What would happen if Texas went through with the idea Rick Perry likes to flirt with and actually seceded? NPR explored what that alternative reality would look like in an eight-minute story on All Things Considered Friday.
Austin-based correspondent John Burnett spoke to Tea Party members, academics, and political junkies to paint a picture of what a modern Republic of Texas would look like:
The former state has reinvented itself as a sort of Lone Star Singapore, with low taxes, free trade and minimal regulation. It enters the community of nations as the world’s 15th-largest economy, with vast oil and gas reserves, busy international ports, an independent power grid and a laissez-faire attitude about making money. …
Here’s our scenario: airports without the Transportation Security Administration; gun sales without the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; land development without the Endangered Species Act; new congressional districts without the Voting Rights Act; and a new guest-worker program without Washington gridlock over immigration reform. The new normal is a leaner government that bears little resemblance to the full-service nation it left behind.
Texas, in its second stab at independence, would not provide welfare or food stamps, some imagine. “There’s a safety net that’s always been out there. We don’t have that anymore. You will be a productive member of society and our environment doesn’t allow for people to not be productive,” Texas Tea Party member Katrina Pierson told Burnett.
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