🚀 go-pugleaf

How about some REAL facts about Texas.

Though born in Ohio, I spent the last 26 years in Texas. I think I probably
know just I little bit more about that state than you will ever know.
Regardless of your feelings on G.W. Bush, if you knew anything at all about
Texas government, you would know that the office of Governor weilds
relatively little power relative to state government. This was adopted by
the constitutional convention which was convened to replace the constitution
which they were required to adopt during reconstruction.

I realize that this is a newsgroup about cleveland, and yes I now once again
live in Ohio, but I get rather annoyed by individuals who make arguement
about topics on which they obviously know nothing about. BTW I was educated
in Texas and scored 1270 on my SAT 18 years ago. I also hold a BA, MBA and
CPA license so I suppose all that Texas education must have made me quite
ignorant!


"John Q. Public" <centraltulsa@cs.comvote4me> wrote in message
news:20000917044155.26290.00000279@ng-fl1.news.cs.com...
> S o m e  F a c t s  A b o u t  T e x a s
>
>
> AUSTIN, TEXAS -- A look at Texas under Bush:
>                  National Ranking Among 50 States
>
> ===============
> For further information see:
> http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html
> ===============
> The Texas Observer's extensive coverage of the
> Bush presidential campaign can be found at
> http://www.texasobserver.org
> ===============
> How did Texas get this way?  For some insights,
> please read the following article . . .
> ===============
> "the United States presidential election is fast turning
> into a referendum on Texas and all it stands for.
> But while guns and geography have certainly played a part,
> explanations like these tend to understate . . . "
> ===============
>
>      The Education Governor of Texas
>
>
>  1-- Teacher salaries at beginning of 1st term
>      36th out of 50
>
> Source:   National Education Agency,
> Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 1999
>
>
>  2-- Teacher salaries at beginning of 2nd term
>      38th out of 50
>
> Source:   National Education Agency,
> Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 1999
>
>
>  3-- Percentage Change in Average Salaries
>      Down by 1.1 Percent in 1989-99 Constant Dollars
>
> Source:   National Education Agency,
> Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 1999
>
>
>  4-- Teacher salaries plus benefits
>      50th out of 50
>
> Source:   National Education Agency,
> Rankings & Estimates: Rankings of the States 1999
>
>
>  5-- High school completion rate
>      48th out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Department of Education
> Office of Educational Research and Development
>
>
>  6-- SAT scores - 1996 -- 44th out of 50
>      combined math & verbal:  995
>
> Source:  College Examination Board,
> Educational Testing Service
>
>  7-- SAT scores - 1997 -- 45th out of 50
>      combined math & verbal:  995
>
> Source:  College Examination Board,
> Educational Testing Service
>
>  8-- SAT scores - 1998 -- 44th out of 50
>      combined math & verbal:  995
>
> Source:  College Examination Board,
> Educational Testing Service
>
> ===============
> For further information see:
> http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html
> ===============
> The Texas Observer's extensive coverage of the
> Bush presidential campaign can be found at
> http://www.texasobserver.org
> ===============
> How did Texas get this way?  For some insights,
> please read the following article . . .
> ===============
> "the United States presidential election is fast turning
> into a referendum on Texas and all it stands for.
> But while guns and geography have certainly played a part,
> explanations like these tend to understate . . . "
> ===============
>
>      Bush Family Values in Texas
>
>
>  9-- Highest number of children living in poverty
>      2nd out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Bureau of Census,
> Current Population Trends
>
>
> 10-- Highest number of children without health insurance
>      2nd out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Bureau of Census,
> Current Population Trends
>
>
> 11-- Highest % of children without health insurance
>      1st out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Bureau of Census,
> Current Population Trends
>
>
> 12-- Highest % of poor working parents without insurance
>      1st out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Bureau of Census,
> Current Population Trends
>
>
> 13-- Highest % of population without health insurance
>      2nd out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Bureau of Census,
> Current Population Trends
>
>
> 14-- Highest number of people stripped of Medicare benefits
>      1st out of 50
>
> Source:  Families USA
>
>
> 15-- Highest teen birth rate
>      5th out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Dept Health and Human Services,
> National Center for Health Statistics
>
>
> 16-- Per capita funding for public health
>      48th out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Dept Health and Human Services,
> National Center for Health Statistics
>
>
> 17-- Delivery of social services
>      47th out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Dept Health and Human Services,
> National Center for Health Statistics
>
>
> 18-- Mothers receiving prenatal care
>      45th out of 50
>
> Source:  Children's Rights Council
>
>
> 19-- Child support collections
>      45th out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Bureau of Census,
> Current Population Trends
>
>
> 20-- Number of executions
>      1st out of 50
>
> Source:  National Association of Insurance Commissioners
>
>
> 21-- Teen smoking
>      Down Nationally, Flat in Texas
>
> Source:   1998 Texas School Survey of Substance Use Among
> Students: Grades 7-12, Texas Commission on Alcohol and
> Drug Abuse
>
>
> 22-- Teen drug use
>      Down Nationally, Up 30% in Texas w/ Bush
>
> Source:   1998 Texas School Survey of Substance Use Among
> Students: Grades 7-12, Texas Commission on Alcohol and
> Drug Abuse
>
> ===============
> For further information see:
> http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html
> ===============
> The Texas Observer's extensive coverage of the
> Bush presidential campaign can be found at
> http://www.texasobserver.org
> ===============
> How did Texas get this way?  For some insights,
> please read the following article . . .
