What’s a girl to do? She’s young, full of energy and dreams, and has her eyes on adventurous horizons. But even in the 2012 world where she is coming of age, her [...]
What’s Left of Texas
Governor Good Hair
“If I owned Texas and hell, I’d rent out Texas and live in hell.” – U. S. Gen. Phillip Sheridan, 1866
When they held their constitutional convention in a cotton gin on the edge of the Texas Hill Country, they seemed a merry band of pranksters. The Republic of Texas Militia, which became a movement in the state during the mid 90s, had decided the state was not a part of the union. The fuzzy-haired leader of the organization, Rick McLaren, had studied the state’s constitution and was convinced that the legislature had not ever taken the appropriate votes to rejoin the United States after the Civil War.
McLaren was an intelligent man and was capable of endlessly debating law. There was no charisma to his leadership of the group but his fire kept inspiring fringe characters to join the ROT organization. When the separatist group got a permit to march on the state capitol, McLaren stood on the steps and declared the independence of Texas.
“We don’t have to put up with Washington,” he said to about 50 followers and a few reporters. “We aren’t part of the United States. We haven’t been since the beginning of the Civil War. Why should we pay taxes? Look at what Washington is doing with our money and how they are meddling in our lives and we don’t even belong.”
Although the language is a little different the message and the rhetoric coming from the current governor of Texas is essentially the same as delivered by a man who led his tiny militia to the mountains of West Texas and bought a run down trailer to establish a Republic of Texas Embassy. McLaren was willing to begin diplomatic relations between the ROT’s new government and the U.S. Whenever I went to interview McLaren and keep track of his legal tricks and size up his politics, we sat on a rock outside his embassy. On the ridgeline above and in the trees I saw men patrolling with high-powered rifles and I kept reminding myself to make no sudden moves toward the leader of the ROT.
Nothing good was going to transpire. McLaren became more fervent. He declared the government in Austin defunct because it was established under state charter and Texas was a republic, in his analysis, and not a state. His embassy was the new location of the Texas Federal government. Eventually, he made even more absurdist statements that began to threaten other residents in the Davis Mountain Ranch and the Department of Public Safety was dispatched to reduce McLaren to custody. He did, however, have guns, and a week-long standoff ensued, which ended with a shootout that took the life of one of McLaren’s “soldiers.” As DPS officers closed in on his embassy, I heard McLaren calling out on the short wave radio, “Nations of the world, mayday, mayday, mayday; this is the Republic of Texas calling for all due military assistance to protect our sovereignty.” He lived his fantasy to the end but his inglorious accomplishment turned out to be a life sentence in a federal prison.
McLaren’s misadventure began with the same hysteria that Texas Governor Rick Perry has been stirring. Perry blatantly suggested during the FOX News National Tea-Bagging Festival that Texans are about ready to leave the union because they are sick of Washington. In one cartoonish moment, the Republican standard bearer in this state insulted our entire democracy and every man or woman from Texas who has served under the Stars and Stripes. What is it they fought and died for governor? Was it so you could leave the union when people who had different politics than you were in the majority? I think we had that horror already in our history and, if you read when you were growing up out in Paint Rock, you would know that it was called the Civil War.
If a governor of a Democratic state had suggested such a thing during the administration of the previous president then you and every Republican in the land would have been demanding he or she be tried for treason. Suddenly, you fancy yourself a folk hero leading a band of revolutionaries. Turn around for a minute, pull back the hair from your forehead, and take a good look at who’s following you. They are the 2009 version of Rick McLaren’s wingnuts.
When Perry finally tempered his remarks there was a naked political motive. The state is in line for $17 billion from the Stimulus Bill. God knows that after six years of B**h and going on nine of Perry that the money is sorely needed for a state increasingly in disrepair. Eliot Shapleigh, a state senator from El Paso, compiles a report each legislative session called “Texas on the Brink.” Skimming it will provide more than enough data to show just how functional the Republican leadership of this state has been since 1994. Here are a few embarrassing tidbits about Texas that Rick Perry doesn’t want the rest of the nation to know so he can start planning his little fantasy of national politics.
1) 49th in teacher pay
2) 1st in the percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma
3) 41st in high school graduation rate
4) 46th in SAT scores
5) 1st in percentage of uninsured children
6) 1st in percentage of population uninsured
7) 1st in percentage of non-elderly uninsured
3rd in percentage of people living below the poverty level
9) 49th in average Women Infant and Children benefit payments
10) 1st in teenage birth rate
11) 50th in average credit scores for loan applicants
12) 1st in air pollution emissions
13) 1st in volume of volatile organic compounds released into the air
14) 1st in amount of toxic chemicals released into water
15) 1st in amount of recognized cancer-causing carcinogens released into air
16) 1st in amount of carbon dioxide emissions
17) 50th in homeowners’ insurance affordability
18) 50th in percentage of voting age population that votes
19) 1st in annual number of executions
Shapleigh’s little book of horrors comes fully footnoted to avoid being attacked by partisans. His staff gathers data from the Census Bureau and Texas government agencies. One assumes they then go out and get deeply, profoundly intoxicated to deal with their sense of hopelessness. In many categories, we are no longer ahead of poor Mississippi. This, then, America, is what Texans have acquired after 15 years of Republican guidance from B**h and Rick Perry. You want some of this? Didn’t you just get a big overdose?
