Handbasket Talk

As in "going to Hell in a..." (see two posts below).  Just because I'm loath to join the chorus these days doesn't mean I'm willfully uninformed.  We're still doing our reading, Gentle Reader, and we're trying to get back into the Charlie Rose habit now that the two week Olympic hockey orgy is over.  I'm finding it hard to watch the talking heads, tho.  It's much easier to pick and choose items that pique my interest from memorandum or Real Clear Politics.  Here's one such by Michael Barone, writing in yesterday's Washington Examiner:

"Stop messing with Texas!" That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to Texas' anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democratic politicians as well as Republicans.

His point was that the big-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters' independence and ability to make decisions for themselves.

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state's history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

[...]


Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California -- almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes -- and no state income taxes -- and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California's year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California's. But its test scores -- and with a demographically similar school population -- are higher. California's once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

I've been a Texan by choice, not birth (as it's said in the Lone Star State) since 1999 when I established residence in Livingston County about an hour north of Houston.  I can do this because Texas law allows folks who live in RVs to maintain a permanent "home" in the state while they're off gallivanting around the country.  I chose to keep that home, even during the two and a half years I lived out in The Golden State (2000 - 2002), which is to say I refused to surrender my Texas drivers license even though I DID pay those exorbitant Kallyforhneeya income taxes... Momma didn't raise no fools... which were HIGH, Gentle Reader.  And when it comes down to it, I'm technically one of those 1,509,000 people who "voted with their feet" and got the Hell out of that place.  

But enough of the personal.  Read the whole Barone piece, especially if you live in California.  Or New York.  Or Massachusetts.  Or any number of other similar states that the Democrats have messed up.  This is also what's wrong with our FEDERAL gub'mint and it's getting worse, day by day.  Hell.  Handbasket.

Oh... and while you're at the Examiner... Glenn Reynolds (yeah, THAT Glenn) has an excellent piece on "consent of the governed," just in case ya missed it this weekend.  Good stuff.  The kinda stuff that makes Leftie heads explode.