Category: Texas

Trust Ventures Engages in “Trench Warfare” Against Regulations Binding the Firms It Finances

(p. A15) Another “Ghostbusters” movie is in theaters, but what we need are regulation busters. I spoke with Salen Churi and Brooke Fallon from Trust Ventures, a $500 million Texas-based venture-capital firm. It’s almost as if they are wearing plasma proton packs.

. . .

Trust Ventures came together, Mr. Churi said, because no one thinks “ ‘I hate innovation,’ except perhaps for incumbents. We have crises in the most human of industries—energy, healthcare, housing. Everyone thought I was nuts. They’re like, ‘Why would you invest in companies with regulatory problems?’ ” Good question.

Most venture capitalists invest and help startups with new strategies and hiring a team. Mr. Churi describes what he does as “trench warfare,” fighting with regulators and incumbents deal by deal.

. . .

Mr. Churi explains that “when you get a great new technology that’s fundamentally different, regulators just want to shove you in the old box, right? Our challenge is to say, ‘Well, actually, this needs a new box.’ Otherwise, it’s going to sit on the shelf.”

Eye exams are a great example of an old box. The American Optometric Association is powerful, and many states banned online vision tests. “Regulators don’t care about all those single mothers who have to pay three times as much or that people in Central Illinois have to drive three hours,” Mr. Churi says.

The pandemic loosened telehealth rules, providing an opening to test your eyes with your own smartphone. As lockdowns ended, Trust Ventures worked with the startup Visibly in several states to legalize online eye exams permanently. They got help from their investors network—some of their limited partners “are great American families,” Mr. Churi says. Visibly’s Food and Drug Administration-approved online eye tests, now in 36 states, cost as little as $35 instead of three times as much at LensCrafters or box-store-located optometrists.

For the full commentary see:

Andy Kessler. “Inside View; America’s New Regulation Busters.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, April 15, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 14, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Musk Will Downsize Government and “Remove Absurd Regulations”

(p. B4) If Elon Musk becomes chief red-tape cutter in a second Trump administration, he is already giving a taste of what’s to come.

. . .

. . ., he often talks about how regulations can be like little strings that collectively tie down a giant like Gulliver, and strip us of our freedoms.

. . .

A Trump victory could give the country, according to Musk, a rare opportunity to clean house unseen since the Reagan administration’s massive deregulation effort.

“It’s been a long time since there was a serious effort to reduce the size of government and to remove absurd regulations,” Musk said during an appearance this month at the “All-In Podcast” conference.

While he skirted what exactly he would do, Musk made it clear that the EPA was the kind of agency on his mind. He pointed to a proposed fine of about $148,000 by the EPA announced this month over claims of SpaceX improperly discharging deluge water and spilling liquid oxygen at its South Texas launchpad.

Musk called it an example of “irrational regulation” and compared the company’s actions to dumping drinking water on the ground. “There was no actual harm done,” he said. “It was just water to cool the launchpad during lift off.”

. . .

Neuralink announced a regulatory win this past week. Musk’s brain-implant company said the Food and Drug Administration had awarded its experimental Blindsight microchip, which aims to restore sight, a special designation intended for medical devices aimed at treating life-threatening or irreversible debilitating conditions.

If successful, it sounds like the stuff out of TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time,” Musk said this past week.

It is those kinds of advancements that excite his fans and why it can be so hard to rein him in amid public support.

For the full commentary see:

Tim Higgins. “As Musk Picks Fights, Stakes Are Rising.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Sept. 23, 2024): B4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date September 21, 2024, and has the title “The Fight Elon Musk Is Ready to Pick in a Trump Administration.”)

The New York Times Is Open to the Possibility and Desirability of Geoengineering

In the past, The New York Times either ignored, or was dismissive of, geoengineering to reverse or mitigate the alleged future effects of global warming. A few months ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see the paper publish a page one article, quoted below, that was open to the policy of geoengineering. This is progress because the left’s standard response to the alleged effects of global warming is to advocate reduced economic growth. Geoengineering would allow economic growth, and the human flourishing it allows, to continue, even if global warming becomes as severe as the pessimists fear.

