TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalStanford investors’ lawsuit heads to federal court
Eighty-nine investors defrauded by now-imprisoned Houston financier Robert Allen Stanford want $115 million from seven insurance companies in addition to claims that could total as much as $1 billion against the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions and SEI Investments Co.
But six of the insurers responded Monday by transferring the investors’ four-year-old state-court suit to Baton Rouge federal court, action the investors have fought hard in the past.
“We feel confident that this case should not be removed to federal court, because the state court has already ruled on it” and granted the investors class-action status, said Phillip W. Preis, Baton Rouge attorney for the investors.
Telephone and email requests for comment from three New Orleans attorneys for the insurance companies were not returned.
http://theadvocate.com/home/5409909-125/stanford-investors-lawsuit-heads-to
Cross-posted in Louisiana Group.
Stanford investors’ lawsuit heads to federal court
Eighty-nine investors defrauded by now-imprisoned Houston financier Robert Allen Stanford want $115 million from seven insurance companies in addition to claims that could total as much as $1 billion against the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions and SEI Investments Co.
But six of the insurers responded Monday by transferring the investors’ four-year-old state-court suit to Baton Rouge federal court, action the investors have fought hard in the past.
“We feel confident that this case should not be removed to federal court, because the state court has already ruled on it” and granted the investors class-action status, said Phillip W. Preis, Baton Rouge attorney for the investors.
Telephone and email requests for comment from three New Orleans attorneys for the insurance companies were not returned.
http://theadvocate.com/home/5409909-125/stanford-investors-lawsuit-heads-to
Cross-posted in Texas Group.
Halliburton exec testifies at Gulf spill trial
NEW ORLEANS — An executive from the company that was BP's cement contractor on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig testified Monday that he learned of some "irregularities" in tests that the contractor's employees performed after the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Timothy Probert, a Halliburton president who served as the company's chief safety officer at the time of the spill, didn't specify the nature of those irregularities during his testimony at a trial designed to assign fault to the companies involved in the deadly disaster.
However, an attorney for rig owner Transocean Ltd. asked Probert if he was angry when he learned in 2012 that "evidence had been destroyed."
"Yes," Probert said. "Obviously, it doesn't make you feel happy."
More at http://www.shreveporttimes.com/viewart/20130311/NEWS01/130311042/UPDATED-Halliburton-exec-testifies-Gulf-spill-trial- .
Unlikely victims of the Sequester: The Bush family
There’s a new and unlikely victim of the sequester: The Bush family.
The across-the-board spending cuts brought on by the budget impasse have put a crimp in the plans of Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, to get the childhood home of George W. Bush, the nation’s 43rd president, designated as a national historic site.
Conaway, a Republican who represents the Midland, Texas, area where Bush grew up, has requested that the National Park Service conduct a ”reconnaissance survey” to determine if the Bush home, now a museum, would gain official federal historic status.
”The people of Midland have done a wonderful job preserving the history of the George W. Bush Childhood Home, which joins the Adams National Historical Site in being the home of two presidents,” Conaway said, referring to George W. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States.
More at http://www.mywesttexas.com/top_stories/article_b2907bea-8934-11e2-815d-001a4bcf887a.html .
Teachers, staff rally, lobby at Texas Capitol
AUSTIN, Texas —
About 1,000 teachers and education staffers from across Texas rallied at the state Capitol on Monday, urging the Legislature to reverse $5.4 billion in cuts to public schools approved two years ago.
As part of Texas American Federation of Teachers lobby day, union leaders encouraged educators to use their spring break to gather in Austin for the demonstration — which saw many participants in blue-and-white ATF T-shirts wave signs reading "Our Kids, Our Future."
Members of some high school percussion sections also turned out and the banging of their drums reverberated off the Capitol's pink facade as the House and Senate opened their sessions in the afternoon. Later, the crowd fanned out for meetings in the offices of individual lawmakers.
Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, said leading Democrats in the Texas Senate have called for spending $4 billion from the state's cash reserves, or Rainy Day Fund, to roll back the 2011 public education cuts. The fund is expected to grow to $11.8 billion by the end of 2015.
More at http://www.statesman.com/ap/ap/education/thousands-of-teachers-staff-to-rally-in-austin/nWnmb/ .
State Board of Education panel to review CSCOPE
Concerns have been raised by parents and educators about the CSCOPE curriculum management system. CSCOPE was created by 19 regional education service centers and is now used by more than 800 public school districts and private schools in Texas. The system’s lesson plans, like all lesson plans, are not under the authority of the State Board of Education (SBOE). However, in response to growing public concern, legislative leaders have asked the SBOE to review CSCOPE content.
