-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
According to a Wall Street Journal article, Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, found that since June 2009 37% of all net new jobs in America were created in Texas. Even though Texas is an energy state benefitting from high oil and natural gas prices, Fisher touts Texas’ business friendly environment, its right-to-work laws, and its “tort reform”– a $250,000 cap on punitive damages.
The WSJ article even calls Texas “fiscally responsible.” That’s the same Texas with a $27 billion budget shortfall. The WSJ article also uncritically cites Texas’ statutory limits on mortgage borrowing, a regulation of the financial industry they would decry if Obama proposed it.
While the 37% figure is accurate, the details are what’s interesting. Texas has the highest percentage of minimum wage worker in the country. As the chart below shows, the level of minimum wage jobs has increased during Perry’s reign.
The median hourly earnings for all hourly-paid wage and salary workers in Texas stood at $11.20 per hour in 2010; nationally, the median was $12.50.
Texas also ranks number one in the percentage of residents without health insurance. Texas’ percentage is almost 28%. Massachusetts, with Romneycare, has the lowest at 4.7%.
According to The Economist, the state-level Gross Domestic Product of Texas grew by 2.6% last year, equal to the national average. New York grew by 5.1% and California by 1.8%.
Here is a listing of the Perry economic portfolio touted as a model for the whole country:
- Highest percentage of minimum wage jobs.
- Highest percentage of residents with no health insurance.
- A budget deficit of $27 billion.
- Lower than average wages.
- Average growth in GDP.
So, if you want a low paying job with no health insurance, Texas is your choice.
Years ago, psychiatrist Dr. Eric Berne wrote a best selling book called Games People Play. Mike, I know you are familiar with it and Elaine as well. One of the “games” Berne described was called Let’s You and Him Fight, in which the initiator behaves in the manner Elaine describes in her comment above. Then when caught, maintains denial. Dr. Fritz Perls had a term for it himself. Perls called it, “Mind fucking.” Apt, methinks.
Joe South had a hit song sometime about 1969 in which he riffed on that title.
Mike, your imagination is getting the best of you again.
“Attacking” your ideas and arguments falls within the bounds of civil discourse, Personal attacks do not. Your frustration dealing with the former seems to be pushing you to the latter. The quicker you understand this flaw, the sooner we can return to civil discourse and get away from personal attacks.
“Yet, I’m still seeing personal attacks from the “regulars” who clearly are not moving on. What gives?”
Probably your blatant hypocrisy by the pretense, dis-proven, of your own original attacking style. This is a personal attack by the way. I at least have the integrity you so sorely lack.
“Over the years, I had a few elementary students who behaved like the provocateur of which you speak.”
Elaine,
I know whereof you speak from my personal school experience. I was unfortunately always the kid provoked who punched the provocateur and then was blamed for fighting.
“Mike, see my false flag comment above. Somebody is trying to sow discontent.”
OS,
You are correct and the attempt is obvious. The question is why do they bother. My guess is that a blog such as this is frightening to them because of their rigidity of mindset. We know that regulars writing here like yourself, FFLEO, Blouise, SwM and too many more really smart people, too long to enumerate, aren’t monolithic in their ideas. Certainly the guest bloggers are also not mono-maniacally pursuing anyone’s “canon”. The blog is a tapestry of varying opinions, even among those who might generally agree in some areas. The common thread is a dedication to maintaining a constitutional country that adheres to it’s Bill of Rights. Most of those whose minds are “blown” by this are awash in an Orwellian “doublethink/speak” mindset that makes it impossible for them to follow anything but their party line. In that they remind me of the rigid Marxists I’ve known that so angered me in their inability to think for themselves, so attached were they to their dogma.
Otteray,
Over the years, I had a few elementary students who behaved like the provocateur of which you speak. They used to like to provoke other children and then wait and hope to see the other children get in trouble when they reacted to the provocation. Of course, my little instigators did it slyly–in hopes that I would not see that they were the first to strike. I learned to watch such children closely…and through the corner of my eye. They were often surprised when I called them on their behavior because they didn’t think I had seen what they had done or know that I was wise to what they were doing.
Didn’t JT ask everyone to move on from the rancor and personal strife?
Why aren’t you people moving on, putting this episode behind you, and focusing on the issues being discussed?
He was pretty clear about maintaining civil discourse and not resorting to personal attacks. Yet, I’m still seeing personal attacks from the “regulars” who clearly are not moving on. What gives?
