As usual, your takes often piss me off despite being a fellow Poke. There’s a lot of valid nuance being discussed here.
DEFCON: LOBO warning
I moved to Austin metro from Stillwater in ‘02. Since then I’ve bought two houses, gotten married and have two kids. If it weren’t for my parents living in GTown, our entrenchment with friends/schools and my employer suddenly backtracking on remote work…we’d have left already.
There’s early markers my 9yo son may be gay, based on my wife’s 20 years as an educator. Jury is obviously way out, but if that’s the case and nothing changes in Texas…I want him the hell out of here when he’s old enough.
My 6yo daughter has a vagina, if nothing changes in Texas I want her the hell out of here.
My property taxes equal my mortgage payment…yet schools are being deprived of funding, we are only building toll roads and public infrastructure is literally falling apart.
Local PDs are receiving record funding in some areas, yet they fail to respond a vast majority of the time and actively lie on Props.
Schools are getting shot up…yet folks bring rifles to the Capitol to protest and pistols to HEB.
It’s getting hotter due to climate change and we live in Frontier Days during winter storms…yet we spend budget surplus on fucking floating balls in a river and lawyers to defend the practice against federal lawmakers. Oh and they’re finding bodies in them.
Our AG has a web of fraud accusations I can’t keep track of. Criticizing the Lt Gov gets you suspended. These clowns are generally fucking with nationally-recognized universities down to calling special sessions to further cripple public school systems.
Voting rights are being systematically disabled / made harder, disproportionately affecting ‘liberal’ cities and their diverse population. Districts are ass backward as fuck to keep it that way.
/Lobo warning
TLDR: There’s so much going wrong in this state that waving a ‘quit moving here’ hand is fucking embarrassing…and I’m one of the lucky ones who is a white, straight, upper middle class male who built a house in 2012 back when it was reasonably affordable. I’m allowed to be pissed about things that don’t directly affect me, because I generally care about other people (except The Darrel, fuck that guy)