Texas Governance The Answer For Washington

Texas State Capitol ..

A very bold statement indeed for your gentle muse to open up a current topic with such a title as that displayed in the above header box. No doubt you will have also noticed the absence of what normally would follow such a bold statement, and that would be the inclusion of a question (?) mark; to which the muse responds, au contraire, it is a statement, not a question. The inference being of course, that it is not up for challenge.

Indeed there is precedent throughout the history of the discovery, founding, and preservation of the United States, that wherever conservative values and principles have been applied to the governing process, the nation has prospered greatly; whenever something else, other than conservative values have been tried, it has been a complete train wreck.

State legislators in Texas make $600 per month, or $7,200 per year, plus a per diem of $150 for every day the Legislature is in session (also including any special sessions). That adds up to $28,200 a year for a regular session (140 days), with the total pay for a two-year term being $35,400.

Currently the nation is in a dreaded lock-down of sorts, where long-entrenched verbal warriors of one party or the other (a gentle reminder of the two-party system in play) are engaged in a bizarre version of a political frat-house pillow fight where one side or the other is attempting to claim bragging rights for this surrender, or that cave-in, or the other failure to come to agreement. Not that the agreement is anything of value to compromise the debate; it is simply the ploy to continue the feathers flying all over the dorm.

In the current issue of American Thinker Bruce Walker declares, as the topic of his piece, that The Problem, of course, Is Washington, with the spectacle of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner hogging the daily headlines as a very visual example of what the real problems are in Washington.

Recalling the words of Governor Perry from the seemingly-endless Republican nomination debates from last year, Walker writes Governor Perry, when he looked like the most promising star in the 2012 nomination season, promised that he would make Washington as unimportant in the lives of Americans as possible. That was precisely the right kind of political attack, even if Perry stumbled in the Republican debates.

Harry Passin' a Peach Pit

What cannot be dismissed lightly however, is the fact of Governor Perry’s success in the rise of the State of Texas during the 13 years he has held the office since succeeding George W. Bush in December of 2000. Ranked the 14th largest economy in the world, ahead of South Korea and the Netherlands (2012) Texas is home to six of the top companies on the Fortune 500 list, and 51 overall (third most, after New York and California). As the largest exporter of goods in the United States, Texas currently grosses more than $100 billion a year in trade with other nations.

Of greater importance however, is how the Republic of Texas governs itself in the achievement of such success, and it is a very simple system to comprehend; small government, low taxes, wide-ranging entrepreneurship, legislative activities every other odd-numbered year, and zero politicians getting filthy rich from the tits of welfare hand-outs.

In concluding his piece, Walker lays out the true nature of Washington’s dilemma, and how the Texas model could solve the DC malaise. By giving power back to the states (according to the Constitution) .. we could add that one third of the states have serious term limits on state legislators, so that no Harry Reid (in Congress since 1989), Nancy Pelosi (1993), or John Boehner (1995), would even be allowed to be in the legislatures of those state governments.

Conservatism did not produce this crisis, nor did commonsense. Alinskyism is running rampant throughout this current administration, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who coined the phrase don’t let a good crisis go to waste (hint: he is currently directing Chicago along the same path to destruction that ruined Detroit) but it would be remiss of We The People were we not to declare what millions of us are thinking: The problem of course, is Washington, DC.  

Link to Bruce Walker and American Thinker