. . . is to insult Texas.
Admit it, fellow, Texan: You've taken some secret pleasure in California's recent troubles with its state budget.
Okay, it's a mild insult. But insult it is: that we Texans are such miserable beings that we wish troubles on others.
The Chronicle's carefully chose "you've" (rather than "we've") directs the insult strictly at readers, holding the editorialists harmless.
Over the years, maybe you've gotten sick of the lectures about how California is a preview of the future, whether in fashion or music or, heaven forbid, politics and government.
And where have we heard those lectures? From Chronicle editorialists and columnists, endlessly. Sometimes explicitly. Sometimes by simply pushing for one policy or another that is more Californian than Texan, or by criticizing one policy or another that is distinctly Texan.
Now, heaven forbid, gravity has pulled the California system of politics and government -- with its ruinous taxes, ruinouse spending, and ruinous regulations -- down to the earth.
The Chronicle minimizes California's crisis as merely "troubles with its state budget."
The the budget troubles are symptoms; what matters is the disease -- a state economy wracked by statist viruses loosed from Sacramento.
And while confessing, with obvious reluctance (and disguised by snarky humor), that things are bad in California, the Chronicle refuses to admit the full implication of the natural comparison: Things are much better in Texas.
Example:
We're not unaware that California's misfortunes have been TexaThat's half right. There has been a "push" out of California. But "pushes" are blind creatures. They propel businesses (and and even-more-mobile citizens, particularly wealthy citizens) across state lines.s' [read Texas's] gain in many respects. Over the past few year, increasing tax burdens in the Golden State have pushed many businesses Texas' [read Texas's] way.
More interesting, however, is what draws those emigrants elsewhere. And it's not a "push," it's a "pull."
So what draws migrants to Texas, not only from California but also from other states?
The Economist apprehended the importance of this question and worked up a good report on it. The Chronicle, by contrast, hasn't a clue.
The paper also delivers a backhanded insult to our legislature, much like the inexcusable editorial that labeled the New York's legislative meltdown was a good thing because now people could now laugh at some place other than Texas. ("Nuts in New York: Can a state legislature possibly be more dysfunctional than our own? Yes, oh yes," June 11, 2009). (And the Chronicle accuses us of schadenfreude?) (Unca D's takedown here.)
Yesterday the editorial board mocked the California legislature, rightly, then offered up a comparison with Texas that laced, typically so, with sarcasm.
[The California legislature's budget fix is] so bad, it actually makes our biennial legislative proceedings in Austin look like a textbook exercise in representative democracy.
A knee-slapper, that.
What the Chronicle misses, as always, is an opportunity for reflection. What is California doing wrong? Why is Texas faring so much better? Could the editors be wrong in perpetually criticizing, and laughing at, a state that serves its citizens so much better?
Readers get none of that, and never will. Our editorial board -- must I say it again? -- neither understands nor respects Texas. Not its people, its institutions, its processes, its politics, its economy, or its culture or traditional sensibilities.
Yesterday's editorial proves that woeful point again, for the umpteenth time.
As for California's being "a preview of the future," sadly it still is.
It is the future the president of the United States and the editorial board and columnists of the Houston Chronicle still have in mind for Texas and the rest of the United States.
UPDATE: Thanks for the links from blogHouston and Kevin Whited.
Comments