Headlines

Local News
2009 Meant Tight Funds for Bryan and College Station

According to an article in the Bryan-College Station Eagle, Bryan and College Station budgets and water supplies came in lower than expected this year, and both cities were looking for ways to make up for budget shortfalls. Each city handled the issue differently. College Station addressed its $1 million general fund shortfall by holding vacant positions open, cutting travel and training costs, reducing maintenance at parks and city facilities and holding off on replacing old equipment. Bryan officials decided to lay off eight employees and eliminate two positions in an effort to make up for a $1.3 million budget shortfall. Officials said the rest of the shortfall would be recovered through a change in the way the city offers insurance to retirees and through a reduction in the number of times city parks are mowed each year.

Local Politics
Sen. Hutchison focuses on transportation issues in stops in Waco, across Texas

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was campaigning in Waco on this week, unveiling transportation policy proposals to unclog Texas’ highways, connect Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston with a high-speed rail system and to “clean up” the Texas Department of Transportation. The Waco Herald-Tribune reported it was the senator’s third event in Waco since kicking off her gubernatorial campaign in August and her second stop at Tejas Logistics, a warehouse company based in East Waco. The event was sandwiched between speeches in Tyler and Dallas, and Hutchison has scheduled events in San Antonio, Austin and Houston today. The state’s senior senator, who hopes to defeat Governor Rick Perry in a March Republican primary, laid out a series of reforms, including new restrictions on toll-road construction and more checks on spending, as well as a plan to connect the state’s roads with its railroads, airports and waterways.

Texas News
Poverty Growing in Texas Schools

According to an article in the Houston Chronicle, almost six out of 10 Texas public schoolchildren hail from low-income families, marking a troubling spike in poverty over the last decade, a new state report finds. The increase coincides with a significant jump in the number of Hispanic students, while fewer Anglo students were enrolled last year than 10 years ago, according to the study by the Texas Education Agency. Schools also are educating many more children whose primary language is not English. The rapidly changing makeup of the Texas public school classroom poses growing challenges for the state. Impoverished and disadvantaged children are more likely to falter academically and drop out, and educating struggling students can be costly. The state's school funding system is set up to pay districts more for their impoverished students, but some believe the extra dollars are not enough. This year, the price tag is $2.8 billion, according to the TEA.

Texas Politics
Finger-Pointing Grows on State Education Board

A feud on the State Board of Education has spun off a new round of conflict-of-interest questions, this time regarding senior member Geraldine Miller, Republican from Dallas, from two colleagues who doubt she can stay clear of $1.2 billion the board plans to invest in real estate projects. The San Antonio Express-News reports that Miller's family runs the state's largest independent real estate brokerage firm, Henry S. Miller Realty Services. She has been critical of the board's decision to invest part of the $22 billion Public School Fund in real estate, and the fact that her opposition was public is likely to create conflicts of interest for her when some of those real estate deals begin next year, say board members David Bradley, R-Beaumont, and Rick Agosto, D-San Antonio. A Texas Education Agency lawyer downplayed those concerns, and a spokesman for Miller said they were manufactured because of how she votes on curriculum and other non-financial issues.

National News
Report Says ACORN Didn't Commit Voter Fraud or Misuse Federal Funding

According to an article at TruthOut.org, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) did not commit voter fraud, and it didn't misuse federal funding in the last five years, according to a recently released report prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan investigational arm of Congress. Among its findings, CRS also reported that recently enacted federal legislation to prohibit funding to ACORN raises significant constitutional concerns. The report said courts "may have a sufficient basis" to conclude that the legislation "violates the prohibition against bills of attainder." Also, concerning recent "sting" operations related to ACORN, although state laws vary, two states, Maryland and California, "appear to ban private recording of face to face conversations absent the consent of all the participants," the report said. The CRS report was requested by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank in September.

National Politics
Allen Stanford Helped Pete Sessions Score Big Political Victory

Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) offered aid and comfort to disgraced financier Allen Stanford, who's accused of bilking investors of $7 billion. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that Sessions wrote Stanford "I love you and believe in you," in a February 17, 2009 e-mail, according to the Miami Herald in an exclusive report this week. A Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates that employees of Allen Stanford-led Stanford Financial ranked No. 2 among Sessions' donors during the 2004 election cycle, accounting for $24,275. The Stanford donation total ranked ahead of massive firms such as SBC Communications, Ernst & Young and Crow Holdings, all of which have notable presences in Sessions' Texas District 32, situated in Dallas and its suburbs.

Foreign Policy
U.S. Looks to Intensify Yemen Campaign

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration is likely to intensify pressure on Yemen's president to focus his security forces against al Qaeda militants, following claims that the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing originated there. The U.S. also is discussing increasing its counterterrorism support to Yemen from $70 million this year to as much as $190 million in 2010, according to a senior military official. U.S. security policy toward Yemen had been increasingly focused on President Ali Abdullah Saleh even before the botched attack, officials said. His government in recent months has shown willingness to coordinate with the Obama administration in counterterrorism operations within his country.

War and Peace
Afghanistan Civilian Casualties Rise Ten Percent in 2009

Civilian deaths in Afghanistan rose more than 10 percent in the first 10 months of 2009, UN figures showed, amid anger over the alleged killing of children in a Western military operation. AFP reports that figures released to AFP by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) put civilian deaths in the Afghan war at 2,038 for the first 10 months of 2009, up from 1,838 for the same period of 2008 -- an increase of 10.8 percent. The figures were released a day after President Hamid Karzai launched an investigation into reports that 10 people, most of them school children, were killed in a raid by foreign troops near the Pakistan border. The UN calculations show the vast majority, or 1,404 civilians, were killed by insurgents fighting for the overthrow of Karzai's government and to eject Western troops. UNAMA said 468 deaths were caused by pro-government forces, including NATO and US-led forces, and 166 by "other actors".

