> Despite the discovery of oil in 1901, the state remained undeveloped
> well into the 1950s. Although Texas's fortunes took flight in the
It's called air conditioning -- the state is not humanly habitable without it. This same phenomenom is seen all across the Sunbelt.
> town of Arlington, a Houston suburb, to pick up much of the tab for a
Arlington is a Dallas suburb.
> George W. Bush did better in his bid to become governor, winning the
> election in 1996 and again in 1998, and, of course, he may also do
> well in his bid to become president. If he does, however, he will
Bush has not imposed any policies on Texas because no Governor of Texas can --it's a largely ceremonial post. As he points out below, the real "executive branch" power is wielded by around 140 (he says 200, but a former comptroller that did a big state gov audit a while ago said it was 140) independent commissions. They cannot be fired after they are appointed and they serve for 6 years so no Guv even has all her own appointees.
> In a special convention called to draft a new state constitution, a
> group of hand-picked delegates voted to cripple the executive branch
> by dividing it up into five different posts, each one separately
> elected. They further fragmented executive power by dividing it up
> among what are, by now, some 200 administrative boards, whose members
> are chosen by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate
> and are largely unaccountable to either. The delegates also crippled
> the local legislature by restricting its members to two-year terms,
> and limiting their salaries and the times they could meet, so as to
> ensure a high turnover of members.
And only those wealthy enough. This is a recurring theme throughout all levels of government in Texas. When I moved to Houston 12 years ago, the mayor was paid $30k/yr -- I'm not sure what the salary is now. Houston has typically had rich real estate people as mayors.
>
> Political impoverishment has also led to intellectual impoverishment.
> According to Fehrenbach, "The Texan's ... distrust for theories [was]
> profound. ... The practical outweighed the conceptual; things were
> more important than ideas; education was to fit children to society,
> not change them or produce inherent confusion by educating too many
> students beyond their station" (6). If, traditionally, Texans "were
> not antisocial but asocial", this perhaps explains the deep sexual
> unease that Texas's most famous novelist, Larry McMurtry - author of
> The Last Picture Show (1966), Terms of Endearment (1975), and
> Lonesome Dove (1985) - argues underlies much of West Texas cowboy
> culture.
I don't think any of the anti-intellectualism above is unique to Texas -- it's a very 'Merkin thang. (I do like the dose of amateur psychoanalysis though, we've got a deficit of that around here since losing Dace.)
> hinterlands, put on jeans and cowboy boots, and set themselves up as
> ranchers - as George W. Bush has done with 1,500 of desolate scrubland
> that he recently purchased near the remote West Texas town of Crawford
He really is geographically challenged, isn't he -- Crawford is near Waco, and thus, nowhere near West Texas. (Can't one at least get a Rand McNally atlas in Manhattan?)
> indicators as the number of physicians, full-time college enrolment
> and infant mortality (8). Thanks to relentless budget cutting under
> George W. Bush, it now ranks last in terms of state spending per
> capita, an indication that the distribution of income is continuing to
> worsen (9).
Is he on Gore's campaign staff, or what?
Texas really does have a fucked up form of government. Texas really has disastrous social policies. But Texas really is just the US on steroids, not a special case. It's a matter of degree, not of kind.
--
Joseph Noonan Houston, TX jfn1 at msc.com