A bad reputation among who? Maybe in your insular circle, but certainly not for the majority of middle-class Americans. It has the highest in migration rate for a reason.
Yeah, I live here (Austin; spent 10 years in Houston, too). I love Texas.
But, Texas does have a reputation for being backward, regressive, racist, and willfully ignorant. It was Texas State Board of Education that led to a decades-long battle over evolution. If that's not embarrassing, I don't know what is.
Texas also just passed a law that will shut down all but 4 (maybe 5) of the health clinics that offer abortion in the entire state. Those clinics are also where a lot of folks get birth control, STD testing, and often where poor women go for gynecological care.
Texans will spend 15% more on healthcare because of the stubbornness of our governor. Whether one agrees with Obamacare or not, it's pretty nasty to intentionally screw over poor people out of nothing more than spite.
Texas definitely has a bad reputation. And, it deserves that bad reputation.
As a native Texan (I've lived in the Houston area for about 26 years), I agree with most of what you say.
RE: the clinics, instead of closing, could those clinics continue to offer the other services and simply stop offering abortions? I feel like it's throwing the baby out with the bath water to just shut down altogether. Perhaps I am just misunderstanding the legislation, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
I do not belive all Texans (or even the most of them) are as bad as one might think, but the tiny bits of information we get about Texas paint an ugly picture.
We do not get Reports like "Things are going well in Austin!". In the internatiol news reports. We get reports like
"Stricter abortion laws, force clinics to shut down", "Armed Militia hunting illegal imgrants at the Border", "Patent troll wins in Texas", "...".
Texas is a great target for critics all over the world:
Texas is well known and is closly associated with Cowboys, strict laws, and the death sentence.
Liberals have someone, to bash and local conservativs are glad that critics get distracted by someone far far away.
So I´m sorry Texas reputation is bad, not only among IT folks, and not only in small hardcore leftist cells.
I do _NOT_ say that all this true.
Hell, I would be shocked if it really was!
