One of the staples of comment sections and social media up in Rochester is former residents logging in to brag about moving to Texas (or Florida, or North Carolina, or some other Southern state). The theme of these messages are that we’re suckers for paying high state taxes.
For some reason, I haven’t seen much of that bragging lately. Perhaps it’s the utter collapse of the Texas electrical grid. Maybe it’s the hospitals overflowing with anti-vax yokels gasping to death as their relatives tear up DNR paperwork while demanding that the doctors prescribe Ivermectin and HCQ. It could be the COVID superspreader schools without masks or distancing. Add in the possibility of your wife or daughter being the target of a lawsuit because they had a late period, and the silence from these assholes is deafening.
I have lots of empathy for people who grew up in these states, but the ex-New Yorkers who moved there to dodge taxes can go fuck themselves. Today, anyone who wants to move to Texas really needs to have their head examined.
dlwchico
Neighbors a couple houses down sold their house and moved to Texas a few months ago.
In 2016 they had a Gary Johnson sign on their lawn. Guess they’ll get all the ‘freedom’ they want down there now.
catclub
The census showed that ALL the growth of texas was in its blue cities, not rural texas. That may push it blue…. sometime.
Of course, if they moved there so they can vote against school property taxes…
BerkeleyMom
Texas is dead to me. My elderly mother just moved there and I will not give the state a penny by visiting.
germy
Thread from a ProPublica reporter:
Al Z.
You get what you pay for.
Marcelo
As a 10-year Texas resident (we moved there to be closer to my wife’s family), please understand – this “dead to me” bullshit is toxic. There are MILLIONS of people here who are trying very hard to change things, being met by a governor, legislature, and court actively trying to kill us and then suppress the vote of those who are left. We’ve gotten really close to some statewide victories (Beto is the biggest example) but it is hard to organize in places where sheriffs and law enforcement have zero qualms about killing you and calling it an accident, regardless of your race.
Texas is a diverse, vibrant, apartheid state with suppressed voters aching for help. The best way you can help Texas is to encourage your blue senators and reps to ditch the filibuster and pass the For The People Act, not to mention codifying the right to legal abortion into federal law. If federalism is real, if it really is we the people, then your response to a rogue state should be to help get that state back in line, not to write it off. When you say things like “you get what you pay for” you’re basically agreeing with the monsters who use “state’s rights” as a justification for what they do. Either TX has the right to do this or they don’t. Which side are you on?
So in all my Texas kindness, fuck off with this “dead to me” “you get what you pay for” mentality. We need help, not scorn. There are people dying here under the thumb of our fascist monster of a governor. We are not to blame for this, and we need your help and support. Please and thank you.
Anonymous At Work
Use the “p” word to describe the act of moving to a new state for tax purposes. Watch them lose their $#!t.
lowtechcyclist
@germy:
And the media will continue to portray the GOP as a normal, sane political party, and give it the benefit of the doubt on practically all real and ginned-up issues.
germy
@Marcelo:
Has a Democrat announced a run for governor in Texas?
We need to support the candidate.
lowtechcyclist
@Marcelo: I strongly concur. Thanks for speaking up.
dm
@Anonymous At Work: “‘p’ word”? Parasite?
The Moar You Know
I hear the same horseshit here in California. Can you imagine leaving coastal California for Texas, no matter the taxes? I think not.
If they’re stupid enough to say it in front of my face I beg them to leave.
Marcelo
@germy: Everyone’s in a bit of a holding pattern holding out to see if Beto will run against Abbott. IMO he really is the only candidate who has a chance to beat him.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/23/beto-o-rourke-texas-democrats-2022/
dm
@Marcelo: Texas is pretty dead to me, but I still send a pittance every month to the Texas Democratic Party.
Andrew
Native Texan here. It was a lot less crazy growing up in the 1960s and 70s, when Texas was also a one-party state, but under control of the Democrats. I mark the transition to craziness as 1990, when Ann Richards barely won the governor’s race, only because Clayton Williams made an awful comment about rape. After 1994 when Shrub won, it was downhill from there, and fast.
I moved out of the state for good in 1981. I think the last time I actually visited was 1999 or so. I didn’t feel the need to go back even before all this awful legislation was passed.
matt
I just figure anyone who chooses to move there now is a right wing fascist, or I guess a desperate person.
rikyrah
David Rothschild (@DavMicRot) tweeted at 7:58 AM on Thu, Sep 02, 2021:
Mainstream media assured US during 2016 & 2020 elections, and confirmations of the 3 Trump justices that Republicans would never actually do what they were campaigning on, because it is too extreme, too dangerous, too unpopular, but then they did something faster and *way worse*
(https://twitter.com/DavMicRot/status/1433414129302360064?s=03)
Andrew
@The Moar You Know: I have a friend from the salsa dance world who is a Republican and is (was?) engaged to a chiropractor. They used to live in the Long Beach area, but made a big splash about moving to Corpus Christi where they set up a chiropractic office. She said nothing about leaving California, but I did find her choice of states interesting.
Andrew
@Marcelo: This native Texan agrees with you. My usual reponses to “fuck Texas” comments: 1) Biden got more votes in Texas than any other state other than California, 2) look at how close Beto came to unseating Ted Cruz. No state is a monolith and I appreciate all the hard work you activists are doing in my home state to get things turned around. We’re working just as hard in Florida.
Marcelo
@dm: That’s a shame you feel that way. Turning Texas blue would be an absolute icepick in the skull of the GOP’s electoral college advantage.
Alas, everyone on the coasts is too busy making snobby jokes about flyover country and gun nuts to care (see @matt and his comment about what he thinks of people who move here). And it makes sense, the people being hurt by this madness is pretty much 100% women and people of color, no wonder everyone would rather just write the state off.
Another Scott
@Al Z.: +1
Rich countries/states/localities have relatively high taxes because they provide goods and services and quality of life that low-tax places can’t. Economic growth and prosperity comes from spending money, not hoarding it.
This isn’t hard.
“But I have a fixed income!!11” Yes, but so does just about everyone else in practice. The answer isn’t to cut taxes, it’s to tax people and companies that are sitting on vast stashes of money and doing nothing productive with it. Raise wages as productivity increases. The minimum wage would be $26/h if it had kept up with productivity growth.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
Steve Bannon looks like a bit player in “Shameless”; for three episodes, he spends his time at the Alibi Room talking to Frank about how great things were prior to his child molestation conviction, prison sentence and monitoring on the offender registry. His story arc ends when he tries to stick his dick in an open electrical socket in the back of the Alibi Room thinking it is 110V, when instead it was 220V.
Kay
I thought it was really interesting when I’ve visited and I’ve though about retiring there because I just don’t like Florida but I think it’s too hot and I’ll end up in northern Michigan.
Which is also pretty wingutty as an area, if not the whole state :)
Ian
I live in Texas. Feels bad, man.
germy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
We laugh but he’s got more money than both of us combined.
Cameron
All four of my siblings live in Texas. Three love it, the other is leaving next year.
namekarB
Friend of mine moved from California to Alabama a decade ago to be closer to daughter and grandkids. Made a tidy sum on the sale of their Bay Area house, bought a McMansion on acreage for $250k. They are looking into returning to California but housing has continued to go up and their place in Alabama is worth . . . $260K. Oh yeah. Taxes? They get you one way or another. Local property taxes in their case.
Kristine
Was it someone on this blog who had their accountant run the numbers only to find that California was actually equivalent to or even a little less expensive than Texas due to multiple regressive taxes the latter put in place to make up for the lack of a state income tax ?
anon
@The Moar You Know: Texas could be as blue as San Francisco and I still wouldn’t move there. Hot weather. Hurricanes. Will just get worse with climate change. You can’t vote that crap away.
emmyelle
Born and raised in New England, higher-educated in NY, wandered the globe, then settled in Houston in early 2000s. Loved it, saw myself staying there, lived through Rita and Ike. Had a kid, who considers herself a native Texan. Great job opportunity pulled me back east. I miss aspects of Houston but not a day goes by when I wish I still lived there. And many a day go by when I am so incredibly glad that I got out of there when I did. Never going back.
Kay
Also, the electrical grid is…concerning. They have these huge, sophisticated cities! My God, get the grid worked out.
Miss Bianca
@Anonymous At Work: The “p” word?
Ian
I think one of the Castro bros could potentially beat Abbott. Would need someone who could over-perform with Latinos, especially non-voting Latinos.
But make no mistake, Ds are still big underdogs here. At least another 10 years until its a 50/50 state.
Chief Oshkosh
I have relatives who moved back there because where they were living was too liberal for them. Sadly for them, what they remembered of “conservative” Texas of the 70s and 80s was really not much more than nostalgia and a misunderstanding of the realities even back then. I can’t say that they’ve told me that they regret the move overall, but they are pretty unhappy with local and state government right now.
As Marcelo says, though, there are millions of Texans that are under the thumb of the fascist evangelicals. I need to remember that more often. Thank you, Marcelo, for reminding me.
Marcelo
I wish we could leave but our jobs are tied here pretty securely. Most of the people who are being hurt by this law lack the means to leave. But fuck those people, amirite? They made their bed when they *checks notes* were born in TX or came here out of economic necessity from a country worse off that we are and didn’t have the luxury of choosing where they ended up and now don’t have the means to up and move to the paradise that is everywhere else.
Kay
@Kristine:
There’s a graph. I was delighted someone finally did it.
Anonymous At Work
@dm: Privilege. As in “You are privileged both to have a job that lets you move across state lines and the money to do so just for tax reasons.”
Marcelo
@anon: That’s fair. The weather here is pretty gnarly.
matt
@Marcelo: Look, I feel sorry for you, like I feel sorry for people who live in Saudi Arabia. Good luck with that! And good luck with your quest to turn what is essentially the capital of the new confederacy into a blue state. You won’t succeed, but you might feel good about yourself, friends along the way, etc.
Betty Cracker
@Marcelo: Nods in Floridian. I understand people’s frustration with our rancid statehouses, fascist shit-bird governors and local and imported brown-shirts who support them. I hate those fuckers too. And I am sure you will agree that no one is more angry and depressed about the state of things as those of us ground under the heel of these monsters.
But yeah, Bugs Bunny won’t save the rest of the continent by sawing off Florida, and boycotting Texas won’t make blue state people immune (literally and figuratively) from what happens there. Anyone who doesn’t think it’s their fight because they live in a blue state will find out differently when one of these monsters puts his hand on a bible on a future 1/20. We’ve seen that movie before, and we know how it ends.
Baud
I gather upward of 90% of people don’t take politics into account when deciding where to live.
Kay
I hate the “cut off the red states” sentiment among liberals. Come on. Even it it’s a 60% GOP state that’s a lot of D voters to just abandon. Also? It’s a little dumb. It’s Right wingy.