(p. 1) On a windswept Icelandic plateau, an international team of engineers and executives is powering up an innovative machine designed to alter the very composition of Earth’s atmosphere.

If all goes as planned, the enormous vacuum will soon be sucking up vast quantities of air, stripping out carbon dioxide and then locking away those greenhouse gases deep underground in ancient stone — greenhouse gases that would otherwise continue heating up the globe.

Just a few years ago, technologies like these, that attempt to re-engineer the natural environment, were on the scientific fringe. They were too expensive, too impractical, too sci-fi. But with the dangers from climate change worsening, and the world failing to meet its goals of slashing greenhouse gas emissions, they are quickly moving to the mainstream among both scientists and investors, despite questions about their effectiveness and safety.

. . .  Once science fiction, today these ideas are becoming reality.

Researchers are studying ways to block some of the sun’s radiation. They are testing whether adding iron to the ocean could carry carbon dioxide to the sea floor. They are hatching plans to build giant parasols in space. And with massive facilities like the one in Iceland, they are seeking to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.

. . .

(p. 12) A plant similar to the one in Iceland, but far larger, is being built in Texas by Occidental Petroleum, the giant oil company.

. . .

The Occidental plant, being built near Odessa, Texas, and known as Stratos, will be more than 10 times more powerful than Mammoth, powered by solar energy, and have the potential to capture and sequester 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

It uses a different process to extract carbon dioxide from the air, though the goal is the same: Most of it will be locked away deep underground. But at least some of the carbon dioxide, Occidental says, will also be used to extract more oil.

In that process, carbon dioxide is pumped into the ground to force out oil that might otherwise be too difficult to reach. Techniques like this have made Occidental a company worth more than $50 billion and helped send American crude production to a new high in recent years.

Of course, it is the world’s reliance on the burning of oil and other fossil fuels that has so dangerously sent carbon dioxide levels soaring. In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts as a blanket, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the world.

Today, Occidental says it is trying to become a “carbon management” company as well as an oil producer. Last year, it paid $1.1 billion for a start-up called Carbon Engineering that had developed a way to soak up carbon dioxide from the air, and began building the Stratos project. Today, what was a barren plot of dirt less than 12 months ago is a bustling construction site.

“It’s like the Apollo missions at NASA,” said Richard Jackson, who oversees carbon management and domestic oil operations at Occidental. “We’re trying to move as quickly as we can.”

For the full story see:

David Gelles. “Can We Engineer Our Way Out of a Climate Crisis?” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, March 31, 2024): 1 & 12-13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 4, 2024, and has the title “Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?” The sentence above that starts “Once science fiction” appeared in the print, but not the online, version.)

Texas Is “One State” Whose “Streamlined Permitting Process Allows Wind, Solar and Battery Projects to Get Built and Connected”

(p. A1) Something unusual is happening in America. Demand for electricity, which has stayed largely flat for two decades, has begun to surge.

Over the past year, electric utilities have nearly doubled their forecasts of how much additional power they’ll need by 2028 as they confront an unexpected explosion in the number of data centers, an abrupt resurgence in manufacturing driven by new federal laws, and millions of electric vehicles being plugged in.

Many power companies were already struggling to keep the lights on, especially during extreme weather, and say the strain on grids will only increase. Peak demand in the summer is projected to grow by 38,000 megawatts nationwide in the next five years, according to an analysis by the consulting firm Grid Strategies, which is like adding another California to the grid.

“The numbers we’re seeing are pretty crazy,” said Daniel Brooks, vice president of integrated grid and energy systems at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization.

In an ironic twist, the swelling appetite for more electricity, driven not only by electric cars but also by battery and solar factories and other aspects of the clean-energy transition, could also jeopardize the country’s plans to fight climate change.

To meet spiking demand, utilities in states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are proposing to build dozens of power plants over the next 15 years that would burn natural gas. In Kansas, one utility has postponed the retirement of a coal plant to help power a giant electric-car battery factory.