> ===============
> "the United States presidential election is fast turning
> into a referendum on Texas and all it stands for.
> But while guns and geography have certainly played a part,
> explanations like these tend to understate . . . "
> ===============
>
>      Pollution in Texas
>
>
> 23-- Pollution released by manufacturing plants
>      1st out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
> Office of Pollution and Prevention
>
>
> 24-- Pollution by industrial plants in violation of
>      Clean Air Act -- 1st out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
> Office of Pollution and Prevention
>
>
> 25-- Greenhouse gas emissions
>      1st out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
> Office of Pollution and Prevention
>
> ===============
> For further information see:
> http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html
> ===============
> The Texas Observer's extensive coverage of the
> Bush presidential campaign can be found at
> http://www.texasobserver.org
> ===============
> How did Texas get this way?  For some insights,
> please read the following article . . .
> ===============
> "the United States presidential election is fast turning
> into a referendum on Texas and all it stands for.
> But while guns and geography have certainly played a part,
> explanations like these tend to understate . . . "
> ===============
>
>      Quality of Life in Texas
>
>
> 26-- Spending for parks and recreation
>      48th out of 50
>
> Source:  The Texas Observer
>
>
> 27-- Spending for the arts
>      48th out of 50
>
> Source:  The Texas Observer
>
>
> 28-- Public libraries and branches
>      46th out of 50
>
> Source:  Statistical Rankings by State
>
>
> 29-- Spending for the environment
>      49th out of 50
>
> Source:  The Texas Observer
>
>
> 30-- Best place to raise children
>      48th out of 50
>
> Source:  Children's Rights Council
>
>
> 31-- Affordable Housing
>      48th out of 50
>
> Source:  U.S. Bureau of Census,
> State Government Finances 1998
>
>
> 32-- Home ownership
>      44th out of 50
>
> Source:   U.S. Department of Education,
> Office of Educational Research and Development
>
>
> 33-- Highest homes insurance rates in the nation
>      1st out of 50
>
> Source:  National Association of Insurance Commissioners
>
>
> 34-- Spending for police protection
>      47th out of 50
>
> Source:  U.S. Bureau of Census,
> State Government Finances 1998
>
> ===============
> For further information see:
> http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html
> ===============
> The Texas Observer's extensive coverage of the
> Bush presidential campaign can be found at
> http://www.texasobserver.org
> ===============
> How did Texas get this way?  For some insights,
> please read the following article . . .
> ===============
> "the United States presidential election is fast turning
> into a referendum on Texas and all it stands for.
> But while guns and geography have certainly played a part,
> explanations like these tend to understate . . . "
> ===============
>
> September 2000
> The backward state of Texas
>
> Texas breaks all the records. It rates first for capital punishment,
second
> for size and population, last for public spending, and it is nearly always
> behind in health care, racial equality and protection of the environment.
>
> by Daniel Lazare*
>
> Most Americans, including most Texans, assume that Texas, home
> to George W. Bush, gets its distinct political character from its cowboy
> heritage, its wide open spaces, and its long history of violent struggle
> with everyone from Mexico and the Comanche Indians to the Civil War
> armies of the American North. When the Indians are on the warpath and
> the nearest neighbour is miles away, a man has nothing to fall back on
> except his trusty six-gun - which explains why Texans have long prized
> individualism and self-reliance above all other virtues.
>
> Thanks to Bush, the United States presidential election is fast turning
> into a referendum on Texas and all it stands for. But while guns and
> geography have certainly played a part, explanations like these tend to
> understate the degree to which Texas was consciously put together
> during a brief period in 1875 by a group of 90 or so lawmakers, all of
> them white and many of them ex-Confederate (Southern) army officers.