Nancy
@Marcelo:
My sympathies. Admiring your effort and commitment. Important to remember that the comments are not about you. I get that it is hard especially at a site you depend on for GOOD STUFF, like virtual friends.
Marcelo
@matt: The difference is that the Saudis are in a different country, and Texas is not. People outside of Texas who believe that we are all in this together and that we do need and rely on each other, people who believe in the values of the left, y’all have a moral responsibility to at least not be shitty about things like this. If we are all in this together fucking act like it.
satby
My ex-husband moved to Texas in the 80s to evade child-support as well as taxes, because it had one of the worst records on child support enforcement in the nation.
I’ve been to Texas a lot for various reasons, none of which were particularly voluntary; and I will happily never go again. Best of luck to the good people there, but it’s off the list in perpetuity.
dm
Yep. That’s why I send the Texas Dems money for their ground game.
You know what will happen, though. The Texas legislature will switch to apportioning its electoral votes by gerrymandered Congressional district (as Maine and Nebraska do) if it ever looks like a Democrat might carry the state in the Presidential election.
TXG1112
I often wonder how much these sort of things will affect large corporations attempts to relocate jobs from expensive blue states to cheaper red ones. My company (based in NJ) has recently shifted from a strategy of hiring and relocating jobs in low cost areas to promoting workers being fully remote. This is obviously somewhat driven by the pandemic, but I’m sure that’s not the only consideration.
Several years ago when I was at a previous company, I turned down a relocation offer to the suburbs of Atlanta and nothing in the meantime has made me more eager to relocate to a red state. If companies cannot hire skilled technical talent in red states they won’t have offices there and I imagine there will be downstream economic impacts.
germy
@Kay:
I live in a “liberal” city in upstate NY. I’m surrounded by Republicans and Trump fans.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I always thought that every “moves to TX to avoid a state income tax” discovered that was essentially a con. Why? Local property taxes are beyond brutal and the net effect was people moving there ended up paying more in taxes and obviously getting far less in services.
Kym
@catclub: yessss!
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Despite the rampant wingnuttery, I like Florida. Alas, due some personal issues I’ll probably be moving back North next year.
Soprano2
It’s an article of faith here in SWMO that huge amounts of people from California are moving here because they hate the California government.
Omnes Omnibus
@Marcelo: We should point to comments like this when some of the usual suspect talk about breaking up the US. It’s a stupid idea, born of frustration, but I think it is damaging. It ignores the 30-49% of GOP assholes in the blue states as well as the 20-49% of decent people in the red states. Unless you want to do mass migrations and ethnic cleansing at Bosnian levels, it isn’t happening.
burnspbesq
@The Moar You Know:
I did it. Amor vincit omnes.
trollhattan
Curious whether Texas harvests the North Carolina treatment from organizations and corporations and sports leagues, in response to the Fuck All Y’all Womens legislation.
We know at least three families who decamped Sacramento in the last year, all for “wide open spaces.” One husband said “I’m not leaving Sacramento, Sacramento left me” and I know damn well it was fleeing scary Antifa-BLM last year.
But, while I’m sure he considered Texas et al moving to the hills was away enough and that’s how they are in process building a new house in…Tahoe.
Oops.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TXG1112:
That’s hard to say because there are so many factors that drive where somebody is willing to live. Sure, they might be able to work remotely from Bumfuck Alabama but do they actually want to live there?
Back when I was in Central Misery, the state DOT HQed in Jeff City spent a lot of time trying to get a next-gen, diverse workforce there. They were successful in recruiting minority and women candidates to basically a civil engineering (and accounting) organization. The problem was that after very little time, typically 1-3 years tops, those candidates left because, well, they saw what it was like to live in/around Central Misery and said “no thanks”.
The state DOT there has never found a solution because, well, it’s Central Misery.
trollhattan
@Cameron: The good news: each represents a lost “yes” vote on the recall.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Watch it, bub.
Marmot
@Marcelo: I cannot agree more.
MrMix, we actually, desperately need more blue votes. How dare you talk cheap smack about blue voters who’ve already moved here, regardless of their self-serving economic bullshit?
karen marie
I was hoping for a post by a lawyer or other knowledgeable perso to break down how the Texas bill will actually work. Like what’s the govt agency to which complaints are made, what the investigation involves, and where the $10,000 comes from.
If not here, can anyone point me to a somewhat “shorter version” explainer?
If we’re going to be mad, it would be great to know the deets of what we’re mad about, so when this shit inevitably comes to a state we live in, we’re better armed with facts
If I find something like what I’m asking for, I’ll post a link.
frosty
@Kay:
There’s no such thing as red and blue states. Every red state would be blue if it had another big city. Was it you who said that yesterday?
UncleEbeneezer
@Marcelo: Thank you. My in-laws are elderly and retired in North Texas years ago because it was the only place they could afford that was close enough to a major medical center (MIL suffered pulminary fibrosis and eventually got a double-lung transplant). Believe me, we would helicopter them out in a heartbeat if we could but we can’t. They are trapped in a state that is held hostage by Republicans and rednecks.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@germy: Shows us how much $$$ wealth is really worth. I wouldn’t want to be Steve Bannon for a trillion dollars.
Ohio Mom
When Ohio Son was in elementary school (16 years ago!), the Special Ed department was abuzz with the news that a family with two autistic sons had just moved from Texas to our neighborhood.
When I met the mom, I welcomed her and said if she had any questions about local services, just ask.
She replied that she had already started contacting various service providers and could not believe how much was available in Cincinnati. “The services here are SO much better than in Texas. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
She continued to remind all of fellow moms how lucky we were compared to families in Texas for the rest of her years in town — they eventually moved back to their hometown of Boston.
Clearly, Texas had traumatized her. Things are okay here but nowhere near what they could be.
Marmot
And yes, the Gary Johnson voters were never going to help, granted. Not all the new Texans are that way.
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The spouse spent some of her childhood in the Missouri Ozarks and a branch of the inlaws still live in the Ozarks, but the Arkansas part because Missouri “got too expensive.”
Or so I’m told. Not doing any field reconnaissance, that’s for sure.
satby
@Kristine: I’ve been saying that about Indiana, which runs a similar ad campaign about “getting away from taxes” against its blue neighbor IL.
As for the people who don’t like the idea of bad actor states being boycotted: money talks. Citizens don’t count, but corporations do. When their business suffers the corporate voices will put pressure on the legislature.
matt
@Marcelo: Your state is a laboratory for killing democracy. The state level politicians are some of the scummiest pig fuckers in America. I definitely am not in anything together with the people who run your state.
I consider your state to be effectively a hostile country, one of the capitals of the fascist insurgency that’s threatening to destroy my home.
Sorry if that’s hurtful.
Betty Cracker
As I mentioned yesterday, in most cases, it’s not a red-blue state divide or North vs South thing. A state’s red/blue status depends on the population of its cities. Tons of people in CA voted for Trump, but they were outnumbered by voters in cities. The same is true in lots of blue states — rural areas are red as a baboon’s ass, cities are blue and suburbs are swingy but trending blue.
azlib
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Yes, property taxes in Texas are quite high. I lived there for 37 years and the taxes on my rental place there were higher than the property and income tax here in AZ on a per $100 valuation basis.
Marcelo
I’m ok with wondering why anyone would move there now (I certainly might think twice if it were on the table today), and I’m also kinda okay with boycotts from corporations (though a lot of times that ends up hurting the service workers who rely on those incomes from special events like all-star games, but I get it at least). The BARE MINIMUM someone in another state can do is not be a butthead and show some real empathy. Some empathy, and resolve to support whatever actions we need to get out of this mess, whether by amplifying local efforts or pushing for an expanded court, all those things would be better than smugly signaling your personal superiority over anyone unlucky enough to end up in Texas.
germy
@matt:
Think of those state level politicians as covid, and voters like Marcelo as the vaccine.
Marcelo
@matt: So your response to that hostile state is to dump on the people trapped by that government? Because we’re the ones on the front lines of this government that’s trying to kill us, we’re the ones dying first. Maybe consider some empathy for those people.
H.E.Wolf
@Marcelo:
Amen.
The rhetoric of “writing off” parts of the country is… well, it’s a lot of things, let’s go with simplistic solution to complex problem.
“people remember that gerrymandering exists when we’re in the middle of an election and then immediately forget it exists once a red state is suffering” https://twitter.com/clairewillett/status/1432065671563603968
Feathers
I’m hearing Beto live up above, but I am cold on both Beto and Castro after they chose a presidential run over the Texas governor’s race. May have had their reasons, but the Dem focus on President over everything else needs to be stamped out and discouraged whenever possible.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Marmot:
Pretty sure that we’d never hear from MrMix again if he stopped talking cheap smack.
eclare
@Marcelo: I live in a very blue city in a very red state. Thank you for your comments. We do manage to send Steve Cohen, D, to Congress with overwhelming wins.
Peale
@dm: Yeah. But even a move like that would help the dems more. Yeah, they’d lock in 20+ seats to our +12-13 for awhile, but there’s not a lot of wiggle room for them to get those 13 votes back elsewhere. It would be basically handing us a Michigan.
burnspbesq
Austin is a victim of its own success. All the freeways look like the 405, and housing prices look like the Inland Empire (still a ways to go to reach Orange County levels of ridiculousness).
It’s increasingly dystopian.
Marmot
@Betty Cracker:
Absolutely. We’re not the worst, matt, etc. We’re just the first. Amazes me how y’all’s snobbery keeps you from seeing that.
brendancalling
I’ve toured Texas more times than I can count, and have dozens of dear friends from (or living in) that state.
I’d just as soon have Joe Rogan cough in my face than go back there after this debacle. Fuck Texas Republicans.
Marcelo
@Feathers: I don’t disagree with this take, but at this point we don’t have any other option to take down Abbott that doesn’t involve one of these guys. Semi-local hotshots have tried (Wendy Davis, et al) but they have never been strong enough candidates to really go the distance in a statewide race. Beto is the only person who has shown that he can even get close to winning the entire state. I don’t think either of the Castros would get within 10%.
Kay
@germy:
Right. There’s that too. Let us never forget where Donald Trump came from. And Rudolph Giuliani.
Feathers
I think there needs to be a strong boycott and it needs to be made clear that it will cover any state passing “bounty” type anti-social justice legislation.
Also, the trans rights folks language policing on Twitter right now are not reading the room.
zhena gogolia
@Marcelo: Thank you for a great comment.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
They’re attacking us. We have to defend ourselves and each other.
They’re trying to divide us. We have to come together.
They’re trying to make us suspicious of each other. We have to trust one another.
They’re trying to make us scared. We have to be brave.
They’re trying to make us hateful. We have to be loving.
Parfigliano
@frosty: Doubtful another Sioux Falls size city in SoDak would make SoDak blue.
