Opinion

I have been missing my lifelong friend and childhood hero, Toby Dawn McIntyre, so I was excited to see him standing on the front porch. I barely opened the door, however, when he pushed past me. “Where you hiding them, Tommy Boy?” he demanded as he began rifling through random cabinets, drawers, and closets. I played it cool while I mentally checked off all the items I had hidden from him for his own good over the years (mostly harmonicas, roller blades, and berets). “The phonebooks!” he screamed. “Phonebooks!”

The phrase 340B may sound like some technical jargon far removed from your own personal health care. It’s a federal drug pricing program named for the section of the authorizing legislation that Congress passed in 1992 with broad, bipartisan support.

Do you make a difference in the world? Does anyone care about what you do? Are some people more important than others? We all ask ourselves these questions from time to time. Some people wonder about them more than others.

With flu season underway in the United States, you may have heard predictions that this year could be particularly bad, for a multitude of reasons, one being that Southern Hemisphere countries suffered a particularly severe season.

An aging water main snapped in Odessa. Drought conditions decimated groundwater supplies to the town of Concan. Millions of Texans lived without water for days when complications from Winter Storm Uri left household taps dry. While Thursday, Oct. 20, marked the eighth annual Imagine a Day Without Water, too many Texans have already been forced to endure this reality.

Texas voters are increasingly concerned about the state’s future. What else do they agree on? They support solutions on core-governance issues, offering leaders a roadmap for strengthening voter confidence and moving Texas forward.

The “butterfly theory” suggests that the minuscule amount of air disturbed by the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Africa can grow, if conditions are right, into a major hurricane that causes millions of dollars of property damage on the other side of the Atlantic.

There was a period in the late 1960s when the Beach Boys, desperate for a hipper identity, reportedly considered shortening their name to “Beach.” Of course, the Backstreet Boys may perform into their ‘80s, but there’s no question that a dated name can take a toll. Take the newspaper.

When Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, it allocated $102 billion for rail-related projects in America. Another $50 million was authorized for annual disbursement to incentivize smaller transit-oriented projects. That’s a lot of available funding making it obvious that Congress intends to make public transportation attractive, safe, and convenient.

That sage advice, “the job ain’t over until the paperwork is done” serves us well during potty training and for the rest of our lives. In the old days in elementary school, math teachers made us show our work, even if we could do the calculations in our heads.