Texas Insider » Legislators to Debate Stimulus Funds for Unemployment Insurance at TPPF Policy Primer

AUSTIN – The benefits and detriments of accepting federal stimulus funds for unemployment insurance will be discussed at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s March 26th Policy Primer, “Stimulus Funds for Unemployment Insurance: Accept or Reject?”

Texas’ economy stands at a crossroads in choosing whether to accept all or some of the federal economic stimulus funds. Of all the policy areas affected by the federal stimulus package, few evoke as much energy and intellectual debate as the area of unemployment insurance (UI). This matter directly affects the way we do business and the state of Texas’ economy.

Four key legislators involved in this debate will share their unique perspectives in a discussion moderated by The Honorable Talmadge Heflin, Director of the Foundation’s Center for Fiscal Policy and former Chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee.

The Policy Primer will begin at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 26th in the Legislative Conference Center (Capitol Extension, Room E2.022A).

WHAT: Policy Primer – “Stimulus Funds for Unemployment Insurance: Accept or Reject?”

WHO:

Rep. Craig Eiland – Speaker Pro Tem; Member, House Committee on Appropriations and House Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization Funding

Rep. Dan Gattis – Member, House Committee on Technology, Economic Development & Workforce

Rep. Kelly Hancock – Member, House Committee on Insurance

Rep. Mark Strama – Chairman, House Committee on Technology, Economic Development & Workforce

WHEN:

Thursday, March 26, 2009

8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

WHERE:

Legislative Conference Center

Texas Capitol, Extension Room E2.022A

About the Texas Public Policy Foundation: TPPF is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.

via Texas Insider » Legislators to Debate Stimulus Funds for Unemployment Insurance at TPPF Policy Primer.

Texas Insider » Shapiro’s Child Protection Bill Passes Senate

Jacob Fox Bill Passes through full Senate

Jacob’s Law, SB 572 by Senator Shapiro, last week passed out of the Senate Health & Human Services Committee. Jacob’s mother, Avonda, was there to testify on the bill, which requires all daycare providers to attend transportation safety training.

The training required in SB 572 would apply to providers transporting children whose

chronological or developmental age is nine-years-old or younger, and will be carried out

through the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Training topics would

include the proper use of safety restraints, vehicle maintenance, proper behavior during

transport, loading and unloading procedures, and safe accounting for each child and their

well-being.

Jacob Fox, the bill’s namesake, died in a daycare van after being left behind in 103 degree

temperatures. This year, several other cases of children being left in daycare vans have

surfaced, prompting Senator Shapiro to seek safety regulations through legislation.

via Texas Insider » Shapiro’s Child Protection Bill Passes Senate.

Texas Insider » Jindal Defends Those Who Want Obama to Fail

By Mark Preston – CNN Political Editor

WASHINGTON (CNN) — – It’s OK for Republicans to want President Obama to fail if they think he’s jeopardizing the country, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told members of his political party Tuesday night.

Jindal described the premise of the question — “Do you want the president to fail?” — as the “latest gotcha game” being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans.

“Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. “This is political correctness run amok.”

Since conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said that he hoped that Obama would fail, Republicans have been pressed by Democrats and the media about Limbaugh’s comments.

Jindal, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, told the Republican audience he would “not be brow beaten on this, and I will not kowtow to their correctness.”

“My answer to the question is very simple: ‘Do you want the president to fail?’ It depends on what he is trying to do.”

Jindal, who served two terms in the U.S. House, returned to Washington to help his former colleagues raise more than $6 million for the 2010 midterm elections. And he likely picked up important political chits, should he decide to run for president.

So far, Jindal has sidestepped questions about 2012. But on Tuesday he seemed to be laying the groundwork in case he eventually decides the political climate is right.

A video of favorable back-to-back TV reports about Jindal preceded his introduction to the audience. And Jindal used his remarks to deep-pocketed Republican donors to emphasize his vision for how the Grand Old Party can get back on track.

He made a point to criticize Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a “spending spree” that he said “is costing the taxpayers more than the Iraq war, more than the Vietnam War, and, near and dear to my heart, even more than the Louisiana Purchase.”

Jindal singled out House Republicans for standing up to Obama and helping the GOP return to its conservative roots.

The governor took a controversial stand when he refused to accept $98 million in federal stimulus money to expand unemployment benefits in Louisiana, because he said it would force an unfair tax on businesses when the funding ran out.

Democrats and other critics blasted Jindal’s decision, saying he was influenced by presidential ambitions. But many conservatives saw his decision as a principled stand.

Moments after Jindal wrapped up his remarks Tuesday, Obama held his s

via Texas Insider » Jindal Defends Those Who Want Obama to Fail.

Obama Backs Teacher Merit Pay, Charter Schools – ABC News

I don’t know what to think of this article. These are some of the things that the teachers union are against.  Is he saying this because he believes it?  Yes, American children need to spend more ime in the classroom and teachers need to be paid based on their performance since giving more money is not what will improve the performance of children, and charters schools should be encouraged to continue their good work.

