As the US slides into recession, the Lone Star State is trying to figure out what to do with a $10 billion surplus. While politicians in other states worry about job losses and home foreclosures, the Comptroller and Legislature are wrestling with ways of giving cash back to their people.
"Much of the extra money," the Houston Chronicle reports, "can be attributed to record oil prices. While motorists are being socked with ever-increasing gasoline costs, oil and gas employment in Texas has been booming."
To some, this may suggest a connection between oil and the war in Iraq and a former governor in the White House. But Texas has always been fertile ground for suspicion.
Soon after JFK's assassination in Dallas, at a meeting with a group of visiting Russian poets, one of them asked why Americans editors were not worried about the murder of their president in a place from which his successor took control of the country. We assured them that such a thought only reflected the state of mind of those who lived under the Soviet system.
Aren't we lucky to be free of such political paranoia?
No comments:
Post a Comment