Woodrow/asim
Non-Lawyer here, I’ll try: Part of the issue is that this bill was written to be as convoluted as possible, to evade exactly that kind of understanding, from both the courts and the media. Here’s a pretty good unrolled Tweet explaining that: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1432682606248747009.html
And it comes from this Vox Explainer, that goes onto say:
So a lot of us are working off known prior playbooks (hell, I and others are invoking shades of the Fugitive Slave Laws!) in trying to understand all this. Kay, in another comment today, noted how this is ripe for the usual conservative funding system to pump money into people working these bounties.
That said, another good explainer, written months ago, is the “Texas creates a market for abortion vigilantism” article, which really dives deep into that aspect of this odious “law”.
Hope this helps!
Kay
@burnspbesq:
I liked Austin but it’s one of those places where people demand you tell them how great it is, which just makes me refuse to do it.
“It’s FINE. Okay?” :)
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Marmot:
Just to be clear, the people I’m thinking about are not blue voters. Every single jackass who mouths off about taxes around here is a frustrated Republican.
My point in the post wasn’t to say “fuck Texas don’t spend any political money there” — that’s not my view at all. I think we need to spend a lot of political money there. The point is that in the last 6 months, we’ve seen what Republican rule looks like, and asshole Republicans who move there and crow about their lower tax bill are making sacrifices in quality of life in return for their perception that they’re paying lower taxes.
Also, I don’t think Texas, as it stands today, is somewhere where sane people would want to move. Again, that doesn’t mean that Texas is “dead to me” — that’s a different position entirely.
Baud
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Even Omnes?
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Et tu, Baude?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Marcelo:
THIS, mfz
emmyelle
I was reminded of a little story from my years in Houston. Even in blue Houston, we had a fair number of “libertarian” ding dongs. You know, people who like pot and abortions, but disliked taxes. Anyway, my kid went to a really great public school for K-5, and it was a really great school because it was in a really nice neighborhood and 90% of the students lived in the neighborhood, and the only rental properties were “luxury” swanky places where highly paid and usually childless people rented for a year while looking for the perfect McMansion. Anyway, in one of the PTO news letters, Karen was complaining that the property taxes were going up in order to support the schools and Karen didn’t feel that the “property owners” should bear the burden of supporting the school. The school that her, you know, kids attended. Did I mention that this was the PTO news letter?
Marcelo
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: That’s fair.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Ohio Mom:
I’ve had this same experience with neighbors across the street who had a boy with Asperger’s as well as some other issues. But they moved from a suburb on the other side of town that was full of redneck Republicans (which do exist out here).
If you are planning to have children in red parts of the country, you’re taking a risk that if they have some kind of developmental issue, they will have a much harder time then if they lived in a blue area.
When that becomes part of the Republican brand, it will damage it among people who “aren’t political.”
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Baud: Maybe not Baud…
Marmot
It’s telling that these accounts are always about “Texas,” not some city or region within. The teller obviously sees “Texas“ as a homogeneous, undifferentiated blob—the classic Other. You know, “them.”
It’s not insightful, and it’s not helpful.
Adam Geffen
@Kay: Re Michigan. We have Democratic federal senators. At the state level we have a Democratic governor, a Democratic secretary of state , and a Democratic attorney general. All women. Pray tell how the whole state is wingnutty?
As for northern Michigan, I don’t find the cities to be wingnutty. Indeed, the county that contains Traverse City, in northern Michigan, has the highest vaccination rate in the state—74% fully vaccinated.
Summers “up north” are spectacular.
Ocotillo
Read the above article from the Texas Tribune cited in comments. Beto is probably the best hope if he does run for Gov but I also saw a poll citing he loses to Abbott by 12 points or something big. Matthew Mc only loses by a point.
I live here and feel the pain. Mrs. O is thinking about walking away from being an election judge because of the license to intimidate via poll watchers. Maybe Dems need to send “poll watchers” that watch the poll watchers.
I pitched in and helped last election and Trumpy poll watchers were there. They followed us all the way down town to ensure we were “properly” doing what we were supposed to be doing with the election materials.
Most election judges are elderly people with the time to take on a temporary job that requires a lot of attention to detail and an often times hostile public. Oh yeah, there was a pandemic going too that the state refused to protect election workers from by not requiring masking in the polling place.
I reached out to my GOP state rep wanting to know when he would have his next public meeting as I was interested in hearing him defend what he and his fellow nuts passed this session. Nothing back from him, probably realizes I am a Dem so “f**k ’em” is probably his response.
Kryptik
Greetings, it’s been a while since I’ve been around. And…yeah, not the best of times considering how high tension things have been but yeah….that’s kinda the point of returning as well..
All I can say is that I am not going to go out of my way to crap directly on the entirety of Texans or Floridians, because…yeah, many of them aren’t part and privy to this and are actively fighting against it.
…it’s just that from where I’m sitting, it honestly feels like it won’t be enough. It feels like at the state level, the GOP has a death grip on both states that is just so utterly unassailable that no amount of fighting back will break through. ANd when there does seem to be some kind of breakthrough, the GOP just plays an UNO Reverse card and institutionally destroys any chance of them losing power again, solidifying perpetual rule even as their actual numbers shrink.
It’s honestly depressing to watch, precisely because of how many people seem to be trapped behind that firewall, but with news like this, with the courts seemingly hyper-stacked the way they are for at least a generation and a half, I just have…extremely low hopes for even a smidgen of a chance of turning either state purple enough to even start undoing the damage their governments are collectively achieving. And with how many dominos both states are able to send falling just by their sheer size and influence, they’re bellwethers for what may as well be a new southern Iron Curtain. And that freakin’ terrifies me.
What answer do I have? None. Genuinely none, I honestly am at a loss, and I can’t suggest ‘just leave the state’ because that’s never been a viable answer either, logistically, morally, economically, etc. But…it seems like Texas and Florida both have become exercises in ultimate Dem futility, and I don’t know what we can realistically do about that at this point.
Kelly
My move to Texas story. Fall of my senior year in CS at the University of Oregon I got a cold call from a recruiter. He was on campus would I like to interview? It would be my first interview. Where’s the job I asked? Dallas he replied. We have a Dallas, Oregon in the mid Willamette Valley. Pleasant little town. Did not occur to me it was in Texas until I walked into the interview. About half way through I apologized for wasting his time explained about Dallas, Oregon and that there was no way I’d move to Texas. He cracked up laughing and spent some time time coaching me on interviewing and job search. Said he liked Texas but after a few days in the PNW he understood.
Shakti
@Betty Cracker: When I checked the FL legislature’s site for bills this morning, I didn’t find a doppelganger bill but apparently the legislature is working on an identical bill.
spc123
@Kristine: really high property taxes for one.
Another Scott
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Relatedly, …
IOW, only “little people” pay taxes, part MCXVIII.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
I’d feel a little more sanguine about the joint if it didn’t reliably send politicians to D.C. hellbent on destroying the entire nation. That, to me, represents assault.
piratedan
I think we’re all just frustrated…. frustrated that those who oppose us politically are engaged in backing such heinous legislation, that people who were labelled as being not-extreme are indeed willing to support such legislation that is in fact beyond the pale. That there is no easy solution, no wand to be waved, no method short of continued hard work and channeling this rage and frustration into perseverance.
The fact that those that who were supposed to be dispassionate and call “balls and strikes” have been co-opted and refuse to recognize it or even acknowledge it. That some among us still provide allowances that the behavior and activities and rhetoric of those that oppose us “don’t really mean it”.
Still, I am proud of our side, we’re not driving over protestors, we’re not occupying legislative chambers, we’re not attempting to kidnap Governors or overthrow the country… and I can attest to adolescent fantasies of going Rambo on those people who don’t believe as we believe, so instead, I toss money at the people that can help, that are actively working to make a difference, while I earn my paycheck and do my job (despite the distractions of this blog) and try to keep my circle of friends aware and informed… it seems so small in comparison to what we’re faced with, but trying my best to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.
Marmot
Thanks for clarifying. If I may, I’ve met plenty of newcomers who’re Dems. I’d be surprised if political considerations even break into the top-5 reasons people move here. So my attitude is that you’re not currently helping.
I need to go around to newcomers’ houses and get them registered to vote. It’s a damn fine time for it.
also, my sincere thanks for your help in other ways. I have noticed.
Ocotillo
Oh yeah, my sliver of optimism is that women and I am speaking about white women (they still voted for Trump in 2020) will in 2022 begin to move in modest numbers to the D column since kids are being put through the wringer with the anti-mask nuts and now the nosy neighbor bounty.
trollhattan
Did think of something to thank Texas for: offing Scalia.
West of the Rockies
Just another idiot’s opinion, but decades of the arrogant “everything’s bigger in Texas” crap along with the recent suing other states for the way those other states count votes and such, plus Texas-bases Enron tanking the CA economy for a time, oh, and the cheating Astros… I’m feeling no affection for the state itself. For its Democrats, absolutely.
trollhattan
Kryptik
@piratedan:
Sadly, it seems heavily like the solutions simply cannot even made a dent in the problems, much less solve them, and those who are behaving the worst are the ones rewarded the most. That the country is simply just institutionally hardwired to give the GOP wins hand over fist, and fighting back against it is like fighting quicksand, and ultimately just as futile.
Not helped either by the ‘Do Something’ crowd who is extremely willing to hang all these things around the Democratic Party’s necks exclusively for ‘not fighting hard enough’ or ‘actually wanting it to happen’. Votes we need in 2022 overtly and openly signalling that they’ll sit out just to spite the Dems and hand them losses as punishment.
It feels like even with Biden in the WH, we’re in such a fragile, despairing position because all the problems we have are so utterly impenetrable, and failure only breeds contempt for us specifically, regardless of it’s a Dem or GOP failure.
Geminid
@Marcelo: Curious: do you think that the Democrats can use the crappy Republican freeze response to good effect in next year’s election?
And thank you for your comments. I live in a state that has gone from red to purple to blue in the last 20 years. I tend to see this a natural progression in states like Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Georgia. In Texas last year, for every 26 people who voted for trump, 24 voted for Biden. Sneering at Texans as a class is small-minded and counterproductive.
Kelly
@trollhattan: At the time Texas weather and having to fly places to ski was enough.
Woodrow/asim
Harping on this, again: That’s what too many folx said about Jim Crow, until it wasn’t.
And before it comes out of people’s mouths — my Dad, or my Great-aunt, would be happy to explain that the current shit-storm is still better than the American Apartheid that was Jim Crow. I have 1000x more power — political and otherwise — than my Dad did when he fought Jim Crow, than many people who made that movement happen, personally had.
(I’m on here, reachng an audience he could never have dreamt of, back then.)
So they joined up. They built networks of ideas, support and help. They developed tactics and strategies to fight back, to push back. And that took decades — but Black folx and allies, at the end of the day, put noses to grindstones and moved this country that did not want to be moved.
