Will Franklin

Thanks to the social media, redistricting is about to become a statewide issue, for the first time ever.

Nobody understands how communication is changing better than Gov. Rick Perry, who in winning the Republican primary last year courted conservative bloggers while skipping newspaper editorial boards.

“Someone will write a story or a book someday about the 2010 campaign and our use of social media as a tool to reach a lot of people,” Perry told Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview livestreamed from the social networking company's new Austin office.

Perry said he didn’t understand the power of social media until 2008, when his campaign started gearing up again, and decided that’s where he would pour his resources. “We wanted to run the most forward-leaning … campaign to be able to reach people who historically might not have been involved in politics and being engaged in that. And we did it through the social media,” Perry said. “We were very, very successful.”

During the 2010 governor's race, Franklin was the director of new media and research at Texans for Rick Perry. "Instead of a handful of insiders plotting in smoke-filled back rooms, you have citizens taking back their government and keeping their elected officials accountable," Franklin says. "Politicians can either run with it, or be trampled by it."

Will served as Director of New Media & Research at Texans for Rick Perry. He guided a team that crafted online messaging, directed online fundraising, and engaged supporters in grassroots efforts for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s 2010 re-election campaign. Will created the vast majority of Governor Rick Perry's reelection campaign web videos in both the primary campaign and the general election. Will also created most written and video content for WashingtonKay.com, LiberalBill.com, and RickPerry.org. Will designed social media training for "Team Perry" staffers, and created the successful "Perry Blogger Summit" and other blogger outreach and training programs with hundreds in attendance. Will managed the Governor Perry Facebook account, the @GovPerry2010 Twitter account, and is also credited with getting @GovernorPerry addicted to "tweeter."

One of my good friends, Will Franklin, who ran social media for Governor Perry and consults with many private industry and political folks about social media, was nominated for the same award as me:the Austin Statesman Social Media awards. When informed by a Statesman editor that I was one of the 25 winners, my first response was, cool! My second was, oh crap, what if Will didn’t win? I’ll feel guilty because he’s so good at what he does.

Thankfully, we both won. Congratulations to Will. If you don’t know his work, please learn of it. If you’re looking for the best social media guy in politics, Will is your man.

'Will Franklin is the person ‘to blame’ for getting Governor Perry addicted to Twitter.’

As Director of New Media & Research at Texans for Rick Perry, Franklin created the vast majority of the campaign’s web videos, he guided a team that crafted online messaging, directed online fundraising, and engaged supporters in grassroots efforts for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s 2010 re-election campaign. Franklin managed Governor Perry’s Facebook account and @GovPerry2010 Twitter account as well.

And it’s easy to forget that Governor Rick Perry, who started his gubernatorial primary down by more than 30 points, embraced new media in a big way, frequently tweeting himself and running an online-dominated primary campaign. If you want people to know you’re in touch, show it. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when a candidate who is willing to take the time to engage laps you in the pool.

Your newest Facebook friend and your latest Twitter follower could be an inanimate object: a House bill.

House Joint Resolution 51 — Rep. Wayne Christian's anti-health care reform measure to allow Texans to go without health insurance without a penalty — hasn't even had a committee hearing. It was only filed Jan. 4. But it's already got 111 Facebook friends and hundreds of Twitter followers — not too shabby for a 278-word bill.

In the span of a single biennium, many lawmakers have boosted their online credentials, establishing Facebook pages and persistent Twitter threads. But as far as we can tell, this is the first time a Texas bill has had its own social media presence. As lawmakers scramble to push their pet legislation through jam-packed committees, expect an increased reliance on social media tools, to rally their troops and put public pressure on their colleagues.

In addition to the audacious framing of his re-election as governor as a referendum on Washington, the federal government and the Obama administration, Perry also eschewed many standard campaign tactics and strategies. Although the Perry campaign template will not be adopted by a majority of future candidates, it may very well serve as a model for conservative Republicans who are already well-known by the electorate and at the same time consider the mainstream media to be unsympathetic to their candidacies.

Perry's strategy was unorthodox – and potentially risky. He campaigned from lectern to lectern, utilizing retail politicking, social media and paid advertising. The plan was executed flawlessly, says Roy Bailey, a Perry friend who was one of the governor's finance chairmen for this year's campaign.

Perry's team eschewed editorial endorsements, debates, direct mail, and yard signs, investing instead in field operations, social media, and television.

Gov. Perry's signature moment in this campaign may have been his decision, months before other major elected figures in this country, to speak with empathy at Tea Party rallies. Perry told the Associated Press he had decided, even before the March primaries, to forego interview sessions with editorial boards. "It was a calculated decision," Perry told AP, "but you know the world is really changing, I mean, the way people get their information, who they listen to, etc."

It was this insight and the Perry campaign's successful use of social media to build its organization and deliver its messages that is the subtle but significant development in this election, according to David Guenthner, director of media and government relations for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.

For the most part, however, Mr. Perry has followed the classic strategy of front-runners, with a few new twists. He has avoided debates with Mr. White and limited his attacks. He has also skillfully harnessed the anti-incumbent sentiment this year, allying himself early on with the Tea Party and riding the wave of anger at deficit spending in Washington.

And he has been able to run on the state’s economy, taking credit for its relatively good record of creating jobs.

He has snubbed most of the newspaper editorial boards in the state, which have endorsed Mr. White. And he has relied more on Internet videos and social media sites than on yard signs.

Texas Debt-

Texas' state debt is the second lowest per capita in America:

More here.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Unemployment So Much Higher Than It Appears Due To People Dropping Out Of The Workforce.

