Governor Misses Badly with Bragging
on Texas as Top State in Most Rankings
Capitol Inside
May 2, 2024
Governor Greg Abbott bragged on Wednesday for the second time in five days that Texas leads the nation in almost every category after its 20 consecutive selection as the best state for business in the eyes of corporate executives.
"Texas tops nearly every ranking, including best state for business, again!" Abbott said on X in a post that included a copy of a report that the conservative Washington Examiner picked up from a far-right competitor called The Center Square on Saturday when he made the same exact claim with the article as his source.
But the social site that Elon Musk owns felt compelled to an Abbott post the day before the original Texas rankings with false claims about Harvard University replacing the American flag with the Palestine flag. The Tesla owner's site slapped a "Readers added context" warning to the Abbott X post on Sunday to show that protestors hoisted the Palestine flag at a location on the Harvard campus where the United States flag flies on weekdays. X readers pointed out that Harvard denounced the protest publicity stunt and vowed punishment for students involved.
While the message that Abbott repost was wildly unbelievable, the governor of the nation's second largest state appeared to fall for it when he expressed his outrage on X in a terse commentary that just as if not more fantastical when he demanded the defunding of Harvard in the nation's capital. "Congress must never again allocate a single taxpayer dollar to Harvard," Abbott declared.
With X having failed up to now to call out Abbott's assertions on Texas' ostensible supremacy in national rankings for states, Capitol Inside is adding context for the sake of giving readers a more accurate picture of how Texas actually stacks up against the other states.
Texas for the record isn't first in almost every set of rankings as alleged by the governor. It's not even close. The Lone Star State doesn't crown nearly every rating on the best states in the U.S. for business.
The "readers add context" on the Abbott post on rankings should say that he would have been accurate if he'd said that Texas claims the top spot in some of the state-by-state comparisons on fiscal matters like business climate and the economy. Abbott has touted first-place rankings for example in Chief Executive Magazine and Site Selection - a pair of publications that the lion's share of rank-and-file voters in Texas may have never read or heard of unless they follow him religiously on X.
Texas leads the nation in some categories that Abbott and the Republicans would prefer to ignore. The Lone State ranked first on the list of worst states for personal freedom in the Cato Institute analysis of Freedom in the 50 States for 2003. The conservative think tank ranked Texas as the 6th best state for economic freedom and 17th for freedom overall.
The CNBC list of America's Top States for Business had Texas at the pinnacle of the list for worst states in the area of "life, health & inclusion" - one of eight factors on which the annual ratings are based. CNBC ranked Texas as the 6th best state for business in 2023 - the first time that it landed outside the top five. But the Lone Star State didn't lead any one of the eight categories on which the overall score is based.
The Tax Foundation had Texas at 13th in the State Business Tax Climate Index for 2023.
U.S. News & World Report - one of the oldest and most respective news magazines in the U.S. - rated Texas as the 35th best state in 2023. Florida and California both were named better states last year than Texas in 10th and 33rd place respectively. Texas was 36th in crime and corrections, 35th in education, 32nd in health care, 40th in natural enviornment and 47th in opportunity in the U.S. News & World Report assessment of states last year.
Forbes rated Texas as the 8th worst state for health care in 2023. WalletHub was more generous when it ranked Texas as the 17th worst states for health care last year.
According to an analysis in January by the Houston Chronicle, Texas had the 16th highest number of rapes per capita despite Abbott's promise to eliminate rape here.
more to come ...
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