Media Articles

AUSTIN -- Gov. Rick Perry today issued the following statement regarding bullets from a gun battle in Juarez that struck a building on the campus of the University of Texas-El Paso over the weekend:

"For the second time in two months, bullets from a gun battle in the escalating drug war in Juarez have struck a building in El Paso, and I'd like to commend the swift action taken by local and state law enforcement in the area. By the grace of God, the stray bullets from these incidents have yet to injure or kill a Texan. It is unconscionable that the Obama Administration is gambling with American lives, betting that escalating violence from these cartels won't eventually shed the blood of innocent people on U.S. soil.

"We must ensure El Paso and other border communities remain a safe place for people to live, work and raise a family. It's time for Washington to stop the rhetoric and immediately deploy a significance force of personnel and resources to the border to protect our homeland."

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas students can now download podcasts, videos and other multimedia lessons directly from iTunes through a new online program aimed at providing free, supplementary coursework that can be accessed anywhere, state officials announced Tuesday.

The Texas Education iTunes U channel allows teachers to upload material from their classes to help students understand new concepts or do more research in a specific subject area. Students and parents can access the material through home or school computers, and those with iPods can download the information to the handheld devices.

The state first met with Apple Inc. about three years ago. The governor’s office and the Texas Education Agency began working on the project in November, finding and culling existing teacher training videos and programs for students, said agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe.

“A lot of that content may already be out there, but it’s either overlooked or hard to access,” Gov. Rick Perry told about 50 students at Sharpstown High School in southwest Houston. “This will really consolidate that information.”

When the House convenes today in a special session to vote on a $26 billion package of aid funds for state and local governments, it will have to decide whether to single out one state — Texas — for special treatment. This is not the kind of special treatment that we’re used to seeing in Washington, where senators often secure extra benefits for their states in return for their votes. Instead, Democrats are trying to punish Texas for its fiscal responsibility, above and beyond the punishment inherent in a “state bailout” that is intended mostly to help spendthrift states such as California, but that Texas taxpayers must help pay for nevertheless.

The provision in question, an amendment authored by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat, would deny Texas its share of the bill’s education funds unless its governor “provides an assurance” that it will not reduce the percentage of total revenues it spends on education at any time in the next three years. Gov. Rick Perry argues that this is impossible: The state legislature controls education funding in Texas, not the governor, and the governor cannot bind future legislatures to any level of spending. Because Perry cannot provide the kind of assurance the Doggett amendment appears to require, he argues that it would deny Texas, and only Texas, over $800 million in education funds.

Former Houston Mayor Bill White got involved in an ugly billing dispute between an area agency and a company he recommended to help the region recover from Hurricane Rita, playing a greater role in the transaction than previously acknowledged, according to documents and interviews with those involved.

White, now the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, was invited five months after the dispute was settled to invest $1 million in the privately held company. He has so far reported more than $500,000 in profits on that investment.

On the 80-mile drive from San Antonio to the Texas capitol in Austin, it’s difficult to miss the signs of growth. At every highway exit, it seems, huge new shopping malls greet motorists. Valleys where cattle grazed five years ago now sport shiny new Target stores, tract homes, and tennis courts. Between 2000 and 2009, Texas added about 4 million residents, more than half of them migrants from elsewhere in the nation. And Texas will almost certainly emerge from the recession with the nation’s strongest and most important economy.

In May alone, Texas, America’s second most populous state, added over 75,000 jobs—more than California (the biggest), New York (third biggest), and Florida (fourth biggest) combined. Texas has shown consistent gains in 10 of the 11 categories of private employment that the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures. The state is far more than cowboys and oil: It has several of the nation’s leading medical research centers (Baylor and UT hospitals among them), one of the biggest computer makers (Dell), and a financial industry that never took a turn for the worse. And, even though unemployment remains a tick over 8 percent (about a point and a half lower than the national average), the rapid growth is bringing this down quickly. During the last week in June, the job-hunt website Monster.com offered more new job openings in Texas than in California even though the Golden State has over 10 million more people. In a nation looking for economic good news, Texas stands out as a bright spot.

In late June, bullets fired during a skirmish in an ongoing and escalating drug war in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, struck El Paso City Hall. Thankfully, no one was injured, but this incident is far from the first time cartel-related violence has impacted communities on the Texas side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s hard to imagine a clearer sign of what’s in store if our nation’s border security issues are not dealt with conclusively and immediately.

