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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

The Party Of Stupid

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Apr 17 2009, 3:00 PM ET Comment

Witness Tom Delay...



Matt claps back:

One problem here is that Texas isn't a wealthy state. Its median household income of $47,548 made it 28th in the country. Below average, in other words. New Jersey is second, California is eighth, and New York is nineteenth. Indeed, of the top ten states in per capita income nine are "blue" states.

The exception is Alaska, whose wealthy is due not to "hard work" on the part of the population or a business-friendly policy environment but to the combination of substantial natural resource wealth and a small population. Texas is like a poor man's Alaska, with the substantial natural resource wealth but with the wealth spread across a much greater population. Absent oil, Texas would probably look more like its even poorer neighbors Louisiana (46), Oklahoma (44), Arkansas (49), and New Mexico (45).
Matthews should have called him on that. I don't even give Delay enough credit to say that he was lying. He's just ignorant.


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