. . .

(p. A15) At the same time, investment in American manufacturing is hitting a 50-year high, fueled by new federal tax breaks to lift microchip and clean-tech production. Since 2021, companies have announced plans to spend at least $525 billion on factories for semiconductors, batteries, solar panels and more.

In Georgia, where dozens of electric vehicle companies and suppliers are setting up shop, the state’s largest utility now expects 16 times as much growth in electricity demand this decade as it did two years ago.

Millions of Americans are also buying plug-in vehicles and electric heat pumps for their homes, spurred by recent federal incentives. In California, one-fifth of new cars sold are electric, and officials estimate that E.V.s could account for 10 percent of power use during peak hours by 2035.

. . .

So far, one state that has kept pace with explosive demand is Texas, where electricity use has risen 29 percent over the past decade, partly driven by things like bitcoin mining, liquefied natural gas terminals and the electrification of oil fields. Texas’s streamlined permitting process allows wind, solar and battery projects to get built and connected faster than almost anywhere else, and the state zoomed past California last year to lead the nation in large-scale solar power.

“Texas still has problems, but there’s a lot to learn from how the state makes it easier to build clean energy,” said Devin Hartman, director of energy and environmental policy at the R Street Institute.

For the full story, see:

Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich. “Energy Appetite in U.S. Endangers Goals on Climate.” The New York Times (Monday, March 17, 2024): A1 & A15.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 14, 2024, and has the title “A New Surge in Power Use Is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals.”)

“The Aggressions of Brutes and Incompetents Brandishing Governmental Authority”

(p. C7) The story of David Koresh and the siege of the Branch Davidians’ compound near Waco, Texas, is by turns gripping, harrowing and nauseating. The initial raid of the compound, called Mount Carmel by its residents, resulted in the deaths of six Davidians—two of them finished off by a fellow cultist after they were badly wounded—and four federal agents. After a 51-day standoff, the FBI tried to flush out Koresh and 85 remaining Davidians with tear gas. The compound, built haphazardly of plywood, caught fire. A government report later claimed that the fire had been set deliberately, though the few Davidians who fled in the final assault deny this. Seventy-six people died in the conflagration, some with bullet holes in their skulls. The dead included 25 children and two pregnant women.

The initial raid, conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, occurred on Feb. 28, 1993. Two accounts of the event—Jeff Guinn’s “Waco” and Kevin Cook’s “Waco Rising”—mark the 30th year since the catastrophe. Another book, “Koresh” by Stephan Talty, will appear in April from HarperCollins to memorialize the standoff’s fiery conclusion on April 19, 1993.

All three books are impressively researched and written with storytelling verve. Each account, though relating the same sad tale, is distinctive. Mr. Guinn has interviewed an array of ATF and FBI officials. Mr. Cook tells the story mostly from the Davidians’ viewpoint. And Mr. Talty delves the deepest into the history and twisted personality of David Koresh.

. . .

. . . the ATF and the FBI—and by extension Attorney General Janet Reno and the Clinton administration—managed to make the word “Waco” a symbol of governmental violence and persecution.

. . .

(p. C8) The details of what happened when the agents arrived can’t be fully known, but we know that Koresh came out, unarmed, to meet the ATF contingent and asked to speak. Rather than arresting him as ordinary police officers might have done, the agents stormed the place with shouts of “Search warrant! Lay down!” The first shots appear to have come from the raiders: They shot the dogs, Alaskan Malamutes, penned outside the compound.

The Davidians had vague expectations of apocalyptic violence from Babylon—their term, drawn from the Book of Revelation, for the outside world. Evidently some drew the not unreasonable conclusion that the time had come. Hearing shots fired, they shot back. So began an hours-long chaotic gunfight that left 10 dead and scores wounded.

. . .

