Much Ado About Texas: The Wrong Stuff

Lately there's been a lot of chatter, meaningless chatter I should say, about "Texas History" and how to "fix" it. Mainly this is to assuage the guilt of some who are having a difficult time coming to grips with their family's past.

To Whit:

Texas Needs a Re-branding away from racially charged myths. Chris Tomlinson, Chron Austin Bureau.

And.

"Being Better Texans" - Letters from the same people who statistics say can't name their State Rep. Houston Chronicle

Since this topic is seemingly meaningless, OF COURSE I've got some things to say about this. After all, what is a blog good for outside of meaningless banter?

First off, I'm not a Texan.

Sure, I live here (for now) and I spent a large part of my life here (pretty much from 2nd grade on) but I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, half of my ancestors originated in California (a place I've only visited once) while the others came from various locations in either Texas or Oklahoma.  I've got some roots here, but they're more shallow than Erica Grieder's Twitter feed. (trust me, that's pretty damn shallow. It's top soil)

So, why am I here?

Because I work in the oil and gas industry and this is where the jobs are.

It's not because I have some deep connection with the State. As a matter of fact, I have a closer connection with many other places other than Texas. I live in Houston because of my job. I hold no sense of special Houston pride, nor will I brag about how many generations of a Texan I am. (A childish, silly argument made by childish, silly people)

So now, you know from what perspective I am writing today, what (meaningless) thing do I have to say?

First, I've only ridden a horse two times in my life. I don't own a pair of cowboy boots and I'm not especially fond of modern country music. I consider rodeo season in Houston to be among the worst times to live here.

Yet, I would not want it to go away, because it means a lot to a LOT of people.

To say cowboy culture is "just a small" part of Texas history and to suggest that people should more accurately dress as slave-owners is inflammatory, and wrong.  Texas cowboy history is only a sliver from a "white's-only-need-apply" perspective and ignores the great cultural contributions of the Vaqueros. Ignore them at your peril.

Nor is it fair to suggest that the defenders of the Alamo were just "racists who wanted to kill Mexicans". They were flawed people, just like you and I, fighting to defend their way of life, and hoping to keep their lands. That they were not entirely pure in their motivations in no way places them on the same level as General Santa Ana, one of history's all-time bad rulers.

But this is the problem with trying to shove historical figures into modern norms. Ideas, norms and society change over time. Some would call this "progress" and try to benefit from it politically but ultimately the arc of history does not bend to either liberal or conservative social norms. In fact, the arc of history is not an arc at all, it more closely resembles a scribble.

I will admit to always being amazed by the willingness of the victorious Union to allow Confederate statues and symbols to survive after the War Between the States. The Confederacy lost, yet in many cases have been allowed to craft the narrative of the past as if they were the winners.

In Midland, I went to Robert E. Lee High School who proudly proclaims its mascot to be "Rebels". As a teenager this didn't bother me, as an adult it does not bother me to say I went there. It's a fact, it happened, I had no say in the matter.

That a Texas High School should decide to honor a Virginian General, probably the best General in the War Between the States FWIW, seems an odd choice now, but back then it didn't register, even among the minority students in the school. We were all proud Rebels. (To be perfectly honest, I haven't paid attention to the area in quite some time, so I'm not sure if there's a move to change the name of the school today. To be really honest, I don't care.)

Elsewhere in the State: San Antonio is correct to celebrate the history of the Alamo, and the relatively recent movement to bring more diversity into the story is wise as well.  But Santa Ana should not be lionized. In fact, Houston should do more to emphasize the San Jacinto monument, and the victory at the Battle of San Jacinto that led to Texas becoming first a near-bankrupt Nation-State which was eventually saved from insolvency by the United States of America.

And before you go off judging the Texas Rangers solely because of an Indian Slaughter (which happened, there's no denying that) go read Empire of the Summer Moon to see just how messy, brutal and barbaric that era was, on both sides. Again, history is a scribble, not some great arc toward societal awareness.