 

By LIBBY QUAID AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON March 10, 2009 (AP) The Associated Press

SHARE Barack Obama greets school children after making a surprise visit to St. Columbanus Catholic School…

Barack Obama greets school children after making a surprise visit to St. Columbanus Catholic School on the South Side of Chicago, Nov. 26, 2008. President Barack Obama is promoting tighter standards for teachers and a reduced dropout rate for students as part of an education plan that, at least for now, lacks any new legislative component.

President Barack Obama called for tying teachers’ pay to student performance and expanding innovative charter schools Tuesday, embracing ideas that have provoked hostility from members of teachers unions.

He also suggested longer school days — and years — to help American children compete in the world.

In his first major speech on education, Obama said the United States must drastically improve student achievement to regain lost international standing.

“The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens,” he said. “We have everything we need to be that nation … and yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us.”

His solutions include teacher pay and charter school proposals that have met resistance among members of teachers unions, which constitute an important segment of the Democratic Party….

Click on the link to read more…..

via Obama Backs Teacher Merit Pay, Charter Schools – ABC News.

Reading Textbooks at Risk in House Appropriations Committee! – Texas Insider

James B. Cardle, Publisher, Texas Insider

Reading Textbooks at Risk in House Appropriations Committee!

Children need books to learn reading! The situation is urgent. Call your Legislator today!

Late Tuesday night, the House Appropriations Committee of the Texas Legislature posted a meeting for 4 p.m. today, March 25, 2009, to consider education budget items.

The Appropriations Committee will vote on a recommendation that would, unlike ever before:

1.) Not include funding for reading textbooks & supplemental instructional materials in the baseline Texas Education Agency (TEA) budget, but rather includes instructional materials funding only as a “contingent rider”; and

2.) Slash 25% from the amount requested by TEA to purchase new reading & language arts materials for grades K-12.

These proposals are unacceptable and unfair to Texas schoolchildren.

Without new reading textbooks & other instruction tools, how can legislators expect Texas’ school kids to pass the TAKS test for reading?

Yes, the situation is urgent – Please contact all members of the Texas Appropriations Committee listed below today, and ask them to fully fund instructional materials for reading (of all things!) in the TEA budget.

Tell the House Appropriations Committee members you support the Texas PTA position of fully funding new reading materials for Texas schoolchildren.

Texas has the money to pay for this most basic educational need, but, evidently we need your help to insure its done. Please call the Appropriations Committee and ask them to “vote yes” for our schoolchildren & their reading textbooks!

Please call today – thanks!!

Chair: Rep. Jim Pitts (512) 463-0516

Vice Chair: Rep. Richard Raymond (512) 463-0558

Rep. Jimmie Aycock (512) 463-0684

Rep. Fred Brown (512) 463-0698

Rep. Angie Button (512) 463-0486

Rep. Norma Chavez (512) 463-0622

Rep. Ellen Cohen (512) 463-0389

Rep. Brandon Creighton (512) 463-0726

Rep. Myra Crownover (512) 463-0582

Rep. Drew Darby (512) 463-0331

Rep. Joe Driver (512) 463-0574

Rep. Dawnna Dukes (512) 463-0506

Rep. Al Edwards (512) 463-0518

Rep. Craig Eiland (512) 463-0502

Rep. Ismael Flores (512) 463-0704

Rep. Helen Giddings (512) 463-0953

Rep. Abel Herrero (512) 463-0462

Rep. Scott Hochberg (512) 463-0492

Rep. Carl Isett (512) 463-0676

Rep. Susan King (512) 463-0718

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | National Politics

12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, March 25, 2009The Associated Press

HOUSTON – The U.S. Border Patrol is launching a controversial pilot project to poison plants along a 1.1-mile stretch of the Rio Grande to eliminate dense foliage used by illegal immigrants and criminals to hide.

For: The Border Patrol and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say the chemical, Imazapyr, is safe for animals and humans. The program is designed to keep Border Patrol agents safe and help make their jobs easier.

Against: Critics say the action is similar to the Agent Orange chemical program during the Vietnam War and express concern that it could be harmful over the long term, especially near the cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

What’s next: The $2.1 million pilot project is scheduled to begin this week. If successful, it could be expanded along up to 130 miles of river in the patrol’s Laredo sector, as well as other parts of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Associated Press

via ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | National Politics.

Pros, cons of immigration enforcement heard at forum | ajc.com

How did these illegals get tax ids?  Aren’t you supposed to show legal papers in order to get a tax id#?  Whose identity have they stolen?  It is ridiculous to hear them talk about how illegals have tax id#s and pay taxes (that in itself is a crime) because they are not supposed to have tax id#s.

 

By PATRICK FOX

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Feelings were mixed when about 30 people turned out in Lawrenceville Tuesday night to talk about Gwinnett County’s implementation of a federal program aimed at illegal immigrants.

Opponents pointed to a lack of direction in the enforcement in the program called 287(g), which is named for a section of the federal immigration law. It allows state and local enforcement to investigate, detain and arrest illegal immigrants on civil and criminal grounds.

