An Independent Texas Would Be A Third-World Country

By Manifesto Joe

The jokes about Gov. Rick Perry's veiled threat of Texas secession have faded into collective memory now, but a few of us were given pause to consider the "what ifs" about this.

What if Texas legally could, and did, leave the United States?

If these figures available courtesy of Texas state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, are any barometer, we would be little more than a Third-World country.

Here are some nuggets from the senator's Web site about Texas' standing when stacked up in 2007 against the other 49 states:

Percentage of Uninsured Children
1st

Income Inequality Between the Rich and the Poor
2nd

Percentage of Population without Health Insurance
1st

Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) Scores
47th

Percentage of Population over 25 with a High School Diploma
50th

Percentage of Non-Elderly Women with Health Insurance
50th

Rate of Women Aged 40+ Who Receive Mammograms
44th

Rate of Women Aged 18+ Who Receive Pap Smears
47th

Cervical Cancer Rate
5th

Women's Voter Registration
43rd

Women's Voter Turnout
49th

Percentage of Eligible Voters that Vote
44th

For more on the subject, go here.

And the coup de grase: The president of our great reborn republic would apparently be (you guessed it) Rick Perry, he of the 2.3 GPA as an animal husbandry graduate of Texas A&M.

Am I sure that a dolt like Perry would be somebody that an independent Texas would actually elect as its president? I suppose nothing in this life is truly certain, but a recent piece of evidence points to this as the case.

Perry has been governor since Il Doofus resigned in December 2000 to go on to bigger and more horrific things, and Perry is finally facing his first serious challenge for re-election, from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. Hutch is almost certain to go through with a challenge in the 2010 Republican Primary.

There's one big problem with her chances. She's regarded as a moderate (chortle) in this state, and the Texas Republican Party still wants the U.S. to unleash Chiang Kai-shek's skeletal remains on the mainland of Red China.

A poll conducted jointly by the Texas Politics Project and the University of Texas' department of government had Perry with a 12-percentage-point lead over Hutch, 38-26. Let's face it, the 'necks will go to the polls for Governor Goodhair, not for Kay Bailey H.

And although Democrats here have made a few admirable gains in recent years, they are still in a shambles when it comes to having a viable challenger for governor. The undecideds are way ahead among Democrats; but among those potential voters who have made up their minds, the poll leader is Kinky Friedman, with 12 percent.

Kinky, for those unfamiliar, is a veteran Austin singer-songwriter and humorist whose talents in those areas are considerable. But in his foray into Texas politics in 2006, he was inept as a politician, made a gaping ass of himself in debate, and ultimately split the meager progressive vote here in a year in which Perry seemed a bit vulnerable (He won re-election with 40 percent of the vote against three challengers).

Rather than talking this horseshit about seceding from the union, Texans should be damned glad of the union. It's damned near the only thing that keeps us from becoming Guatemala.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Why Does Governor Goodhair Hate America?

By Manifesto Joe

By now I suppose that everybody who follows matters political knows that the governor of my state, Rick Perry, made a statement at a tax day "Tea Party" gathering that strongly suggested that Texas might, under great duress, want to secede from the Union.

I had hoped Governor Goodhair meant that we Texans could all just get out of the Teamsters or the United Auto Workers en masse. There ain't very many of us who is members of them there union outfits anyway, so there would be no change that anyone outside Texas urban areas would notice.

But unfortunately, I don't think that's quite what Governor Goodhair meant. He was probably pandering to the rubes, the people who don't quite get it -- that the reason they drive on paved streets, can cross bridges without crashing into the river, can get their elderly parents on Social Security, that their children can construct English sentences even if they haven't gone to Yale, is because taxes are collected.

There are a couple of things to remember about the governor's statement. One is that he's facing a potentially tough campaign for re-election, even though he's already been the state's longest-serving governor. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, appears to be tired of Washington and seems to want a swell job back home. She sort of looks like a moderate Republican by Texas standards, so Perry may be setting up early to line up the right-wing yahoo base.

Then there's the matter of intellect. Rick Perry has a great head of dark hair, and from all the female accounts that I've heard, he is the closest thing to a Ken doll we've ever had in high office in this state. But, as the late Molly Ivins often pointed out, Governor Goodhair ain't the sharpest pencil in the box. He's a grad of Texas A&M -- not a place known for high academic distinction -- and he majored in animal husbandry. His grade-point average was 2.3. Oh, by the way, he was an Aggie cheerleader.

This would explain why he's not quite up to the legal and civics questions here, i.e., that it actually would be quite illegal for Texas to quit the Union. The bozos actually did it along with several other Southern states back in 1861, and the sad result was 600,000 Americans killed on the battlefield. I guess they don't teach much about the Civil War in Animal Husbandry 101.

But I don't think Goodhair's lack of cultural literacy is to blame here. He's looking ahead to 14 years in the Governor's Mansion, and CNBC's Chris Matthews tells me that 31% of Texans who responded to a poll actually think that Texas has a legal right to secede from the Union. He's cynically betting that the ignorant rubes in this state are numerous enough to get him past Kay Bailey in a nasty 2010 Republican primary.

To read the latest on this, here's a link to the Houston Chronicle's online edition. Also, there will be more about our illustrious Governor Goodhair in subsequent posts.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.