The long and short of it is this: If you cannot come to terms with the fact that the City/State/Country in which you reside has, at one time or another, done some pretty vile shit then you're never going to find a place to be happy and content. If you think the only way for modern society to atone for these past sins is for the ancestors of the ruling class to sit splay-legged on the ground while the ancestors of the cattle class walk by and kick them in the groin you're not going to find satisfaction.

Sins of the parents and all of that.

Wailing, gnashing of teeth and calls for societal apologies are not efforts to solve the issues they're efforts to assuage familial guilt. If only our elected rulers will apologize for things of the past I can go about my life without guilt.....until the next historical atrocity is unearthed by some writer trying to make a quick buck.

The best way to 'make-up' for past atrocities is two-fold. First, work hard to ensure that they never happen again. Second, work hard to ensure that everyone has equal access to the rapidly growing wealth-pie that is (or, more accurately was) the American economy. 

Work to ensure that "driving while black" in the wrong neighborhood is no longer a thing, work to end political payola which wall-off certain people from engaging economically, take a deep look not at ensuring everyone pays their "fair-share" (which is a lie we've come to believe) but that everyone gets a "fair shot" at success. Work to ensure immigrant families have a way up from the bottom rung of the economic ladder. In short, try to make present society better.

And stop-trying to paint over history, or (even worse) to white-wash it into things that remove, primarily white folks ideas of what makes them guilty. If our history, warts and all, do not empower and inspire us then they only serve to divide us and bring us down.

Lately we've been listening to the people who try to do the latter more than the former, and we continue to elect to public office narcissists who do nothing but try to obtain power through division.

Maybe it's time we stopped giving our power away to these people? Because if we don't turn this around pretty quickly they're going to have all of it, and then it will be impossible to get it back.

Just a thought.

Lone Star: As Texas as......Milwaukee?

How far the mighty have fallen.  Lone Star, a middling beer that is way more popular than it should be based solely on it's name and some clever marketing, will continue to be brewed by MillerCoors due to a recent Jury ruling in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

The Verdict is in. Lone Star Beer is Here to Stay. Chron.com

On Wednesday, after nearly two days of deliberation, a Milwaukee, WI  jury decided that MillerCoors will continue brewing Pabst Brewing Company's 21 beer labels, including Lone Star, according to NPR News.
MillerCoors did not want to renew its contract to brew for Pabst when it expires in 2020, saying it no longer makes financial sense, while Pabst argued the contract includes options for an extension and MillerCoors was essentially trying to put it out of business.

First off, a couple of points:

1. Lone Star is not a good beer, it is not a craft beer, it's cheap plonk.
2. Lone Star is not the "National Beer of Texas" it never has been.

Now, if you want to make a case for a true State Beer of Texas I would nominate Shiner Bock. For one, it tastes better, is actually brewed in Texas, is owned by Texans and has much deeper roots IN Texas than Lone Star ever had.

Yes, I know that Lone Star started in Texas, but those days are long behind them. And the beer market has moved on.

Lone Star is a carpet-bagger, an import, a relic from a by-gone Texas that some people seem to pine for while waddling around Austin looking for the next hemp store to open up.  A Texas that didn't exist.

Modern Texas is an urban sort, and while I disagree with the TLSPM that "all" of Texas vibrancy is found in the cities certainly some of it is.  But the wealth, and the history, are found in the increasingly empty wide-open spaces West of the Texas Triangle. Anything truly original can be found there as well.

What Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio truly are is replicators for European and outside culture.  Things will get invented in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, etc. and the Texas 4 will do their darndest to bring it to Texas, just about 2 years after the trend is dying out elsewhere. Cupcakes? Gourmet Donuts? Chicken and Waffles? Tapas?  Light Rail? Bike Lanes?

None of those things were invented in Texas, but they were brought to its cities.  That's OK in some cases, light rail and bike lanes being the obvious exceptions here) but to find something truly Texas original you usually have to travel to the hinterlands.