Agents outside the compound shouted curses at the Davidians and mooned them—a fine enticement to come out. ATF deputy director Daniel Hartnett led Reno to believe, wrongly, that the Davidians were heavily invested in illegal narcotics. FBI officials convinced her, based on the slenderest evidence, that Koresh and others were “beating babies” inside the compound. That the U.S. attorney general bought this unlikely story, and indeed relied on it in approving the FBI’s half-baked tear-gas-raid proposal, is among the rankest instances of ineptitude in the whole shameful episode.

When at last the FBI penetrated into the compound with tanks—all the while announcing over a loudspeaker, “This is not an assault”—agents fired “ferret rounds,” plastic tear-gas canisters, into the compound. The vast majority of Davidians would not leave, even when the fires ignited. The FBI called for assistance from the fire department, but bureau agents had long since cut off the flow of water to Mount Carmel; restoring it would probably take hours. When fire engines arrived at a checkpoint half a mile from the compound, the FBI official in charge directed the checkpoint agents to “keep them there.”

Did the ferret rounds start the fire? The government classified these devices as “nonflammable” and alleged, with inconclusive evidence, that the Davidians started the fire. Both Mr. Cook and Mr. Guinn note significant evidence that ferret rounds are often combustible. In 1999, the Dallas Morning News revealed that “pyrotechnic” ferret rounds, specifically designed to combust, had been used hours before the fires began—a fact that several government lawyers and an FBI agent omitted to disclose in 1993. A government report released in 1999 concluded that those rounds didn’t cause the fire, but the details were far too murky to change anyone’s mind.

. . .

The opinion makers of America’s media and political class frequently bemoan the existence of antigovernment radicals and right-wing conspiracy theorists as if such people are motivated exclusively by irrationality and delusion. But although Mr. Jones and a thousand other paranoid fulminators may be tragically wrong about many things, their anxieties often stem from the aggressions of brutes and incompetents brandishing governmental authority.

For the full review of three books see:

Barton Swaim. “Agents of Armageddon.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 27, 2023, and has the title “Three Books on the Siege at Waco.”)

The three books under review are:

Cook, Kevin. Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America’s Modern Militias. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2023.

Guinn, Jeff. Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023.

Talty, Stephan. Koresh: The True Story of David Koresh and the Tragedy at Waco. New York: Mariner Books, 2023.

Firms Nimbly Shift Shipping Away from Unionized and Bottlenecked California Ports

(p. B1) Sharpie maker Newell Brands Inc. is opening distribution centers in Pennsylvania and North Carolina to lessen dependence on seaports in California. Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is moving more merchandise through New York and New Jersey to avoid West Coast bottlenecks. Air-conditioning manufacturer Trane Technologies PLC is sending most of its cargo this year through ports in the South, instead of the Los Angeles area.

The hierarchy of U.S. ports is getting shaken up. Companies across many industries are rethinking how and where they ship goods after years of relying heavily on the western U.S. as an entry point, betting that ports in the East and the South can save them time and money while reducing risk.

Their reasons range from fears of a dockworkers strike along the West Coast and a repeat of the bottlenecks that roiled supply chains early in the pandemic to a reduced dependence on Chinese production and the need to get products to all parts of the country faster.

In August [2022], Los Angeles lost its title as busiest port in the nation to the Port of (p. B6) New York and New Jersey as measured by the number of imported containers. It trailed its East Coast rival again in that measure during September and October, according to the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association and ports data.

The share of all U.S. containerized cargo handled by Los Angeles and a neighboring port in Long Beach fell through the first 10 months of the year to a combined 25% as measured by weight, according to census data analyzed by Jason Miller, interim chair of Michigan State University’s supply chain management department. That was their lowest level in nearly two decades, down from a height of 33%.

Other ports benefiting from this shift include Savannah, Ga., Houston and Charleston, S.C.

For the full story, see:

Paul Berger. “New Routes for Big Business.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022): B1 & B6.

(Note: bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Dec. 14, 2022, and has the title “California Long Ruled Shipping in U.S. Importers Look to East.”)