As a result, SBOE Chair Barbara Cargill has appointed an ad hoc committee to include SBOE members Marty Rowley, R-Amarillo; Mavis Knight, D-Dallas; Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth; and Tom Maynard, R-Florence. She has also named three members of the CSCOPE governing board to the committee: John Bass, Region 16 in Amarillo, Clyde Steelman, Region 11 in Fort Worth and Elizabeth Abernethy, Region 7 in Kilgore. Marty Rowley will chair the committee. The first organizational meeting will occur in late March. All meetings will be posted as open to the public.
The chair’s ad hoc committee will appoint review panels to examine the CSCOPE instructional content, beginning with social studies. A public process will solicit nominations for the review panels which will be composed of parents, educators, curriculum specialists, business professionals and other stakeholders.
Results of the review will be given to the CSCOPE governing board for its consideration. As the review is voluntarily and non-binding, it will be up to the CSCOPE governing board to decide whether to take any actions based on the results.
“I believe this process will be of great benefit to everyone involved, especially the students, parents, teachers and citizens of Texas,” Cargill said. “I thank concerned citizens for bringing this issue to light. All instructional materials must be easily accessible to parents, not only to reinforce learning at home but also to assure that quality, error-free content is taught in our classrooms.”
Source: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/news_release.aspx?id=25769803956
Related: Some discussion about CSCOPE in the following thread. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10786582
Texas German dying out
When Kaye Langehennig Wong was a little girl in Katy in the '60s, her parents would take her to visit her grandparents in Fredericksburg. “My grandparents lived in a stone house on Main Street,” she says. “I played with horny toads and walked down Main Street listening to the ladies in the shops talking in German.”
Wong's father spoke only German until he went to school. “My parents spoke German to each other when they didn't want us to know what they were saying,” she says. But like many parents of their generation, they didn't teach her.
The German Wong heard on Main Street was unlike German spoken anywhere else in the world. Texas German, the result of the flood of German immigrants into South Central Texas in the 19th century, is an amalgam of many of the dialects spoken in what is now Germany but was, until 1871, a collection of independent states.
When Germans settled in other parts of the U.S., they tended to cluster with people from the same original area. In Texas, they mixed freely, thus creating a unique language stew.
More at http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Texas-German-dying-out-4343915.php .
Scooter Store not target of probe: CEO
The Scooter Store's CEO told furloughed employees that it isn't a target of the Justice Department probe that led to some 150 agents swarming the company's New Braunfels headquarters last month.
“The Department of Justice has informed our legal counsel that the company is not a target of this investigation and we will continue to cooperate with the government in their work,” CEO Martin “Marty” Landon said in an email sent to employees Sunday night.
The Scooter Store is one of the nation's largest suppliers of power wheelchairs and scooters.
Landon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. His email didn't say whether any individuals at the company are being investigated.
More at http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/local/article/Scooter-Store-not-target-of-probe-CEO-4345334.php .
A Dallas Lawmaker Wants to Turn Central into George W. Bush Expressway
It took nearly six years after leaving office for George H.W. Bush to have a functioning North Texas highway named for him. His son could do it in less than five.
State Representative Dan Branch has taken it upon himself to see that that happens. On Friday, just before the filing deadline for the legislature's 2013 session, the Dallas Republican filed a bill that would rename a seven-mile stretch of U.S. 75 as President George W. Bush Expressway.
The appellation would be fitting in that the stretch of Central in question passes mere feet from the soon-to-be-inaugurated Bush Presidential Center and maybe three miles from the former president's Daria Drive abode.
But the potential for confusion shouldn't be ignored, though. Bush Expressway would run parallel to the new Bush Avenue, and travelers directed to take the George Bush would have to puzzle over where to go. The simplest workaround would be to refer to the road much as people came to refer to president himself: as The W.
More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/03/a_dallas_lawmaker_wants_to_tur.php .
Paulson Said to Explore Puerto Rico as Home With Low Tax
John Paulson, a lifelong New Yorker, is exploring a move to Puerto Rico, where a new law would eliminate taxes on gains from the $9.5 billion he has invested in his own hedge funds, according to four people who have spoken to him about a possible relocation.
Ten wealthy Americans have already taken advantage of the year-old Puerto Rican law that lets new residents pay no local or U.S. federal taxes on capital gains, according to Alberto Baco Bague, Secretary of Economic Development and Commerce of Puerto Rico. The marginal tax rate for affluent New Yorkers can exceed 50 percent.
Paulson, 57, recently looked at real estate in the exclusive Condado neighborhood of San Juan, where an 8,379- square-foot penthouse, complete with six underground parking spaces, lists for $5 million. The area is home to St. John’s School, a private English-language academy where he and his wife could send their two children, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private.
Paulson’s firm declined to comment on his personal plans.
More at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-11/paulson-said-to-explore-puerto-rico-as-home-with-low-tax.html .
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
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Current location: Bryan, Texas
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