Seems a bit forced to call that treason. We already have a political commitment to local rule and state sovereignty.
This.
Well, you got out. I don’t think an in-for-keeps attitude is a thing to be proud of in any case.
That is incredibly insulting to the nation to your south now.
Really? If secession passed by referendum? I don’t expect such a decision would mean much.
Well, at least the school books in the rest of the USA would probably be a little better, until the Flat Earthers managed to infiltrate and subvert the next largest available state.
I think the present mix of local control and no secession just pushes that up; progressives skip out to progressive districts, reactionaries hole up in reactionary districts, & they see each other as undesirable and alien, & among those who are not refugees, each sees his own kind as the real American true people. Without widespread national service, this will get worse.
I could be wrong, maybe secession would be even worse.
And Texas has among the lowest (maybe THE lowest?) per capita taxes of the 50 states and quite proud of having a small, lean government. A high percentage of a small budget doesn’t excite me. I could be the 3rd richest person in Loving County. I’d much rather be the 100th richest person in Harris County.
I quite enjoy being a Texan, but I’ll take the good with the bad. It’s not a hellhole, by any means, but picture’s not rosy, either.
SBOE aside, the education budget won’t be doing well for at least a couple bienniums, and the “tax reform” we passed in 2006 did it no favors. Unfortunately, our current political system means we can’t repeal the reform and get our schools funded sooner, either.
I think first that you must be born and raised there. Second, you have to learn to keep your eyes and ears open and refuse to drink the damned kool-ade. Then you have to have the guts to move out of Texas and live in places where some independent thought is allowed.
Indeed. And I well remember Texas when it was a staunch Democrat state, and I remember when it started the Republican transition. But the Texas Democrats even back in the day always seemed a breed apart from the national party, never seeming really to trust them, because they weren’t Texans.
Hear hear! But I wouldn’t bust a gut. As the great Louis Armstrong once said: "“Some people, if they don’t know it, you just can’t tell them.”
Oh, and just to clarify my earlier comments: I spent 24 years in Texas, not 22. Seems my Texas upbringing left me confused about numbers over 20, since I run out of fingers and toes to count on. (Well, truth be told, I can count to 21, but we wont go into that.)
Yes, but I’m not a state. When I said the US is like the mafia in that once you’re in, you don’t get out, I was talking about states. The Civil War settled that rather definitively, I think.
Hmmm … that’s assuming federal troops all remained loyal to the federal government. A lot would depend on the feds getting plenty of public support, which is not a certainty. Hell, Lincoln’s biggest job was keeping up enough support for the Civil War.
Given a big enough economic disaster, it’s entirely possible that the federal government might not be able to control large sections of the country militarily. I don’t see it happening in the near future, though.
On the other hand, any seceding region or state would have to have recognition from other governments. Possibly some country like Venezuela, Cuba or Iran might recognize them just to poke Washington in the eye.
Wouldn’t that be federal marshalls and/or the FBI? As long as Texas didn’t have any military forces mobilized, I assume it would still be a matter of criminal justice, not war.
On the other hand, Johnson sent federal troops into Detroit entirely on his own authority, so maybe I’m all wet here.
So, what’s your master plan here. Dam up all the rivers that flow through the State of Texas to try to cut off water supply to the state’s population to fight a non-existant war? You seem fairly delusional.
No offense, but you do realize that: a) this is an insane idea; b) Texas is not and never will be at war with the U.S.; c) Texas sits next to the Gulf of Mexico and has significant underground water supplies of brakkish water that make the state an ideal candidate for desalination as a source of water; d) the only way Texas suffers any major water shortages based on current forecasts are if the state population continues to grow drastically and the state doesn’t spend any money to develop alternative sources of water (or alternatively, learn to conserve better) they will have shortages during droughts starting in something like 2060; and e) under some sort crazy scenario where the U.S. does somehow dam up all water flowing into Texas from other states (disregarding what consequences that might have for other regions of the U.S.), Texas could probably get by long enough based on a combination of existing supplies, severe conservation, and purchasing water from other sources, to handle the short period of time that a war with the U.S. would last (a pretty damn short time considering the U.S. would absolutely crush Texas with its millitary) to where lack of water would be the least of Texas’s concerns.
Let me let you in on a secret, Texas gets 100% of its sunlight from outside of the state of Texas as well with no feasible alternatives available. Why not just build a dome over the state to cut off the sun’s rays from reaching it and wait them out that way.
In other words, your idea, if I am understanding it correctly, is preposterous, and you would probably make the worst millitary commander in world history if this would be your strategy for winning a hypothetical war with Texas.
Except that having a large rural population doesn’t help explain the poor rankings.
And from this most recent post, sure, Texas could get a lot of fresh water from desalination plants. How many of those do you have already, and how quickly do you think you can build them? Between the time the Army Corps of Engineers shuts off all the dams and when people start dying of dehydration, you’ve got a week, tops.
Yes, it does. Rural districts are generally poorer and there is correlation between poor performance and how rural a district is. For example, one (of many) reason would be that Rural districts often do not have as broad of a course selection (AP courses vs. honors vs. regular vs. remedial, for example). Do you really want to disagree that better performing schools are usually located in suburbs?
No offense, but would you please at least make an attempt to read the entirety of my posts so that you stop having an incorrect understanding of my point. To answer your points directly here:
I have no idea how many desalination plants Texas currently has, probably not many.
I have no idea how long it would take to build them, probably a long time.
I have no idea if all fresh water rivers coming into the state of Texas could be haulted quickly, let alone how much time it would take. I seriously doubt that the U.S. has the capability of causing death from dehydration within a week, but I’ll stipulate for the sake of argument that your wild ass guess is correct.
One week would be plenty of time to make a lack of water a very small concern for Texas in an armed uprising against the United States. Considering that the U.S. millitary could probably crush an armed rebellion by whatever millitary force Texas could muster within a number of hours, I’d say lack of water would never even cross anyone’s mind.
Just pure speculation on my part, but I’m guessing the U.S. would decide that rather than kill countless civilians using a method that most people would consider torture, they would rather just go ahead and kill/capture the poorly armed (in comparison) much smaller number of people that were actually attempting to revolt. Of course you may think that the U.S. would engage in an act that would make the Holocaust look tame by comparison, but I guess we would just have to disagree. I’ll say though that clearly Texas would be in the moral right to secede if they were simply trying to revolt against a country that thought a good war strategy would be to attempt to kill tens of millions of people by dehydration. How much further into fantasy land do you want to take this incredibly stupid hypothetical?
Of course I know all of that. Again, that’s a reason why a high percentage rural would lead to poor academic performance. It still isn’t a reason why a high absolute number of rural folks would lead to poor performance. Put it this way: Compare Texas to the rest of the country combined. The rest of the country combined has far more rural people than Texas, and yet, also has significantly better academic performance than Texas. Why is that?
And you seem fairly ignorant of the fact that I was responding to the scenario of a war. Talk of armies and all that stuff. I was just going with the premise.
Whoooo, now you’re talking desalinization. That requires a ton of resources. A ton. Texas would have a hard time acquiring that, much less coming up with the money to pay for it, especially if they break off from the US. It would take years to build even one, and mere seconds to blow it up.
Just a question: how much does one desalinization plant cost in time and years vs one cruise missile?
The severe amount of sun they get is part of their problem, in case you haven’t noticed over the last few months.
But really, I mean let’s get real for a second and quit fracking around. What politician is going to be able to drum up support for cutting off Texas’s water? Texas ain’t gonna secede. Ergo we’re not going to send any army against them. Ergo they ain’t getting their water cut off.
