HOUSTON COULD ADD 80,000 JOBS IN 2013

So many jobs are coming to Houston top oil companies from around the world are building new office spaces to accommodate their new employees. In fact, banks are loaning money to companies even if the developers do not have a tenant.

Texas’s economy is growing and grew 4.8% last year. They added 100,000 jobs and Houston alone could add 80,000 this year. Real estate firm CBRE Group, Inc. said there are 56 office buildings under construction in and around Houston. These buildings total at least 11 million square feet. Not only are they providing jobs for their employees, but they are building the economy in the area. An area called Springwoods Village has room for up to 5,000 houses and apartments and it is near an Exxon campus. The campus is 400-acres with 20 buildings with room for 10,000 employees.

BP is building a three-story building to speed up their search for oil and gas around the world. Other companies with buildings under construction are BHP Billiton Petroleum, Anadarko Petroleum Corp, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron.

The demand is so high in Houston there are many buildings going up as specs. Principal Real Estate Investors and Trammell Crow Co built one with a loan of $100 million even though they did not have a tenant. ConocoPhilips signed a lease for the entire building within four months and construction has not even started.

This boom is not new to Houston and experts are cautioning the developers not to overbuild. Between 1980-1986 there was a bigger boom and developers built over 88.9 million square feet in Houston, but the economy crashed when oil prices went too low. It took Houston almost two decades to fully recover from that crash. 

Via: Breitbart

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Systemic Medicare Fraud Under Houston's Sheila Jackson Lee

Will Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee have to distance herself from Houston's Riverside General Hospital now that top administrators have been caught in a major Medicare fraud scam?

Last week's roundup makes me wonder why the Obama administration is cracking down on Medicare/Medicaid fraud in the first place.  Aren't they the ones shelling out hundreds of millions to their Solyndra-like cronies with no consequences?

Is it to make them look tough on crime, or is it to make sure the recovered monies are going into their own wallets at the end of the day?

Since her days on the Houston City Council, Jackson Lee has pushed to use city funds to keep Riverside's doors open.  At that time, the councilwoman suggested that the facility was a good investment for the city. 

Jackson Lee's interest in Riverside goes back to the '80s when her husband Elwyn C. Lee, now University of Houston vice-chancellor (see video), served on Riverside's board from 1981-1988.  In his last year at Riverside, Mr. Lee was made chairman of that board, and over the years, husband and wife have been influential in keeping the financially strapped hospital open.  Jackson Lee was voted into Congress in 1994, representing the 18^th district, where Riverside is located.

The president of Riverside, his son, and five others were arrested on October 4 as part of a nationwide Medicare fraud sweep.  Earnest Gibson III, chief executive officer of Riverside General Hospital for 30 years, has been charged with bilking $158 million out of Medicare over the last seven years.

His son, Earnest Gibson IV, was charged with thirteen counts, including money-laundering and conspiracy to commit health care fraud.  The older Gibson became president around the same time Jackson Lee's husband was appointed to the board in the early '80s.

Via: The American Thinker

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