As Lupe Valdez and Andrew White take to the debate stage, heated past Democratic gubernatorial primaries from 1972 and 1990 highlight how the nastiest battles are often fought within a political family. Vicious runoffs resulted in political divides that didn’t heal for decades.
There is no limit to the distance Aggies will go to help those in need. During his holiday break, environmental geosciences major Brian Lynch ’19, together with geology and geophysics doctoral student Yibin Huang, joined researchers and professors from Texas A&M and the University of Guanajuato to study vulnerable mountain aquifers in Mexico.
In order to succeed, students with special needs require more than minimal support from public schools. It is the state's responsibility to ensure that these students are provided robust services during the school day that will allow them to have meaningful impact on their community upon graduation. The momentous task should not lie solely with the families of these students.
Going out of its way to change a policy that saved taxpayer dollars and spared pregnant women the hardship of detention is a new low, even for this administration. It means that pregnant women will be less likely to find lawyers to represent them in court, to receive support from their family members and community and to access the medical care they need.
In recognition of National Nurses Week (May 6-12) and the important role that nurses play in the delivery of health care, it’s time to reflect on the constraints that Texas is placing on a profession that is consistently rated the most trusted in America.
As our Commission on Public Education Finance struggles through the summer we wish them well. Most of us believe that accepting mediocrity is not very Texan. But the reality is that, without a discussion about increasing state revenue, their work can only join the myriad of other dust-covered school finance studies that have preceded them.
The world community must continue to find ways that are culturally sensitive, yet progressive, to provide young girls greater access to education, knowledge about their rights and filling the voids within their communities that can help them become entrepreneurial, independent, and most importantly, feel valued.
When the dean of the University of Michigan’s business school, (which now has a Sam Wyly Hall), asked me how his state can be more like Texas, I told him, “Texas is immigrant-friendly, whether you’re from New York, California or Timbuktu.”
Not just individuals, but municipalities have formally recognized the benefits of carbon fee and dividend. More than 80 cities around the country including San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Portland, Oregon have already passed resolutions supporting carbon fee and dividend.
Rescuing dogs at auction saves, at best, a tiny percentage of mill dogs. But every single dog we rescue from auction is a chance for us to tell the story about how these dogs are treated, and how they live. Until the public begins to ask questions about where their dogs come from, until they begin to understand how horrible these operations truly are, there will be no change.
There will never be an easy fix for Houston’s flooding issues. Hurricane Harvey came on the heels of “500-year” floods in 2015 and 2016 — and the 2018 hurricane season is predicted to be more active than average. It is clear the region’s flood risks are increasing. It is time to think big and creatively about how to prepare for the changes that are already underway.
Football is a dangerous game. When we played, my teammates and I took lot of hard hits — many to the head. At the time, we thought it was just the cost of playing the game. We were never told it was a problem, so we just accepted it.
Over the past half-century, children’s prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90 percent to 50 percent, according to the Equality of Opportunity Project. In his book “Dream Hoarders,” Dr. Richard Reeves cites extensive research showing that the top 20 percent of income earners have pulled further away from the bottom 80 percent on multiple fronts, from educational attainment to health and longevity. What implications does this widening inequity have on American society, prosperity and economic growth?
The denial of climate change science inevitably contains five telltale techniques of science denialism: Fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry-picking information and conspiracy theories (FLICC). All can be found in Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian’s recent op-ed here in TribTalk.
Acknowledging that certain groups have privilege can be uncomfortable for those who wish to believe we live in a meritocracy. The reality is that everybody has a combination of unearned advantage and unearned disadvantage in life. Acknowledging privilege forces me to wrestle with the question: What do I have that I didn’t earn?
Eight years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Americans from coast to coast are telling the Trump Administration to avoid the offshore drilling mistakes of our recent past. The bottom line is that we neither want nor need to experience the pain and harm of another catastrophic spill.
This surge of youth empowerment and engagement comes at a time when our country needs it – and them – the most.
As three-way trade has accelerated over the past quarter century, Texas has become the heart of NAFTA, reaping huge gains in terms of jobs, income and tax base. But just as Texas currently benefits more than any other state from NAFTA trade, we also stand to lose the most if NAFTA goes away.
Most of the existing approaches to prevention are school-based programs aimed at preventing sexual victimization by teaching children “the three R’s”— recognize, resist, report. While such programs have benefits, research has not yet found these programs to be effective in reducing rates of abuse.
Americans want and need a new politics, and media organizations play an important role in its founding. The media should drop its superficial pretense to objectivity and take up its role as a mediating institution in the great American tradition of radical republicanism.
