Horns Up: Texas leads nation in job growth

According to state-by-state data released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Texas lead the nation in job growth in 2013 with 252,400 new jobs added.  In fact, Texas saw nearly 20,000 more new jobs than California, the second-best performing state, and nearly 60,000 more than Florida, the third best. Texas’ unemployment rate also fell to 6 percent from 6.2 percent last December. While it is comforting to know we live in a state that is outperforming the entire rest of the nation in job growth — especially since many of us will be actively searching for employment in the next several years — the news isn’t all good. Texas job growth has slowed from 3.2 percent in 2012 to 2.3 percent last year, and the state added 80,000 fewer new jobs in 2013 than it did in 2012. But still, horns up to Texas for being the national leader in the recovery from the Great Recession.

Horns Up: Obama sticks up for sexual assault victims

In a speech on Saturday, President Barack Obama announced the creation of a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. According to Obama, the task force will combat the sexual abuse commonly experienced on college campuses by both strengthening the criminal justice system to prevent future assault and by reaching out to survivors to assist in the healing process. The announcement left out many details on how such a task force would operate and how it would realistically address the problem, but horns up to Obama anyway for promoting greater awareness of the issue. We hope Obama’s words will soon result in real actions to fight sexual assault and abuse.