“Texas Crazy” is Different and Way Better Than “Texas Stupid”

This subject popped up on the radar screen recently, after Keith Olbermann spent one of his Comments talking about a U. T. survey which reveals, among other things, that a lot of Texans firmly grasp all the “intelligent design” evidence that says dinosaurs were the personal pets of Adam and Eve.

What Olbermann has tapped into is nothing short of  “Texas Stupid.”   It has been part and parcel of  Texas culture at least since the time when Texans decided to blow off Old Sam Houston’s advice and to throw in with the Confederacy.   And we all remember how well that little adventure went…..

“Texas Stupid” reared up its rather sloped head in the immediate aftermath of the ’08 election, when gun sales in the Lone Star State went through the roof, because folks literally bought into the notion that “Obama’s gonna take your guns.”

Two things:

1) The massive rush to buy firearms spiked the price of firearms up…again.  This means that Bubba, along with a certain Texas-expatriate shootist, will each have more difficulty in buying that coveted Desert Eagle .50 caliber in titanium finish.

2) I’d rather be sent as an evangelist to proselytize the Taliban than be the one who attempts to pry firearms out of the hands of your average Texan.

“Texas Stupid” also covers several statewide organizations and movements such as the KKK, the John Birch Society, and the New Secessionists.  I’m tempted to throw the Tea Party folks in there as well, except that I know a few people who would consider themselves tangential teabaggers, and they are anything but “Texas Stupid.”  Actor Chuck Norris, however, fills the bill nicely.  Gubenatorial candidate Debra Medina is certainly not T.S.; but her notion that you can just wipe out all property taxes and pay for stuff like roads and schools and W.I.C. cards by sales-taxing anything that makes you pull out your wallet, why that puts her in the camp named “Texas Crazy.”   And that is exactly why her appeal is growing, even among certain progressive, yellow-dog tumbleweeds.  That “We Texans” slogan, combined with the fashionable apparel in her campaign’s virtual gift shop, cannot help but endear Texans of all political stripes to her cause.  “Texas Crazy” is at the root of the most delightful aspects of Texas culture.  But its shadow side is also at the root of Texas’ darker historical moments.  Triumph and tragedy, Lone Star-style, often come from this quirky, sometimes bizarre, and usually amusing condition.

Examples of Texas Crazy run the spectrum between twisted satire and twisted behavior.

Charles Whitman was Texas Crazy.  So is Kinky Friedman’s “The Ballad of Charles Whitman,” which is tucked into the Kinkster’s unique remembrance of Charlie’s U.T. sniper spree in 1966:

There is a complex interrelationship and interdependence between these two conditions, T.S. and T.C.

Janis Joplin, a T.C. luminary,  fled her hometown of Port Arthur after high school,  not so much to get the refinery smell out of her hair, but to get away from her Texas Stupid tormentors, which included this guy.  Yet ol’ shell-head went on to become one of the great Texas football coaches in both college and pro arenas.   His gig with America’s Team landed him in the Texas Crazy camp, especially the time he called a Dallas radio sports-talk show to rag on the Mighty San Fran 49’ers the week leading up to the NFC championship game.  “Jeez, Jimmy, why’d you go rile up Steve Young and that nasty West Coast bunch by saying you’ll whip their butts with no problem?  What are you?  Crazy!?”  Crazy like a fox, since the ‘Boys smoked San Fran and went on to win their second straight Super Bowl.    Speaking of San Fran, that’s where Janis went to break through some big barriers in the field of blues rock, making her singular mark as only a T.C. white girl could.  Looking back now, one can see how Texas Crazy fueled her ascent, while the shadowy memory of Texas Stupid was always close by, waiting to envelop her.

If there is a Poster Boy for Texas Crazy, it would have to be this guy:

Ross’ theme song in the ’92 presidential election was Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”  And, well, he was.  In a good way, mostly.  He had quite a few of us stirred up and ready to vote for him until the vice presidential debate came along and revealed that his VP-picking skills left a lot to be desired.  Then came the stunning meltdown on 60 Minutes where he began talking spies, threats on his family, a GOP plot to ruin his daughter’s wedding, and after that, well….Hello, President Clinton!  Still, Perot leveraged enough of the vote to swing the election for Ol’ Bubba, which is a significant accomplishment, especially for someone so richly imbued with Texas Crazy.

If real, meaningful, socio-political change is ever going to grab hold in the Lone Star State, folks there are going to have to seize on this great historical legacy of Texas Crazy, a force so formidable it could unite otherwise disparate citizenry into a movement strong enough to repel this current rising tsunami of Texas Stupid.  The good news is it already seems to be happening, given the (albeit) narrow defeat of Board of Education Chairman Don McElroy, the most recent poster boy for Texas Stupid.  We’ve already covered some of his board’s handiwork;  now that he’s out, all he can do is look back admiringly on his accomplishments, which mainly come down to having history textbooks add a little spitshine to the thunder mug we all remember as Joe McCarthy.

But it’s going to take more effort, a heckuva lot more effort over the next few years, and probably the next few decades.  The T.S. crowd is as entrenched as they’ve ever been, and only a broad-based alliance of committed (or recently committed) Texans can turn the tide.  Imagine the Junction Boys working hand in hand with the Texas Tornados.  Or Jim Hightower forming an alliance with Debra Medina.  I know it’s crazy to imagine such things, but it’s Texas Crazy.  And that is what the state needs most at the moment.

Debra Medina’s Tax Overhaul Proposal Gets Serious Scrutiny

Kate Alexander at the Austin American Statesman,  wrote this well-balanced analysis of Ms. Medina’s proposed elimination of the property tax system and expansion of the state sales tax:

Debra Medina, the feisty Republican running for governor, promises Texans that she will liberate them from their property taxes.

