Joseph Meyer on Nostr: Wikipedia claims Thomas “Tip" O'Neill, former speaker of the U.S. House of ...

Wikipedia claims Thomas “Tip" O'Neill, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives popularized the phrase, "all politics is local." The same Wikipedia listing mentions that Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, claims that politics is "less local than it used to be." This certainly seems to apply in Texas where Republicans have increasingly imposed state-level policies to regulate issues that were once left to local city and county officials. A result is that the Austin is far less of a liberal island than it used to be and this hardly seems accidental for a state capital. Liberal and progressive Texans feel less tolerated and more targeted than in the past. Texas is no longer characterized by a live-and-let-live conservatism that was common among Texas farmers and ranchers forty years ago. Folks in Texas, The Friendly State, now feel more empowered to speak their minds. And I expect this to get worse over the next four years. (2/6)