The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: Ongoing federal agency probes in the Rio Grande Valley expose, once again, the problems with so-called “game rooms” in Texas.So, what top officials in Lubbock County, or your city or county, are on the take, if any, from game room operators?In Lubbock County citizens were promised an ordinance to add transparency to who owns and operates these game rooms by September; it’s now November. Add to that the District Attorney’s office, the sheriff, County Judge Curtis Parrish, and others were astonishingly negative toward enacting the ordinance offered up by Commissioner, Precinct 2, Jason Corley in the spring of this year, and an informed and reasonable person would naturally wonder if any of them are on the take from these establishments.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.More Border B.S. – Operation Lone Star officers modify tactics as border surge continues. And then this: Photos Show Migrants Forcing Way Through Texas Border Barriers. Abbott loves to brag on this: Abbott’s Migrant Busing Program Sends 63K Migrants to Sanctuary Cities. For good reason he brags because it is the only part of Operation Lone Star to show any significant results. So, stop spending the over $10 billion of Texas taxpayer money on what doesn’t work and shift attention and resources to what does!Is it smart to pay almost $3 billion to only get $1.4 billion in facilities built? It’s what Midland ISD leaders are pushing and it, along with the same things virtually everywhere, almost rises to the level of malfeasance by local governments.Lt. Gov. Patrick has viral pneumonia. Third called special session of the legislature is not going to get school choice done as time is running out. The House’s latest version of school choice may be better than what it put out earlier but it’s still not real choice for all Texans.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: The political bomb throwing between Lieutenant Governor Patrick, elected by us, and Drinker of the House Failing Dade Phelan, elected by House members including Democrats, demonstrates an issue few will comment upon, but I will: Governor Abbott does not provided effective leadership.Dan Patrick to Dade Phelan: ‘No One Takes You Seriously Anymore’Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Our Alamo Cenotaph is now getting a full structural investigation prior to its renovation. Don’t worry, no one is going to move it this time around. This is a great line from the story: Clark Construction and Guido Construction, the two firms that installed the Cenotaph in 1940, will help a group of architects, engineers, historians and preservation experts..” Isn’t that great? Clark and Guido are still in business!Oil and gas drilling rig count falls again.Much other political and general news from across Texas.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: Governor Abbott jets off to Israel just as school choice, his top priority, effectively dies in the Texas House. Is Abbott ALL about headlines and TV appearances, even to the exclusion of achieving policy victories? Some times it is very hard to tell even when trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.See: The Broken Deal on School Choice and the 23 Republican House members who broke faith with Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP. The right question is asked: What is Governor Abbott going to do about it?Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Sen. Brian Birdwell weakens a major border protection bill which will require reconciliation with the House. One wonders what has pulled Birdwell more and more to the RINO camp over time.Trends prove right: Texas sales tax collections in October do not increase over the previous year for the first time in 31 months.Comptroller adds more to list of companies that boycott energy companies. Read more here.Harris County [Democrat] judge sides with Ken Paxton’s prosecutors over pay dispute.  From the story:“In 2018, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals struck down the prosecutors’ pay schedule and told the trial court judge to “issue a new order for payment of fees” consistent with a state statute governing compensation for court-appointed attorneys. Wice and Schaffer have argued that statute is unconstitutional as it applies to them.” … “Meanwhile, Collin County appears no more inclined to authorize the payment, even after Beall’s order Tuesday. “Good luck with that,” Collin County Judge Chris Hill tweeted Tuesday evening.”Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: San Angelo’s state Rep. Drew Darby says Texans already have “school choice.” But like a Soviet propagandist, he doesn’t tell the full story. Saying Texans have school choice is like saying you have the choice to buy any new vehicle you want but, you also have to keep paying for, for life by the way, the vehicle you don’t want and don’t use that is provided you by the state.Darby also said: “I find objectionable taking public dollars out of public schools and supporting private or parochial schools that don’t have the same accountabilities, don’t have the same testing, don’t have the same transparency, and quite frankly don’t have open enrollment policies.”This goes the fundamental miss most have on school choice – it’s about replacing political power school performance accountability, in which you get whatever accountability those with the most political connections and power want, to consumer power – letting each family determine school accountability with our actions in an open marketplace – as we do for groceries, restaurants, doctors, and everything else.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Maligned Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continues endorsing candidates for Texas House including Wade Cowan for Lubbock-based HD83 over incumbent Dustin Burrows.More proof Governor Abbott is wasting huge taxpayer funds with well meaning but ineffective border initiatives: Concertina Wire Fails to Hold Migrants Back in Texas Border Town. From the story:“The migrant groups crossing near the Eagle Pass area on Tuesday needed little help getting through the concertina wire despite the issuance of the restraining order preventing the Border Patrol from manipulating the wire to intervene in the crossings. The state authorities posted at the scene of Tuesday’s crossing offered no resistance to the group as they moved through the wire.”Texas Senate votes to add $1,540,000,000 to state border wall program.Texas named “Top Business Climate In America” by Site Selection magazine.Home sellers win $1.8 billion after jury finds Realtor, brokerage conspiracy.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: Governor Abbott caves to Texas House’s extortion plan for any school choice program: Will plow billions of new money into the systems people want to leave and lessen the burdens of transparency and accountability on those same monopoly government school systems. It’s almost as if this were not a state with a legislature dominated by Republicans as the deal looks more like what you might see in Michigan or similar to pay off the teacher and administrator unions.