Highlights Thursday from the Texas Legislature

[Sam Spade]

Since people have been complaining here that there's not enough talk about Texas politics in general, I'm going to start posting anything and everything I read in my daily Texas newspaper reading (election-wise or legislation-wise) so that y'all can comment.


Highlights Thursday from the Texas Legislature

AUSTIN — This time, leading Republicans and Democrats agreed. They joined together at the Texas Capitol on Thursday to proclaim that they don't want an expansion of gambling.

"Empty promises to get rich quick do nothing but bring devastation and addiction," said Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party. "We're being asked to gamble away our children's future in the biggest con game of all times."

Legislators looking to cut property taxes while giving more money to schools are considering more than 20 gambling proposals, including video slot machines at racetracks and Las Vegas-style casinos. Conservative Republicans and a group of leading Democrats are working to block efforts to expand wagering.

Some Democratic leaders are accusing Republican legislative leaders of chicanery, saying they created a bad education bill that doesn't have the funding needed to truly end the Texas school finance crisis. The Democrats say those Republicans are secretly pushing gambling without publicly supporting it.

"If we get gambling, it wasn't a Democrat who gave it to you," said Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, to a crowd chanting "No slots" and toting signs with slogans like "Don't mess with the Texas Constitution."

Republican Gov. Rick Perry last year included video slot machines in his own education finance plan. But on Thursday he said he was never pushing the idea, only laying out an assortment of options for lawmakers to consider.

He said he still doesn't consider gambling legislation dead this session, although it would be difficult to pass.

"While the Legislature's still in town and working, and we've got 45, 50-plus days, and I would think everything's still on the table from the standpoint of a legitimate issue," Perry said.

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WORKERS COMP

The House gave final approval Thursday to its revamp of the Texas workers' compensation system. Supporters promise the proposal will deliver better medical care to injured employees and lower costs for business.

While the House tentatively approved the bill the previous day with a 144-3 recorded vote, the chamber gave final approval Thursday in an unrecorded voice vote. Under House rules, a voice vote on final passage presumes that all House members voted "yes," unless they state otherwise in the House journal.

Like the Senate version passed about two weeks ago, the House bill would create managed-care style networks of doctors similar to private health plans. The current system generally allows injured employees to pick their physician from a state-approved doctor list.

The House and Senate will now negotiate any differences in their two proposals.

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ASBESTOS LITIGATION REFORM

Chip Hough spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending his company in asbestos lawsuits. The catch, he said, is his company never had anything to do with the carcinogen.

"The bottom line is companies like mine have to pay for asbestos litigation, but the truth is we all pay, and we all lose," Hough, managing partner of Basic Industries of South Texas, Ltd., said during a news conference by a group called Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse.

Legislation filed in the Senate and House aims to limit the number of asbestos lawsuits filed in Texas by allowing only those who are truly sick from exposure to sue. The proposal would eliminate the current two-year time limit for filing of personal injury lawsuits when an individual finds out they've been exposed to asbestos.

Supporters of the legislation say it protects those who have been injured by asbestos exposure by preventing those who aren't sick from suing and getting money they don't deserve, driving companies to bankruptcy and depriving real victims of compensation.

Critics of the proposal say it protects companies that have harmed Texans.

"The bills strip away the legal rights of thousands of victims of asbestos-related diseases," said Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch.

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HONORING FAMOUS TEXANS

The House honored two famous deceased Texans: boxing great Jack Johnson of Galveston and Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla, a native of Lake Jackson who later lived in Corpus Christi.

Johnson, the first black world heavyweight boxing champion, was featured recently by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.

Selena, as she was known on stage, was a star in the Tejano music world and was starting to cross over into mainstream pop when at the age of 23 she was shot to death on March 31, 1995, by the founder of her fan club.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The idea that we're not going to have any gambling in Texas, I think, is a fairy tale." Republican Gov. Rick Perry discussing existing illegal gambling and proposed video slot machine legislation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The asbestos thing is a good example of the power of lobbyists IMO...

I've got a question for you (I asked it ages ago but the thread got buried).

A while ago I were looking at a few maps of statwide races in 2002 (including Gubernatorial) and I noticed that a cluster of counties in northwest Texas usually voted for the Democratic candidate and one of them, Foard, with over 60% of the vote pretty much all the time.
In the past two Presidential elections they all voted for Bush, and mostly by large margins (although he lost a few precincts out there in 2000, and didn't crack 60% in Foard in 2004) but they mostly voted for Democratic candidates in previous elections, even in bad years for the Democrats.
Basically their voting patterns seem to be totally different to the counties that surround them and, not knowing a great deal about West Texas voting patterns (understatement), I don't know why this is. I'd thought it might be due to a high hispanic population, but in most cases the % of hispanics is actually lower than the rest of West Texas.
Can you explain it please? Thanks.

[Sam Spade]

Al, I honestly don't know on that one.

It's not because of demographics.  Here's a good demographic link for Foard County, for instance:

Link here.

Foard County is also not particularly different than the rest of those areas.  A good historical link is here.  It's mainly an agricultural, oil and cattle county, much like most of the area around it.

Chances are these are just old-school Texas Democrats who still vote Democrat on the local level, but are fairly socially conservative (and probably economically somewhat too).  Bush was a very popular governor here and that probably resonated into Presidential results.

Of course, since I doubt the population of any of these counties is over 2,000 max, it wouldn't take that many votes to switch either.

Texas was much like the nation in 2004 compared to 2000.  Bush gained in those more populist areas of East Texas and among rural voters in general (a large contingent in Texas) and also in many of those border South Texas towns and lost in Austin and its surrounding rich and more libertarian suburbs.

[angus]

I think Rick Perry is a very handsome man.

[Sam Spade]

Oh, and one other thing.  I know too much from friends of the family etc., how big of a ridiculous scam the asbestos lawsuit thingy was because many of them were the plaintiffs under this.

Most of the people who filed under it got hundreds of dollars maybe, max.  Most of the lawyers got millions of dollars.

I have no problem with anyone trying to curb the asbestos lawsuit stuff.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'll sift through some stuff tomorrow