There is little doubt that Perry is serious about seceding from the union. My guess is he’s grown tired of fighting it out for last place with Mississippi.
April 17th, 2009 on 4:12 am
I have friends from out of state planning a visit. Will they need a passport and/or visa?
zman
April 17th, 2009 on 5:48 am
Great piece, Jim. We have “On the Brink” in our office and we quote from it extensively when coming up with talking points for speeches on the state of the state. I think I’m going to make a poster with some of these stats on it to show to some of the crazies who come in the office every day. The Republicans simply can’t govern and I can only hope that the Democrats can come up with some credible candidates to run statewide. After all, you can’t fall out of the basement.
April 17th, 2009 on 8:07 am
Please take those tidbits of simplistic statistics and do some thinking and then re-post.
April 17th, 2009 on 8:56 pm
Carl Parker would be less than proud and less than surprised.
April 18th, 2009 on 8:13 am
JC
It’s that grand “head in the sand” attitude that has made Texas the great state it is today (see above for details).
Cheers!
April 22nd, 2009 on 10:53 am
While I’m sure you will extol the virtuous “metropolitan” modernity of New York, Los Angeles, and Boston … let me assure you that those cities and their parent states have issues as well. If you want to cherry pick from the long, long list of metrics by which we popularize or demonize states, let’s see the laundry list of crime statistics and so on for New York, California, and Massachusetts.
I am a proud resident of Texas, an educated and informed American, a proud father of four, and a veteran of this nation’s fine Air Force. I have read and listened to Rick Perry (as I feel it is the civil duty of all residents to stay apprised of their government’s activities), and while I often find him to be a boor and uninspiring man, I also find that he rarely is guilty of 150+ years of state history. He did not create the conditions that you report “plague” my fine state, nor will he resolve them all during his tenure. Where were you when Bill Clinton (whose 12 YEARS as AR governor never pulled his state above 45th in any national metric), was attaining national stature and committing acts of open moral and legal concern? Where were you when Harry Reid was forcible removed from office in the US House of Representatives for fraud and criminal acts? Sure, you love him now … but let’s not forget our past shall we?
Speaking of the past, let’s go back to a week ago when Governor Perry made these outrageous “threats” against the stability of the Union. What he actually said was, “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.” He was speaking on behalf of voter sentiment in Texas, but I realize that doesn’t nearly bolster your perspective as well as you would like. But go ahead, keep writing … maybe if you say it enough times you can get Americans at large to overlook the truth and believe what you like (gee we just had an election like that didn’t we?). The truth is, modern statism is the defining wedge that is separating the nation. Republicans had their chance and blew it … in a spectacularly craptastic show of leadership … and now a decade worth of spite and bitterness is driving Washington’s policies, not the truth or rule of Law. Pelosi and Reid are about settling scores, not progress. Obama is an unknown, untested, inexperienced enigma who has never had a real job. I don’t have anything against him, if you read his books, nothing he’s doing should be surprising. However, what he is DOING is not what he CAMPAIGNED for, and that is what is steadily eroding his support from moderate Republicans, independents, and moderate Democrats … not Rick Perry relating a sentiment he had picked up on at the tax protests.
April 22nd, 2009 on 10:55 am
I apologize … got too excited … I mean’t when Barney Frank was removed from the House, not Harry Reid.
May 6th, 2009 on 11:25 am
I never could understand why an intelligent person would want to live in a state that has produced the likes of GWBullsh, Tom Delay (delay as in “arrested development”, and so many other Fascists and mental defectives. Its an embarrasment to the entire country, and my advice to you and the handful of sane people who live there would be to get the hell out so we can build a huge wall all around it, like a huge open-air asylum. By the way, I dont think that general’s comnment was meant as a joke !
May 28th, 2009 on 7:52 pm
“james” may not understand why an intelligent person would want to live in Texas, but he cannot deny that a large number of indisputably intelligent people do — and more are arriving every day.
While Texas may not appeal to everybody (I would not recommend it to avid downhill skiers), only a small mind would be unable to see that it has much to offer.
Perhaps a wiser perspective would note that different people value different things, and among the advantages of a federal republic — especially one with a less intrusive central government — is variety of geography and culture.
November 24th, 2009 on 6:58 pm
I wish you would build a big huge wall to keep “us Texans” in. You would only be doing us a favor in keeping yall out while Obama carries yall down with him.