which mercifully failed in Committee) did include a provision related to family violence–but it required one party to have obtained a protective order, which is easier said than done in many cases for many reasons.

A two-year waiting period would be a disaster. For one thing, you can’t expect the couple to live together during this time, but family violence will likely be an issue. Too, you have financial issues such as what happens to money earned, retirement savings earned, etc. during the two-year hiatus. Chisum’s bill does nothing to address what happens in the pendancy of those two years. Would temporary spousal support still be an option?

Chisum’s legislation is just a bad idea.

For those unfamiliar with the Permanent School fund,it is one of the state’s oldest established designated funds. It was established by the state legislature in 1854, and funded by the Third Legislature with $2 million worth of treasury bonds that came from the state’s settlement with the United States upon annexation for payment of the state’s outstanding debts. The legislature regularly raided the fund through the Civil War for other purposes, and the Constitution of 1876 altered the fund, named it the Permanent School Fund, and prohibited its raiding for other purposes. Funded by the sale of public lands and petrochemical and mining royalties on public lands, today its funds are used to guarantee the issuance of general obligation bonds by independent school districts in Texas. For a mere $2,300 per bond issuance, school districts can have the PSF insure their bonds, negating the need for private bond insurance–which can be quite costly.

With $10 billion in bonds sold last year (including these bonds sold) by Texas schools, plus another $7 billion passed this past May, the PSF has a mere $371.7 million in capacity left to back upcoming bond issues.

Although this could place many Texas school districts in dire circumstances, this has happened before:

“Once, in December 2004,” said Cassie Huggins of the TEA’s state funding office. “Between December, January, and February back then, there were about 25 different school districts that were denied the guarantee due to a lack of available capacity.”

The maximum the PSF can guarantee is $56.3; it currently backs about $47.8 billion, including $4.6 billion issued this year, with $5.3 billion in bonds already in process or approved, but not yet sold. A 5% reserve fund for the Permanent School Fund must be maintained; this equals about $2.8 billion.

This is particularly interesting because the Texas Legislature has already taken steps to allow the PSF to issue additional bonds–up to five times its market value. The bill, SB 389 from the 80th Texas Legislature last year, was authored by State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano). Only two sessions prior, the Legislature passed legislation to increase the multiplier from 2 to 2 and a half. State Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston) authored the legislation, HB 1295 (which was sponsored in the Shapiro.

However, the changes from the 80th Texas Legislature haven’t yet become a reality. Why? Because final approval for the changes must come from the Internal Revenue Service. The changes have been before the IRS since 2007. Bond Buyer offers the following reasoning:

One Dallas bond lawyer said the delay is partly due to the collapse of the auction-rate securities market, which has drawn federal regulatory resources away from other areas.

Huggins said the TEA has yet to hear anything from the IRS, and a representative from the office of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Tex., also said he hasn’t heard of an imminent ruling from the Treasury Department.

I guess we’ll see if this added publicity increases outcry from people like Sen. Hutchison to put a fire under the Internal Revenue Service.

Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office has been going after so-called mortgage rescue companies. Public Citizen would like for that office to next go after the subprime mortgage lenders.

Public Citizen Texas President Tom Smith says California and Illinois both filed suit against Countrywide Financial last week claiming it used deceptive trade practices to get people into homes they couldn’t afford.

He says Texas should join that suit. “While other states take action against shady subprime mortgage lenders, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott does nothing. Texas has a deceptive practices act, yet the statute has not been enforced against home-lending giants like Countrywide. The actions in Illinois and California show that Abbott has the authority to do much more than sit by and watch as thousands of Texans lose their homes each month.”

Attorney General’s spokesman Tom Kelley says the office can’t comment on possible ongoing investigations nor can it talk about contemplated legal action.

It is a very interesting question: why hasn’t Texas joined the suits against Countrywide? Perhaps because they are too busy directing resources to bogus voter fraud prosecutions.

