The Midday Brief: November 30, 2009

Your afternoon reading:

• “I think we need to get behind a candidate and coalesce around that candidate and that's what gives you strength.  This is not going to be easy.” — Tom Schieffer Discusses his Campaign for Governor; Meeting with Bill White — Burnt Orange Report

• “Combs revised her estimate for the so-called rainy day fund to $8.2 billion, down from her January projection of $9.1 billion.” — Almost $1 billion less in state’s rainy day fund — Postcards

• “It’s never too early to speculate about turnout. I’m not going to guess a number just yet, but I am going to guess that about half of all votes will be cast early, based on recent behavior in city runoff elections.” — Early voting starts today — Off the Kuff

• “Catherine S. Evans, a former Dallas state district judge, was indicted on a third-degree felony for carrying a prohibited item — a knife — into a correctional facility, according to Gina DeBottis, director of special unit that prosecutes prison crimes statewide. If convicted, Evans faces two to 10 years in prison.” — TYC ombudsman indicted — Postcards

• “Obama will outline his Afghanistan plans Tuesday during a televised speech at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. Indications are that Obama will deploy about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and offer some kind of time frame for ending the 8-year-old war.” — Rep. Kay Granger rebukes Obama's Afghanistan plan after visit to war zone — Trail Blazers

• “Former Austin Democratic state Rep. Glen Maxey this morning filed a complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, arguing that 3rd Court of Appeals Judge Jan Patterson violated judicial ethics when she told the Chronicle last month that Gov. Rick Perry had approached her to apply for an appointment to the Travis Co. civil court bench.” — Did Patterson Violate Judicial Ethics? — Austin Chronicle

• “The Attorney General says the websites appear to give shoppers an easy way to comparison shop by using a single web page to search for a product and receive prices from multiple merchants. Instead, the Attorney General Greg Abbott says the websites secretly steered shoppers toward certain merchants. Those merchants allegedly paid for favorable treatment.” — Texas files charges against price-comparison websites — KVUE 

New in The Texas Tribune:

• “School advocates had a reason to get excited. The budget included $1.9 billion in new education funds, most of it going directly to schools via weighted formulas for distribution.  There was only one problem . The money didn’t exist.” — Stymied by Stimulus? — The Texas Tribune

• “In the run-up to Bill White's expected entrance into the governor's race on Friday, we wanted to get an insider's perspective on what sort of mayor he was, whether the hype on issues like crime and traffic is justified, what his personality and temperament tell us about the kind of candidate — and governor — he'd be, and how both Democrats and Republicans would critique his performance in purely ideological terms.” — How Good a Mayor was Bill White, Really? — The Texas Tribune