Luling and Lockheart didn't invent Texas Bar-B-Q (Mexican Vaqueros did that) but they sure perfected it prior to it being exported elsewhere. You can get a great bowl of Texas red in the cities, but a better one in many small town diners. For years all of these things were brought to the cities via the State Fair. City-dwellers would try them, restaurants would open up and a craze was born. Now people see things on the Internet, or spend two weeks traveling to Europe, and pine to find something here "just like I had over there" (Hint: This is not usually an honest request, it's more a brag that they've been there and you haven't).

The same myth-making, at a much more primitive level, has been falsely attached to Lone Star Beer.

And it's time, past time honestly, to end this myth once and for all.

With that in mind, and judging by the litter I see on the side of the road, it's time to give praise to the TRUE 'National Beer of Texas"

ALL HAIL MILLER LITE!


Sad, but true.

#ShutterTheEdBoard What the Oil Comanies Understand.....

...that the Chronicle Editorial Board doesn't.

Standing for a Carbon Tax. The Chronicle Editorial Board, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

Rarely do companies ask to be taxed. But when the Houston Chronicle editorial board met with representatives from Exxon Mobil Corp. this week, we heard loud and clear their support for an across-the-board tax on carbon emissions.

There are two reasons oil and gas companies have decided that they prefer a tax to Al Gore's "carbon credit" scheme.

1. A tax is easily budgeted, and it makes cost/benefit analysis of future projects much easier to make decisions on.

2. A tax is easily passed on to the consumer, other working interest owners and even federal, state and private royalty owners leaving the companies with very little financial exposure at all.

What the US Government does with the tax?  These companies don't care.  But this is the funding mechanism for the give-away by Western, developed, countries to developing economies in order to help them 'cope'.  India has already estimated it is going to need Trillions of dollars to ensure that it's emerging economy can provide power and water to the citizens it has been ignoring for decades now.

Here's the rub:  The people making policy recommendations at the oil and gas companies are smarter than the people in politics or the media, by far.  They understand that there will be ramifications to having to pay said tax, to the American economy especially, but they also know that their diversification world wide will blunt that. Companies operating in Africa and the Middle East may actually benefit from the largesse America is poised to throw at developing nations while only suffering a hit for a small fraction of the tax.

The biggest problem, right now, is that the free market of ideas is being strangled by the yoke of government regulation and subsidy preventing people from finding unique solutions to ease the transition from hydrocarbons.  Of course, we'll never live in a hydrocarbon free world. For one thing, all of the plastics and other materials that make life easier are derived from crude oil and there will always be a market for heating homes with relatively clean-burning natural gas.

Where there could be advances, and should be advances, is in nuclear power and hydrogen fuel cells to power transportation, as well as Liquefied Natural Gas.

But, you're not seeing that because our politicians have been sold a Hybrid/Electric bill-of-goods which has led most subsidy money to go toward plug-in cars whose root source of energy is mainly coal.

So, America is going to pay, a LOT, developing countries to "assist" them with getting green. In reality we're going to subsidize the growth of Countries in direct competition with our economy in a self-defeating exercise.

This doesn't mean that I'm an isolationist, far from it. In fact, I am typically on the side of free trade and believe that the growth of the global economy is a rising tide that raises all ships. But what I don't believe in is paying other people to compete with you which is effectively what the developed countries are offering here.

If you want to have privilege guilt do it on your dime, not on mine.

As for the Chronicle Editorial Board, it's amazing to me that less than a week after bemoaning the negative consequences of the current oil slump to Houston, they are immediately back on their high-horse calling for the dissolution of that same industry.  If anything in Houston needs to go it's them, not the biggest employer in the region.

The Central Texas Railway: A Case study in why entrepreneurism is dying.

"Misinformation".

