You always get more of what you subsidize, especially risky behavior. That’s certainly the case along Texas’ hurricane-prone coastline.

Pop quiz: Do you save the planet from global warming by switching to renewable energy sources, or do you protect a species from tragic death knowing you’ll make the planet uninhabitable in somewhere between 5 to 5 million years?

Teaching all kids in both English and Spanish failed when tried before, so of course, the Austin Independent School District is going to waste even more money — and kids academic lives — by doing it again. That’s what inept bureaucracies do: spend money on fads, rather than results.

Two weeks ago the Office of the Attorney General of Texas weighed in on the recent controversy regarding the speakership of the Texas House. For 99.99 percent of Texans, that issue is about as exciting as watching the grass turn brown. But in the course of the ruling, the AG’s office offered an interesting note. The ruling states, “We presume that the Legislature never does a useless act.” You can almost hear the laughter, can’t you?

Texas is the fastest growing state in the Union. According to the U.S. Census bureau, the Lone Star State’s population now exceeds 23.9 million — adding 500,000 people in just 12 months. Of course, you can expect the liberals to use our growth as yet another excuse to increase taxes and grow government.

If you’ve ever wanted to waste a million dollars, you should leave it to the experts at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. They spent $1 million on 3,500 GPS devices and specialized software… only to drop them into storage after finding the system didn’t meet their needs. And it’s a liberal Democrat whose calling them out for their waste.

Anti-smoking groups are ready to start cashing bigger government paychecks. Already funded by taxpayers with dubious success, the various groups are salivating over reports that the state’s new $1-per-pack cigarette tax hasn’t reduced smoking — because they want in on the action.

The state is generating $244 million more from the tax than had been anticipated.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the state will collect $244 million more in cigarette tax revenues under the $1 per pack increase than predicted.  While smoking is most assuredly a bad habit, more money for big government is also an addiction that must be broken.

According to Wikipedia, catfish "feed on algae, fish scales, mucus, carrion, insects" — and now, thanks to the Texas Department of Agriculture, your tax dollars. Catfish farmers can get up to $80,000 in bail-out money from the TDA if they suffered "feed losses" during presidentially-declared emergencies between January 2, 2005, through February 27, 2007. Must have been some disaster to cause a shortage of algae, mucus and carrion… This program is courtesy of the state’s Catfish Feed Grant Program. The jokes about bottom-feeders just write themselves.