Firms Move from High Crime Chicago to Lower Crime Texas, Virginia, and Florida

(p. B4) The hedge fund Citadel and the trading firm Citadel Securities, both run by the billionaire Ken Griffin, are moving their offices to Miami after more than three decades in Chicago, according to a memo to employees that was obtained by The New York Times on Thursday [June 23, 2022].

The move follows elevated tensions between Mr. Griffin and Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, over taxes and the city’s crime rate. (Florida is one of the few states that don’t have a state income tax.) And it comes as the rise of remote work during the coronavirus pandemic has enabled companies to more freely move their offices in search of lower taxes, a more affordable work force or other potential perks. In recent months, Caterpillar said it was moving its office from Illinois to Texas, and Boeing has said it is moving from Illinois to Virginia. . . .

“The firms are having difficulty recruiting top talent from across the world to Chicago given the rising and senseless violence in the city,” said Zia Ahmed, a Citadel spokesman. “Talent wants to live in cities where they feel safe.”

According to the Chicago Police Department, there were 797 murders in 2021, up from 772 in 2020. Crime has been spiking in the city, though it is largely concentrated in a few areas.

While not a direct comparison, Miami Dade County reported 30 homicide offenses this year through May, down from 48 over the same period last year.

For the full story, see:

Lauren Hirsch. “Hedge Fund Cites Crime for Leaving Chicago.” The New York Times (Friday, June 24, 2022): B4.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 23, 2022, and has the title “Citadel says it will move offices to Miami because of crime in Chicago.”)

Recycling Is Good When It Saves Enough to Be Worth the Time

“Juani Lira shopping for her 13 grandchildren at Ludy’s Ropa Usada in downtown McAllen.” Source: online version of the NYT article cited below.

(p. 18) McALLEN, Texas — A mountain of clothes swallowed half of Juani Lira’s petite body, from the waist down. But the 67-year-old did not seem to mind. Ms. Lira closely inspected a pair of black shorts studded with rhinestones and tossed them behind her, unimpressed. Too flashy for her teenage granddaughter, she murmured.

Ms. Lira then spotted a long-sleeved, pearl-colored blouse, still with a tag intact. Bingo. She looked around her, as if she were getting away with something, and tucked the blouse at the bottom of a duffle bag. At a price of 71 cents a pound, Ms. Lira was on her way to collecting a haul big enough to clothe most of her 13 grandchildren at Ludy’s Ropa Usada in downtown McAllen.

. . .

During several visits to ropa usada warehouses, some of them just a mile from the Rio Grande, store operators were protective of their businesses and their clients’ privacy. Signs prohibiting photos were often posted at the entrance, a reminder that the stigma of shopping for discarded clothes persists. Some people hid their faces in the piles of clothing, and some avoided eye contact.

But others, like the longtime ropa usada shopper Angelica Gallardo, 64, felt there was no shame in struggling to make ends meet and doing the best you could to clothe your growing clan. Ms. Gallardo spends hours at a time meticulously inspecting an endless heap of potential purchases. “You have to dig in!” she said.

Ms. Gallardo, who said she has been shopping at ropa usada outlets since the 1970s, has developed a keen eye for “the good stuff” from the “pila” — the pile.

For the full story, see:

Edgar Sandoval. “In Texas, Clothes by the Pound to Make Ends Meet.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, April 10, 2022): 18.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “On the Border, Buying Clothes by the Pound at Ropa Usada Shops.”)

Some Texas Firms Resisted the Trend to Enter the Debate on the Texas Bill on the Integrity of Voting

On April 1, 2021, the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 7 on “Election Integrity.”

(p. B6) . . . , Texas is an important state for big business, with companies and their employees drawn in part by tax incentives and the promise of affordable real estate. Several Silicon Valley companies have moved to Texas or expanded their presence there in recent years.

Apple plans to open a $1 billion campus in Austin next year, and produces some of its high-end computers at a plant in the area.

In December [2020], Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that it would move its headquarters from California to the Houston area, while the software company Oracle said it would take its headquarters to Austin. And last month, Elon Musk issued a plea on Twitter for engineers to move to Texas and take jobs at SpaceX, his aerospace company.