Misinformation circles proposed Houston to Dallas High Speed Rail Line. Dug Begley, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

Normally, I'm not impressed by the transportation "reporting" that Mr. Begley produces. He's a fan of institutional sources and often seems to be doing little more than parroting the company line, with the company being either Houston Metro or local public transportation advocates such as Houston Tomorrow or other groups.

In the linked story above Mr. Begley refuses to acknowledge the elephant in the room.  Much of the opposition surrounding the Texas Central Railway project is focused on Government control. The biggest complaints of the municipalities, counties and other government groups is not that their constituents would be "disturbed for the benefit of the few" but is instead focused on the fact that they won't have a big enough influence over how the pie is sliced.

For all of the gripes about "foreign investment" what the local officials are really suggesting is that they can't use the procurement process as they wish.  And this is a big issue in massive construction projects as the rail is sure to be. Billions of dollars in contracts are going to be rewarded and there are many in the ruling class who will naturally resent that they are not positioned to have influence over that.

The administrative red tape in this is going to be unbelievably complex. And this in a state that often likes to beat it's chest about how "business friendly" it currently is.  The fact is Texas is only business friendly if you're willing to play ball with politicians.  For all of the chatter about "not picking winners and losers" the Governor's Economic Development funds have done this for years. It's one of the main reasons this blog has called repeatedly for their elimination.

Administratively, the State of Texas is broken, and the reason for this is not because Texas needs to "spend more money" which is the siren call of the Left.  The major reason for this is because Texas one-party domination of the political system has led to Texas Republicans getting lazy and Texas electing officials to positions of administrative authority for which they are ill-qualified. Jerry Patterson was more interested in his failed run for Governor than he was in being the Land Commissioner. We are seeing the same thing currently with George P. Bush.  In the cities it's not much better. Houston Mayor Annise Parker is more interested in establishing her progressive street cred for a future political office than she is in fixing pot-holes and City Controller Ronald Green might as well not even be present judged on the amount of fiscal watchdog work his office has produced.  Our City Councils have decided that the best way to solve problems is to pass an ordinance, often creating new laws and new regulatory hurdles for prospective business to navigate.

Want to start a restaurant in Texas?  Good luck.  Because once you clear the Byzantine Maze that are the state regulations you also have to comply with all municipal regulations (which, as we've noted, are likely to change on a whim) and we haven't even gotten to all of the Federal regulations which doesn't even begin to address the impacts of the ACA and other payroll withholding obligations.

And that's just for a mom and pop restaurant in one city. The Texas Central Railway is trying to build something that travels across several municipalities and counties and will be subject to that patchwork quilt of negotiation as well. Either they're certain that they can make money or they're masochists. I'm not sure which.

For all of the talk of "streamlining government" from the right and "better government" from the left what no politicians seriously addresses is the mostly broken system of regulation.  This is not just a Texas thing (spend a day dealing with a Federal regulator and you'll see what I mean) but it is growing slowly worse in a State whose economy seems to be thriving despite this.

I worry however that our well-meaning politicians are going to price small businesses out of the market, much the way the unproductive class has effectively priced the poor out of Houston's central core. More so than education the ability to open and run a small business is a stepping stone for the poor into the upper class. If you have a marketable skill, and can make money off of it, the government should not exist to prevent you from making that dream a reality. This is not to suggest that food safety standards should go away (although some will read this and suggest that's what I'm claiming) only that the permitting and regulatory framework for operating and running a business should be greatly streamlined and the permitting process be simpler, and cheaper.

Again, the cities, counties and State governments mainly object to this because they operate under the believe that they are entitled to their 'fair share' of any businesses profits. They feel this way despite the fact that they invested no money, took no risk, and did nothing to contribute to the businesses success.  Obama's "you didn't build that" quote was emblematic of this line of thinking.

It's as wrong-headed as the idea that profit is evil or that the game is rigged by evil multi-national corporations against the little guy.  If anyone is rigging the game, it's the government and over-regulation. Even in a supposedly limited government state like Texas.