I don't often get any grins from political news these days, but every time I hear that Texas is on the verge of seceding, I roll my eyes and feel a little smile glowing inside.
As someone who grew up on a farm on a dirt road in a remote but fascinating corner of West Texas, my theories on why Texas won't even seriously consider secession can be linked mostly to one word: taxes.
From what I read, the Texas tax structure is one of the most regressive in the nation -- heavy on working and middle classes, light toward the top income brackets.
Assuming that to be true, consider: Texas' recent "economic miracle" is based mainly on adding a lot of low-paying jobs that are subsidized through the entire nation's taxpayers -- food stamps, health care (for those lucky enough to get it in Texas), housing assistance ... you see the picture.
According to an article in the Washington Monthly, Texas' sales and property taxes are such that people toward the middle and lower end pay higher tax rates while "the top 1 percent in Texas have an effective tax rate of just 3.2 percent."
The same article states that 3.2 percent is about a quarter of the rate paid by the bottom 20 percent.
What makes anyone think that wealthy Texans are willing to pay more taxes in order to subsidize all those low-paying jobs? And if they refused after Texas seceded, what makes anyone think that there wouldn't be a mass exodus of workers heading back to a civilized country, assuming mass emigration were permitted? Bye-bye, economic miracle!
Washington Monthly reported that complacency plays a part in the Texas success story:
"Middle- and lower-income Texans in effect make up for the taxes the rich don’t pay in Texas by making do with fewer government services, such as by accepting a K-12 public school system that ranks behind 41 other states, including Alabama, in spending per student."
Apparently in 2013, Texas did receive only 79 cents for every dollar sent to the feds, though that followed two years where the return was above $1.40. I haven't found the reason for federal largesse being cut in half for 2013, so I'm not vouching for that.
Here's some summing up from "Texas on the Brink," a yearly report from the progressive research caucus in the Texas House of Representatives, the Legislative Study Group:
"Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured adults in the nation. Texas is dead last in percentage of high school graduates. Our state generates more hazardous waste and carbon dioxide emissions than any other state in our nation. If we do not change course, for the first time in our history, the Texas generation of tomorrow will be less prosperous than the generation of today."
Of course, that came from a progressive caucus, and we all know how reliable progressive sources are -- the mass media refuse to even quote them.
But still, does that sound like preparation to go it alone?
Sam Houston, probably the greatest Texas hero ever, from the War of Independence (from Mexico) to leader of a nation and then a state, recognized a wacko streak among his fellow Texans when he gave a speech in 1860 opposing the state's secession to join the Confederacy.
"You are asked to plunge into a revolution; but are you told how to get out of it? Not so; but it is to be a leap in the dark — a leap into an abyss, whose horrors would even fright the mad spirits of disunion who tempt you on. ...
"Are we to sell reality for a phantom?"
More than a century and a half later, Texas' fright-wingers seem not only willing to sell reality -- they'll give it away if that's the only way they can escape it!
But I'm betting that if secession talk ever gets serious, the business establishment will run like a straight boy at a gay panty raid.
I don't lie awake at night worryin' about Texas seceding, y'all.