And it looks like we’ll be called to that work, again.
If you don’t know how, try asking someone who’s doing the work, today. And join in.
Yarrow
@Marcelo:
This. Fuck all y’all who are saying this kind of thing. You gotta deal with Texas because it’s part of the country. Do your part to help the people who are working to change it.
the pollyanna from hell
The immigrant justice work I do in Denver is often just auxiliary back-up to the heroes in Waco. I absolutely would move to Texas for the political purpose of voting, and I am looking for just such an opportunity. I am terrified of being too old to endure the dangers and hardships of such a move.
Citizen Alan
@Baud:
Count me in the 10%. I don’t even consider job openings in red states, and, after my mother eventually passes away, I don’t expect to return to Mississippi ever again.
Miss Bianca
@Adam Geffen: Tell me about it. I grew up in SE Michigan and my earliest “summer vacation” memories are of a cabin literally a stone’s throw from the shore of Lake Michigan, in the upper peninsula, a tiny little grease spot on the map called Naubinway.
As I get older, and I stare at my formerly blue skies in CO that are these days more often than not a kind of blue-grey with smoke, I find myself remembering upper Michigan (and the coast of Maine, another place I spent a lot of summer time as a youth) and wonder what the hell I’m doing here, so far away from a large body of water.
zhena gogolia
OT, very good article on the Afghanistan evacuation.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-story-of-the-state-departments-afghanistan-evacuation
Ksmiami
@Marcelo: I moved here due to job stuff- it’s a pointless endless uphill battle and now the state is incredibly dangerous for me and mine. I’ll pressure the Dems to do the right thing, but the state is a cesspool and we are selling as fast as we can.
Kelly
Perfectly describes Oregon. Adrian, OR is adjacent to Idaho
https://www.malheurenterprise.com/posts/8843/adrian-school-board-fires-superintendent-for-obeying-states-mask-mandate
Ksmiami
@Miss Bianca: I lived outside Detroit for 5 years- if I don’t buy a place in California, I’ll head back. It’s beautiful and close to Canada
piratedan
@Kryptik: that I understand as well…. incredibly easy to fall into despair, disgust, apathy… and while I want to defeat these people the 64k question is how, all I can think of is to continue to use the tools at hand and keep at it.
Another Scott
@Marcelo: When W was governor, the story I heard was that the governor actually had little power in the state; that the Lt. Governor was the real power vs the legislature. (And that the Railroad Commission actually holds all the real power.)
Obviously, Abbot has been able to do a lot of real damage (with a legislature and state court system that lets him do what he/they want).
Is all of that true? If so, should Beto / Willie / Reincarnated Molly run for head of the Railroad Commission or Lt. Gov. or does it matter without progress everywhere?
IOW, is Texas right now another example of One Weird Trick being a waste of time? That Texas Democrats need to run for every seat, to do everything they can to get their message and voters out, etc., etc.?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who gave to the Texas Planned Parenthood and the Texas ACLU yesterday.”)
Miss Bianca
@Woodrow/asim: I keep wanting to tell you thank you for reminding us not to give up. I caught myself whining the other day and thought, “you know, the people who overturned Jim Crow had it *way* worse than you and *they* didn’t give up on this country. Suck it up and commit to doing something besides bitching.”
OK, the best I could do *that* day was throw some snide (but true) remarks about Lauren Boebert into an article I was writing about her *seven* (so far!) Democratic challengers in CD-3. Not much. But at least it was something. : )
Yarrow
@Marcelo:
Yep, yep, yep. The snobbiness and holier-than-thou comments are ridiculous, exhausting and demoralizing for anyone in a red state that is working to change things. You think you don’t have your share of rightwing assholes in your sainted blue states? You think they aren’t coming for your state houses? California right now is far too close to tossing out their Dem Governor in favor of some crazy guy who calls himself a Republican and might get the chance to appoint Feinstein’s replacement. Good for you, perfect blue state no one would ever want to leave.
Walker
I lived in Texas before moving to New York. Texas is NOT low tax. It is low tax if you are a business owner. Not if you are a resident. So many regressive state and local taxes.
Bloomberg had an article showing that, for the middle class, California has less taxes than Texas:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-19/wait-california-has-lower-middle-class-taxes-than-texas
Kenneth Fair
@Marcelo: Exactly! Native Texan here. We need as many of you as possible to move here and help us get rid of these fruit bats running our state.
Keep in mind that there are more Democrats in Texas than any other state besides California. Don’t write the state off!
Ohio Mom
@Marmot:
Without getting into a dissertation’s worth of details about funding for disability services, a significant amount of the funding that supports those services ultimately comes from the state capital (through Medicaid, which matches state allocated funds with federal money). So it isn’t all that unfair to compare state against state for disability quality-of-life.
As mistermix points out @96, school funding matters a lot for children with disabilities. That is why my family lives in the suburb we do. My favorite neighborhoods are all in the city proper, with all that implies about urban districts stretched thin. But people with disability, like everyone else, are only children for two decades. Then they enter the much less robustly-funded world of adult services.
Another Scott
@Miss Bianca: One of my favorite vacation memories is of staying at a small KOA with a small lake outside of Ann Arbor late one summer/early fall. It was just about perfect.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@piratedan:
A part of me read this and saw it as tacit agreement that the Democrats are only allowed to be victims.
Sandia Blanca
Native Californian here who moved to Texas (from Hawaii) 30 years ago when ANN RICHARDS was governor! My economic reasons had nothing to with taxes–I didn’t even realize there was no state income tax. I was moving from a high cost-of-living state to a depressed economy so I could afford grad school. I stayed because Austin became home. As Marcelo so aptly explained, there are millions of Democrats here who are fighting every day to overcome the unholy trinity of Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton. We appreciate all the help from blue supporters all over the country.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Marmot:
I’m sure this is true, but I’ll give you a counter-example. My daughter is moving to a purple state. She and her boyfriend had a choice between that state and a red state (not Texas). When they saw the racism, low quality schools, etc. of that state, they chose the purple one. My kid is not hugely political, but it was a factor.
That said, if I were in your position, I’d want more Democrats moving in.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: A part of you was wrong.
Yarrow
If you don’t know about the Texas Organizing Project, you might find it’s doing the work that needs to be done in Texas.
You can donate at the link.
Ksmiami
@Kenneth Fair: to me it’s not about writing the state off- it’s a matter of protecting my immediate family and fighting how I can. It’s also about punishing the TX GOP and turning the vaunted state economy into the smoking crater it should be. Fine you dont like the 21st century assholes, you live with the consequences. I’ll help as many poor and poc peeps out of the state.
Soprano2
We are, because I guarantee you that if this law stands, Republicans all over the country will be passing ones identical to it, and pretty soon half of the states will be like Texas. There’s nothing particularly unique about Texas Republicans. I’m sure the ones here in MO are already writing the bill.
JoyceH
@Marcelo:
Okay, Marcelo, not bashing you, but have to say this statement just frayed My Last Nerve. And it’s not just you, it’s everywhere. Over and over again, in the discussion of what can be done about the GOP slow-motion legislative state by state coup, the immediate response is ‘pass the For the People Act’. So, excuse my rant but…
Guys, guys, guys! The For The People Act is NOT going to pass. It’s just not. And know what? I’m okay with that.
Look, the For The People Act is a Christmas tree, all festooned with a gaudy array of Democratic wish list items. It was written in *2019*. You know what’s in it? Support for DC statehood. Requirement that presidential and vice presidential candidates release ten years of tax returns. Ban on dark money. All worthy goals, to be sure, but do those things address the current problems? And I could almost guarantee that that ban on dark money is the reason that those unnamed Democratic senators hiding behind Manchin and Sinema’s skirts are against blowing up the filibuster.
Meanwhile, you know what’s NOT in it? A prohibition on state legislatures overturning the popular vote and appointing their own slate of electors. Or any of the myriad ways that Republican state legislatures are using in 2021 to rig our elections.
So please let’s stop beating that dead horse. Forget the For The People Act. Encourage your senators to support a NEW piece of legislation that will solve the problems of 2021 AND can pass the Senate with a filibuster carveout. We can get to those other worthy items (especially the dark money!) on a case by case basis, campaign against the people that voted against them, LATER. But we need a new specific piece of legislation that will deal specifically with what is happening right now.
Betty Cracker
@Shakti: I saw that and wish I had time to write a post about it now, but I’m too busy with paying work at the moment.
Soprano2
We have the same problem in SWMO. This area would have seceded during the Civil War, if that tells you anything. The city government would like to have a diverse workforce, but the non-white young people know not to live here if they want to have a good life. We did get a black school superintendent, which means I expect the howling about the school indoctrinating kids with CRT to start shortly. They’ll probably run her off in a year or two.
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
Because mainstream press/media – like their right-wing colleagues – live in big blue cities and would never have to live with the right-wing policies they promote or normalize.
taumaturgo
@Marcelo: Groupthink is a horrible affliction and those who suffer from it are able to detect it in other groups but unable to see it in their own group.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Ksmiami: I grew up in Grand Rapids. I’d go back there for sure before moving to TX (I’m in the MD suburbs of DC at present). The only place South of Maryland that at all tempts me is Asheville, NC. But honestly Asheville doesn’t tempt me any more than Traverse City, or Burlington, VT, or Portland, ME. I’d happily move back to GR too. DC is just a little too big for me – I like a mid-sized city that has enough “big city” amenities without quite so much traffic gridlock and other inconveniences. And by “other inconveniences” I do NOT mean crime as that has never been a problem here in DC for me. The main thing I would miss about DC, other than the friends we have here, is that it is a super-integrated city. GR has improved since I was a kid but is still pretty segregated by race/ethnicity.
brendancalling
@Citizen Alan: I miss Nashville desperately—I live in Vermont now and have never been as bored in my entire fucking life—but I won’t move back because it’s a shitshow of disease, poverty, inequity, and overall horribleness.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Reading TMP deep dive into that Texas law is an OMG. it’s basically set up so elderly hicks can remotely harass their granddaughter and her friends for not going to church.
Soprano2
@Geminid: Lucky you, I live in MO, a state that went from purple in 2008 to deep, deep red last year, driven mostly by population loss in St. Louis and Kansas City. All the rural areas are losing population too, but not enough to offset the loss in the cities, especially St. Louis.
CaseyL
I am one of those people saying we can’t help Red states and telling people in Red states to move to Blue ones, so I’m definitely part of the problem.
So here is my modified suggestion:
Some states, like Texas, are Red only due to gerrymandering and voter suppression. What is needed there is an influx of dedicated Democrats, to move to the reddish areas in enough numbers to turn them. Since they’re “reliably GOP” right now, there’s probably not a lot of voter suppression in place.