Mr. Musk’s other companies, Tesla and the Boring Company, have also expanded their presences in the state in recent months.

None of those companies have so far voiced opposition to the Texas legislation. And at least for now, there is little indication that the growing outcry from big business is changing Republicans’ priorities.

For the full story, see:

David Gelles and Andrew Ross Sorkin. “Big Law Joins Fight To Protect Voting Rights.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 13, 2021): B1 & B6.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 12, 2021, and has the title “Defying Republicans, Big Companies Keep the Focus on Voting Rights.”)

At the University of Austin, the Intellectually Diverse Will Discuss, Rather Than Censor, “Provocative Questions”

(p. A16) A group of scholars and activists are planning to establish a new university dedicated to free speech, alarmed, they said, “by the illiberalism and censoriousness prevalent in America’s most prestigious universities.”

The university, to be known as the University of Austin, or UATX for short, will have a soft start next summer with “Forbidden Courses,” a noncredit program that its founders say will offer a “spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.”

The university then plans to expand to master’s programs and, in several years, to undergraduate courses.

. . .

The prospective university’s board of advisers features some of the most prominent iconoclasts in the country, including Lawrence H. Summers, the former Harvard president; Steven Pinker, a Harvard linguist and psychologist; David Mamet, the playwright; and Glenn Loury, an economist at Brown.

. . .

“I think new models for a university are important,” Dr. Pinker said, “because current universities are locked into a strange business model: exorbitant tuition, a mushrooming bureaucracy, and obscure admissions policies that are neither meritocratic nor egalitarian, combined with plummeting intellectual diversity and tolerance for open inquiry (which is, after all, a university’s raison d’être).”

For the full story, see:

Anemona Hartocollis. “Organizers Plan New University They Say Will Defend Free Speech.” The New York Times (Tuesday, November 9, 2021): A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 8, 2021, and has the title “They Say Colleges Are Censorious. So They Are Starting a New One.”)

Californians Move to Texas, to Prosper

(p. 5) A Californian will feel right at home in Dallas even before touching the ground. Like the suburbs around Los Angeles, San Diego and across the Bay Area, Dallas and other Texas metros are built on the certainty of cars and infinite sprawl; from the air, as I landed, I could see the familiar landscape of endless blocks of strip malls and single-family houses, all connected by a circulatory system of freeways.

. . .

My guide through the Dallas suburbs was Marie Bailey, a real estate agent who runs Move to Texas From California!, a Facebook group that helps disillusioned Californians find their way to the promised land. Bailey is herself a Californian. She and her family moved in 2017 from El Segundo, a beach city next to Los Angeles International Airport, to Prosper, a landlocked oasis of new housing developments north of Dallas. In El Segundo, the median home list price is $1.3 million; in Prosper, it’s less than half that.

And in Prosper, the houses are palatial, many of them part of sprawling new developments that brim with amenities unheard-of in California. “It’s like living in a country club,” Bailey told me, which sounded like hyperbole until she showed me the five-acre lagoon and white sand beach in the development where she and her husband purchased a home. Their house is 5,000 square feet; they bought it for about the same price for which they sold a home they owned in Orange County, which was 1,500 square feet.

Bailey’s move gets to the heart of the great California-Texas migration: housing. As she drove me around Dallas’s suburbs, Bailey would point out cute house after cute house now occupied by a Californian. I had been talking about the idea of choosing between California and Texas, but for many people moving here, Bailey suggested, there really was not much choice at all — it was simply that, economically, they could not make their lives work in California, and in Texas, they could.

. . .

Texas, now, feels a bit like California did when I first moved here in the late 1980s — a thriving, dynamic place where it doesn’t take a lot to establish a good life. For many people, that’s more than enough.

For the full commentary, see:

Farhad Manjoo, Gus Wezerek and Yaryna Serkez. “Is Texas the New California?” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, November 28, 2021): 4-5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 23, 2021, and has the title “Everyone’s Moving to Texas. Here’s Why.”)