> Over the previous half-dozen years, a Northern-sponsored radical state
> government had struggled to bring Texas into the modern world by
> building public schools, encouraging industry and putting an end to some
> of the worst abuses of Mexicans and blacks (1).
>
> The results were so traumatic for Texas's large-scale landowners
> that, when the North abandoned reconstruction and the state's brief
> experiment with democratic reform was allowed to collapse, they seized
> the first opportunity to restore the ancien r�gime. They decreed racial
> segregation in state schools, slashed education, banned the use of
> general revenues to fund black colleges, and all but dismantled the
> governing apparatus that the former governor, Edmund J. Davis, had
> worked so hard to create. The upshot was the deliberate reinvention of a
> state whose name would become synonymous with hostility to
> government, opposition to political change, and violence towards racial
> minorities, workers and the poor.
>
> This side of Texas is apparent in virtually everything the state says
> and does - in its abysmal urban conditions, its class structure, its boom-
> or-bust economy, and its love affair with capital punishment. Texas, as
> the tourist brochures say, is a land of contrasts. What they don't say is
> that many of those contrasts are the result of deep-rooted contradictions
> in its political structure. Texans are contemptuous of politics, yet they
> have produced some of the canniest politicians in the country. They
> abound in oil and gas millionaires who preach the gospel of free-market
> capitalism while milking Washington for tax breaks and subsidies.
> Texans are imbued with a can-do spirit, an irrepressible frontier
> optimism, yet, thanks to chronic political disorganisation, their history
> is a record of one failure after another. The battle of the Alamo, the
famous
> Spanish fortress in San Antonio in which 187 Texas independistas were
> killed by Mexican forces in 1836, was a wholly preventable military
> disaster. With unerring accuracy, the state's white population chose the
> losing side in the US Civil War of 1861-65. Then, in subsequent
> decades, local politicians did everything in their power to make sure the
> state stayed an economic backwater by cutting schools and all but
> outlawing trade unions.
>
> Despite the discovery of oil in 1901, the state remained undeveloped
> well into the 1950s. Although Texas's fortunes took flight in the 1970s
> when Opec forced up energy prices, it lost much of its wealth in the
> savings-and-loan financial disaster of the 1980s when, relative to the
> nation as a whole, its per-capita personal income fell nearly 10%.
> It has a loser as governor. George W. Bush managed to go through
> $4.7m, put up by family friends and wealthy Republicans, in the oil
> business in the 1980s. He nearly ran two energy companies into the
> ground and only turned a profit in 1990 when, on the eve of the Gulf war,
> a third company in which he was involved won a lucrative oil-exploration
> contract from Bahrain - helped by the fact that his his father was
> president at the time. George W. Bush did well as the owner of a
> professional baseball team, but only after persuading the town of
> Arlington, a Houston suburb, to pick up much of the tab for a new $191m
> stadium - another example of the Texas bourgeoisie's reliance on public
> largesse (2).
>
> George W. Bush did better in his bid to become governor, winning
> the election in 1996 and again in 1998, and, of course, he may also do
> well in his bid to become president. If he does, however, he will merely
> succeed in imposing Texas's losing policies on the nation as a whole. It's
> hard to think of anything the world needs less than a right-wing Texas oil
> man at the helm of the sole remaining superpower, but that may be
> where America's political system is now heading.
>
> Oligarchy and frontier republic
>
> The Texas that rose from the ashes in 1875 was very much an
> American creation. In other circumstances, a land-owning class intent on
> putting down ex-slaves and impoverished tenant farmers might have
> been expected to monopolise political power and wield it with ruthless
> force. But Texas's neo-Confederate elite did something more
> complicated. Because the previous regime had tried to create a
> centralised governing apparatus that would be a force for change, it
> instinctively set about dismantling it.
>
> In a special convention called to draft a new state constitution, a
> group of hand-picked delegates voted to cripple the executive branch by
> dividing it up into five different posts, each one separately elected.
They
> further fragmented executive power by dividing it up among what are, by
> now, some 200 administrative boards, whose members are chosen by
> the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate and are largely
> unaccountable to either. The delegates also crippled the local legislature
> by restricting its members to two-year terms, and limiting their salaries
> and the times they could meet, so as to ensure a high turnover of
> members.
