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Photos: HuffingtonPost.com
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Photos: HuffingtonPost.com
Texas Gov. Perry (R), who has taken every opportunity in recent weeks to slam President Obama's economic stimulus and recovery program, did so again Wednesday in remarks to several hundred Texas home builders gathered outside the Texas Capitol.Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) News Item Two:
Gov. Perry’s opposition to the economic stimulus program isn’t shared by the Texas Association of Builders. According to a Dallas Morning News report, Scott Norman, the Association’s executive director, said he hopes Texas takes every dollar it can get. “From our industry, we need it to succeed,” Norman said. “We need the stock market to rebound. We need the credit markets to rebound. And we need people to get out there and drive our economy.”
Texas stands to get $17 billion from the just-passed federal stimulus package. It includes an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers, although Norman said, “We wanted more. We were pushing for anything, obviously.”
Perry's likely Republican primary opponent next year, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, voted against and also stands opposed to President Obama's economic stimulus and recovery program.
Gov. Rick Perry, who strongly supports teaching only "abstinence" sex education in Texas schools, greeted several hundred anti-choice activists rallying outside the Capitol. Gov. Perry promised the group that he would prevent embryonic stem cell research in Texas and touted his record for passing more restrictions on stem cell science and research than any previous Texas governor. [Apparently, Gov. Perry does not think Texas needs the high tech science dollars flowing into Texas to replace the crumbling telecom industry that is rapidly disappearing from Texas' "silicon prairie" corridor.]
Gov. Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst are strongly pushing 2009 Tx legislative session legislation mandating that doctors require women seeking information about an abortion must view their own fetal ultrasound image and listen to the fetal heartbeat monitor.
Jim Dunnam, Tx House Democratic caucus chairman has observed that if Gov. Perry and other anti-abortion leaders would support broader sex education, such as provided for in the “Education Works!” 2009 Texas House and Senate legislation (HB741/SB515) – instead of strictly abstinence only – fewer abortions would be contemplated.
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Kathy Miller's news conference announcing the report |
Teenagers who receive abstinence-only sex education and pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a large federal survey released last month.Related Links:
More than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but the percentage who practice precautions against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for those receiving abstinence-only education and making abstinence pledges.
…require schools to still discuss abstinence but also require information be included alongside about testing and prevention for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and complete, medically-accurate information about the health benefits and risks of contraception and condoms.No Texas school district is required to offer a sex education course. If they choose to, they must emphasize abstinence over all forms of contraception. At this time, schools are not required to offer any information on contraception at all. Study after study has shown that abstinence-only education does not prevent teens from having sex.
Additionally, this bill includes strategies to encourage young people to develop healthy communication with their parents and peers, and help build other living skills such as goal setting and responsible decision-making about sexuality.
Quoted from PPNT website
WaPo/ABC News: 73 percent say Obama is “trying to compromise with the Republican leaders in Congress” while just 34 percent believe Republican leaders are trying to compromise with Obama.As Greg Sargent points out, the New York Times/CBS News poll had a particularly interesting finding regarding bipartisanship. According to the poll, “a sizable majority wants Obama to pursue his policies with or without Republican support” while “a huge majority says that Republicans should emphasize working with Obama in a bipartisan way over pursuing their policy ideas.”
NYT/CBS News: 74 percent think Obama is “trying to work with Republicans in Congress” while just 31 percent think Republicans in Congress are trying to work with Obama.
Fox News/Opinion Dynamics: 68 percent believe that Obama “has sincerely tried to reach out to Republicans and be bipartisan” while only 33 percent believe Republicans have “sincerely tried to be helpful to Barack Obama and be bipartisan.”
President Obama, responding to conservative Republican Governors' public criticism of the economic stimulus package, said the criticism has more to do with politics than policy. Texas Gov. Rick Perry waged a weeks long aggressive campaign and co-wrote an op-ed piece with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford opposing the stimulus bill. Last week Gov. Perry grudgingly informed the White House that he'll accept "some" stimulus money, but left the door open to not taking all of the money allocated to Texas. Several southern conservative governors including Texas Gov. Perry (R), South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jinda (R) have made public statements that they are considering rejecting part of the money because they do not want to accept money that would fund social programs, like unemployment insurance to every unemployed worker, to which they are opposed. | |
Obama speech to governors 22nd February : no time for politics. Part 1 | |
Obama speech to governors 22nd February : no time for politics. Part 2 |
Before you bash the idea of New Deal-style government spending, take a look around. Some Texans have been "agin" federal projects since 1933 and the beginning of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s original New Deal. Nothing wrong with watching pennies. But, if you want to see the New Deal in action, you don’t have to go very far. . .
Start at Dealey Plaza.
Those oak trees were planted with Washington money. The columns were sculpted with New Deal dollars.
Back before freeways were built, and before President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade made its fateful turn onto Elm Street, Dealey Plaza was known as the "Gateway to Dallas."
In today’s dollars, that project cost $1.5 million.
The Children’s Aquarium in Fair Park and the Museum of Nature & Science were New Deal projects. So was the lagoon — and the drainage system, built quickly before Dallas hosted 6 million visitors for the 1936 Texas Centennial state celebration and fair.
In Fort Worth, our parrots and Komodo dragons in the Fort Worth Zoo live in shelters built for monkeys and alligators during the New Deal. (The zoo didn’t make the cut for projects this go-round.)
Federal money helped build the Will Rogers Memorial Center and plant roses in the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. Same for its counterpart in East Texas, the Tyler Municipal Rose Garden.
The New Deal also built not one but two roads between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Texas 183 from Love Field to Fort Worth eventually became Airport Freeway, paving the way for our cities’ single greatest success, Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.
Spur 303 — Pioneer Parkway — still connects Oak Cliff with Grand Prairie, Arlington and Fort Worth.
Government money built Fort Worth’s art-deco high school football stadium, Farrington Field. The New Deal built the county hospital, the downtown municipal courts building, a now-gone library and college classrooms in Arlington.
College history professor J. Todd Moye mentioned a few of the projects Monday on the opinion page. He wrote: "Imagine for a moment what Fort Worth would look like had the government not made those investments." Yes.
Not only that, but imagine San Antonio without the River Walk.
Imagine Texas without the $350 million in federal projects — $5 billion in today’s dollars — delivered by the New Deal through the Works Progress Administration and the park-building Civilian Conservation Corps.
Imagine North Texas going through the 1930s without 250,000 working-class jobs.
Maybe those weren’t "real jobs." But they paid real money that Texans spent on real rent, real groceries and real clothes. And saved real jobs.
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This is essentially the same argument Texas Gov. Perry makes in leaving the door open to also turn away at least a portion of the federal stimulus money.But it is not clear why participating in the expanded unemployment insurance program would result in tax increases for business. By Jindal’s own estimate, the recovery package would have funded his state’s unemployment expansion for three years, at which point the state could — if it chose to do so — phase out the program.
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suggested earlier today, perhaps Jindal’s presidential ambitions are “clouding” his judgement. “I think he’s been tapped as the up-and-coming Republican to petition a run for president the next time it goes around. So he has a certain vernacular, and a certain way he needs to talk right now,” Nagin said.
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