Thompson writes: "Let's back away from the secession ledge for a moment, see if we can’t find a compromise."
'More than 80,000 people have signed an online White House petition asking permission for Texas to leave the Union.'(photo: Getty Images)
Go Ahead and Secede, Texas. We Dare You
13 November 12
n the wake of news that more than 80,000 people have signed an online White House petition asking permission for Texas to leave the Union, a single grave concern has united the minds of Americans of all political colors: If the state secedes, where are we going to get our NFL-caliber wide receivers?
As a recent student not just of secession, but the traditionally Southern mindset that drives it in this country (similar petitions for Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina have all topped 20,000 signatures), let me be the first to say to the aggrieved liberal community: relax. No one is talking about building a Berlin Wall around the upside-down pistol grip part of Texas.
Texans may be stubborn, but they ain't stupid. In the event of secession, mutually beneficial treaties would be drawn up between the United States and newly formed Texas Republic, ensuring both sides get what they need.
The U.S.A. would be guaranteed access to Texas's critical military bases, and to necessities such as refined oil, natural gas, cattle, cotton and cheerleaders. (By the way, anytime someone mentions jazz as America's singular gift to world culture, I hasten to remind them of the cheerleader outfit.) In return, Texas would receive from the rest of the nation such life-sustaining provisions as …
Come to think of it, what does Texas actually need from the rest of us?
It's not just that the state leads the nation in production of most of those aforementioned resources. With a rock-solid infrastructure (Texas is the only state in the continental U.S. with its own independent power grid) and stable political tradition, it's also a self-sustaining player in agriculture, aeronautics, computers, energy, high-tech research and manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation and just about any other economic category to which you care to attach a dollar value. It's home to six of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips and AT&T, not to mention Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Dr Pepper. According to a 2011 Economist ranking, Texas's $1.224 trillion GDP makes it the economic equivalent of Russia - and the fourteenth-largest economy in the world, second among U.S. states only to California.
Even during the recent economic downturn, commerce in Texas has remained robust. Employment is growing at 3.1 percent annually; its manufacturing and export figures are trending up; its unemployment rate currently stands at 6.8 percent, a full point below the national average; and housing starts are up 17.2 percent over the past year.
Texan Bob Smiley, author of the witty Texas secession novel Don't Mess With Travis (Travis being the surname of a fictional Texas governor who calls for secession), is even more emphatic on the point. "In the last decade of the Great Recession, Texas has expanded by more than one million jobs, more than all other states combined," Smiley told me in an email. "And fully 95 percent of the country receives its oil and gas courtesy of pipelines that originate within Texas. That is what one might call leverage."
Texas isn't entirely without need - consider the recent drought there, and accompanying federal aid - but then again, no major player in the global economy is entirely self-sufficient. Point being, instead of freaking out about angry Texans and other Southerners wanting to control their own destiny, we'd do better to consider their position and complaints, and ask ourselves: Shouldn't shared values, cultural norms and manageable geography - not the chance tentacles of history and insatiable federal bureaucracy - ultimately be the things that unite a given population?
For two years, I traveled throughout Texas and the South researching these very questions for a book. I concluded that while on its surface secession is an admittedly absurd proposition, there's a certain logic, even a sense of humanity, in its essence. Sure, splitting the country apart feels unnatural - a crime against manifest destiny, at the very least. Americans have become so accustomed to their hard divisions - conservative-liberal, black-white, Roe-Wade, red-blue, Tea Party-sane - that the chasm separating us feels almost ordained, an organic and even integral part of the national tradition. But just because spiritual, political, racial and commercial divides have always been with us doesn't mean they must continue to define us.
So let's back away from the secession ledge for a moment, see if we can't find a compromise. Maybe the solution for dissatisfied Texans and other wannabe secessionist states that can't tolerate the oppressive yoke of the federal government is to grant them some measure of quasi-autonomy. There's plenty of international precedent. Maybe deal with Texas the way that the Philippines deals with its restive state in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or the way China manages economically independent Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region, even issuing its citizens their own passports. Hell, Scotland already has a semiautonomous parliament and in 2014 it's going to vote on an independence referendum that could abolish its 300-year tie to the UK. Turn Texas into Puerto Rico or Guam; give them some form of political and social expression in exchange for diminished power in federal government.