>
> On the assumption that a judge immediately dependent on the voters
> would be less likely to challenge the other two branches, they then
> hamstrung the judiciary by requiring that every last member be popularly
> elected. As a final measure, they decided to hamstring the electorate as
> well, by disenfranchising blacks en masse, and by requiring even white
> voters to pay a poll tax and register in person nearly a year prior to
each
> election. A $1.50 poll tax may not sound like much, but in the days when
> subsistence farmers rarely saw money from one season to the next, it
> was enough to keep thousands of people away from the polls.
> Although often described as a return to loose forms of government
> that had existed prior to the Civil War, the new system was actually
> worse - more fragmented, more decentralised, less responsible to the
> voters at large. Rather than a dictatorship, it was a kind of oligarchic
> frontier republic that large-scale landowners had no trouble manipulating
> behind the scenes.
>
> In creating their pseudo-democracy, members of the 1875 Texas
> convention were able to draw on a sizeable body of US constitutional
> beliefs and structures. Although Americans like to think of themselves as
> the most modern people on earth, the US constitution of 1787 was (and
> is) curiously pre-modern in its elevation of what medieval jurists
> described as jurisdictio (law) over gubernaculum (government). Because
> law is the closest thing to a sovereign power, the law is always right.
> Because it is strong, government can afford to be weak. Indeed, since
> Americans have traditionally regarded their constitution as a charter of
> liberties, the weaker the government, the stronger and more undiluted
> those liberties will be.
>
> Constraint on constraint
>
> This is what Richard Coke, Texas's first governor after the Civil War,
> meant when he told the state convention in 1875: "The accepted theory
> of American constitutional government is that State Constitutions are
> limitations upon, rather than grants of power.." (3). Even though the US
> constitution already put permanent limits on the people's ability to
govern
> themselves, the purpose of a state constitution was to limit it even more.
> Constraint was piled on constraint.
>
> Texas's unshakeable state constitution - the state legislature
> attempted to create a new one in 1975 but failed - has distorted state
> politics ever since. Texas has a brand of folk conservatism that has
> become the law nearly as much as driving on the right or stopping at red
> lights. If the political culture of the Texas land-owning class helped
> shape the Texas state constitution in the 1870s, the constitution has, in
> return, served to ensure its hegemony over the ensuing 125 years.
> A rigid constitution has led to rigid politics, morality and much else
> besides. In the 1890s Texas saw a brief populist revolt by impoverished
> farmers, which was all too easily crushed and co-opted by the state's
> Jeffersonian elite (4). Thereafter it saw a collection of colourful
> politicians go trooping through the governor's mansion, each one promising
> change
> while doing his best to preserve the status quo. When one governor
> found himself impeached by the state legislature, he arranged for his
> wife to run in his place so he could continue governing from behind the
> throne. Another governor travelled the state in the 1930s with his own
> country-and-western band, campaigning on a platform consisting of the
> Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and a promise to provide each
> retired citizen with a pension. (The pension, needless to say, never came
> to pass.) Others made names for themselves by railing against
> communism, the federal government, or literature professors who
> assigned "obscene" books at the University of Texas.
>
> While politics degenerated into little more than empty theatrics,
> morality remained almost tribal. If a Comanche "enjoyed heaping live
> coals on a staked-out white man's genitals," wrote T. R. Fehrenbach,
> then a white Texan would, just a blithely, "bash an Indian infant's head
> against a tree, or gut-shoot a 'greaser' [a Mexican-American] if he
> blinked" (5). Texas probably saw more lynchings of blacks between 1900
> and 1930 than other states in the deep south. Meanwhile the state militia
> known as the Texas Rangers - also the name of the baseball team that
> George W. Bush owned before becoming governor - conducted a reign
> of terror against the state's Mexican-American population, executing,
> without trial, an estimated 300 in the years 1915-19 alone.
>
> Political impoverishment has also led to intellectual impoverishment.
> According to Fehrenbach, "The Texan's . distrust for theories [was]
> profound. . The practical outweighed the conceptual; things were more
> important than ideas; education was to fit children to society, not change
> them or produce inherent confusion by educating too many students
> beyond their station" (6). If, traditionally, Texans "were not antisocial
but
> asocial", this perhaps explains the deep sexual unease that Texas's
> most famous novelist, Larry McMurtry - author of The Last Picture Show
> (1966), Terms of Endearment (1975), and Lonesome Dove (1985) -
> argues underlies much of West Texas cowboy culture.