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.School choice: Market forces (meaning you and me) versus political forces (such as narrow self-serving special interests and the powerful politically connected) is the fundamental issue with school choice: How do we change the always much maligned “accountability systems” (think testing) for the use of taxpayer money to provide education to children and youth in the state.A monopoly always looks out for itself, for the interests of its people, more than it does for its customers, or users. This is simply because if it is a monopoly, which government schools are in Texas in regard to tax money paid for the purpose of providing education, it does not have to worry about significant losses of users of its services. That then brings on the demand from the polis (political demand of the people) of forms of accountability to try and measure the performance of the inward focused monopoly – think STAAR testing and similar.Those things are not needed in a true choice environment as the accountability system becomes the aggregation of the choices made by what become authentic customers, as opposed to service users. If a school, or type of schooling, is perceived by parents as ineffective or offensive then they take their child, and the tax money that follows the child, to a school or system that better fulfills their value proposition.School choice is about replacing political forces with market forces (you, the customer) as the accountability system in taxpayer funded schemes of primary and secondary education.  Or put differently, school choice moves public education accountability (quality, etc.) from a politically driven system to a consumer driven system.  Dallas Fed report shows Texas’ service sector flat with worsening conditions and retail sales continuing their slide downward.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: Federal judge tells Border Patrol to stop tampering with Texas’ border concertina wire, for now. And, under the remaking America heading: Illegal aliens caught in just the Texas border sectors, over just the last two years, total more than the population of Houston, the nation’s 4th largest city!Even if these folk are not allowed to vote, they are used in redistricting and that spells doom for non-Leftists in the future. We should be demanding not only securing of the border but mass deportations after the border is secured.And then, of course, there is this: EXCLUSIVE: 100 Syrians, 50 Iranians Cross Biden’s Open Border in October, Says Source.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.“Tepid” is the word used by the Dallas Fed to describe the Texas Manufacturing Sector in today’s report. Rep. Clardy, himself a big part of the problem in the Texas House, gets one thing right: Texas’ impeachment process needs reform.NFL tells the University of Houston to cease and desist…Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

In this Pratt on Texas Podcast Extra I visit with Dr. Gilbert Berdine, an associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and an affiliate of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, to discuss the dangerous failures of the American health system in handling COVID.Hint: COVID care (or non-care) is a look forward to what it will be for everything under a single-payer system.

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: A ridiculous, spurious decision from a Travis Co. Democrat district judge places a temporary injunction on TEA from releasing the public school A to F accountability ratings. The judge, ruling on a lawsuit to stop transparency from about 100 ISDs, says school districts could suffer “irreparable harm” from the release! How?One charter school leader wrote me:  “You are probably already aware of this, but some judge in Austin blocked TEA from releasing ratings after about 100 ISDs sued.  I think charters should do the opposite and tell the world to ”bring it on” because we don’t fear accountability like the ISDs do.  … But we need to face the facts.  It’s widely understood that the delay is because TEA is trying to tweak ratings to already make schools look better.”Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Brain dead Democrats in Houston and Harris County go out of their way to advertise their brain dead status: Harris County justice leaders eye ‘cite and release’ revival.Texas rig count up in this week’s Baker Hughes report.Second Amendment issues including stupidity from a Dallas city councilman. Here’s where to sign up for NRA political action.In the last segment, it’s the beginning of a Pratt on Texas Podcast Extra with Dr. Gilbert Berdine, an associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and an affiliate of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, in which we discuss the dangerous failures of the American health systems in handling COVID. The full Podcast Extra interview can be found here (link will post after 6pm.)Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: Petty and obstinate: Speaker Phelan has sergeant at arms remove Attorney General Ken Paxton from the House floor despite him being invited by members and being a former member himself.Democrats fight border security bills hard but lose on all three. Of course the press carries their fellow Democrats’ propaganda about all – what is it these people don’t know about probable cause?!House finally passes the ban on employer mandated WuFlu vaccine that should have been, and could have easily been, passed in the regular session.House To Abbott: Won’t Pass Choice Without A Payoff – Texas Scorecard. I said it on 10 October: “If the early bill filing and comments are the guide, school choice in the 3rd called special session of the 88th Texas Legislature appears to be not so much authentic, universal school choice but a ruse to hand over billions more of our money to the  public school lobby.”Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Report: El Paso objections sink Biden’s nasty “Remain in Texas” policy for illegal aliens. | Border Authorities Are Counting Palestinian Migrants As Other Nationalities.Another story seems to link “game rooms” to money laundering and political favors. Where is the Lubbock Co. game room ordinance that Co. Judge Parrish promised would be here in September of this year?Sheriff proposes $464 million expansion on Lubbock County jail with overcrowding worsening. None of this should be entertained until there is a county full court press to move cases and depopulate the jail of those there because the DA and courts are not moving their cases. We’ve done it before and it works.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: The Texas House met today, finally, to handle special session items and there is not much new: Democrats are against border security and RINOs still prefer the big government socialist model of public education over freedom and parental choice.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Jury finds Baylor university was negligent in its handling of ex-student’s domestic violence case, awards $270K in damages.U.S. House: Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson wins Speaker job with full backing of the GOP caucus. To all the “embarrassed” hand-wringers: This is how it is supposed to work, in public view with votes and debate. Our country is NOT supposed to be governed through backroom deals kept from public view and I find it troubling that so many think such is the better, less “clownish” or “embarrassing” method. Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com