Or maybe the solution is simply to give Texas and other secessionist-conservatives what they really want: free passage to the land of all their conservative fantasies. Send them all off with gratis one-way tickets (I'm happy to earmark some of my socialist tax dollars for the effort) to a country with: a small federal government with limited power and meager influence over the private lives of its citizens; extremely weak trade unions routinely sabotaged by the federal government (i.e., a "pro-business environment"); negligible income tax; few immigrants, legal or otherwise; a dominant Christian population, accounting for some 70 percent of the people; no mandatory health insurance or concept of universal health care; a strong social taboo surrounding homosexuality and a constitution that already states, "All individuals have the right to marry a person of their choice of the opposite sex"; and a gun culture so ubiquitous that you can find automatic weaponry displayed openly on the streets of its capital city and in many households.
Sound like a Texan secessionist's dream? Well, it's no dream. This country already exists. It's called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Don't mess with us, Texas. You just might get what you want.
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Comments
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President Obama should sign an executive order to strip U.S. citizenship from anyone who signed a petition to secede and requests that they are "peacefully deported."
We aren't all childish and pigheaded.
The only reason you hear, "we live in a republic, not a democracy" is that Republicans don't believe in allowing people the right to determine their own destiny. It makes a good talking point, and like all conservative talking points, it's factually inacurate, but sounds plausible.
perhaps many of the people signing the petition supporting Texas' secession live in the 'blue states'. I for one, wouldn't mind to see it go!
43% of Texans voted for Obama.
We're not a red state anymore. Give us a decade for the old racist farts to die off...
Watch 'em whine when Galveston goes under water and they need early warning satellite data and FEMA.
All the polls really mean is that the crybaby right has a lot of ineffectual whiners and losers.
I am a little P.O.'d about the football and cheerleader comment in the article: there's plenty of head injuring football in the rest of the country.
But the record extreme drought that Texas has been experiencing is going to drain their economy, and they also get hurricanes, often. If everybody in Texas isn't real nice to the rest of us, we might not be there when they need us. Too bad, because I have some friends in Texas (and I don't understand what they see in the place).
I'll believe that they are behaving nicely when they remove that school textbook committee that only allows a right-wing spin on 20th century history, which results in the rest of the country only having those books available from publishers.
Good analysis. This is exactly the "pouting child" phenomenon that you outline. Like the six-year-old who's going to make a sandwich, and then run away.
Given that Texas, like all Red States, receives far more money from the Fed than it pays in, LET "EM GO !
CA, NY and MA alone are the top tier of Blue States paying *far* more INTO the Fed than they ever receive. Which means that these and other Blue States literally support the welfare Red States, Texas included.
So, if the economy in TX is as good as the author indicates, they must be involved in some truly "creative accounting" to stay so low on Federal Tax Scales !
Given the "contributions" of notable Texans such as Tom Delay, Dick Armey, Phil Graham, G.W.Bush, Rick Perry - need I go on ? - I'm just not seeing the down side to letting these people go.
No, in fact, if they promise that they WILL secede, I think we should offer to help them pack !
Texas doesn't contribute anything that the Nation cannot easily find elsewhere, and I, for one, would CELEBRATE the loss of the Texas School Board which is one of only two places in the United States that makes final determination regarding what kind of religious and political censorship to apply to the final editions of AMERICAN public school textbooks.
You know .... such as when we have to teach our kids that George Washington was the first President, not Sam Houston. :)
Aside from the misplaced apostrophe, when you slam the Bushes and Perrys, don't leave out Bob Perry; whenever someone buys a Perry home that person is sending money to a far right wing super PAC.
Don't throw us out with the Perry's and the Bushes.
Their lack of seriousness is evidenced by the thought that the same folks would no doubt be holding hands, prayerfully genuflecting and singing "God Bless America" had Romney won the election.
Their silly protestations actually do disservice to a legitimate concept for scholarly debate.
Secession is not of necessity a dirty word. We have seen it at work in the dissolution of the Soviet Union as well as some recently more serious ongoing attempts in Europe.
Some may remember that our departure from the good King George meets the requirements of the definition as well.
The difference is spite and altruism. Sure, there was the triangle trade, and also stealing lots of land from the Natives, but there was some kind of protest for Due Process (now where did that go?) when we protested King George.
But Texas, since Nixon, has gotten nothing but billions of red-lined dollars, and any rights that they do not enjoy are because they themselves took them away. What plan would they have to improve their land or their people?
If you read the parts you left out of my quote you would find my feelings about the entire charade.
