Our weary Secessionist-in-Chief is beginning to realize that this presidential campaign thing is a lot of work. More work than he’s accustomed to, for sure. On days like this, he probably wishes he’d just gone the “secession” route.
“When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”
If only… today, he’d be living large as the leader of the Great Republic of Texas. No more having to deal with those nitwits in Washington. He and his pay-to-play cronies would have the whole place to themselves. They'd control a big swath of the Gulf Coast, farms, ranches, oil wells, refineries, manufacturing plants, rail lines, ports, utilities, and plenty of cheap labor.
Trouble is, we’re kind of tied into the rest of the country. It’s complicated. Real complicated.
Follow along below the logic gap for more...
As reported by the Houston Chronicle Blog
You wouldn’t know it from all the anti-federal government rhetoric that pervaded the 2010 election, the recently concluded Legislative session, or Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, but Texas received almost $44 billion in direct federal aid to state and local governments in 2010, according to figures released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, making it the single largest funding stream for state government.
...Even though that $44 billion figure seems large, that’s mainly because of the number of people living in Texas. In terms of the amount of direct aid given by the federal government to state and local officials broken down on a per capita basis, Texas ranks near the bottom of the list.
While the totals reported by the Census include aid given to both the state government and local municipalities, most of the money went to fund healthcare programs like Medicaid, while $4 billion was spent on highways.
...The new figures from the Census tally Texas’ total contribution to the federal government at about $148 billion — counting everything from the income tax, to excise taxes, to the payroll tax and other fees — while the state received $226 billion in total federal spending, a figure that includes the amount the military spends in Texas and Social Security checks that are mailed to Texans.
So for every two dollars Texans send to Washington, they get roughly three dollars back.
In addition to the infusion of money, much of the "Texas Miracle" stems from reliance on the federal government as a provider of direct and indirect employment.
For example, the Department of Defense has 15 military installations in Texas, including:
• Fort Hood, Bell County (yes, this one has been in the news…)
• Fort Bliss, El Paso
• Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio
• Naval Air Station (NAS) Corpus Christi
• Fort Worth NAS Joint Reserve Base
• NAS Ingleside
• Kingsville NAS
• Brooks City-Base, San Antonio
• Dyess Air Force Base (AFB), Abilene
• Goodfellow AFB, San Angelo
• Lackland AFB, San Antonio
• Laughlin AFB, Del Rio
• Randolph AFB, Universal City
• Sheppard AFB, Wichita Falls
Texas is also home to 14 federal prison facilities:
• Federal Correctional Complex – Beaumont
• Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) – Bastrop (center of recent wildfires)
• FCI – Beaumont
• FCI – Big Spring
• FCI – Fort Worth
• FCI La Tuna – Anthony
• FCI – Seagoville
• FCI – Texarkana
• FCI – Three Rivers
• Federal Detention Center – Houston
• Federal Medical Center Carswell – Fort Worth
• Federal Prison Camp – Bryan
• Federal Security Low La Tuna – El Paso
• United States Penitentiary – Beaumont
Of course, we can’t forget NASA… after all, the first word ever spoken on the moon was “Houston”, as in “Houston, Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed”. NASA’s Johnson Space Center (also known as “Mission Control”) is facing job cuts with the termination of the Space Shuttle program, but in its heyday, it employed over 3000 people.
We’re also home to federal facilities for the:
• US Department of Energy
• US Department of Homeland Security
• US Drug Enforcement Administration
• US Customs and Immigration
• US Department of Agriculture
• US Department of Labor
• US Department of the Interior
• US Department of Transportation
and many, many other federal departments.
Even if we could wean ourselves off the federal government’s continuing infusion of money, getting uncoupled from the rest of the country poses other logistical complications.
Many of the raw materials and goods coming into or leaving the US do so through Texas ports. According to Texas Ports
Texas ports rank No. 2 in the US 50 states handling 500 million tons of foreign and domestic cargo.
• Nearly 1 million jobs to Texans
• Over $48 billion in personal income for Texans
• Maritime industry represents over $135 billion in economic value to the state.
Marine and intermodal transportation alone accounts for nearly $65 billion, or 10%, of the Texas gross state product. Annually, ports bring in almost $5 billion in local and state tax revenue.
Once we’ve spun ourselves off as the Great Republic of Texas, this revenue stream will diminish as other ports pick up this business. Other complications: we have over 1000 miles of channel that are maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Guess we’ll have to take that on ourselves. Maybe there’s some way we could get prison chain gangs to do it.
The one area where we’re secession-ready is our electrical grid. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) handles about 85% of Texas customers. This independent grid sounds like a great idea, until we dealt with unprecedented strains on our system due to extreme heat and – curiously – winter conditions last year when quite a few of our Texas power plants went down due to “maintenance” issues. At times like that, other out-of-state providers could have helped us avoid the outages, but hey – we’re mavericks here, and we don’t need y’all’s help. (But... please keep sending the money.)
For all his dreams of secession, our would-be Secessionist-in-Chief has probably resigned himself to being stuck with the status quo. Like the dejected spouse who has run the numbers and realized they can’t afford to sell the house and get a divorce in a down economy, Perry and Texas continue their sad tale. No wonder he spends as little time here as possible.
Perry's presidential campaign is an exciting prospect for his deep-pocket crony capitalist “friends” who are salivating over a national pay-to-play bonanza. For Perry, however, this quest may be an exit strategy, an escape from the petty woes of our Texas citizens, far too many of whom are living in a "Texas-miracle-free zone."