Site Selection magazine has recognized Texas as the top job-producing state in its most-recent issue. If you open up the page, you'll see that it looks a lot like a blatant political endorsement of our governor, who is seeking re-election this November. There is legislation and policies that help attract businesses to the Lone Star State (but not all attributable to our govnuh), but it's more likely our plentiful supply of sunshine, flat land and immigrants willing to work cheap that put the state up front. That, and our abundance of colleges and universities helps ensure we've got an ed-u-mecated public in general.
The magazine mentions a big banking boon that leads the job boost, but it doesn't mention where most of the jobs are. If you look solely at the suburbs, then the jobs are being created by the opening of new donut shops, nail salons, Super Wal-Marts, pizza joints, barbecue restaurants, insurance offices and dental practices. Our wide open spaces are being overcome by big-box retailers and strip retail centers, and it's making the sky smaller.
We were driving in far north Fort Worth the other day and noticed something odd. Something you don't see too often. Something, strangely, that is now out of place. It was a cow. Just one. Rooting for grass among some scrubby-looking trees. Was the barbed-wire fence there to keep the cow out of the suburban sprawl, or to keep some of the wild west from seeping out?
Texas isn't a bad place to live. Some parts are better than others. We've got a lot of pollution, traffic, urban sprawl, poverty, hunger, snobbiness, large SUVs, copious amounts of credit-card debt, high-density housing, boring landscape ... and more! ... where we live. There are some ways the state is No. 1 that isn't so good, such as having the most drunken-driving fatalities, or too many Texas A&M graduates.
I wish we were happier where we are, and it's a place I'll miss if/when we leave. But that's probably because we're also No. 1 in ambiguity in the country. Guess that explains a lot about our U.S. president, doesn't it?
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While I've never been to Texas, it is with some amusement that I read that there's still a cow there. We've got a 3'x 3' patch of Bluegrass left here in Kentucky, too. Someone should take a photograph of both of them...quickly.
Maybe we should change our slogan to "Don't Meth with Texas". It's more relevant.
And that's why we will be doing an early scouting trip on our April visit to Big Bend!