Let them have a little fun, the election loss is worse than a root canal for them.
If you examine our Revolution closely you will find that our folks comprised a varied complement of intelligentsia, commoners and even a smuggler or three. All united against the King but with an wide range of sub motives. Even including spite and altruism. :)
We aren't a Red state anymore.
Texas secedes. . .Then, declares war on the US. . .Then, surrenders! And, demands "foreign aid" to "rebuild a democratic society!" [a la Iraq and Afghanistan]. . .Obama showers money on them; and, has George W Bush tog himself out in his flight suit to declare "Mission Accomplished!" [What better way to get the Texans to fall into the Democratic Party camp??!!] Maybe even install Petraeus as Military "administrator" to resurrect his tarnished image?
If you think I'm being silly. . .Please bear in mind, I'm just trying to get out from under the silliness of the past election!!!
Texas is a past master at playing "The Mouse That Roared". "The squeaky wheel getting the grease", etc.
Before this petition from citizens, Rick Perry himself has threatened at least once to secede.
Texas threatens to secede about every fifteen minutes.
When they were Mexican Territory, they revolted when Mexico outlawed Slavery, and put on that embarrassing military fiasco at the Alamo. Then they shouted, blustered and boasted until that sounded like something "heroic".
They were briefly a republic, and they they whined their way into the Union. Once in, and the Civil War brewing over using the Western Territories as Slave States, Texas was screaming to leave the Union before the ink was dry on their recent Statehood petition.
No less a personage than Sam Houston warned the Texas legislature that they could never prevail against an industrialized North, and they thanked him by kicking him out of office.
Yup .... "Texas Diplomacy" !
These examples of addled judgement are legion, and yet Texas somehow manages to B.S. and "spin" them all into something to be *proud* of.
Many have been the times when Texas has needed to secede from the State Of Denial!
You know, like as "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands"?
BTW, Smiley is a Californian, not a Texan. And what he writes about Texas for the most part is fiction.
The only reason you hear, "we live in a republic, not a democracy" is that Republicans don't believe in allowing people the right to determine their own destiny. It makes a good talking point, and like all conservative talking points, it's factually inacurate, but sounds plausible
Barack Obama- 56.97%
Mitt Romney- 41.59%
http://www.city-data.com/forum/texas/1727912-2012-election-results-major-texas-counties.html#b
I'm also a native Texan (SO HAPPY to be a left coaster for the last 44 years!)
I'm aware of Texas's annexation treaty, and how it gives Texas the ability to split itself into up to five states. Imagine that-eight more effing republican Senators. There goes Obombya's Senate.
I'd rather Texas seceded, myself; good riddance. But that would mean war, and i'm an almost pacifist.
I really wonder if the majority of Texans would actually agree to split Texas into five states. Before Alaska was brought on board, no way! Texans just loved being the biggest and "best" state. But now, being less than half the size of alaska (which state has threatened to split itself in half, just to mess with Texans' minds, making TX the third largest state) maybe they aren't quite as hungup on being SECOND biggest.
Boy, they'd sure gain a lot of power if they were five states.
Pleased to hear that Big D is "liberal" now. When i lived there, there was only one REpublican congressman, John Tower, and this was when Texas democrats were generally about as liberal as Dick Nixon. Glad things are looking up!
It's kinda like part of the Constitution, guys.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiv
Article IV Section 3 of The United States Constitution expressly prohibits Texas, or any other state, from dividing up and forming smaller states without Congressional approval. That simply is not a state right.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiv
Jeez, why do people say these things without researching. It's not that difficult folks!
My adios would go something like this: “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Oh, and while you’re at it take Mississippi, Alabama, and a few of the other states that believe Dixie is our national anthem with you.”
By now, Texas may be ready to fight that war along the border without the feds. Chaos reigns.
The rest of you deserve each other.
(I know, I know, there are some good Texan posters on RSN and of course I'm being facetious but I hope you get the point).
All aboard -cast off and avoid Cuba like the plague y'all! Ding-ding!
IT MEANS AMERICAN.
If you're not a Yankee, then you're not American.
The Civil War is over. YOU LOST.
Kelly
Proud American, Proud Texan
UUUmmmmmm, "If you're not a Yankee, then you're not American"? A "Yankee" is the original corporate US citizen. After the war, the people of the south were conquered and forced into the US Corporation. The war was about banking issues(collater al for debt) not slavery. People in the north had slaves too.
