It is a Texas Democrat ritual to misleadingly compare small, homogenous states to our huge, multicultural state to try to drum up support for more spending and bureaucracy.
“Texas on the Brink!!!!!” is the scare-name of their “study”, and Garnett Coleman pushed it on KUHF FM in Houston. (The exclamation points are added for effect)
While he admitted Texas has very affordable housing compared to other states, he went on to make several unintelligent comparisons that paint Texas in a bad light.
One of them was a comparison of carbon dioxide output and hazardous waste.
To use cumulative stats to compare states of drastically different sizes is dumb. It is like comparing the overall food intake from a family of two with that of a family of 10, and then pretending the big family are gluttons for eating more food cumulatively.
Of course Texas puts out more carbon dioxide than other states. It is one of the two biggest states.
Additionally, Texas produces oil, which is a big reason our economy is so good. If Texas quit producing oil it would not reduce the output of carbon dioxide and hazardous waste worldwide, because countries that would like to destroy us would simply pick up the extra business.
Plus, carbon dioxide scare-mongering came out of the now-humiliated and discredited “global warming” social fad. The scientists who stood behind that movement now admit the word hasn’t been warming after all.
The other two stats are just as worthless.
Percentage health insurance and high school graduation rates are hugely effected by Texas’ multi-culturalism.
Elitist liberals may like to impose their values on everyone, but the fact is, immigrants come to this country with their own values. One of them is that many of them don’t like to accept handouts. As a result, Texas has a huge number of people who qualify for Medicaid who don’t accept it. Good for them.
Additionally, assimilating cultures don’t have the same social stigma attached to graduating from high school.
Last time this kind of tired argument was hauled out, an Iowa blogger undressed it completely. It was focusing on standardized test scores, not graduation rates but the underlying point that if you control for ethnic diversity, you get the real picture, and Texas comes out very well.
And again, liberal elites have kids with lots of degrees, lots of debt, and no jobs right now, so let’s not judge anyone’s paradigm too harshly.
“Texas on the brink” is goofy and misleading. People vote with their feet about the quality of states, and Texas is winning in a landslide.
–Coleman interview