Watson Wire
When Failure is the Good News
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
There's an old joke about a calculating daughter who's away at college for her freshman year when she calls her loving daddy.
She tells him that she's been in a bad car wreck. She describes how she rolled her car, flipping it three times and hitting a row of other cars. She details lots of crunched metal and broken glass and says all of the cars were totaled. He understandably becomes extremely upset – and grows more so as she adds detail after detail of this disaster.
You Looking at Me?
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
The guy never stops staring at me. He never speaks, but his gaze is constant – unblinking and focused. From his high perch down to me in my assigned place, he sends what I take to be positive vibes.
He’s got kind of a wispy gray beard, gray hair, a weathered face and dark eyes that reveal they've seen a lot – more, I’ll bet, than anyone truly knows.
Running on Empty
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Once, when I was Mayor of Austin, a constituent got agitated that I was moving a little too fast with an initiative that was before the city. In a public hearing, she profoundly suggested that I needed to be taught how to walk – since, as she said in a rather derogatory tone, I only ran.
My mother happened to be staying at our house and heard this on the City of Austin public access station. When I got home, my mother was now agitated her ownself by what she considered an assault on her boy. And she said, without a hint of sarcasm, "Tell her it's not that you never walked; it's that you never crawled." Ah, a mother's love
My Own Rules for the Session
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The start of the legislative session means a couple of things:
First, I’ve passed the four-year anniversary of serving in the Texas Senate.
And second, I’ve been writing the Watson Wire for a bit less than five years.
That last point, of course, means some of you have been reading the Watson Wire for almost five years.
I’ll let you all contemplate which of the above facts is the most unbelievable.
The Big (in the) Red One
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Generally speaking, it’s a weird week at the Capitol when the opening of a legislative session isn’t the biggest news. It’s weirder when those opening ceremonies might actually obscure the week’s biggest news.
And this ... is a weird week.
Yes, today begins the 82nd Texas Legislative Session. Which might make it kind of a slow news day (though it does seem that some state representatives have done what they could to fill up the news cycle with a little Speaker's race).
The New Year Rules
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Happy New Year!
If you’re saying that to someone in Texas and it’s an odd-numbered year, then you’re also getting ready – whether you know it or not – for the legislative session.
Yeah, it’s that time of every-other-year again, where 181 new, old, genuine and figurative friends get together to pass some laws – some of which will almost certainly mean a lot to you and your family and friends.
Striving To Do ... Not Worse
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
There’s been a lot of news about Texas’ schools in the last couple of weeks – most of it pretty sobering.
In the legislature, those in control of the budget are talking seriously about lifting protections that help keep some class sizes under control in Texas schools.
An Electric Smile
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
I took a quick trip up to Abilene last week for a conference on clean energy.
Now, keep in mind, a “quick trip” from Austin to Abilene and back doesn’t feel particularly quick (although there were moments I did a pretty good imitation of Jimmie Johnson). These days, when I have to spend that kind of time alone (or with my family and/or folks who have no choice but to accept me regardless of my appearance), I face a very new, very simple, and hopefully very temporary question: tooth, or no tooth?
Boys and Their Bobcats
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
This week's Wire will be unusually short. No, it's not that I'm still moving pretty slow because I ate like a pig for five days in a row.
It's entirely because I enjoyed every minute of the long Thanksgiving weekend and, frankly, didn't get around to writing my normally pithy, but somewhat longer, treatise.
Happy Thanksgiving
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
I really think that despite all the bad news you've heard about the session and the budget, we have a chance to make some very good fundamental changes in how the state manages taxpayers' money. My agenda will ensure that the state is far more honest in how it balances its finances, responsible in how it invests in Texans and takes advantage of technology, and far-sighted in how it plans and builds for Texas' future prosperity.