The Texas Capitol has been rocked by a widening sex scandal in the state's juvenile justice system. And ordinary taxpayers have been left to watch in horror and disgust as the state's top leaders rush to play the blame game, find scapegoats, and limit the political damage.
Newly minted State Comptroller Susan Combs announced last week that the state's popular prepaid college tuition plan is broke and should be shut down forever - making the latest GOP tax hike on the middle-class permanent.
But where are Democratic voices standing up for the more than 158,000 families who are part of the plan and now face the prospect of being abandoned by yet another Republican privatization scheme?
(A perspective from the previous State Democratic Party Chair. - promoted by Matt Glazer)
A great deal of heat has been generated in these brisk winter days by Gov. Rick Perry's unilateral executive order that 10- to 11-year-old girls must be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted disease human papillomavirus, or HPV, with a drug called Gardasil, whose sole manufacturer is the German pharmaceutical company Merck.
Like many Texas fathers of young girls, I was taken aback by how cavalierly the nominal head of the state's GOP, the party that claims to believe in personal responsibility and less government interference in our personal lives, had trotted out this controversial proposal. And like many, I had watched Mr. Perry's career closely enough to suspect that private gain rather than public good might have more to do with it.
Some speculate that he hoped to bury the story by releasing it late on a Friday as Super Bowl weekend got underway. Who would pay attention or even remember it by Monday? Known as "the news dump," this is Republicans' preferred method of leaking stories with the least amount of damage to themselves.
But it didn't work out that way, did it? And the religious right Mr. Perry has so assiduously courted was left to wonder if "in God We Trust" has now been replaced by a new state government slogan: "In Merck We Trust."