Protecting the country’s border and ensuring the safety of its citizens are the basic functions of a federal government. Unfortunately, all signs indicate Washington will, once again, fall far short of achieving the task at hand.

"Governor Rick Perry issued the following statement regarding Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s amicus brief in the U.S. v. State of Arizona case:

All Americans should support today’s actions by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and other state attorneys general in their efforts to uphold the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the right of states to provide for the public safety and security of their citizens.

The federal government has failed to secure our borders as drug activity and murder rates soar in many border communities.

States are left with no choice.

Until the federal government secures the border, I expect more states to legislate in an effort to protect their citizens.

Regardless of anyone’s feelings on the Arizona law, we must protect the 10th Amendment and right of states to legislate public safety to keep families and communities secure.

I join Texas Attorney General Abbott in opposing the Obama Administration’s effort to undermine the right of states to protect their citizens and govern themselves."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is right to refuse to "compete" for federal "Race to the Top" education funds. Applying for and "winning" the $700 million would mean abandoning state control of education and ceding it to the federal government.

And that's not the federal government's job.

"This administration's attempt to bait states into adopting national standards is an effort to undermine states' authority to determine how their students are educated, and is clearly aimed at circumventing laws prohibiting national standards," Gov. Perry said on June 1. "Abandoning state standards and adopting new nationalized standards would cost Texas taxpayers $3 billion, and would likely weaken the rigorous college- and career-ready standards and assessments already in place in our state."

The Race to the Top program pits states against each other in an unseemly competition.

"The $4.5 billion federal program aims to spur innovation by rewarding states that promote charter schools, adopt rigorous learning standards, tie teacher pay to student achievement and intervene in chronically low-performing schools," the

Wall Street Journal reports. "Forty states applied for the first round of the competition. Only Delaware and Tennessee won funds. They received a combined $600 million."

The Obama administration claims Race to the Top has "advanced" education by spurring states to enact their own reforms.

"But Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, said many of the changes -- especially on the charter school front -- have been 'inconsequential,'" the

Journal reports. "In New York, lawmakers pushed through legislation Friday afternoon that eased the cap on charter schools from 200 to 460. But it placed restrictions on the schools by barring for-profit organizations from opening new ones."

Mississippi also passed a charter school law,

"but it prohibits the creation of charters in the traditional sense," the

Journal adds. "The law doesn't allow private groups to open new charters. It simply allows low-performing schools to convert to charters if parents vote for it. Parents would run the school, but budget and curriculum decisions could be overridden by state or district officials."

There's nothing wrong with the idea of national standards -- a key part of Race to the Top and an important reason why Texas won't seek the funds.

But in practice, national standards would inevitably fall short -- because of politics.

Nothing at the federal level will be done without union involvement. The teachers' unions will inevitably have a big say in what the standards are, how they're measured and the penalties for poorly performing teachers and schools.

And politics will be involved -- just look at the recent flap on the Texas State Board of Education over the content of textbooks. Imagine the unions getting involved in something like that at the federal level.

But the most fundamental argument against national standards remains the U.S. Constitution itself. Education is simply not an enumerated power of the federal government -- nor should it be.

Children are educated by local schools, local teachers and local districts -- not by bureaucrats in Washington.

Perry is right to keep control of Texas schools in Texas.

AUSTIN – Samsung is investing $3.6 billion in a vast expansion of its semiconductor plant in Austin, a move that will lead to 500 new permanent jobs in Texas.

“This is great news for Austin and yet another indication that companies are getting the most out of their Texas operations,” said Gov. Perry, who met with Dr. W.S. Han, President of Samsung Austin Semiconductor earlier this week. “Employers around the country and around the world are realizing Texas is the place to do business, and more and more often, their success in the Lone Star State is leading to further investment.”

The Samsung plant in Austin, the company’s only such plant outside of Korea, currently employs 1,000 people. Samsung’s Austin payroll is projected to grow from $70 million to about $105 million.

Construction on the new facility will also employ an estimated 3,000 people in construction and vending jobs.

To read more about the expansion, please visit http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/samsung-austin-semiconductor-begins-36b-expansion-for-advanced-logic-chips-95960189.html

Clean air and good jobs; When it comes down to it, that’s the legacy of Texas’ existing air permitting program.

Operating from a position mired in bureaucracy, however, the EPA is determined to “federalize” our 16-year-old system. It’s a move that will kill tens of thousands of Texas jobs and effectively kick the legs out from under one of the strongest economies in the country during a time when our national economy remains on shaky ground.

They certainly can’t find fault with what Texas has accomplished under our system: