TEN STATES are in financial peril, according to the Pew Center for the States. How many are named Texas?
None, of course. But a lot of really cool states -- the kind that, like the Chronicle editorial board, sometimes refer to Texas as a laughingstock -- they're on the list.
California, naturally, is No. 1.
"The nation watches closely as California struggles to avoid going broke," Pew says.
Next worst managed are Arizona, Rhode Island, Michigan, Oregon, Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin. New York is twentieth.
How about Texas? Among the states elegantly described by Pew as "least like California," Texas ties for third-best fiscal and economic condition.
According to Pew, the best-managed states are (1) (tie) Iowa and Nebraska and (3) (tie) Texas, Montana, and North Dakota, (6) (tie) Pennsylvania and Utah, and (8) (tie) New Mexico, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
(The Pew Center on the States, Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril, November 2009)
Our national government, like the Chronicle, wants America to be more like California and will, in due course, find a way to reward that profligate state by sending federal bailout money borrowed from our children and grandchildren.
UPDATE: The Chronicle studiously ignores all reports about Texas's relatively good fiscal and economic health, but let it be said that we're the twelfth fourteenth most obese state -- that's Front Page City.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link from blogHouston.
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