“And of course most of the people who read this are probably progressives so they probably would object to what I have to say.”
Roco,
Being so caught up in your own religious fervor for what you deem is a “free market” it seems impossible for you to understand that this is NOT a progressive blog. I am not a progressive and I know enough history to know that the man considered the epitome of progressiveness in the US, Teddy
Roosevelt, was a racist, elitist, imperialist and believed that an elite managerial class of corporate executives should rule the country. People, who previously called themselves “liberal”, moved to the term “progressive”
when others from the more radical Left scorned “liberal” as a tactic of attempting to radicalize those more sanely moderate. One of the ways we differ, Roco, is I actually know my history and know the political philosophies you find anathemas from you rigid viewpoint.
While you, your intellectual leader and the “Boy wonder” blather on about being attacked, you have constantly attacked from your inception here by “pigeon holing” people into your very, limited conception of who disagrees with you. Since you are so rigidly bound by your political/economic canon, you can’t conceive that others disagreeing with you are not. Your use of what to you are pejorative terms, like socialist, collectivist, etc. you are directly insulting those who disagree with you. That we at times respond with naked scorn is a function of the fact that shown by the nature of your writings, it seems highly unlikely that you would understand the more sophisticated responses, of which all of us are quite capable.
Mike, see my false flag comment above. Somebody is trying to sow discontent. Question: Who might be a provocateur who has the motive and means? I don’t know who it might be, but the list of known suspects is not very long.
“Turley should abandon the guestbloggers until they have the maturity to deal adult intellectual challenges presented here.”
Xenicus,
Precisely who are you whose pseudonym I’ve never seen around before? you express a lot of concern for Professor Turley’s blog, but never comment, why is that?
Your explanation lacks the clarity needed to assess whether you have any information to offer on Mespo of value. You don’t, but that wasn’t the point was it? The game you are running, with at least Roco who posted directly previous to you writing “See below”, is that you think we will immediately check the records for your ISP and then respond into what your mind weakly conceives as a trap to show our snooping. Silly goose.
What you and your cohorts don’t realize is that now that JT’s back we are
Weekend Guest Bloggers and don’t sign on during the week. You imagine,
with feigned paranoia, that we all have time and/or interest in dumb espionage in the service of discrediting people, whose very words discredit themselves. The guest bloggers don’t need no stinking pseudonyms, since our real names are out there. Given the times and the insanity of some of the opposition to freedom in this country, that’s known as courage.
“What part of it did you absorb in that wop skull?”
I.M. So Sorry,
Not being Italian, but having grown up with parents whose closest friends were Italian American’s and with my having close Italian American friends, I take exception to your use of “Wop”, for even someone like kderosa. While of course I agree with much you say I find that word jarring and distasteful. I
know that current mores being what they are, if you yourself are Italian American then our cultural mores would recognize that you have the right to say it. I don’t feel bound by cultural mores and so your use of the word, even in a good cause, was not helpful in my opinion.
Maggie Simi’s random comments contain more relevant thoughts, less juvenile antics, and certainly less personal attacks than many of the comments I’ve seen of late. And, I’m not talking about the comments from the new sockpuppet hoard released by the cabal of regulars.
There’s gotta be some measure of the difference between brilliantness of the blogger and the stupidity of the commenters.
If so, this blog would be up for a webby fer sure.
Roco,
Then why do you assume progressives would object to everything you have to say? I think we can be conservatives or liberals/progressives without being ideologues. While I consider myself to be a liberal/progressive, I have a conservative viewpoint on some issues and live what some would consider to be a “conservative” lifestyle.
Otteray Scribe, you still sound bitter over that low billable rate of yours.
Elaine:
no I do not object to what you have to say.
Roco,
Do you usually object to what progressives have to say?
Mespo:
I am not Xenicus.
And of course most of the people who read this are probably progressives so they probably would object to what I have to say.
It also occurred to me that folks such as, for instance, a patent attorney who is internet savvy would likely know all about spoofing an IP in order to set up false flag operations.
Nal, I think you will need something more sophisticated than a Whois search. There are too many ways to spoof an IP, and not just in Chrome. There is, for example, TOR. It started off an an onion routing project for the Navy Research Laboratory. TOR and other similar software is designed to be almost impossible to compromise. Happy hunting!
This is getting way too technical for me! Thanks for following up on that Nal!