“I talk about that for freedom reasons first,” Medina said at the Jan. 29 gubernatorial debate.

“We’ve surrendered private property ownership to the ever-growing state — we lease our property in the form of ever increasing rents known as property taxes,” she wrote on her campaign Web site. “We’ve forgotten that ownership is an essential element of freedom.”

A call to eliminate property taxes might resonate with many taxpayers, beleaguered by the demands for more money from schools, cities, counties, emergency districts and more when their wallets are thin.

But critics say the freedom Medina promises would come at a huge cost to local taxpayers because they would lose a critical element of control over the governments closest to them.

As envisioned by Medina, the property taxes now paid by Texans — $39 billion as of last year — would be replaced with a sales tax applied to more services and to real estate transfers.

Texas would be the only state not to have local property taxes, if Medina’s plan were to be adopted, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington.

The state would collect the sales tax dollars and redistribute them to local governments based on “sharing formulas,” according to the campaign’s Web site. Campaign officials did not provide someone to explain Medina’s plan.

The practical effect would be to make local governments beholden to state government for every tax dollar and thus concentrate decision-making power in the Texas Capitol, said Kail Padgitt, a staff economist for the Tax Foundation.

“Cities and schools and other governmental entities would be at the mercy of us in Austin, and they would have no local control, which is one of the banner themes in Republican politics,” said state Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

There’s An Arch-Conservative Woman Drawing A Crowd in Texas Politics

And it’s not Sarah Palin.  Her name is Debra Medina and right now she’s polling right at 16% in the GOP primary race.  Here she is:

She has participated in the Texas Tea Party movement and she spoke at last summer’s gathering of Texas secessionists at the State Capitol.  And yes, she did call for secession.  Here is her speech:

The two big planks of the Medina platform deal with property taxes and gun ownership.  Medina refers to property taxes as “rent” being paid to the state.  So the elimination of property taxes is an essential step to take in her framework of property ownership.  Her revenue-raising alternative is to broaden the base of the Texas state sales tax.   One thing she is unclear about is whether she is in favor of taxing the food Texans buy at the grocery store, which is currently sales tax exempt.

Gun ownership and the training of Texas citizenry in the use of guns follows right behind the property tax issue.  Gun ownership is a sacred right in the Lone Star state; generations of Texas youth–myself included–have grown up learning to use firearms.  My dad (a liberal, Yellow-Dog Democrat) was merely following through on his paternal responsibility when he put a .22 rifle in my little hands and then taught me the safety rules that naturally precede going out to the country and doing a little plinking.  And plinking naturally preceded learning how to hunt.  It also led to target shooting, which is a favorite sport among gun owners.   Medina has tapped into a fundamental vein of Texas culture here, as she speaks to the irrational fear that Barack Obama is going to come and take people’s guns away.  In the words of Mr. T, I pity the fool that would ever attempt to take guns away from Texans.

Then comes the issue of sovereignty (secession), which began to catch fire primarily in the southern states soon after the election of Barack Obama as President.  Medina says this on her website:

Texas must stop the over reaching federal government and nullify federal mandates in agriculture, energy, education, healthcare, industry, and any other areas D.C. is not granted authority by the Constitution.

One wonders if this would include federal ag subsidies and EPA restrictions on what power companies and other industries might dump in Texas waterways or expel into the atmosphere (not that the EPA’s regulations are all that stringent or enforced.)  What about the protective FDA regulations that (should) call for sanitary conditions in meat packing plants?  Would she opt out of the federal highway and transportation system?  If so, how will Texas continue to maintain its highway infrastructure?  Wouldn’t such a move necessitate handing even more Texas roads over to private toll road companies?

Debra Medina will likely lose the primary, but perhaps force Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison into a run-off.   Win or lose, she is likely going to remain an active force in Texas politics.  Like Sarah Palin, Deb Medina won’t fade back into the scenery.  And though Deb isn’t the beauty pageant type, she is an attractive, outspoken, glasses-wearing female politician.  Expect her to run again in ’14.  Depending on how bad or good things get between now and then, she may have a fighting chance to win.  And if she does, the normally whacked-out state of affairs known as Texas politics will become even crazier.

I know.  You’re wondering, given the current situation, how getting even crazier might be possible.  But I look at the current occupant of the governor’s mansion and think back to 1978, when an unheralded oilman named Bill Clements came out of nowhere to clobber the Democratic candidate for governor, John Hill.  Clements’ win was historic: he was the first Republican governor to be elected since Reconstruction.  I remember the atrocious, ham-handed way he attempted to govern, how the Lege had to school him a bit, how coarse  and pugnacious his speeches and press statements were, and I remember thinking then that his election set an all-time low in Texas politics.   Little did we know  that this was only the initial stage of sinking for the good ship “Political Gravitas.”   The ascendancy of  George W. Bush and Karl Rove to the Texas political main-stage heralded the onset of new lows.  And amazingly, W.’s understudy, Rick Perry, has plumbed uncharted depths in his secessionist rantings, his selling off Texas roads to private toll road firms, and his Big Pharma connections with Merk that relate to his attempt to require that all Texas girls be immunized with Merk’s  HPV vaccine, Gardasil.

The one thing Debra Medina would seem to offer that is sorely lacking in the governor’s office at the moment is integrity.  Watch her in action and it becomes apparent that she truly believes in and is passionate about her intent to honestly represent “We Texans.”  If the incumbent wins re-election, as the polls suggest he will, then maybe the stage will be set for 2014, when another victorious candidate might just swoop in from the margins.  Perhaps, in the long term, that is what Debra Medina is counting on.