The lawsuit is here.

The suit requests the court to “disqualify Davis from the November 2008 general election.”

The suit follows the same line of argument as three Fort Worth firefighters charged back in January, when they alleged in a suit that Davis couldn’t run for the state senate because she didn’t officially step down from her seat on the Fort Worth City Council before filing her candidacy.

“In effect, Davis sought to become a candidate for the Legislature at the same time she continued to hold a ‘lucrative office’, exercise her duties and enjoy the benefits of office as a member of the City Council,” the suit alleges.

We’ll see what happens, but I doubt Brimer’s lawsuit will be successful.

This week, we mark 232 years since our nation declared its independence and launched the greatest experiment in democracy the world has ever known.

That experiment continues to illuminate. The Founders were revolutionaries – and we should always think of them so – who designed our government to be an institution answerable to the American people. Our government works because regular men and women stand for election among their peers who, by their vote, grant the ultimate consent to be governed. No matter the great change that has taken place since 1776, our government was designed to survive “politics” because American citizens are able to control their own course.

The mood is revolutionary again because - for the first time in over fifty years - whoever is elected President will be “new” to the White House. Not since Eisenhower’s 1952 election over Stevenson have we witnessed a campaign without the President or his Vice President seeking the office. And since no incumbent is defending the past four years, the 2008 election cycle is about demanding an honest assessment of our condition and finding a new way forward. We’ll find that way forward by voting our conscience.

I take my kids to vote with me because the citizen’s act of voting is the trademark American experience. I’m asking you today to take stock of your vital role as a Texan and an American, and reflect on your commitment to making our democracy work. We’ll have an opportunity to vote in November 2008 in a life changing election for several offices, and each of us has a duty to cast an informed vote. We’ll be voting for office holders who decide matters vital to our family’s well being. While the politicians and special interests hope for minimal scrutiny from the public, and they expect most people to be “tuned out” until just before the November 4, cycle, it’s July 4 and we have four months until election-day. We have the opportunity to learn who the candidates are, study their issues and ask questions. We can afford to be casually indifferent about a few things in life, but casting an educated vote is a vital civic challenge we ought to accept given what’s at stake: the robustness of our economy, the quality of our foreign relations, and – clearly the most important issue - our domestic investment in our next generation’s health, education and welfare. Today’s vote determines our future. We love our children and grandchildren; let’s remember that when we vote.

Amid the many family picnics, fireworks displays, and community parades, let’s take a moment to reflect on the enormity of our American experience and consider the heroes and generations whose shoulders we stand upon. Our commitment this Independence Day is to participate and defend the democratic ideal committed to us by the Founders and the Americans who followed.

Joe Jaworski served as Galveston Mayor Pro-tem and is currently running for the Texas Senate in District 11.

State Representative Armando “Mando” Martinez (D-Weslaco) announced today his commitment to have a medical school located in the Rio Grande Valley. The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) currently oversees the Regional Academic Health Center (RAHC) in the Rio Grande Valley. RAHC is an outreach effort of UTHSCSA and is not an independent, stand-alone campus.

“The Regional Academic Health Center (RAHC) has played a tremendous role in the Rio Grande Valley. It is now time that a full-fledge, independent medical school be established”, Representative Martinez stated. “The population of the Rio Grande Valley exceeds 1 million people. We are one of the fastest growing areas not only in Texas, but the entire United States. A medical school along the border affords a unique learning experience that is not available at medical schools located in large metropolitan cities.”

Currently, only three doctorate programs are offered in the Rio Grande Valley. A medical school would expand the numbers of doctoral degrees as well as the education opportunities for South Texans.

“It was always a goal of my late uncle and former State Representative Renato Cuellar to establish a medical school in the Valley, and I vow to make it one of my goals, too,” Representative Martinez stated, “The medical profession, the business community, our citizens, and the entire Rio Grande Valley delegation will need to work together to make the dream of a medical school in the Rio Grande Valley a reality. It is possible. I have already made the initial step by sending letters to all of the members of the House Higher Education Committee and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus Higher Education Task Force requesting that a medical school be established in the Rio Grande Valley.”

