We’re all familiar with the “slippery slide’ argument when it comes to laws and social policies (a.k.a. the “camel’s nose under the tent” expression).
Yesterday in Texas we went to the polls to vote on a series of propositions that either change or underline the Texas constitution.
The one proposition was that in order to vote in the state of Texas, you have to be a U.S. citizen. Now one might think that that is understood to be the case — except of course when shit-holes like Boston or San Francisco allow non-citizens to vote on “local “matters.
Well, that ain’t gonna happen in the Lone Star State, should our local shit-holes (like Austin) start getting any ideas. Best of all, of course, is that by making it a constitutional issue, Texas has the right to demand that voters show proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote. (With my very non-Texas accent, I always take my passport with me to the polls, just in case. Of course, I do have my voter’s card and driver’s license, and I’m on the voting roll anyway, but I have absolutely no problem with producing my U.S. passport if anyone wants to see it.) This is not an issue to mess around with, and I’m glad we’re going all hardass on the topic. [Update: it passed, 75-%25%.]
All the other propositions / amendments had to do with taxes, and when doing my research on each of them, I grinned broadly because they seemed to fall into two camps: “This tax is bullshit and it needs to be whacked” — e.g. that farmers have to pay a tax on animal feed. There were a few like that.
The other group of propositions are all preventative in nature, because unlike the U.S. Constitution, a product of the Enlightenment, the Texas constitution is very much proscriptive as well, i.e. we’re not going to trust the government to abide by goodwill alone: the damn government isn’t allowed to do this or that specific thing — in fact, a whole lot of specific things.
My favorite? The one that bans any kind of estate tax — okay, a “death” tax.
“But Kim… Texas doesn’t have a death tax.”
Quite right. And now that it’s expressly forbidden by our state constitution, there’s never going to be a death tax in Texas.
I voted in favor of all the propositions.
And by the way, I thought that the polls weren’t going to be too busy. In fact, the line of waiting voters was well over 200 yards long, and it never fell below that in all the time I was there. [Update: all the results are here. The margins are about what you expect.]
We take this “restricting government” thing very seriously here, deep in the heart of