>
> Locked in the past
>
> The Texan economy is also anchored in the past. Thanks to massive
> federal investment in military installations and aerospace, Texas has
> been successful since the 1980s in its efforts to diversity into computers
> and other forms of high tech. Yet it remains an essentially land-based
> economy. Regardless of how they make their money, wealthy Texans
> consider it de rigueur to buy a few thousand acres out in the hinterlands,
> put on jeans and cowboy boots, and set themselves up as ranchers - as
> George W. Bush has done with 1,500 of desolate scrubland that he
> recently purchased near the remote West Texas town of Crawford (7).
> Wealth is not really wealth apparently, unless it takes the form of
> property.
>
> Texas's economy is also rooted in the past in terms of its social
> policies. Although it ranks dead centre among the 50 states in terms of
> personal income, its distribution of wealth is so lopsided that by 1998 it
> was among the 10 worst in terms of the portion of the population living
> below the poverty level. Proportional to its population, Texas is also in
> the bottom fourth in terms of such social indicators as the number of
> physicians, full-time college enrolment and infant mortality (8). Thanks
to
> relentless budget cutting under George W. Bush, it now ranks last in
> terms of state spending per capita, an indication that the distribution of
> income is continuing to worsen (9).
>
> Because landed wealth is intrinsically anti-urban, Texas has little by
> way of mass transit, multi-family housing, neighbourhood playgrounds or
> other urban amenities. Because government is so undeveloped, the
> people have no means with which to create effective environmental
> policies. As a result, Texas is responsible for more water and air
pollution
> than any other American state or Canadian province. Hundreds of
> ageing utilities, chemical plants and oil refineries are exempt from
> pollution regulations while, thanks to rising traffic levels, Houston, the
> state's petro-chemical capital, beat Los Angeles in 1998 as the city with
> the worst ozone levels in the US. Not that George W. Bush seems to
> mind, though; one of his top environmental appointees once testified in
> Washington that ozone is actually a benign substance (10).
> Texas has emerged in the late 1990s as the nation's leader in
> "sprawl," a term that Americans use to describe a cancerous blight of
> shopping malls, fast-food outlets, and discount stores that now covers
> much of the landscape (11). Imagine a smog-shrouded, stiflingly hot (36
> degrees centigrade) city with about 20% fewer people than Paris but
> spread out over an area more than 13 times greater, where there are
> virtually no pedestrians or cyclists but an abundance of traffic-clogged
> eight-lane highways going every which way like strands of spaghetti -
> that is pretty much what Houston is like today.
>
> Texas incarcerates more people per capita than any other state in
> the nation: indeed, it has a system of law enforcement that is now the
> most punitive in the industrial world. Though it only has one-tenth of the
> population, it hosts a prison population that is now greater than that of
> France, Germany and Italy combined. Its criminal justice system is an
> uncontrolled Gulag consisting of some 250 county sheriffs, 500-plus
> municipal police departments, more judges than in the whole of Great
> Britain, and some two dozen state boards and agencies, all more or less
> autonomous. The state legislature lacks the constitutional authority to
> reorganise this hideous mess even if it wanted to. Given the thousands
> of defence attorneys who also have a stake in the status quo, serious
> change is unlikely.
>
> Texas's criminal justice system is drawing international attention
> because of the more than 200 prisoners executed since the 1970s.
> Predictably, state officials have responded to the protests with
> resentment and hurt. "I happen to think we live in a rather fine place,
and
> I think that Texas is being showcased by some for political reasons as
> not such a fine place," declared Bush right-hand man Lieutenant-
> Governor Rick Perry on the eve of the execution of Gary Graham on 22
> June. Graham, a black, protested his innocence to the end, and the
> press failed to mention that he was under the age of 18. The US is one
> of only six countries still to carry out the death penalty on minors and
the
> mentally ill - along with Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
> Incompetent state government not only invites criticism, it fairly
> thrives on it. Rather than protecting state autonomy, the Texas state
> constitution consistently undermines it by leaving the federal courts and
> other US agencies (12) no choice but to step in and clean up state
> abuses. Texas's consequent reliance on the federal government serves
> to thrust it deep into federal politics, which is why the state has turned
> into such a prolific breeding ground for national politicians since the
turn
> of the century - not only ex-President Lyndon Johnson and the Bushes,
> father and son, but also long-time Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn,
> Clinton Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen Jr., Bush Secretary of State
> James Baker and numerous other Washington power brokers.
