We're not just corrupt when it comes to the oil industry.
Anybody who's ever lived in the same state as Governor Goodhair - and, thusly, lived under der Guteshaar's reich - knows that he and his government don't care one lick (throwing that out there to prove that I'm a Texan and not some self-hating liberal douche hipster from Vermont that moved to Austin that overpays for SXSW every year because he was too young to go when it was good) about the state's/nation's people, they only care about how much money they can make/scrape/steal from them and just how much money corporations will pay/sink/donate to stay out of trouble.
Rick Perry and Greg Abbot would throw their own grandmothers under the bus, sell their own children's organs on the black market and put their wives into sexual slavery if they thought they could make a buck from any of it. There is nothing more to this than looking for payday for the state of Texas and, moreover, its government.
This is a bit of an aside but it most definitely ties in, so please bear with me: Every time patent lawsuits are filed in the East Texas courts and someone inevitably asks the question of why nothing is done about this court and there is no reform happening or blah blah blah, I have to physically restrain myself from stating, restating and beating the fucking obvious dead horse into the ground with a bloody rock that we make too much damned money off it.
The Silicon Prairie is an institution in Texas, akin to the King Ranch or Fina Oil. They know how to play ball, they know when to bend over and they know whose pockets to line and elbows to grease. The GDP for 2008 was $1.24 trillion dollars - of that the various tech industries (services, manufacturing, research, etc.) account for more than a fifth of the entire economy. I believe that's a higher percentage than Silicon Valley's is California, but obviously it doesn't make more than Silicon Valley does.
Now tell me, what do you REALLY think is going on here? (hint: corruption, corruption, corruption)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
