Is Texas Our Future?

On the cover of the October 28, 2013, copy of "Time" magazine, there was a picture of the United States of Texas! All of the present states were states in Texas. I thought maybe I was dreaming, but no, that's what it said. I will quote the first paragraph of the article:  "They say the Lone Star State has four seasons: drought, flood, blizzard and twister. This summer 97% of the state was in a persistent drought; in 2011 the Dallas-Fort Worth area experienced 40 straight days in July and August of temperatures of 100 degrees or higher. The state's social services are thin. Welfare benefits are skimpy. Roughly a  quarter of residents have no health insurance. Many of its schools are less than stellar. Property-crime rates are high. Rates of murder and other violent crimes are hardly sterling either.  A recent report from the FBI found that the home state of Chuck Norris led the nation as the place the most people got punched or kicked to death in 2012."

This was written by Tyler Cowen, an economist and Libertarian, who says Texas has acquired a cool factor recently, and it's a place where people go to get a fresh start. I certainly don't agree with that. The people moving there are not adding to middle America, they are dumbing it down to lower than middle. The only good news I've heard recently coming out of Texas is that a federal judge just knocked down the new law that  would make it impossible for clinics to provide abortions unless they were situated within 30 miles of a hospital. That's right on the way to destroying Roe v. Wade. That law would have put about 30 clinics out of business which was the idea all along. The good ol' people of Texas say they will fight the judge's decision all the way to the supreme court. I wonder if they ever solved their problem of not having anymore drugs for executions. They execute so many people in Texas you'd think they'd have a big stock of that kind of drug on hand. I certainly wouldn't want to move to a state which couldn't execute at will as Texas seems to do.

The article goes on to say Texas has many good things going for it. Maybe it does. but they aren't apparent to me. The undesirable aspects out-weigh the good ones by far and it would be the last place I would ever consider living.