Others, where Democrats are just plain outnumbered, can’t be changed by an influx of Democrats. Similarly, states where a large city is a Blue speck in an otherwise deep Red state; e.g., Kentucky. I don’t see how they change at all. For one thing, all their Quality of Life ratings suck: lousy economy, lousy infrastructure, lousy access to healthcare, high crime.
So if people want to vote with their feet, and try to change the demographics, then I suggest doing some research on purple-to-red districts where maybe a few dozen or few hundred new residents could make a difference. I did similar research here in Washington State, to see which Red counties might shift, and came up with a few.
Such an effort needs to be organized. One family moving in doesn’t accomplish anything. Ten barely moves the needed. One hundred? – now you’re talking. More than one hundred, even better.
That would be a great Federal Program. Call it the Reclaim Our Heritage Plan. Or an Economic Redevelopment Program.
PS: Some states already have economic development programs to encourage people and businesses to move there. They mostly want younger people who will stay and contribute to the state’s economy for a while. But it might be possible to use those programs to get a nice Blue migration going.
Marmot
this is an excellent point. More of a Moneyball approach with Beto going for Lt Gov?
catclub
@burnspbesq:
and i will refer to my post up above: the growth in texas is in blue cities.
california is also dystopian, but there are 30M people there. How did that happen?
yellowdog
What is the general jackal opinion of advocating that students boycott applying to TX colleges. I cannot imagine any person capable of becoming pregnant wanting to set foot in the state. But YMMV.
catclub
@germy:
Ithaca? I loved visiting ithaca.
cleek
we moved to NC because that’s where the fucking jobs are.
i have no idea what the NYS vs NC tax rates are and it didn’t matter anyway because the NYS job market was bullshit in the mid 90s.
and last i checked, Trump is from NY. as is Rudy G. and Fox News.
Soprano2
I will also say that all the “I would never be friends or even talk with a Trump supporter” takes I’ve seen in this forum are pretty tone-deaf when it comes to those of use who live in conservative states. I wouldn’t have many people to talk to if I eliminated everyone who I believe voted for Trump, including most of my co-workers and many of our regular customers at the pub. Where I live you cannot avoid Trump supporters at all.
On a completely different topic, I just watched the one outside cat of my mother’s who I can’t even pet walk into a humane trap and STEP OVER THE TRIGGER PLATE to eat food. It was absolutely a deliberate act! He ran out of the trap when he saw me move inside (I was watching him on the deck). I left the trap in the garage last night because that’s where they usually eat, but he didn’t go in there so I put it out on the deck. I’m hoping he’ll be in there tonight, because I have got to get him to the shelter that my mom asked to take her cats. I took the other three cats there yesterday, but I absolutely could not catch this cat. I’ve been going to her house almost every day since the last week of July, and this cat still won’t let me pet him. I may have to get three or four people to help me; if I can get him in the garage again I think several of us together could catch him.
Eric K
The jokes on people who move to Texas for taxes.
Sure there is no income tax, but there are still sales and property taxes and there have been numerous studies that show that unless you’re in the top 10% or so of income levels total taxes for a person who owns a median value house are higher in Texas than California.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I can imagine it and see it clearly. People are moving out of California because they cannot afford to live here. I see cities whose city councils have decided that residents must be upper middle class and above. So lots of luxury apartments and churning of commercial real estate, but no affordable housing at all.
And then there is the gentrification in some areas spurred by high income workers and relatively wealthy immigrants.
And of course some of the people who are trapped are the homeless who lost jobs and homes but who cannot escape to areas with more opportunities.
California is still wonderful for a lot of people, but increasingly unaffordable for many.
Feckless
FEMA = TX HVAC.
cheap taxes and utilities are easy as long as you can outsource the real overhead.
I say stop giving money to the confederacy that hates it (see hurricane Sandy) when anyone but Them gets federal aid.
GOP states put my federal tax money in one pocket and try to kill me with the money from the other pocket.
Just stop funding their insanity.
the pollyanna from hell
@yellowdog:
Boycott is not the word for trying to avoid gun-nuts and vexatious litigants; people are just trying to stay safe.
Yarrow
@Nancy:
You can tell yourself that but you’ll be lying to yourself. If you write off a state you write off EVERYONE in that state. You don’t get to pick and choose the parts you like. Marcelo is part of who you’re writing off if you write off Texas.
Subsole
@Marcelo:
You said it better than this 40 yr resident could.
Thanks.
Woodrow/asim
You’re welcome! I spent a…lot of time being somewhat cynical, myself. So I speak from someone who gets it, and had to learn that some things matters, beyond my view.
cain
I think though we should keep in mind that Republicans always overreach – that means that this bill is going to bite them in the ass – and also be aware Florida is planning to follow suit. In fact, we are going to see bills coordinated in all 50 states. They assholes believe there is blood in the water.
Expect some serious coordination going on – and we the people need to start pushing back hard.
Kent
My wife and I moved to Texas in 2003 for her medical residency training. She matched to a residency program in Waco which those of you who know how medicine works, is something of a luck of the draw. As an immigrant from Latin America and Spanish-speaking it made sense for her to look at residency programs in the SW and the program in Waco was the top one.
Back in 2003 it was still a relatively civilized place. Gerrymandering hadn’t killed things. Waco had a Democratic mayor, lots of local Democratic politicians, and we had a great Democratic Congressman, Chet Edwards, who is perhaps the best Congressman or woman that I have ever had. Then we had Tom Delay and mid-decade redistricting and a lot of other nasty shit that put the state into a tailspin.
Honestly, the school district and high school that I taught at in Waco was better than the one I taught at in WA in terms of resources, staff, and management. It isn’t a complete hellhole. But the GOP is doing its best to make it that way.
And I’d also point out that there are more Democrats in Texas than any other state except California. Many of them working their asses off to fight this kind of thing.
The other thing I would point out that confederate states have NEVER EVER done the right thing without being forced to at the Federal level. Not ending slavery, not ending Jim Crow, not ending school segregation, not passing voting rights, etc. etc. It ALWAYS took Federal action. And with Democrats controlling the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, all of these revanchist state laws across the south on abortion and voting rights could be made to disappear tomorrow if there was the will to do it. All that is blocking progress is Sinema and Manchin who would rather wank than vote to improve things in this country. So in my mind, “centrist” Dems like Sinema and Manchin are MORE to blame for Texas than the GOP in Texas. The GOP is going to do their bullshit stuff regardless. Dems with the power to stop it have chosen not to. For “reasons”. That is the reality of the world that we live in
Of course we moved back to the Pacific Northwest in summer of 2016 so missed living through the Trump years and the Pandemic in Texas. I think that has kept my sanity. I honestly can’t imagine teaching there right now with all the death cult bullshit happening at the state level. The teachers I knew and still know were mostly Dems who supported safe schools. All this mask and vaccine bullshit is mostly from the crazed Trump right wing.
topclimber
@Marcelo: Anybody writing off Texas, Florida and Georgia is being played by the GQP. Look at how much emotion and effort has gone into debating this loser argument on this very blog.
catclub
@Feckless:
Ummm…. Texas is one of the few red states that sends more federal taxes into the Government than come back to texas.
Now Mississippi ….
Marmot
Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
(But PSSST: Do us a favor and don’t spread the word that property taxes generally make up the difference!)
Peale
@cain: Its not really a wedge issue for Dems any longer. I’m just hopeful that it will be a mobilizing issue. “Come out and vote for me for governor so we can sue your neighbors if they miscarry” actually will mobilize them.
zhena gogolia
@topclimber: Yep.
Benw
@Soprano2: in my experience, once a cat has seen another cat trapped, it won’t fall for that type of trap. But if you can find a different type of trap you might be able to catch it. Good luck!
Kent
@catclub: That’s also because Texas has basically no public federal lands compared to states like Arizona or Oregon so no Forest Service, BLM, parks service and all those other federal agencies. About the only major federal spending in Texas (other than entitlement programs) is military. And because Texas is richer than Mississippi there is less Federal spending per capita on social programs like school lunch subsidies, food stamps, etc.
Marmot
Don’t forget the “constitutional carry” law! I imagine your teacher friends are (rightly) freaking out.
Ksmiami
@cain: I think we should start suing on the basis of interstate trade. Like how can commerce ie goods, services and transportation work when there are so many legal potholes? IE If I’m a woman exec and I have to stop in a Texas airport, my rights are effectively null and void
bcw
Texas is only a low tax state if you’re in the top 20% because they use a lot of regressive taxes to fund government. Sales taxes fund more than 50% of government.
“Krugman … based his statement on an analysis released Nov. 18, 2009 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research arm of Washington-based Citizens for Tax Justice, which says it advocates for fair taxation of middle- and low-income families.
The study says the 20 percent of Texas families earning less than $18,000 a year spend 12.2 percent of their income on state and local taxes, while the next-wealthiest 20 percent of families, earning $18,000 to $31,000, spend 10.2 percent of income on the taxes, which largely consist of sales and property taxes. Nationally, the poorest 20 percent and next-poorest 20 percent of families spend an average of 10.9 percent and 10 percent of income, respectively, on state and local taxes, the study says.
Conversely, the study says, the 60 percent of Texas families that earned $31,000 or more put less of their income into state and local taxes than the national average. Texas households in the top 20 percent of income, earning $89,000 or more, paid 5.8 percent of their income or less, while such households nationally paid 8.8 percent or less.
Texas is among 10 states with “particularly regressive” tax systems, the study says. One result is that low-income families “pay almost six times as much of their earnings in taxes as do the wealthy” and “middle-income families in these states pay up to three-and-a-half times as high a share of their income as the wealthiest families.”
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@cleek: Right. There are no red states or blue states.
J R in WV
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
I’ve never understood people who hate taxes. Taxes are how we pay for good roads, clean water to drink and shower in, medical centers for when we need specialty medical care, safety staff like ambulance and medivac service, education, etc.
The reason America is a fairly decent place to live is because of FDR’s New Deal and Social Security, Rural Electrification after WW II, Ike’s Interstate Highways, the FAA managing the airline industry, the FDA keeping our food supply safe and our medicines effective.
When the FAA fucks up we get 737Max aircraft flying themselves into the ground; when the FDA fucks up we get thalidomide babies born with deformities or measles epidemics; when state and federal highways administrations fuck up we have Interstate bridges falling into the rivers they cross! This kind of thing is a cross between inadequate funding from a too-low tax base and Republican corruption in office holders.
Taxes are like shopping for good government — you can have Walmart Nation or Macy’s Nation. I don’t shop at Walmart unless forced to, so I want to live in Macy’s Nation where everything looks good, fits well and is comfortable, and lasts a long time!
That’s what the Democratic Party stands for… make things better and better. If Republicans want to live in the 1800s that’s OK, but they can’t make me go there, I won’t let them. They are welcome to all the typhus and cholera they can’t stand, I’m going to take the vaccinations and keep the food and water clean.