Yes, the Civil War is over, but the north lost right along with the south. (14th Ammendment) That's why this entire country is ruled by "statutes" and everyone is a corporate US citizen, instead of being an American. A US citizen is NOT an American. Look it up.
My daughter sent me other similar articles about the idiots in this country who have signed petitions in favor of seceding from the unon. I say GO AHEAD. The surest sign that our schools are not doing their job is how widespread this stupidity is. It boggles the mind.
Go ahead, you idiots. Move to secede! Do us a favor. There will be fewer idiots in the Union the rest of us will wisely continue to inhabit.
And the Texas K-12 school boards (full of nutty "Creationists") largely determine what is included in textbooks used everywhere else.
I know public schools need improving, but ice baby, the people that signed the petition were all home-schooled!
Yours,
Pickwicky
And home-schooling has been proven to be much better than the Corporation Indoctrination Centers.
No big loss.
Texas, and other U.S. southern states, seem to have not gotten over the defeat of their "confederacy", i.e., a confederacy containing the roots of racism and a shoot-em-from-t he-hip ultrantionalism . Combine that with segregation, Jim Crow, etc., and present-day stirrings or remnants of the "confederacy," and you have a region in the U.S. that doesn't sound like it would be a diplomatic "nation," or even an autonomous area. Even despite racial changes over the years. The ultranationalis m and racism still remain in the form of subtle residues against U.S. citizens who still are not considered "True Americans" and a superiority complex against the "other" in particularly "Third World" nations not considered to be on equal par with "True Americanism."
Thus, I would be concerned, e.g., with an "independent" or "autonomous" Texas which, without a progressive and/or Leftist philosophy influencing it, potentially could be an imperial interventionist in itself. Would consider an invasion of another state or a foreign nation like Mexico? The latter particularly is a reasonable cause for at least potential concern, considering history. Texas, after all, was a part of Mexico when it was stolen in the Mexican-America n War, and incorporated as a U.S. state.
So goodby. Oh bye the way, we are tearing down the fence on your southern boarder and putting on your northern boarder. We will be closing the military bases and moving them to Kansas, there will be no disaster assistance for next hurricane, drought, fire, earthquake, or rising seas. We are going to make it illegal for American companies to do business there, no XL pipeline, and the list goes on. But most important, Bush will no longer have secret service protection, nor have his government pension...All Texans will have to have a green card, and work permit to enter the US. That includes Bush.
We're almost a Blue state... give us a few years to let these racists die off...
Taking too long.
But we get to keep Josh Hamilton!
I live in Oregon and have checked out your thread.
"Groups of citizens" is about what it amounts to, which is from what I can gather 500,000 across the country. It averages out at about 12,821 per 39 states if you data is right. Hardly a wave of revolutionary proportions -and they'll always be there anyway, hiding in corners and sniping.
Now you can join up with these permanent malcontents, who are just offshoots of the Tea party really and just as out of touch (although their websites make them sound almost rational enough to attract the detritus from the "never enough" crowd), or you can accept the mandate of the last election.
If you burrow deep enough, you'll find enough trash from some long-buried heap to fuel sufficient rhetoric for whatever agenda you want to put forward.
Hell, I met some Albanians recently who thought that they'd been living an Nirvana for 50 years----etc (only kiddin' but you get the point I hope).
So what IS your point B.T.W.?
Then you'll need a passport and visa approval to visit us.
You'll get no direct help when you need it, only limited foreign aide.
When you're invaded, you're on your own.
Zip subsidies. For oil. Farmers. Ranchers. Zip.
And we'll all be free of the BS swaggering and bragging.
Please Texas, pull that rip chord!
Popeye, please. Any red-blooded Texan will tell you that the Confederacy won that war. Just note the flags on their 4WDs. After all, who would possibly fly a "Loser" flag?
Some truly great ideas there .... but do you think that any *one* of them would be adopted by Texas ???? "Our" Texas ??? :)
Au contraire, I can hardly see the Texas we all know so well, the one that has executed more people than any other state for a long time now and that the late Molly Ivin's named "The University of Bad Government", embracing Habeus Corpus, would be more likely to laugh at it and re-introduce slavery, public flogging, lynching and execution, apartheid against it's own dark-skinned people and enhancing the NDAA -I mean, the Texan "Department of Public Safety" has it's own drones now, as well as several police departments. I'd say that it would be more likely to resemble a cross between the former HMS "Bounty" and Devil's Island.
