Writin' Forty

The first city I lived in after I left the Air Force was Victoria, TX. Victoria is located in a part of Texas, southeast or so, that is called “The Crossroads”. While I personally think that’s a cool name the practical reason for the name is the city and area is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Victoria is located 2 hours away from Houston, 2 hours away from Austin, 2 hours away from San Antonio, and 1.5 hours away from Corpus Christi. Those are at least 4 Texas cities anyone has heard of all surrounding a city no one has heard of.  Ok, maybe you’ve heard of it if you’ve watched professional wrestling. That isn’t a typo. Stone Cold Steve Austin, if you’ve ever listened to his introduction beyond the glass shattering, is announced as being from Victoria, TX. Here’s the punchline: Stone Cold is NOT from Victoria, TX. He’s from nearby Edna, TX, a shotgun town that is much, much smaller  than the 70,000 or so in Victoria . Edna is so small  of a town  that Stone Cold decided to claim

There are times where if you see or hear someone react a certain way, you can figure out a lot of what they might or might not know. A common refrain that I’ve heard is that (in general terms) government is too big/powerful/cumbersome,  etc  and that government (in general terms) needs to be smaller.  From someone who thinks this, I infer a few things: 1.  There are two powerful entities the US has: government and corporations. If you want one to shrink, government, you are essentially saying that you want corporations to be more powerful. 2.  By corporations I only mean the biggest of businesses; if you own a small business you most likely wouldn’t be getting more power with smaller government. 3.  The individual has even less of a say if government gets smaller. At least in theory, anyone can run for government and change with they don’t like. For corporations if you’re not on the board of shareholders you’re not going anywhere, or at least the average Joe Cool on the street