And Fuck Texas.
No one in this country is forced to live in a shit hole like Texas. Anyone can move out of that shit hole and improve their lives. If you think you are trapped, I refer you to the people escaping from Afghanistan! Be as brave as the Afghan refugees, move to a blue state, or a purple state turning blue like GA or NC. Just Do IT!
Quiltingfool
@Marcelo: I hear you, friend. I live in Missouri.
Betty Cracker
@Kent:
That’s the truth.
Betty Cracker
@J R in WV: Says a guy who lives in West by God Virginia. LOL! When you are wrong, you are SO fucking wrong…
Another Scott
@Kent:
We know this is not true. Without them, we wouldn’t have Schumer as Leader and things would be worse.
As JoyceH said above, the as-introduced legislation isn’t going to pass. S&M are trying to get their pound of flesh, but we know they’re not the only ones. Something that gets their support will pass and will make things better.
We need to remember that almost no legislation that passes is identical to what was introduced. There are always adjustments and compromises, and yes, some are infuriating.
Politics is slow, it’s uneven, and progress is always incremental.
People need to stop being pre-disappointed. It doesn’t help.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
Kent
@J R in WV: Says the guy who lives in WV which trails TX in just about any measure you want to use: education, infrastructure, environmental protection, etc.
J R in WV
@Marmot:
You are not trapped in Texas. Rent a U-Haul, pack your stuff, and drive away! While you continue to tell us not to dis Texas, you are going to be in the Pie Safe where I don’t have to listen to you cry about how you are trapped in Texas and so we need to stop saying Fuck Texas.
You are not trapped in Texas. Rent a U-Haul, pack your stuff, and drive away! You can even find a new job anywhere else, IF YOU TRY!
Subsole
@burnspbesq:
Tell me about it.
The sad part is the whole vibe is dead. It’s hard for me to explain, but “Keep Austin weird” wasn’t just a slogan. There was a sort of quirky openness to the town.
Now? It’s basically “Welcome to Austin. Now get the fuck out.”
Like, there are billboards up in rural areas saying send Californians back to California. Because they come in and essentially gentrify the whole county. Land is cheap and taxes are low, so they come in, buy everything up, ploop down a really ghastly minimansion, driving up local property values…and…you know how that goes.
Believe me, there are a lot of folks here in central TX who would send the folks y’all are talking about back if they could.
Ksmiami
@J R in WV: agreed- if 100k Democrats from thx move to Montana /Wyoming we get 4 senate seats
Marmot
@Betty Cracker: Beat me to it.
JaneE
I had a couple of friends from Texas. Both were very happy here, but moved back to take care of elderly parents. They had enough to deal with before the avoidable disasters of grid and Covid.
The people I feel sorry for are the ones who had to relocate to keep their jobs when the businesses moved to “tax friendly” Texas. A good percentage took the layoff, but the jobs were good. How much of the “good” job was because of state laws and regulations, I sometimes wonder.
Fake Irishman
@Woodrow/asim:
AMEN, sir.
Rob Mickey, an old professor of mine at Michigan and scholar of sub national authoritarian regimes pointed this out on Twitter a few years ago to some commentator who was wailing with despair about the current state of affairs. Mickey noted that black folks recognized Jim Crow for what it was, didn’t despair got together and worked their asses off to end it. They made little headway for decades, but when circumstances shifted, they were ready to exploit it.
(I say that as a white liberal, a current Houstonian who loves this city, a former Rochesterian (NY)who loved that city and a native Clevelander (OH) who loved that city)
Subsole
@Parfigliano:
What about purple?
Immanentize
@Yarrow:
Hi Yarrow!
I love Texas — much of it. Austin was great when I lived there, although it has exploded and is so much more expensive now. San Antonio is probably the best city for living I have ever put down in. If it wasn’t for a job offer back in Boston, I might still be there. The Hill Country is just beautiful and still wild in parts. An evening in Luckenbach having a beer with the cowboys and the bikers and listening to music was the best. The Valley is crazy in a way I loved — hispanic poverty, white poverty, i.e. rural poverty — people trying to figure out how to get by in their peculiar corner of the world. My wife was from Houston and I even grew to like that city with its diversity and art and food — and of course my son is in Houston now. And although I didn’t spend that much time there, western Texas is in many ways populated by old time Yankees — ornery and wanting to be left alone but ultimately kind. I went to Texas knowing what I was up against (moved there to represent folks on death row). But I didn’t leave because of that horror, rather I was there to fight it.
I really don’t like other parts of Texas (Dallas) and the politics really did take a dive after Ann Richards lost to Bush, but that change was coming regardless. I knew Anne Richards and I was friends with Sissy Farenthold. I think there is the same percentage of total assholes there as there was in 2000, but the assholes have the bullhorn now. But I can say the same about other States I have lived in like NY, MA, FL, AL, and D.C.
But I gotta say, I would not recommend a young woman move there for any discretionary reason right now. But we shouldn’t use Texas to make us feel smug. We should just not feel smug about anything right now.
Kent
@Another Scott: Of course Sinema and Manchin are not the only centrist wankers. They are probably carrying water for others no doubt.
But my larger point is that BY FAR the more likely and promising avenue for change is at the Federal level where Democrats actually have control, rather than at the state level in Texas. Sure, you can boycott AT&T and Exxon and other TX companies and run around Austin holding protests. But none of that will affect the Texas lege in the slightest. The only way to make them do the right thing is to FORCE them to do it by Federal action.
That is the reality that we live in and it is the reality of progressive politics in this country since the time of Abraham Lincoln.
the pollyanna from hell
@J R in WV:
I like your theory of paying for good government. The last few words of your comment do not follow from that theory, and are wrong, wrong, and then wrong again.
NotMax
Wow. Get a lot of nosebleeds from perching atop that high horse, do ya?
SamR
As Krugman noted awhile back, comparing TX and CA, TX taxes are only lower for the top 40%. The bottom 60% (both as a group and as 20% quintiles) paying lower taxes in CA.
Subsole
@Woodrow/asim:
What’s gonna be really great is when we get scammers robocalling about “you have been placed on the abortion suspect list. Please provide your SSN and DOB to have this processed.”
Or even better, the abortion lawsuit tax-farmers will just pull you aside and say “Hey. You’re on the list. You really wanna get yanked out of work, risk your job, be on the hook for 10k plus legal fees, put your family through that trauma while they’re hurting? How ’bout you just slide me a couple grand and we forget this ever happened.”
Like, the rampant fucking fraud this law will birth is going to cross your eyes and turn your turds white.
john b
@Kent: There’s also a lot of NASA employees (and probably far more contractors directly tied to NASA)
Ruckus
I’ve traveled to 46 of the states.
I’ve lived in 2 of them, far different from each other. I’ve also lived in northern and southern CA.
They all have positives and negatives. Every single one. Including northern and southern CA.
Now with our politics so vastly different from side to side and especially from fringe to fringe, it can be harder for someone to live in one place or another. It also amazes me how far people seem to move in the US. And how much different they seem to think the differences are. In some ways they are but the reality is that humanity is the difference and the problem.
I wouldn’t move to TX because of the inane concept that there is no need to be hooked into the electrical grid of the rest of the country. Taxes a concern? Try the taxes in northern Europe. Millions live there. And like it.
Home is where you live.
Most everywhere has some drawback. If you look for it.
Most everywhere has some draw. If you look for it.
TXG1112
@cleek: Yep, I know quite a few folks from the NE who relocated to Raleigh or Atlanta as jobs were relocated and major companies established IT operations in these cheaper locations. I also know there is an upper limit to that and my previous company had difficultly filling positions down there when they moved their entire IT operation to the Atlanta suburbs. There is a reason that Google, Apple, Amazon, FB and various big banks are maintaining offices in NYC and other expensive cities. That’s where the talent is.
Separately, while people may not make decisions directly about the politics of an area, they most certainly do on the quality of life, which will be heavily influenced by its politics.
Subsole
@Ocotillo: In fairness, it would be his response if you were a Repube, too.
These folks are gunning to be the gentry of the Old Bones. There are peasants they have broken, and peasants they have not. All this political party horseshit is quite brside the point.
Imagine the worthless inbred wastrel fuckup failson of a plantation owner and a sleazy car dealer, and you’re pretty close to local GOP reps.
jonas
As a New Yorker, I would make the following points:
1. If you pay a lot of state income tax here, you’re pretty damn rich, so shut the fuck up.
2. We have the same or lower sales tax as most other states, and
3. Texas may not have a state income tax, but wait until you get your property tax bill, and
4. You may not pay it in taxes, but you’ll pay for the services you want one way or another (shitty public schools mean you’ll shell out for private education, etc.) …
Subsole
@West of the Rockies: Fair enough. Just remember, as much as y’all hate these assholes, WE have to live under them…your anger and disgust probably pales next to ours.
kindness
I’m confused. I’ve never been to Texas and don’t hate Texans. If I’m choosing to spend my money and if I have choices that include (for example) buying plane tickets from American Airlines (based in Texas now) or SouthWest which I believe is CA, why shouldn’t I be OK to not buy the Texas business stuff? Money is the only thing the people we are fighting really care about down deep. So….why shouldn’t I pay attention to who I choose to spend my hard earned ducats with?
Yarrow
@Immanentize:
Ha. If Balloon Juice is anything it’s fairly well off white people in mostly blue states who seem to enjoy telling people in red states, particularly Texas, how terrible they are and how they should just leave. Smug comes with the package.
Cameron
@jonas: Florida doesn’t have an income tax, but a pretty hefty sales tax. Which I think is the most regressive tax there is.
germy
@Ruckus:
Home is anywhere you hang your head.
Subsole
@Feckless:
You understand it’s gonna be the peons getting it in the neck, right?
I mean, I’m sorry, but this is just the blue state version of “We should just carpet bomb every goddam one of them ay-rabs and be done with it.”
eclare
@Cameron: Same here in TN, no income tax, high sales tax. And you are right, it is incredibly regressive.
Hamlet
I finally joined Twitter so that I could engage in measured, reasonable discourse.
https://twitter.com/SardonicDem/status/1433482629358227458
How am I doing?
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Way to be an asshole. Congrats.
Baud
@Hamlet:
Here you go.
ETA: Unfortunately, it isn’t the woman’s mouth that the GOP’s hand is over.
Subsole
@J R in WV: Dude, I love ya, but if you’re in WV, you might not wanna fling your glass house at that particular rock…
No disrespect to the blogfather, either.
Subsole
@Ksmiami:
Cool.
I assume you’re paying the rental and transport fees.
Y’know.
Because it’s just so simple, and all.
BerkeleyMom
@dm: I’ve sent hundreds of dollars to Texas Dem candidates over the years, written postcards, etc. Yet Abbott survives. We need legislation on the national level to fix this mess and I’m working to support that.
germy
Immanentize
@Yarrow: I may be among the first group, but definitely not in the second.