Perhaps it could be bordered off and turned into a museum of Medievalism in the modern era, like Kentucky's museum of Creationism. Don't they teach that shit with compulsory bible study in Texan schools too?
It would be like removing a millstone of regression from the nation's neck. Arizona too.
All of these petitioners are mere children threatening that if they don't get *their* way, they are going to take their football and go home. There is no use in explaining to them the workings of a democracy.
We have two choices:
1. Ignore them
2. Help them pack
Just as one would with a six year old throwing the same tantrum.
Here is his info:
http://bobsmiley.me/#cc2/linkedin
Born and lives in California. NOT a Texan. I guess it is fun telling lies about Texas.
Don't tell me the best players would not want the money from USA Football teams. Some would remain Cowboys and Texans. Those teams would want the TV money and remain NFL.
The oil companies would want to sell to Americans as does most of the world. There is not much that the USA would lose if Texas succeeded. There is a lot the US would save. Have not even mentioned if they did it years ago, the loss of George W, Enron, Lyndon Johnson, and Kennedy assassination memories that we never would have experienced.
Arizona go with... Real Arizona personnas join sanity.
Colorado your racism is showing as it is in
Not surprising of the Southern Tier.
I would love to see who these people are, ages, religious background, school background.
I would like to say NJ and NY were supposedly filing and I think that is a slap in Nations Face so FEMA leave them.
Speaking of FEMA, as you notice many of the ingrates are States who have had their hands out in past ten years for FEMA... They also depend on Federal Grants, Budget and freebies. Imagine the Budget dumping these crutches. We would save bundles probably within a year run blue...Again proving why Red States and their Candidates are not good..red signifies a bad budget. Republicans are always putting USA in red sometimes within months of getting in Office.
Adios, do not come a lookin for help if Disaster strikes. You do not need us.
I believe they should go Then in their Budget needs Romnit rides in to save them by buying out their debt with Bain. Bain gives them money and then Sells their Ass ets to China.
Win Win situation for all in that scenario.
This is out dated, and I already waved goodbye. Let them go...less idiots in Congress, was hoping Boner was going also.
Now can we go in with inspectors to make sure they have no weapons of mass destruction?
And before I get letters, it's a joke. That's for the Texans and Californians who don't git it.
That is the United Staters Constitution (Article 4, Section3) says that only Congress can determine the disposal of property belonging to the US. Now Texas has many US military bases, the Johnson Space Center headquarters, federal highways, office buildings and courthouse. It has US national parks, forests, monuments and other property belonging to all of us, not just to Texans.
So, let's let 'em go, but first Texas must buy all the United States assets within its boards; to just leave and take all those assets with them is theft. So let's allow Texas hand over a reasonable price for what belongs to all of us, then be on its way. Maybe $16 trillion would be a reasonable offer to cover all the financial damage its Bushes, Gramms, Armeys and others have caused us. Texas could also pay rent on some of the other US assets within its orders that it doesn't purchase outright.
And let's not worry abut those NFL-calibre wide receivers. When they have few opportunities in the Republic of Texas to apply their skills they will seek asylum to the US to try out for the NFL, just as Cuban defectors now do to seek employment with Major League Baseball.
Texas has a burgeoning Justice Party and if you live there you should git on board. Texans would like a Constitution that politicians don't use for toilet paper. It's a job description, stupid...
How many jobs might be created digging a large moat and putting up a tall fence all around the new Republic of Texas?
Might a real fix for the current unemployment problem..!
Thanks Texas..!!
I'M BEGGING YOU!
We can't afford to keep supporting big fat red states with no sense of responsibility to the rest of the country anymore.
Texas, it's time to move out of the basement and grow up.
43% of Texans voted for Obama. Another 10-20 years and we'll be a solid Blue state.
Texas is becoming irrelevant.
There's nothing left to miss.
Texas, you can leave now. Just don't ask us for any foreign aid.
Its foreign policy would consist of pleading for U.S. protection.
1. If they have something we want, we steal it.
2. We make damn sure they never acquire nuclear weapons they could use to defend themselves.
3. We denigrate their populace as a bunch of backward terrorists as an excuse to do whatever the hell we want to them.
Mitt Romney now claims that Obama got African-America ns to the polls by offering them gifts.
(Of course, no mention of all the newspaper "endorsements" for Romney after he had bought the newspapers.)
