Battle brews as Democrats vie for the Texas House

The Texas legislature, specifically the House, may be in for a change. As the election looms all 150 seats in the Texas legislature will be on the ballot. Republicans currently hold a 79-70 majority. This is a big deal considering legislation in Texas is up for grabs with the majority party electing the speaker. The Republicans have realized this threat and have gone on the offensive. The Republicans have had control of the House since 2002, but are threatened by the dropping majority trend. Both parties have started the fight early as they see the importance of the upcoming elections. It would be interesting to see the effect on Texas politics if the House had a majority of Democrats. Many big legislation areas including education, budget and taxes could be drastically affected. The Texas House will prove to be the ultimate battleground here in the next two years, with seats being vigorously fought over. A big part of the upcoming election will be the redistricting that comes with it, a huge factor in longterm party placement. This will be able to test how hardy the Republican Party's hold on the state of Texas is.

Read the article here.

Advocacy group sees CHIP proposal as boon for state

CHIP (Childrens Health Insurance Program) is a federal program created in 1997 to help families that make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private health insurance. President Bush vetoed a federal bill that would increase the CHIP budget from 5 billion to about 12 billion. An advocacy group in Austin believes that this increase in the budget will ultimately benefit the state. If the veto is overridden then families with a gross income of about $62,000 will qualify for CHIP, instead of the previous level of about $42,000. Essentially, if passed, the bill will allow middle class children to be covered by the government for health insurance. About another 330,000 children in Texas that already qualify for coverage will be able to be enrolled in CHIP. Senator Cornyn had backed a previous bill to increase CHIP spending to 7.8 billion, but now believes that will not be enough to cover the children in Texas, much less the rest of the nation. Effects of this budget increase would allow many more children to have health insurance and make it easier on families who don't make enough money to afford private insurance. The increase would also lean toward a state controlled health insurance system. The increase would infringe upon the middle class and allow children from that specific economic group to rely on the state to provide health insurance. Business for private insurance would make a noticeable decrease. Basically this topic has become a debate over whether the state should control health care or whether it should remain private and be put in the hands of the individual. Liberal perspective sees the increase as positive, allowing more children to be covered under some kind of health plan. Conservative perspective would see it as a negative, putting too many middle class children on a government controlled plan and taking too much away from private insurance. This is an issue to keep an eye on as it will grow in importance and the House is expected to vote on the bill in about a week. Personally I disagree with this bill. I think that a small increase is needed to extend a little more help to those who actually need it, but too large of an increase will put way too many middle class children on a FEDERAL insurance program. People who can afford to buy private insurance should. They shouldn't need to rely on the government to do it for them. Also I think too much business would be taken away from private contractors. Health care is something that needs to stay in the hands of the public as much as possible.

Read the article here.

Muslim charity's terror-funding trial goes to jury in Dallas

So exactly how close to home is terrorism?

Roughly 183 miles.

A case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development accuses the group raising of more than 12 million dollars to fund terrorist operations. The main point of the prosecution and its chief witness was that the Palestinian groups supported by the group were controlled by the terrorist organization known as the Hamas. The defense argued that the organization only provided help to desperately poor children and families, many of them living in refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank.

The government shut down the organization in 2001 from raised suspicions of terrorist support. One of the chairmen for the organization, Ghassan Elashi, is already serving prison terms after being convicted in two other cases of making illegal computer shipments to countries supporting terrorism, and of having financial dealings with a designated terrorist, a Hamas leader who is married to his cousin.

This article is good to read and research because it shows just how close something may be even though you think that it may not exist or happen to you. It is interesting to see how the networks of terrorism can extend almost anywhere. For me the article took some, not much, but some of the buzz off of the term "global terrorism." It is ironic that a charity be accused of something like this, and surprising how easy it may have been(final verdict not given yet) to keep up the illusion of a charity. I would recommend this article and its related topics to those of you who may have found it difficult to support our "war on terror." It may not be convincing enough, but it is close to home.

Read the article here