MON brief 11.1.21
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Today’s Stories
TEXAS VS. WOKE WALL ST. is a cold economic war that’s heating up.
A new report from Bloomberg (i.e., the media company owned by a former New York City mayor) outlines this conflict. This will be one of the most critical issues of the next five years, and it’s receiving almost zero attention.
At immediate issue are laws that the Texas legislature passed during this year’s regular session. The measures in question prohibit the state and its political subdivisions from doing business w/ entities that “discriminate” against firearms manufacturers or oil and gas development.
As discussed previously, this has led woke Wall St. banks J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and B of A to exit the otherwise lucrative market for local government debt in Texas.
The relevant laws were almost certainly intended to be acts of substance-free grandstanding. However, due to the sloppy policymaking process in the Texas legislature, they accidentally wrote bills with teeth. This is a rare example of the law of unintended consequences working to conservatives’ benefit.
Here comes the good news and bad news.
The good news is that this is an economic war Texas can not only win but punch above its global weight class in the process. In addition to the benefits that accrue to those who live here (i.e., a super-strong economy), Texans can do tremendous good beyond our borders if we maximize our economic strength and deploy our capital strategically.
The bad news is that Texas’ current political leadership is incapable of fighting an economic war to win.
Local government debt is a great example. Every time a school district, city, or county issues financial securities, that means interest payments and fees for woke Wall St. Texas debt, quite literally, funds its enemies.
Yet, since Greg Abbott became Governor in 2015, local government debt has ballooned from a “mere” $324 Billion to over $365 Billion.
That’s just one example. Next, take the principle outlined above, and apply it to every act of corporate welfare and crony capitalism (at both the state and local level) across Texas. That’s a lot of channels in which woke Wall St. can operate.
To win this economic war, Texas needs to live within its means and pay down its debt. To use a football analogy, fiscal conservatism is the basic blocking and tackling of this geo-economic playbook. Of course, last Saturday in Waco, the Longhorns showed us everything you need to know about Texas’ ability to execute basic blocking and tackling.
See the next item about the intersection between the global deep state and the Texas good ol’ boy system.
BAKER-BOTTS just had a third consecutive partner named to the Texas Supreme Court.
Baker-Botts (read more here), has been around for 170 years, the last sixty of which have been defined by a close alignment with the Bushes.
In writer Robert Bryce’s classic formulation, Baker Botts “speacializ[es] in representing looters, polluters, and plutocrats.” Furthermore, according to Bryce, they quite literally helped build the Austin lobby (in the 1880s).
But Abbott is going to fight an economic war against (woke) Wall St. to win.
NUBIA DEVINE, wife of the most conservative justice on the Texas Supreme Court, John Devine, has entered the race for HD-19.
Devine, in the past, worked for the state House Member redistricted out of this seat, Rep. Kyle Biedermann. She joins Justin Berry, who ran for a House seat in 2020, and former Austin City Council member Ellen Troxclair.
In recent weeks, the establishment has made it clear Troxclair is a perceived threat, a theme we’ve explored extensively; she’s been on the receiving end of dirty politics from Dan Patrick and Murphy-Nasica.
In this (currently) three-way race, Devine and Troxclair may split the conservative vote leaving Berry a path to a nearly assured run-off.
Last year’s GOP run-off election in this reconfigured seat pitted Berry against activist Jennifer Fleck, who has endorsed Devine’s campaign.
Hit the Links
Beto won’t beat the GOP nominee in 2022
Audit: Austin doesn’t track technology it purchases
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