Blogs May 19, 2011 at 8:04 am

Comments

1
At least they won't be able to bully the rest of the nation's science and history curriculum, since they apparently won't be buying any more textbooks.
2
Really? Its easy to leave the state if you're a felon, or underage, or no have money, or elderly, or any number of other factors that keeps people places?

No.
3
As a kid from Texas I'd say the rational ones want to try and make their home (which has a lot of good points and nice people) a better place and the poor ones don't have a lot of choice.
4
never set foot in that state, hopefully never will.
5
What 2 said. Also, have you ever been to Texas? Find me one person, poor, rich, white, black, pygmy, alien, whatever, who doesn't have a big ole boner for just being Texan. It's like Stockholm syndrome.
6
Sorry, I have an exaggeration problem.
7
Even if they could, what state isn't already overburdened?
Would you like to invite twenty thousand poor people to come here?
8
Moving is expensive. Moving from one state to another is more expensive. The people most affected by these cuts are the least able to change their situation.

This kind of logic drives me crazy. . ."Why do you live in a shitty place where no one cares about you?"

"Oh, I don't know, because I LOVE IT! WEE!"

No, it's because they are stuck. Because if they had the resources to move, they wouldn't be in a situation to need those services.
9
Austin is nice.
10
In addition to the fine reasons that @2 gave --- believe it or not, Charles, there are many people who are poor but not rational. I imagine Texas has at least its fair share of that demographic, if not more.
11
I, for one, think this is great. Texas gets to be the petri dish where we can all observe how the destructive fungus of tea baggerism as it festers and grows and destroys everything people take for granted. We dont have to theorize about how stupid these people's ideas anymore, we can just point to the smoking hole in the ground that used to be Texas and say "See that? That's your Randian Utopia, morons." Get some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show.
12
@11 Well, there is that.
13
i bet they funded all their cops, courts and prisons.

and rick perry thinks he's going to ride this to the white house?
14
Oswald's rifle rested atop a stack of Texas school books. If those cuts had been made in 1963, Kennedy would have survived.
15
I'm having trouble feeling compassion for Texans. They keep voting these conservative asshats into power and then screwing themselves up more and more and more. Fuck 'em, I say. Mess with Texas. Maybe people will realize the consequences of voting against their interests.
16
@2: I'm sure this is Texas' plan (the same as Mexico's): export your poverty problem to someone else. If poor people literally can't afford to live in your state, they'll move out or die. Then it's a utopia for small government millionaires, right?
17
@11 Destroyed lives is not my idea of ethical experimentation.
19
@16 -Texas is becoming more like Juarez and Reynosa(without the violence, yet): third world shitholes with first world cost of living. Mexicans in those cities are moving to the center and south of the country where daily life is just nicer and cheaper. Despite minutemen/teabagger rantings, immigration to the US from Mexico is way down. Easier to be poor and unemployed with your family than alone in the US.

While many poor people will be stuck in Texas, the the most able bodied/minded thousands if not millions will spend their last $500 on a bus ticket out. And the remaining poor people will be the most docile, beat down servants.
20
I didn't have any problem leaving Texas, and I have no regrets in doing so (although I did join the military to do it).
21
Not to worry, job creatin', innovatin' mission accomplishin' former Tx govn'r & commander-in-chief George W. Bush will solve the state's problems from his retirement perch in Dallas.
22
I live in Austin, and consider myself a sane, rational person. I am politically liberal. I have a great job here, and lots of friends here. I went to school here. The weather is generally quite nice (although a bit hot in the summers). There is a great music scene here, great restaurants, etc., and the cost of living is far less than many other worthwhile cities. I don't think I'd want to move to anywhere else in Texas (Austin is *much* more liberal than the rest of Texas), and I'm continually frustrated and disappointed by state politics, but I've been here for nearly 15 years, and it's been a good home to me.
23
Moved to TX 8 months ago and completely hate it here. As soon as my husband's job appointment is up we're out of here - hopefully never to return!
24
@18, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Texas unemployment is currently 8.1%, which is roughly the median unemployment rate among all 50 states. North Dakota has 3.6% unemployment (lowest), and Nevada has 13.2% (highest).