People opposed to the program said it has fractured families and caused the legal system to concentrate on minor offenders. The federal act, they argued, was intended to focus on terrorists and violent illegal immigrants but has become a tool to cut a broad swath through a community of mostly law-abiding citizens.

“These are honest people,” said Richard Munoz of Norcross. “They are hardworking people.”

What the county is doing is wrong, said Andrea Alvarez of Lilburn, who announced she was born in the United States.

“Illegal immigrants pay taxes,” she said. “They have tax IDs. They pay sales taxes. They own homes.”

But there was equal passion from the opposing side.

Cregg Fulkerson, a Gwinnett property owner and founder of Legal American Workers, said everyone in this country is an immigrant, but those who belong here came through a port of entry. He spoke of the problems many undocumented immigrants create in traffic infractions and serious crime.

“I have a painting business I’m losing because of illegals,” he said. “I can’t bid over them, and the American people are using them. My main painter is from Colombia, and he’s legal. He’s staying home, too, like I am.”

Jill Benson spoke of how her neighborhood just off Buford Highway near Duluth has deteriorated from repeated gang tagging and violence.

“Thanks to the tireless efforts of neighbors and law enforcement, we seem to be making some headway,” she said. “Countless neighborhoods like mine in Gwinnett have been negatively impacted by illegal immigration [which has led to] plummeting property values and fears for our safety,” she said.

via Pros, cons of immigration enforcement heard at forum | ajc.com.

Angry citizens filled city hall to debate illegal immigration – 3/24/09 – Houston News – abc13.com

It seems like legal aliens and citizens have no rights anymore in these United States.  An illegal alien can come to our country and take away the life of a legal citizen from their family by killing them, yet, deporting an illegal is more inhumane and un-American to the families of illegal aliens than the dispicable act of killing Americans.  Go figure!  why are the families of illegals more important than the families of legal Americans?  I don’t get it.  You American immigration lawyers should be ashamed of yourself.  You are selling out your own country for a living!

 

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 | 7:07 PM HOUSTON (KTRK) — Mayor Bill White and the city council got an earful from citizens angry over the issue of illegal immigration. Get headlines and breaking news sent to you]Residents on both sides of the immigration debate filled city hall chambers. One side wants the city to ask that officers ask about the citizenship status of any persons they arrest. The issue gained new steam after an illegal immigrant shot an HPD officer in the face during a drug raid. Resident Wanda Schultz asserted, “Mayor White and the police chief are responsible for the security and safety of Houston citizens and they’re not doing their job.”

“If we let this happen, then this will lead to mass deportations and it will further break our families and our communities,” said Houstonian Cesar Espinoza.

The anti-illegal immigration group US Border Watch staged a protest outside city hall today

via Angry citizens filled city hall to debate illegal immigration – 3/24/09 – Houston News – abc13.com.

Will Only Radicals Get A Look-In at the G-20 Summit? » The Foundry

Posted March 24th, 2009 at 12.20pm in American Leadership.

It’s almost tempting to pity the world leaders who will arrive in London in a week for the G-20 summit. First, they have agreed to face questions from bloggers selected by G20 Voice, a creation of a relentlessly left-wing collection of NGOs, including Oxfam, Save the Children, and Blue State Digital.

Predictably, both the UK’s Foreign Office and its Department for International Development are also sponsoring this assembly of anti-sovereignty activists and free enterprise-haters. Also predictable is the fact that the summit will face no questions from bloggers who believe that G20 Voice’s goal of ending all inequality promotes the growth of the overbearing and tyrannical state. Since it is that state that has impoverished the countries about which G20 Voice pretends to be concerned, their enthusiasm for it is strikingly naive.

And if that’s not enough, the security measures for the summit will be intense. British authorities report that demonstrators are intent on shutting down the City, the financial center of London. The London Chamber of Commerce has advised workers to “consider wearing more casual clothing” to avoid being attacked by protesters who hate both suits and anyone who wears them. Anarchists groups are exhorting members to “burn a banker,” and a group called G20 Meltdown promises to converge on the Bank of England

led by multicolored figures representing four horsemen of the economic apocalypse — war, climate chaos, financial crimes and “land enclosures and borders.”

The final target nicely illustrates the opposition to both sovereignty and free enterprise that drives many of the planned protests: to say that the world would be better off without ‘land enclosures’ is to say that it would be better off if everyone lived as a medieval peasant and held their land in common. That would indeed be an equal world: equal in poverty, destitution, and misery.

So, on the one hand, the UK is sponsoring this campaign for economic illiteracy. On the other, it is preparing to defend the world’s leaders against the forces it is busily pandering to. That is the definition of a self-defeating strategy of appeasement. If the UK wants to make a contribution to sanity in the midst of this crisis, it might start by ending the subsidies to groups that hate both the British state and the free enterprise system that has created the wealth the state is fecklessly giving away to its enemies.

via Will Only Radicals Get A Look-In at the G-20 Summit? » The Foundry.

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures » The Foundry

Posted March 24th, 2009 at 10.20am in Ongoing Priorities.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.

President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.

President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.

President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

via Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures » The Foundry.