The administration of Texas Governor Rick Perry is once again caught up in its own pay-to-play culture. This time, it appears as though Governor Perry’s recent request for a waiver of federal corn-based ethanol production mandates was a “thank you” to right-wing poultry king Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim.

Pilgrim met with Perry on March 25 and asked him to seek a waiver from the federal mandates. Six days later on March 31, Pilgrim donated $100,000 to the Republican Governor’s Association–a group which Perry chairs.

Then, on April 17 (no doubt with Perry’s assistance), Pilgrim had a closed-door audience with nine Republican governors during an energy conference in Grapevine.

On April 24, lobbyists for Pilgrim’s Pride and public relations folks from the Austin firm Public Strategies met with Perry’s staff to formalize the final details of the waiver request which was issued the next day.

Of course, Team Perry has an every-ready response for the situation:

Perry aide Allison Castle said political donors get nothing but “good government” from Perry. She said he asked for the waiver because of ethanol’s potential negative impact on livestock and poultry producers. Castle said Perry is scheduled to meet with EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson this month.

That’s a bit hard to buy. Why? Because Perry’s waiver request has national implications, as the Chronicle notes:

Perry’s April 25 waiver request has national implications because an EPA waiver of renewable fuel standards would affect all ethanol production in the United States, not just in Texas. On Monday, more than four dozen House Republicans made a similar plea to the EPA, asking for a reduction in ethanol production mandates.

Perry pressed for the waiver despite an April 10 Texas A&M study that showed a waiver of federal mandates on ethanol production would have little or no effect in driving down the price of feed corn for poultry and livestock. The A&M study blamed rising corn prices on the cost of oil, global demands for corn and commodities speculation.

At Perry’s request, A&M did a second study that was released in June. It found that if corn crops were short because of Midwestern flooding, a waiver would significantly lower corn prices.

Once again, an unsurprising bit of “pay to play” from the Governor’s office. This isn’t the first time Perry has been under the microscope for donations to the Republican Governors Association seemingly connected to his actions right here in Texas. It happened with Merck and the controversial HPV vaccine mandate last year.

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Dallas and water district officials sued in January 2007 to block a wildlife refuge designation for 25,281 acres in Anderson and Cherokee counties, saying the area includes land necessary for the Fastrill Reservoir. The designation would block the land from being sold, cleared or used for a reservoir, according to court documents.
The lawsuit said Fish and Wildlife didn’t consider other sites before making the federal designation and cut short the review process. Judge Jorge Solis sided with environmental groups in dismissing that argument.
On Tuesday, Dallas and the Texas Water Development Board filed an emergency motion seeking a temporary injunction on the land pending an appeal or other action.
“All we can say right now is we are aware of the ruling. We are currently discussing it with the office of the attorney general,” said Carla Daws, spokeswoman for the Texas Water Development Board.
Chris Bowers, first assistant attorney for Dallas, said that it is unusual for a judge to issue an injunction against the winning party in a lawsuit but that in this case, maintaining the status quo is critical.
In the injunction request, S. Cass Weilland, a lawyer for Dallas, wrote, “Forcing the plaintiffs to find water sources elsewhere is simply not an adequate remedy and cannot be compensated for in money damages.”

After reading a post at Alternet on the Ten Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency, I thought we could surely do something like that for some of our elected officials right here in Texas.

We’ll start with the Ten Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Perry Governorship, and move on to the Ten Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Craddick Speakership, and end with the Ten Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Cornyn Senatorship.

But, we want your input. Drop us a comment and tell us what you believe are some of the worst moments of Perry’s, Craddick’s, and Cornyn’s time in office. We’ll put the posts up later this week.