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Don't believe the hyperbole from the social media outrage machine. 1 in 3 Texans is either an immigrant themselves or the child of an immigrant. The border iss

Don't believe the hyperbole from the social media outrage machine. 1 in 3 Texans is either an immigrant themselves or the child of an immigrant. The border issues and illegal immigration are concerning to some in the state, but critically 1) Austin is far from the border and mostly unaffected and 2) there is little to no anti-immigration sentiment for legal immigrants even in the other parts of the state. Austin itself is very LGBT friendly, and even at the state level, the only partisan debates seem to be around trans youth. Your last point actually highlights Texas' surprisingly progressive education system. Rather than funding being local-only as in many parts of America, Texas has a strong state-level Robinhood system of taking money from wealthy zipcodes to fund schools in less affluent areas, so that all schools receive more balanced funding. Additionally on the education front, admissions to the state's flagship schools is guaranteed for students in the top 10% of their high school. This policy is a clever hack around explicit affirmative action policies being banned (and was put in place when those were deemed unconstitutional) because it guarantees admission to students who attended lower-performing schools, often from disadvantaged communities. There's plenty to complain about for the Texas state government, but realistically for most people the issues are more hypothetical than practical. It's not like California doesn't have it's share of governmental incompetence and dysfunction as well.

yareal 2y ago
The Texas state government just pardoned a guy who drove a car into a blm protest. And it's regularly limiting access to women's healthcare and lgbtq healthcare. It doesn't matter if Austin is lgbtq friendly if the state itself isn't.
- ptsneves 2y ago
  This! I can’t accept forgiving murder. I don’t know Texas much but it now is a place where a racist kills a person and gets out of jail forgiven. From a moral point of view I don’t know how the governor and its constituents can look themselves in the mirror. Murder is murder.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Lifetime Texan here. Ten years ago I would have said that Texas was a model for rational conservative governance (and I would have said it with a tinge of grudging respect as someone who's personal politics drift in the other direction), but I will not say that now; eventually the lunacy crept in, and nothing good is going to come of it.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > The Texas state government just pardoned a guy who drove a car into a blm protest. And to clarify, that guy was convicted of murder for shooting a protestor. His defense was that the protestor was carrying an AK-47, but Texas (notoriously) allows open carry, the guy even corroborated witness reports that the protestor wasn't aiming at him ("I believe he was going to aim at me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me."), and he had a history of racist text/Facebook messages that threatened violence against protestors and black people. The dude went looking to kill BLM protestors and Abbott let him off scot free.
gloryjulio 2y ago
I don't think abortion issue is insignificant enough that you left it out
quartesixte 2y ago
>Additionally on the education front, admissions to the state's flagship schools is guaranteed for students in the top 10% of their high school. This is also technically true for the University of California. Top 9% of your local school = get into the UC. The rub (and a pretty big one) is that the UC considers all of it's campuses as one, giant, single University. Thus you are guaranteed a position at a UC, but not a position at your CHOICE of UC. Practically, this means that you will be assigned to UC Merced. Top tier UCs (Berkeley, LA, San Diego) are pretty much out of reach because the competition and prestige means there will be no open space. And, frankly speaking, UC Merced isn't looked upon too favorably by the most desirable employers... How does Texas get around this? Are all their campuses equally strong in reputation and rigor? Did they instead actually open up spaces for 10% of top in-state high school students at even the flagship campuses?

yareal 2y ago

The Texas state government just pardoned a guy who drove a car into a blm protest. And it's regularly limiting access to women's healthcare and lgbtq healthcare. It doesn't matter if Austin is lgbtq friendly if the state itself isn't.

ptsneves 2y ago
This! I can’t accept forgiving murder. I don’t know Texas much but it now is a place where a racist kills a person and gets out of jail forgiven. From a moral point of view I don’t know how the governor and its constituents can look themselves in the mirror. Murder is murder.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
silverquiet 2y ago
Lifetime Texan here. Ten years ago I would have said that Texas was a model for rational conservative governance (and I would have said it with a tinge of grudging respect as someone who's personal politics drift in the other direction), but I will not say that now; eventually the lunacy crept in, and nothing good is going to come of it.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> The Texas state government just pardoned a guy who drove a car into a blm protest. And to clarify, that guy was convicted of murder for shooting a protestor. His defense was that the protestor was carrying an AK-47, but Texas (notoriously) allows open carry, the guy even corroborated witness reports that the protestor wasn't aiming at him ("I believe he was going to aim at me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me."), and he had a history of racist text/Facebook messages that threatened violence against protestors and black people. The dude went looking to kill BLM protestors and Abbott let him off scot free.

gloryjulio 2y ago

I don't think abortion issue is insignificant enough that you left it out

quartesixte 2y ago

>Additionally on the education front, admissions to the state's flagship schools is guaranteed for students in the top 10% of their high school. This is also technically true for the University of California. Top 9% of your local school = get into the UC. The rub (and a pretty big one) is that the UC considers all of it's campuses as one, giant, single University. Thus you are guaranteed a position at a UC, but not a position at your CHOICE of UC. Practically, this means that you will be assigned to UC Merced. Top tier UCs (Berkeley, LA, San Diego) are pretty much out of reach because the competition and prestige means there will be no open space. And, frankly speaking, UC Merced isn't looked upon too favorably by the most desirable employers... How does Texas get around this? Are all their campuses equally strong in reputation and rigor? Did they instead actually open up spaces for 10% of top in-state high school students at even the flagship campuses?