Economy
State-Level Data Show Recovery Act Protecting Millions From Poverty

According to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, while the recession is expected to drive states’ poverty rates up for 2009, new analysis based on Census data shows that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is keeping large numbers of Americans out of poverty in states across the country. In addition to boosting economic activity and preserving or creating jobs, the recovery act is softening the recession’s impact on poverty by directly lifting family incomes. The Center’s analysis, which covers 36 states and the District of Columbia, examines the effect on poverty of seven ARRA provisions: the expansion of three tax credits for working families, two provisions that strengthen unemployment insurance assistance, a provision that boosts food stamp benefits, and a one-time payment for retirees, veterans, and people with disabilities. Nationally, these provisions are keeping more than 6 million Americans out of poverty and reducing the severity of poverty for 33 million more.

Environmental
Sea-Level Rise Quickening Along East Coast

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have learned that along the Atlantic Coast, including New Jersey, sea level rose three times faster during the 20th century than it did during the previous 4,000 years. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that at one location in North Carolina, they fixed the date of the rapid acceleration to between 1879 and 1915, after the Industrial Revolution had taken deep hold, lending credence to the connection between the rising temperatures that occurred then and rising sea levels. Scientists predict sea levels will rise as a result of global warming, but by how much, when, and where it will have the most effect is unclear. The studies suggested a strong acceleration in overall sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic Coast, including in New Jersey and Delaware. Levels there are rising not only because of higher water - due to melting polar ice and expansion of a warmer ocean - but because the land is sinking. In two papers published recently in the journal Geology, the researchers and collaborators teased out details of the complex relationship between the land and sea on the East Coast, mapping an epic geologic history that could help scientists predict what might happen under various climate-change scenarios.

Human Rights
Thailand Deports Hmong Asylum Seekers to Laos

According to an article by Inter Press Service, in a move that places greater weight on growing regional solidarity over historical ties with a western superpower, Thailand ordered its military to forcibly return over 4,000 men, women and children from the Hmong ethnic community to Laos, the country they had fled in search of political asylum. This week the first batch of 440 Hmong—an ethnic tribe living in the mountains of northern and central Laos—from an isolated camp in the Petchabun province in north-eastern Thailand was removed under the watchful eye of over 4,500 soldiers and police. Bangkok’s decision to send the Hmong back to communist-ruled Laos has prompted protests from a range of international actors, notably the United States. Washington has been equally troubled by Thai authorities justifying the deportation after characterising the majority of Hmong as "economic migrants," not refugees. The U.S. government, the United Nations and concerned human rights groups state that at least 158 of the Hmong asylum seekers had been recognised as refugees by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). And a further 80 had "bullet wounds," suggesting that they had fled violence in Laos.

Civil Rights
Disabled Workers Paid Cents Per Hour at State-Run Homes

More than 300 mentally retarded people are being paid less than the minimum wage to work at the state-run Woodward and Glenwood homes for the disabled. State records obtained by The Des Moines Register under the Iowa open-records law show that 74 of the mentally retarded workers are paid an average wage of about 60 cents an hour. One averages 11 cents an hour working for a company owned by one of the world's richest private equity firms, the Carlyle Group. Those wages are legal under a 71-year-old federal law that enables employers to pay the disabled less than the minimum wage. The law has always been controversial, but the alleged exploitation of mentally retarded employees by Henry's Turkey Service in Atalissa has rekindled the national debate on subminimum wages. The federal law is intended to ensure that jobs are available for people who cannot perform at the same level as people without disabilities. It has proved divisive even among the disabled, their families and mental health advocates. Citing the situation in Atalissa, the Association for Persons in Supported Employment is calling for a gradual phaseout of the minimum wage exemption. The organization says the exemption leads to a segregated work force and advances the notion that a disabled worker is not as deserving of base-line, minimum wage protections.

Reproductive Rights
Utah to Introduce Law Requiring Abortion Clinics to Display Ultrasound Images

According to an article by United Press International, a Utah lawmaker plans to introduce a law that would require abortion clinics to display ultrasound images so pregnant women can see them. Representative Carl Wimmer, a Republican, told The Salt Lake Tribune he believes the three abortion clinics in the state do not want patients to see the images of their fetuses before the procedure. Current state law requires the clinics to offer ultrasounds but says nothing about how the images are displayed. Wimmer's proposed bill would also require clinics to offer a detailed description of what is on the screen. Wimmer, who drafted his bill with the national organization Americans United For Life, would like ultrasounds to be mandatory. But he plans to wait for the outcome of litigation over mandatory ultrasound laws in other states.

Race and Racism
Neo-Nazis Use Deceptive Music Downloads to Attract Young People to White Supremacy

In an effort to lure young people into the white supremacist movement, neo-Nazis are using deceptive new tactics to appeal directly to high school and college students through advertisements in their school newspapers, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which actively monitors neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. One scheme hatched by neo-Nazi Kevin McGuire of Bozeman, Montana involves placing advertisements in school newspapers offering "free music downloads." As a result of the scheme, last month unsuspecting students at high schools in San Francisco and Carmel, Indiana were apparently tricked into running ads promoting the racist "Victory Forever" site operated by McGuire. In an apparent attempt to be misleading, the Victory Forever site initially displayed a page of music by independent artists, including at least one African-American artist. However, between the time when the ads were purchased and when they actually ran, the site was changed to its present, explicitly white supremacist form.