Hamlet
@Baud: Thanks!
Almost Retired
I’ll admit to being somewhat smug in the past about Red States. But if the California recall has taught us anything, it’s that we can never, ever let our guard down. If we end up with Governor Elder, I would expect Red State Juicers to “pie” every Californian offering a political lecture.
germy
Ishmael
@matt: My husband and I moved back to the States to help take care of my dad, who had prostate cancer. We moved from an island in the Caribbean to deep East Texas. We are neither right wing fascists nor desperate. I graduated from nursing school in Austin in 1977 and remember when Texas was quite liberal and a wonderful place to live. As Marcelo said, please give us a break. We are working as hard as we can to return Texas to sanity. Not an easy task, true, but there are an awful lot of really good folks here, (many of whom are not right wing, fascists, or desperate).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What this guy is saying
Julian Sanchez @normative
Martin
@Almost Retired: The polls have been consistently and increasingly in favor of ‘keep’. Once the likely successor (Elder) was identified, it seems voters have clarified their views.
Almost Retired
@Martin: Yup. But I’m still phone-banking and sleeping fitfully.
Betty Cracker
@kindness: Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think anyone is saying you shouldn’t avoid businesses based in states run by wingnuts when you have the choice. It doesn’t hurt my feelings when people say they’ll never set foot in Florida because our governor, statehouse and a large portion of our voters suck. (In fact, I wish MORE people felt that way because it’s too damn crowded.)
What kinda sucks to hear as a Democrat in a red state are broad-brush statements like “fuck that state” or “write XYZ off, it’s hopeless” or “people should leave if they don’t like it,” etc. I mean, I GET it, I really do. No one is angrier about what’s happening in places like FL, TX, etc., than the Democrats who live in those places. I’ve said intemperate things about my own state plenty.
But it sucks when that’s the constant drumbeat. It’s probably similar to how Democrats in the Deep South felt when Bernie Sanders discounted primary wins in those states since Republicans invariably win them in the general. Like those voters don’t matter. They do!
Yarrow
@Immanentize: There are plenty of them here. Telling Texans and those who live in other red states how awful they then telling them they’re stupid to live there and should move is practically an initiation ritual.
Soprano2
@Benw: I didn’t have to trap the others, they were easy to catch. He may have been trapped before, but it would have been a long time ago.
cain
@Peale:
Oh don’t worry – conservatives are also going to get bit in the ass. The pursuit of money knows no political borders. They might go after black people or others – but they don’t have money – but well off white people?
Also every anecdote I’ve heard – conservatives do more abortions than progressives. Cuz you know, there is empathy and will likely pull together to support a child. These assholes? They’d rather abort and of course their abortions are the righteous one. This bill will rip that wide open because third party actors will come after them. Now they might get some leeway from judges…
Martin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Today I’m writing to my CA reps for CA to pass a law that would allow victims of gun violence, as well as those who bear economic costs of gun violence (hospitals, schools etc.) to sue anyone who abetted the perpetrator of gun violence for damages, including gun dealers and manufacturers.
More focused than the Texas law, but using the same mechanism.
Another Scott
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: IANAL, but my understanding is:
It’s clearly sophistry. If it’s in the state’s interest to impose these restrictions, then it’s up to the state to enforce it – not a bunch of anonymous yahoos that are answerable to no-one.
SCOTUSBlog and Popehat and many other legal people have the details. See the Kansas-Nebraska Act, also too, as it is trending…
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Almost Retired: Hey, a lot of the shitty things currently plaguing the country got their start in California. It just happened a while ago there, and the state has largely recovered. But Nixon, Reagan, tax protests, and immigrant-bashing laws all have strong roots in California. No one gets to be smug.
That being said, I have no desire to live in the South. Don’t like the weather. I’ll stay where I am.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
We got better. //
cain
@?BillinGlendaleCA: California turned me into a newt!
Eunicecycle
Just talked to my son and DIL from Texas last night on Skype and they were both visibly despondent. I didn’t yet know about the gun law (I had been avoiding the news all day due to my incandescent rage). DIL is from Texas and my son loves his life there (they live in Austin) but they are considering their choices as they plan to start a family. What if she miscarries a very wanted child and someone reports her? Or she needs an abortion and can’t get one? It sucks.
James E Powell
All this F that state & F those people goes against everything that President Obama & I stand for.
Almost Retired
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yup, we got better. Reagan carried Los Angeles County in the first two Presidential elections I voted in. And then there’s Deukmejian, whose judicial appointees bedeviled the early years of my legal career. I just don’t want to go back there.
ETA: Maybe there’s hope to be drawn from the fact that Conservative excesses in California (Props 8 and 187, anyone), along with demographic changes, helped turn the state blue. Is Texas basically California in 1998 or so, on the cusp of change? I like to think so. But I like to think a lot of things that never pan out.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: So will the rest of the country. But not if those who had the disease first and passed on to the rest of the country say IGMFY.
Kent
The most regressive state in the country tax-wise is liberal Washington State. Seriously. Texas is number 2 and TN slots in at #6 right ahead of PA: https://itep.org/whopays
The most progressive is CA, right ahead of VT.
Ksmiami
@Subsole: we supported over 17 candidates to turn TX blue, we were early supporters of Cornyns opposition, it didn’t work. The state is a cesspool because as big as the cities are, There are hundreds of rural districts that overrule all common sense legislation. It would be better for TX if companies pull up stakes and pull out citing a repressive environment as bad for their bottom line.
Woodrow/asim
It’s that. That THAT THAT.
People forget that Obama pumped money and people into NC until he forced it Blue in 2008. People don’t realize that the City Council in red-as-hell Greenville, SC just turned Blue in the first time in forever, because people fought like hell here to leverage changing demographics.
What the Conservatives get, is that Politics, like (American) Football, is a game of inches. You cannot put in the work in one cycle, and expect 100% success. They’ve been coming at this work for decades, day in and out, building and cheating their way to electoral success.
It’s not hopeless. Democrats can win back even the deepest parts of the South. But it will take time, and it won’t be a win every cycle, and yes, that will put people in harm’s way. And we need to accept that, try to manage the pain, and not let that get in the way of Doing The Good Work, and making some Good Trouble.
If Stacey Yvonne of the House Abrams, First of Her Name, the Unbutthurt, etc. can pick herself up from that horrific loss in Georgia and do all the good work she has done for our side? I’d wager almost everyone reading this, can help out as well.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: Those voters do matter, but making progress in antidemocratic states is much harder than making progress in democratic ones.
While states like Texas have gotten more regressive in execution (even as the electorate gets more progressive) we’ve made real gains at the federal level by operating out of races that were winnable. If not for Manchin/Sinema, a hell of a lot of the Democratic bucket list would be getting checked off. Why would I try to win a race in gerrymandered Florida when there’s a much more likely win in a bunch of districts in CA or NY?
What’s more, we know from experience that places like TX and FL won’t change until the GOP goes too far. That was our experience here in CA. So on this I’m an accelerationist – TX and FL need more suffering before the electorate wakes the fuck up. I wish that wasn’t how this works, but that’s how this works. We’re going to have to kill and maim more people of Covid, back alley abortions, gun violence, and climate change. I feel bad about that, but that’s what your neighbors are actively voting for and I can’t fix that.
Another Scott
Robyn at Wonkette has a good article on the TX bill and lots of groups and resources to fight it. Well worth a click
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Umm, wow.
Baud
@Martin:
Should we ask WaterGirl to organize it?
sab
11 a.m. the sidewalk across the street from us sprang a geyser that blew up the sidewalk. We had a small river running down our newly paved street. I called our 311 number ( like 911 but for everything except cops, fire and EMS.) Water department was there within five minutes ( they sent the street sweeper to call it in. Hour later a water department crew. 3 p.m. the water department has a backhoe in, a huge hole dug, all kind of guys working around it, and by the time the guys whose yard sprang a leak get home they might have the water turned back on.
Meanwhile the autistic grand-daughter starts school with mandated masks.
We pay city, state and federal income taxes, and coubty and state sales taxes and county property taxes. Obviously, we get services even in our red state.
Sure Lurkalot
Most of my family lives in Texas and another niece is considering it. For most, it was the low cost housing. They could afford to live in many other states, but they wanted big big big houses.
I’ve visited countless times but now that my mom and sister are deceased, I’m not returning any time soon. The vigilantism, the open carry, the school text books, the toll roads, the weather, the assault on voting…
As a teenager, I turned down California. My parents moved there in 1972 and I was accepted to UCLA. I loved the hippy enclaves, restaurants and the beach but I couldn’t handle the size, the smog and the traffic (even then!). I visited countless times there too, vacations as well, but I never thought to move there.
Lots of good and not so good in Colorado too. Denver traffic is horrendous, the air quality has sucked pretty much all summer and it’s hotter than it used to be.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Absolutely!
the pollyanna from hell
@Sure Lurkalot:
Whenever I am asked to evaluate Denver I count 2 negatives: too many cars, and high blood pressure during pregnancy 8 times the national average. 40% vs. 5%
Geminid
@Martin: You don’t need to be an accelerationist. The Republicans in Texas are doing the job for you. And it’s out of your hands anyway.
Yarrow
@Baud: She’s got an organizing post up top. Ask her there. Texas and Florida must suffer! It’s the only way.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Am I wrong? We make cultural changes in the shadow of crisis. Why was Selma the flashpoint for civil rights? That shit had been going on for ages, but once it turned into a PR crisis for the President, things changed.
Political change usually requires visible crisis. I don’t want it to work that way, but it does. Jan 6 was such a crisis even though it didn’t really reflect anything that new politically. The right wing militias assassinated police officers in CA the summer before. There was an operative plan to kidnap the Gov of MI months before. There were open antidemocratic actions throughout the GOP before Nov. But we needed that visible crisis to get Democrats to fully mobilize. You think there were 48 Dem votes to get rid of the filibuster before Jan 6? Not a chance.
I don’t know what it will take to turn TX blue. Maybe the winter storm was the catalyst and it’s already done. Maybe it’s this abortion law. Maybe it’ll be the next mass shooting now that it’s legal for anyone to open carry in TX. But its not going to be a message about more progressive taxation. GOP voters don’t willingly abandon their party, any more than we do. They need to be shocked out of it, like Cole was. And the GOP will keep changing the rules ahead of any majoritarian shift, so it needs to be sudden.
Cameron
@Martin: Initially, anyway, the reason to contest races in places like TX and FL is to make your opponent invest resources he/she would rather use for other things. You run to win, but don’t expect to.
Martin
@Geminid: Yeah, and it’s why I believe these overreaches are evidence of the collapse of the party’s control.
I don’t like that we seem to lack the capacity to not be an asshole until someone punches us in the face, but that’s the unfortunate reality of things.