Your claim is bogus.
25
@9: Austin is a groomed putting green in the center of a turd-strewn, garbage-ridden city dump.
26
More than moving, what I really don't understand is why anyone outside the very rich vote for Republicans. These cuts are even concievable only because Republicans have a crushing majority in Texas. That means that a wide majority of the population votes for them. By definition that means that a lot of people that aren't rich people vote for them. Why the fuck would they do that?

Why vote for someone who again and again shows every intention of fucking you over? Why vote so obviously against your economic interest? Is boys kissing so yucky that you'd rather grandma be destitute and johnny share a class with 40 other kids to make doubly tripply sure Jake can't visit Tom in the hospital?
27
...Texas population growth has been amazing.

whatever they are doing, it isn't driving people away. Quite the opposite actually.
28
@26 That's the real problem, and why this sort of thing isn't just limited to Texas.

The worst (for the US)/best (for Republicans) thing the Republican machine ever did was start pandering to religious fears.
29
@26 I find this extremely frustrating as well. Texas has a sizable population of military families that tend very Republican, and also a lot of social conservatives who really are just scared of teh gays and mandatory abortions and whatever other nonsense their preachers tell them every Sunday.
30
You can easily and legally leave

Ditto what several other commentators have said: Moving is expensive. Also, there are often familial roots that resist people moving, perhaps the grandparents providing essential childcare while both parents work shitty jobs.

Seriously Charles, you know this already.

As to Texas, my big worry is that in 20-50 years the withered education system will result in a couple generations of "Christian" fanatics in control of the gummit there... and the nuclear weapons that Texas harbors.

Texas *does* still reserve the right to split into five different states, if that happens, it's control of the Senate goes up appreciably. I doubt that's a likely scenario, but weirder things have happened.
31
@11 That's what I was thinking. I generally see most Republicans that I know being stubbornly against anything Democrat, but will that still last if things don't work out there?
32
Way to pass the buck there. The budget hit to the schools, especially the early education, is just going to make it harder for Texans down the line as they wonder why their kids and schools continue a plateau (at best) of under performance compared to other states. And by not paying out for Medicaid for the sick and elderly just pushes costs on to already overburdened health care facilities, which will then cause future problems as quality of life goes down and people despair over the rapid decline of their loved ones.

Good job, Texas. Way to boost the your economy by fucking over your residents.
34
Leaving aside the issues of sentimentality, it's really hard to move to a new state when you have no money and unemployment around the country is near 10%.
35
I left Florida to move to Texas and it was like stepping into utopia. So it's relative.

Of course, then I left Texas to move to Colorado and it felt like utopia all over again.

Not sure where I could go from here to get it again... Europe?
36
Afreet@22: A bit hot in the summers? A bit hot?

"If I owned Texas and Hell, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas." -- General Philip Sheridan.
37
@26,

Redistricting hasn't helped. That fiasco of several years ago led to watering down of the few liberal strongholds in that state.

@16,

What's more likely is that liberal counties and cities will be left holding the bag. They'll have to either preemptively increase spending on social services or pay on the back end as local hospitals, prisons, and jails are swamped with people who can't pay for medical care or who are desperate enough to resort to crime.

And I'm sure liberal Texan cities are already paying more than their fare share of taxes.
38
I left Austin after 14 years because despite it's 'most liberal city (in Texas' status, it suffers from the the same problems as the rest of the state: it's totally dependent on cheap water, gasoline and electricity that come from somewhere else, and which aren't going to be cheap and abundant in the near future. The state is completely unlivable without a shitload of driving and the roar of air conditioners nine months out of the year.
40
Goddammit. I had a really long, impassioned reply typed out and then I closed the tab like an idiot and lost it.

All I'll recount here is that, you guys, for fuck's sake, Texas is a cultural battleground and the regressive dickheads are the only ones bothering to fight for it! A backwards Texas is a recent historical phenomenon that has resulted directly from extremely deliberate strategic political maneuvering by national conservative organizations. The days of Lyndon Johnson - who forced through the Civil Rights Act - and Ann Richards - a keynote DNC speaker while she was the governor preceding Dubya - are not that far gone.

Texas is a great place to live, or at least it was and will be again if we can break the assholes' stranglehold on it. Stop sitting smugly on the coast and bashing it and start figuring out how to reach out.
41
For the same reason that you have resisted moving to a socialist paradise, perhaps?
42
I left that state 15 years ago and never looked back.
43
@22 Must be nice not being poor, old, w/o healthcare, or using public schooling.

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