Austin, TX: Today Governor Perry vetoed House Bill 950, escalating the Republican War on Texas Women. HB 950 mirrors the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which Congress passed in 2009. Overriding the will of the Texas legislature, Governor Perry has ensured that Texas remains on the shameful and very short list of states without laws committed to pay equity for women.

Rick Perry and his Republican Party’s War on Texas Women has been picking up steam in recent days. Perry just this week opened the special session of the legislature to force consideration of a number of anti-choice bills. These bills were unable to advance in the regular session, but with the rules of the special session, they are all but guaranteed passage.  And now the Governor is tearing down the bipartisan work of Texas legislators who in the regular session came together to ensure women are paid equally for equal work.

Even today, in 2013, women are paid 77 cents, on average, for every dollar men earn. This pay gap only worsens for women of color, with African American women paid 64 cents and Hispanic women paid 55 cents for every dollar earned by men. Surely this problem requires the attention of Texas government.

“Our Democratic values are clear: women deserve equal pay for equal work. We know that when women vote, Democrats win, and we can certainly say that Governor Perry is reminding all Texas women, and all fair-minded Texas men, that we have plenty of reasons to vote him out of office very soon,” says TCDP Chairwoman Jan Soifer. “It is horrifying that Governor Perry personally has decided to roll back the clock in Texas and continue to wage this War on Women. One lesson is clear: Republicans do not value women as equals.”

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Special sessions are the emergency rooms of legislation: much of the work done there could have been avoided if people had taken some care…

Gov. Rick Perry added a couple of other issues, both of which came up during the regular session and, after legislative consideration of one kind or another — leaving something ignored on the shelf is a kind of legislative consideration, after all — neither one emerged at the end.

Now they’re in the emergency room. Legislation that would tighten regulations for abortion providers and outlaw abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy — heralded by the governor in a mid-December speech before the beginning of the session and scarcely mentioned since — is now on the special session agenda. So is legislation to clear up sentencing guidelines for 17-year-olds…

Rick Perry really has it in for the women of Texas this week.

As if his efforts to all-but-ban abortion in Texas weren’t enough, now Rick Perry has vetoed the Texas version of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have made clear that women have the right to sue over gender-based pay discrimination and extend the time for that suit to 180 days after the last discriminatory check…

Apple and Google are among the many corporations to have argued that America’shigh corporate tax rates discourage companies from bringing offshore profits — and hence jobs — back home to the United States. Yet after considering several decades of historical data on the U.S. corporate tax rate and economic growth, a new policy brief contends that there is no statistical relationship between the two factors.

The brief, by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, finds that lowering the U.S. corporate income tax rate would not increase the country’s economic growth. Indeed, EPI goes as far as to say there is no evidence to support that the tax rate and economic growth are correlated at all.

Since the 2012 presidential election, the political future of Texas has been subject to much speculation, given the state’s potential to influence national elections.

Lopsided support among minority voters nationwide for President Obama and Democrats has spurred intense interest in Texas’ booming Hispanic population. Plenty of ink has been spilled on the possibility that Texas could soon “turn blue” if only Democrats can tap the state’s reservoir of Hispanic voters — an electorate that grew by 38 percent between 2000 and 2010. Indeed, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has publicly mused whether the Republican Party will go the way of the Whigs if the party continues to lose Hispanics to the Democrats.

The last time Texas redrew its political maps in the middle of the decade, Texas Democrats fled to Oklahoma to protest Tom DeLay’s unprecedented power grab in 2003.

Now Texas Republicans are at it again, with Governor Rick Perry calling a special session of the legislature to certify redistricting maps that were deemed intentionally discriminatory by a federal court in Washington and modified, with modest improvements, by a district court in San Antonio last year. Republicans want to quickly ratify the interim maps drawn for 2012 by the court in San Antonio before the court has a chance to improve them for 2014 and future elections. “Republicans figured out that if the courts rule on these maps, they’re going to make them better for Latinos and African-Americans,” says Matt Angle, director of the Texas Democratic Trust.

Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/174652/texas-redistricting-fight-shows-why-voting-rights-act-still-needed#ixzz2VMzfpsCe

BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — Becoming an American can be bad for your health.

A growing body of mortality research on immigrants has shown that the longer they live in this country, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And while their American-born children may have more money, they tend to live shorter lives than the parents.

As House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts expressed optimism that the Legislature would approve a budget in time to avoid a special session, others were still expressing uncertainty as a pair of critical votes were set to take place Monday.

The 2014-15 deal that budget conferees reached Friday hinges on the approval ofSenate Joint Resolution 1, which would ask voters to create a fund for water infrastructure projects, and House Bill 1025, a supplemental appropriations bill for the 2012-13 budget. SJR 1 is on the House’s Monday calendar, while HB 1025 is on the calendar in the Senate…

We all love Texas. And there are certain areas in which all of us who love Texas should agree that Texas can do better. We all love Texas. And there are certain areas in which all of us who love Texas should agree that Texas can do better.

One of those is healthcare. And Texas had a golden opportunity this session to increase healthcare for Texans while simultaneously supercharging our economy.

It’s shaping up to be a colossal missed opportunity – for Texas and for all of its people. So far this year, the Legislature has passed on the tens of billions of dollars that the federal government is offering the state to expand Medicaid to cover more Texans. The goal is obvious: by ensuring that more people have health insurance, more people will seek help before small maladies become huge healthcare problems that send those folks to emergency rooms – and their bills to taxpayers. One of those is healthcare. And Texas had a golden opportunity this session to increase healthcare for Texans while simultaneously supercharging our economy. It’s shaping up to be a colossal missed opportunity – for Texas and for all of its people. So far this year, the Legislature has passed on the tens of billions of dollars that the federal government is offering the state to expand Medicaid to cover more Texans. The goal is obvious: by ensuring that more people have health insurance, more people will seek help before small maladies become huge healthcare problems that send those folks to emergency rooms – and their bills to taxpayers…