I wish the 1 percent would secede (after they leave their money here).
I still enjoy a vicious smile when I recall the fact that the SALT LAKE CITY TIMES endorsed Obama. WoW ! Is that "cold" or what ? :)
And, apparently Mormons were NOT kidding. Romney got a smaller percentage of the Mormon vote than did George W. Bush!
I see from all these posts that no one knows what UNITED STATES INC really is. It's well documented that it is a corporation. If we secede from the Corporation, that would put us back into the Republic. What's wrong with that? I'm no longer a US citizen. I'm in the Wisconsin Republic. No need to move. You can stay where you are.
And, please tell me, when the "Federal Government" (corporation) was given the authority to rule over the Sovereign States.
Well, be gentle gusselig. SkyKing self-describes as being "steeped in Texas History". If that means SkyKing grew up and was educated in Texas, then SkyKing is suffering from a life-long brain washing that began a the Mama's knee, and continued through every day of public schooling SkyKing may have received in Texas.
It is almost impossible for such an upbringing to be challenged by mere facts.
That is the very source of so many rabidly fanatic Texans to this day.
That would be historical justice, as long as Mexicans control it based on it being a part of the nation of Mexico.
It's time to call the hand of Ted Nugent Americans. Their divisiveness is more UN-American than American athletes wearing Olympic uniforms made in China. Enough! Let them eat cake and let them secede! Let them pay for what they take for granted. I'd rather feed hungry children with their UN-American money than feed their hypocrisy any more.
Keep in mind that ALL our larger cities went for Obama though and we seem to be outliving the stupid old white men who have been running this state-like Rick Perry and his cohorts.
Several of you have mentioned our illustrious State Board of Education. We have a continuing guerilla war going on with them and just got rid of a few more of the loonies in the last election but we didn't get rid of this one:
"I’m sorry. This critical thinking stuff is gobbledygook.”
David Bradley, R. Beaumont
Texas State Board of Education
Take pity on us we have a lot of cretins to get rid of before we can be allowed in polite society.
I'll bet the worst of them have signed the petition and I would agree that they should be immediately repatriated to their last known country of origin.
It would make our job a whole lot easier!
Thank you for your very courageous comments.
While we are having our fun sniping at some of our mouth-breathing , knuckle-draggin g brethren here in this country, we are all fully aware that Texas has millions of good people (as you say, note the votes from your cities).
The truly good news for us all, and the thing that IS making the Good Ol' Boys go characteristica lly ballistic, is the very fact that Texas and other "outlying" Red States ARE changing. This secession talk is simply the noise they make as they are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century.
But following centuries of their bullying, blustering, boasting braggadocio, they have just set themselves up as a target entirely *too* sweet to be ignored. :)
I would like to offer my condolences to the myriad sane, sophisticated human beings who also reside in the Lone Star State.
Texas may seem like it is filled with Yahoos - it isn't. I remember being in an auto parts store in the 60's and overhearing two men talk about how they would kill a black man if he was ever found on the Texas Women's University campus. No emotion, like they were talking about the weather.
This state has come a long way in attitudes. True, we still have our racists, but they are dying off.
Unfortunately, we still elect some of the dumbest politicians. don't even get me started on Perry.
Try to keep in mind that there are GOOD TEXANS working for change here. And it isn't all fun and doughnuts.
Just be a little more sensitive.
Do we have some idiots? Yes. But, then, so do a lot of other states.
I still live in Texas. It's the old farts that have to die off. In less than 20 years we will be a Blue state.
He only lost Arizona and Indiana by 10. He only lost Georgia by 7 and he only lost North Carolina by 3!!!
Clinton did better than Obama in Texas and that was back in the '90s.
Twenty-thirty years from now texas will be a swing state. LONG BEGORE THEN Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana, and Georgia will become solidly blue states.
This makes texas irrelevant to the discussion of how American shapes itself in the coming decades. Texas is WAY behind the curve and the United States of America is going to leave it in the dust (sorry, "texas black dirt").
There'll be no reason left for you to stay in that God-forsaken 3rd world anti-American little country with delusions of grandeur.
David Bradley, R. Beaumont
Jeebus! And I thought we had it bad with Don McLeroy!
Seriously, we are close to being Blue.
Don't kick us out because of a few inbred yahoos (and don't eat the BBQ in the Big Thicket either... just FYI).
Either way you're right! DON'T DRINK THE WATER!