> Texas's backward political structure manifests itself in an unusually
> unified ruling class. As an oligarchic republic, Texas not only allows its
> wealthy residents and corporations to manipulate politics behind the
> scenes, it fairly mandates that they do so to ensure their class interests
> are protected. The upshot is an intense level of political involvement on
> the part of the state's super-rich, most of them reactionaries to one
> degree or another, who have moulded themselves into "a formidable
> force that wins more often than it loses in confrontations with . the
> largely depoliticised masses" (13).
>
> Texas's energy sector is America's very own Opec, a corporate
> clique that believes that global warming is a myth, that the health risks
> from smog are much exaggerated, and that it is the duty of every US
> citizen to burn all the fuel he can. It is a sector that has never seen a
> car, highway, or 10,000-square-foot suburban home that it didn't like as
long
> as it was filled with oversized refrigerators, 72-inch television sets,
> costly exercise machines and other energy-consuming gadgets.
> This sector has backed George W. to the hilt - to quote The New
> York Times, oil has been the essential lubricant for his unsuccessful run
> for Congress, his two gubernatorial campaigns, and his bid to become
> president. Bush's most important patron is the Enron Oil Company, and
> at least 25 of his top donors are connected to the oil business (14). The
> reasons for this support are obvious. The son of an oil driller and a
> former oilman himself, George W.Bush is a local patriot whose years at
> boarding school in New England, Yale University and the Harvard
> Business School only served to strengthen his loyalty to his home state.
> He is an enthusiastic glad-hander - as a college student, he reportedly
> memorised the names of a thousand fellow undergraduates to ensure
> his popularity - and he is thoroughly at home in the deal-making world of
> Texas politics (15). He is also a resolute conservative, well to the right
of
> his father, and he exudes a jovial, anti-intellectual manner. In Texas,
> ignorance rules.
>
> Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 the US has grown ever
> more like Texas. The process has continued in the last eight years under
> Clinton, with the prison population up 50%, the growing use of capital
> punishment (Clinton and Gore are both supporters of the death penalty),
> and an increasingly punitive war on drugs. If Bush gains the presidency,
> the process will simply change pace.
>
> * Journalist, author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is
> Paralyzing Democracy (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1996).
>
> (1) Robert A. Calvert and Arnold De Leon, The History of Texas ,
> Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1990, p. 153. One historian
> estimates that one black male in 100 between the ages of 15 and 49
> was killed by marauding whites between 1865 and the advent of a
> radical state government in 1868.
>
> (2) Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life
> of George W. Bush, Random House, New York, 2000, pp. 19-42. In
> 1998 Bush sold his share in the Texas Rangers baseball team for $15m,
> acquired for $600,000 in 1989.
>
> (3) Gary M. Halter, Government and Politics of Texas: A Comparative
> View, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1999, p. 21.
>
> (4) Chandler Davidson, Race and Class in Texas Politics, Princeton
> University Press, Princeton, 1990, p. 20.
>
> (5) T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans,
> Macmillan, New York, 1968.
>
> (6) Ibid.
>
> (7) Frank Bruni, "Bush Finds Comfort Zone In a Remote Texas Ranch,"
> The
> New York Times, 22 July 2000.
>
> (8) 1997-98 figure. For further information see:
> http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html
>
> (9) Louis Dubose, "The Gospels of the Rich and Poor," The Texas
> Observer, 12 November 1999. The Observer's extensive coverage of the
> Bush presidential campaign can be found at
> http://www.texasobserver.org
>
> (10) Molly Ivins et Louis Dubose, "Bush and the Texas Environment",
> The Texas Observer, 14 April 2000.
>
> (11) See John W. Gonzalez, "Urban sprawl in Texas fastest in the
> country," The Houston Chronicle, 26 December 1999. See also Dani�le
> Stewart, "Do you know the way to San Jose?", Le Monde diplomatique,
> English edition, July 2000.
>
> (12) The federal government often intervenes in the States of the Union
> to ensure that fundamental rules, which apply to all Americans, are
> respected.
>
> (13) Davidson, op. cit.
>
> (14) John M. Broder, "Oil and Gas Aid Bush Bid For President," The New
> York Times, 23 June 2000. Bush broke all records by accepting nearly
> $100m in gifts four months before the general election.
>
> (15) Nicholas D. Kristof, "Ally of an Older Generation Amid the Tumult of
> the 60's", The New York Times, 19 June 2000.
>
> ===============
> For further information see:
> http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ranks.html
> ===============
> The Texas Observer's extensive coverage of the
> Bush presidential campaign can be found at
> http://www.texasobserver.org
> ===============
>
>
>
> Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
>         never lost a battle,
> Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,
>         and under his ribs is the heart of the people,
>                                              Laughing!