Martin
@Cameron: Yeah, and I’m fine with that. But I don’t think those gains are durable if you do win them. I don’t think GA can keep its Senators. I’ll back the efforts to keep them, of course, but GA leg is working very hard to make sure we don’t and it’s very hard to fight that from afar.
Right now we have a GOP takeover of local election boards. There’s literally nothing I can do to prevent that. That has to be done by locals, but where are the Dems on that?
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: It’s just very easy to say that from your very privileged position. And I say that as a straight white guy with multiple degrees.
Josie
@Geminid:
My suggestion for the Democrats in the ’22 election in Texas is to run a slate of high profile candidates for the top 3 or 4 offices – Beto O’Rourke, a Castro, Matthew Mcconaughey, Wendy Davis. For once, if they could bury their egos and run together, they just might pull it off. I know, dream on…..
Kent
Susan Sarandan…is that you?
Subsole
@Ksmiami:
That I can see. That is a reasoned strategy. May not work, but it can be argued.
But telling ordinary folks to just load up the u-haul and Tom Joad their way to Bluetopia is…not something I can take seriously.
Yarrow
Yeah, why would anyone even bother. It’s so much nicer to just focus on districts in blue CA and NY. Pay no attention to Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and Colin Allred who flipped gerrymandered R districts in Texas in 2018 and are now part of the reason Dems have the House and Nancy Pelosi is Speaker. Who cares about those sorts of representatives. They’re not from proper blue states. They’re practically useless. Why even bother keeping them in the House or, heaven forfend, flip other districts in the state. Best to let everyone there suffer.
Yarrow
@Josie: Joe Jaworski, former Mayor of Galveston and grandson of Leon Jaworski has announced his candidacy for Attorney General. Link to his website. I don’t know if he’s high profile enough but he’d be far better than Ken Paxton, that’s for sure.
the pollyanna from hell
@Martin:
Big wins do happen sometimes without crisis, and the crisis wins are unpredictable, and not possible without decades of gruntwork beforehand.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: I’m not saying (and I don’t think anyone else is saying) that party time, money and effort for Democratic candidates should be equally distributed without regard to win probability. Of course you invest the most where you’re likely to get the highest return — I get that.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but what I’m asking for is a little goddamned empathy because we’re in danger and our rights are being whittled away. What I’m asking for is no more ignorant-ass statements like “go pack your U-Haul.” And also an acknowledgement that we’re in this fight together because the danger doesn’t end at our states’ borders.
Take it from Florida Democrats, y’all do not want President DeSantis. So help us stop that fucker in his tracks, if not with donations to his opponent or writing postcards to voters, at least by signaling that our fellow Democrats in blue states see us as more than so many eggs to be broken to make an omelet.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: I won’t argue with that. How hard did african americans work to gain the right to vote? Really fucking hard. Life and death hard. But it wasn’t until it got so impossible to ignore that privileged white people like me got off of our asses and granted them that right.
That’s my point – the unprivileged can’t do it themselves. The disenfranchised voters can’t solve their problems politically. They can only do so through violence (physical, economic, etc.) because the system is designed to require that. Yeah, the GOP can bring that violence upon themselves (and often do) but the violence is necessary, and I say let’s get it over with. Let’s get on with killing 100 people at once to spur change rather than the 50 people a year for a decade under everyones radar. Bring that violence in other ways – shut down the capitol, strike, etc. The violence need not be physical, but it needs to happen, needs to be visible, and needs to hurt badly enough to move the electorate.
I should add – I’m not part of the privileged class of TX or FL to help them. I am part of the privileged class of CA and the US, so I can help at those levels.
Woodrow/asim
This is a problem. It’s on the backs of People of Color, and Women, esp. Poor folx, that your doomsday play, plays out.
You need to consider that maybe, just maybe, those are the people you might want to talk with and too, before you post out these ideas. That those folx, who are on the front lines in this fight, and have been for decades in cases, might have other ideas that don’t involve crawling over their broken bodies and lives to make change happen.
karen marie
@Woodrow/asim: Thank you! I am working at the moment, so I can’t read them right now. I appreciate your help.
Ksmiami
@Subsole: the rural areas only survive off the largesse of the cities. Defund the fuckers and see how they like it.
karen marie
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I don’t know that that’s true. People who don’t have services don’t know that other people do. And they rarely blame their local politicians, they blame “Washington,” and complain that “government is stopping us having what we need.”
The stupid is so deep in this country, I’ve lost all faith that anything is going to improve. We’ve been on a slide downhill that began with the re-election of Richard Fucking Nixon.
Citizen Alan
@yellowdog:
No kids here. But if I had a daughter in high school, I would forbid her from applying to any colleges in the former Confederacy. You just know every god-damned one of them is going to have laws just like this within 6 months at most.
karen marie
@Soprano2: “Already writing the bill.” You jest. They’re just copy/pasting the Texas bill.
karen marie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Got a link?
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Virginia won’t.
JoyceH
I’m not a lawyer, but it looks like neither are the guys who wrote this anti-abortion bill, so just… hear me out. Private citizens ANYWHERE in the US can file against ANYONE in Texas who MIGHT have facilitated an abortion? So what if a bunch of private citizens filed law suits against every Texas legislator who has teenage or low-twenties daughters, accusing them of facilitating their daughters’ abortions? Most of the accusations would of course be made-up bullsheet, but hey, so will probably a lot of the other suits be. File the lawsuit in the court farthest from where the legislator being sued lives and force him to travel across the state to defend himself. As I understand the way the law is written, suing is EASY and no-penalty, while all the penalties and inconvenience fall on those accused. I think it would just be interesting if legislators actually experienced the consequences of the laws they pass. They can whine about malicious filing, but do they really think none of the law suits this law permits will be malicious filings?
Martin
Of course it does. But the status quo is already doing that. TX has 4,000 gun related deaths annually. 300 people a day are dying of Covid.
The faster you get them out of that situation the better.
And that’s what I’m getting at. We’ve discounted all of the violence against People of Color, and Women, esp. Poor folx as normal background noise. A system which commits systemic violence will only be accountable to violence. So bring it. Let’s get this over with.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker:
Sorry, BC. This is Balloon Juice where those who live in red states must suffer to keep those blue staters feeling superior. Empathy is for losers.
Sorry. Not gonna happen. Dems in blue states are nothing more than lazy people who don’t do enough/ don’t do it the right way / aren’t worth the effort. Suffering is required by our betters who live in blue states. Get to suffering to satisfy them, already.
Citizen Alan
@Martin:
I was thinking of something simpler to start: A $10k bounty on anyone who can prove that a gun shop sold a gun without performing a proper background check or that anyone is in possession of a gun who is legally forbidden to own one, to be paid by the store or owner.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid:
At this point, I’m willing to consider Virginia as “honorary Yankees.” :)
misterpuff
@Yarrow:
Oh-oh, Alabama
Can I see you and shake your hand?
Make friends down in Alabama
I’m from a new land
I come to you and see all this ruin
What are you doing Alabama?
You got the rest of the Union to help you along
What’s going wrong?
Absolutely the right sentiment.
But initially, you may get some wrong-headed responses:
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember a southern man don’t need him around, anyhow.
misterpuff
@Citizen Alan: Of course, that law would warrent a immediate thunderbolt from Supremo Olympus!
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Sorry, I don’t buy the argument. Making things worse makes things worse. And I sure as fuck am not going to prescribe it for others when I will remain relatively untouched.
Woodrow/asim
Who are you going to tell they have to die, to get wounded, to have irreparable harm done, so you get your freedom? Me? You? Name names, man — who’s on point to get it in the throat to get a free election?
And — AND — you never answered my point about actually talking to those People of Color you seem so resigned to allowing to die, for America to be free again.
Have you actually talked to the people whose lives you, “with sorrow,” are so willing to let die? What do they say to your ideas, Martin? How do they feel about being on the chopping block for freedom?
This is the thing. There are too many people, too willing to have an idea that cannot stand any real test — much less an ethical framework.
I’m out. My anger and fury at this wanton disregard of living beings — especially the kinds of folx I grew up with, and have seen make a way outta no way — is about to take off, and I don’t need y’all to have to clean up after.
DO BETTER.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: I know you are a numbers guy and this is a nice utilitarian argument, but can you look people in the eye and tell them that you are willing to sacrifice them?
You sound like a WWI chateau general. There is a reason they were despised and later generations of officers were taught to live among their soldiers and endure hardship and danger with them.*
*Yes, I know officers still live better than enlisted soldiers, but the thinking has changed.
catclub
@karen marie:
 
Thanks ALEC!
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Well, plenty of Yankees have moved here. And plenty of immigrants and their kids are now voting Democratic.
There is another kind of demographic change that has helped Virginia turn blue: an increase of college educated people. Fifty years ago this demographic tended to vote Republican. Now it is increasingly Democratic, and some political scientists now include this factor in election models. In 2018 Democratic candidates in suburban districts from Houston and Dallas to Atlanta and Richmond flipped formerly safe Republican districts. The presence of college educated voters may well have been a factor.
This can be a form of intrastate demographic change. The daughter of a a Republican store manager in Waco may become a Democratic voting IT professional in Austin, and the son of a Republican oil pipefitter in Sweetwater may become a Democratic voting teacher in a Houston suburb.
Subsole
@Ksmiami: My Biden-voting grandma lives in a rural area. I’m not starving her to make whatever point you think you’re making.
What else you got?
@Martin: See above.
@JoyceH: Now this, I can get behind.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: How about strict liability for someone selling a gun outside of legal requirements, for any and all injury caused by that firearm? This would be real deterrent for most people, and I think it is coming.
AnthroBabe
@Marcelo: HEAR HEAR! I am an Arizona progressive and the same goes for me!
J R in WV
OK, guys. My glass house is totally shattered in ruins around me. West by God Virginia is not a shining city on the hill. Maybe not quite as bad as TX, but not even Virginia. Not any more.
The problem is I grew up here when WV was solid Democratic. All my friends gransma’s houses had three pictures on their living room walls: FDR, JFK and either Jesus or Lincoln. I myself am a yellow dog Democrat, which around here means I will vote for that nice yellow dog over there on the porch before I would vote for any Republican.
My apologies to Omnes, Betty, and everyone else whom I offended.
WaterGirl
@the pollyanna from hell:
What’s that about? Do they know?
Betsy
@matt: Wow! That was assholish. Fuck you and your privilege!
Betsy
@Marcelo: Matt is a copperhead, one of the northerners that wanted to let the south secede or double down. Also pig-ignorant, and arrogant in his ignorance to speak back like that to you, who clearly have years on the frontlines of this worthy and difficult struggle. Fuck him.
WaterGirl
@matt:
That’s funny, because after reading that comment from you, I kind of feel sorry for you. I’ll take Marcelo’s way of looking at the world any day.