Sorry, he may not have been born there, but he got his attitude there. We don't want him, but if you don't want him either, if Texas were no longer a part of the USA, you could send him to the Hague for trial and execution for war crimes. As a former president, we can't do that to him.
Actually that might not be a bad idea. There is a precedent in Liberia which was where a host of freed slaves were repatriated prior to the Civil War. Paying plane tickets and sea freight would probably be cheaper than any other type of compensation and we'd get to keep the infrastructure our tax dollars have paid for. The level of education and standard of living probably isn't too much different. I can attest from personal experience that elementary education in Botswana is superior to one of the better public schools in Texas (CSISD).
Apparently there are no Americans left!! Or else they would study President Andrew Jackson's PROCLAMATION to the State of South Carolina, December 10, 1832
In fact I am sure the duly elected state legislators will reject any proposal to secede. They recieve more back from the federal government than they pay in and could not survive.
Just think about Texas trying to stem the flood of immigration from Mexico and South America, bloodshed and the U.N. would be forced to step in. Gun crazy Texans, no lose.
I am frankly embarrassed by these developments.
First, Smiley is NOT a Texan. Smiley lives in Los Angeles, California. He was born in California.
Second, despite what Smiley thinks, for the last eight years, Texas has received more from the Federal government than it has paid in taxes.
Third, we have a horrible infrastructure (except for roads: we love our roads).
Fourth, we have a $27 billion shortfall in the state budget. We had one two years ago but that was made up for by Federal stimulus money (see? that's how it works in this state).
Smiley is pushing baloney on people who don't bother to do research. Here is the info on Texas receiving more than it gives; http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20120805-texas-can-no-longer-complain-that-it-gives-more-than-it-gets-from-federal-government.ece
I'm an American first and a Texan second. The majority of Texans feel this way. Please don't write of the entire state as a bunch of idiots because some people are babies.
FYI, I voted for Obama (as did 43.6% of Texans). We are not a Red state - we are purple.
Y'all also don't know how to drive, but that's another story!
Isn't texas the only state in the union that makes it acceptable to fly its own flag higher than the U.S. flag?
Not everyone in Afghanistan is a member of the taliban either, but we went to war with them. texas is as texas does. Control your state first, then talk to us about how far you've come. Ya'll have a long way to go!
I think the US should have let the all the Confederate states go in 1860. Today they'd be an agrarian, English-speakin g 3rd world-country. They'd have to free the slaves eventually. But wait -- where would we get our auto racers, football players, and obedient soldiers?
As a libertarian, I must point out that some of the things the author loathes about Texas are (or used to be) quite American, notably small government and lower taxes.
It's the loud, obnoxious minority old white boys and their idiot sons that give Texas a bad name.
As for "low taxes" you'll get an ear full from many residents. Because our Gov. doesn't like federal money (except when we need to shore our our short fall), the state and cities have had to increase taxes. The Department of State Health Services is only 2nd to the CDC (IIRC) in the number of specimens it processes.
People in Texas "talk" small government, but they never implement it.
BTW, most of what is in this article is wrong or dated material.
Obama did A LOT better than that in North Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and Arizona.
Come away from the dark side. Darth Vader may be your father Luke but he's not a role model. You can stop defending him.
Ya'll are in denial.
Libertarians are perfectly fine people, but nearly as dumb as teabaggers.
On the one hand we have people from all over the world who risk their lives to come here looking for freedom and a livelihood.
On the other we have citizens who wish to leave because they are unhappy with the results of a Democratic system.
I propose to exchange one for the other, that is allow the illegal aliens to become citizens and get their former addresses so that our unhappy citizens can travel to these aliens' country of origin of their choice.
Sort of like that 'Wife Swap' TV show: 'Citizen Swap'.
It might even make for a good reality TV show.
And everyone wins at the end...
Those immigrants who are willing to come here and work and follow our laws and be loyal to our country could be granted the forfeited properties as homesteads.
!) We're not turning our backs on America. We're turning our backs on the corporation known as The United States.
2) You are horribly mixed up as to the difference between United States and America. United States is a corporation. America is a country. State of is just a sub-corporation . Go to Dunn and Bradstreet or Manta.com and see that even your county is listed as a "for profit corporation".
3) Find out who is actually eligible for the Social Security Program. Are you a corporate Federal Employee? If not, then you are fraudulently partaking in a program that was not meant for you.
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