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Some startling data on the need for higher ed reform in Texas and beyond:

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UPDATE:
More stats from EmpowerTexans:

Since 2004... tuition at The University of Texas at Austin has increased 40%, from $3,500/semester to $4,897/semester! That’s over twice the rate of US inflation over the same time. My own tuition over the course of my career at UT has increased by 15%, from $4,677/semester in the fall of 2008 to $5,369/semester in the fall of 2011, triple the rate of inflation over the same time.

So it’s the Legislature’s fault for not appropriating more money, right? Wrong.
Adjusted for inflation, the state budget has steadily appropriated approximately $6,000 per student to statewide universities from 1970 to 2007, yet over the same time the average operating cost per student spiked from $10,655 in 1991 to $17,506 in 2007 (a 64.1% increase).

Where is all this added cost coming from?

Part of it is the out-of-control salary increases for faculty and administration. In 1999, the statewide average professor salary was $70,864. In 2009, the average was $106,311 (a 50% increase). The highest professor salary at UT-Austin was $140,542 in 1999 -- 10 years later it grew 172.5% to $382,948.

An Associated Press study also found that the budget for administration at UT-Austin alone rose from $5.9 million to $8.2 million (a 40% increase) from 2004 to 2008.

States Can Decide What Works For Themselves-

Jim Pethokoukis tweeted out a number about the American economy this morning that was particularly startling:

"11.4%: The unemployment rate if labor force was as big as it was when Obama took office in 2009"

Texanomics has looked at this phenomenon and noted that Texas' labor force has grown by leaps and bounds, while the U.S. labor force has shrunk (I sometimes modify their graphs a bit, so go check out the originals over there at Texanomics):

So, those droves of people moving to Texas: they're coming here looking for work. Not all are finding it right away, of course, which drives up the Texas unemployment rate, but Texas has created more new private sector jobs than all other 49 states over the past decade.

Last month, Texanomics also looked at what unemployment rates would be like in various states, including Texas, if labor forces had held steady at the "recovery" point of June 2009:

It's a little hard to read, shrunk-down like this, so go check out the original post. More explanation:

Texas' fast growing labor force is increasingly comprised of people fleeing other states to search for new opportunities in Texas. Indeed, the Texas labor force has continued to steadily grow even as more than 750,000 Americans have dropped out of the labor force since the beginning of 2009.

And so while the US unemployment rate has dropped half a percentage point over the past year, that is attributable almost entirely to people dropping out of the labor force, not robust job growth. Meanwhile, in Texas, the employment growth has been strong, but the unemployment rate masks that because there is actually a growing labor force.

The above chart takes one approach at adjusting April 2011 unemployment rates for the labor force changes in the five largest states and the United States as a whole. Basically, we took April 2011 employment and divided it by the June 2009 labor force in each state, since June 2009 is referred to by many as the start of the "recovery".

So, if labor forces had held steady since June of 2009, Texas' unemployment rate would be much lower and America's would be much higher.

While the Obamanomics has killed millions of jobs and generally put America in a deep, deep rut, with no sign of it getting better anytime soon, Texas has remained resilient. From May 2006 to May 2011, Texas added more jobs than all other states combined:

And Texas, under Governor Rick Perry's time in office, has also created more new private sector jobs, in net terms, than all other states combined:

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It's no wonder, then, that people are asking whether Obama would stand a chance against Rick Perry, should he ultimately decide to run for President.

The real question, then, becomes how much worse would Obama's economy look without Texas? And how much better could Texas be doing without Obama?

For the number crunchers out there, I may or may not get around to this soon, but wouldn't it be interesting to figure the current Obama unemployment rate, minus Texas, based on workforce levels when Barack Obama came into office?

Yes, the national unemployment rate is officially 9.2%, but it is really so much worse:

The average unemployed worker has been without work for 39.7 weeks (nine months)—the longest since the government began keeping track in 1948.

Even with strong economic growth, it will take time for unemployment to return to normal levels. If employers add an average of 260,000 net jobs per month—the rate the payroll survey showed during the late 1990s tech bubble—then unemployment will not return to its natural rate until August 2014.

If employers add 216,000 net new jobs per month—the rate the household survey showed in 1997, the year of the greatest job growth in the tech bubble—unemployment will return to its natural rate in October 2015.

We're fortunate people aren't wielding torches and pitchforks with these kinds of soul-numbing numbers. This is depressing data for America, and, based on my grocery and restaurant bills of late, inflation is here after, really, decades of being tamed. Indeed, the misery index is on the rise:

These misery index figures, in the twelves, are at levels not seen since Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter.

Obama will be a one-term President.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Winning Among Laboratories Of Democracy.

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States Can Decide What Works For Themselves-

The Washington Examiner crafted an editorial going after Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley for seeking to implement a brand-spanking-new tax on Internet sales:

O'Malley's 2008 millionaire surtax was intended to raise the income tax bill of wealthy families by 32 percent and raise an extra $106 million in revenue. Instead, it prompted one-third of Maryland's top earners to leave the state, sending tax revenue plummeting by 22 percent. Instead of collecting that extra $106 million, O'Malley's blunder actually cost the state $257 million. The Wall Street Journal's analysis of federal tax-return data found that "Maryland lost $1 billion of its net tax base in 2008" from residents moving to other states. That means the millionaire tax is still costing local governments much-needed revenue.

.... it would be extremely burdensome to collect revenue for more than 8,000 taxing jurisdictions in the U.S. Texas Gov. Rick Perry vetoed such revenue-seeking legislation for precisely that reason.

Everybody but O'Malley can see where this is going. Just like the flight of the millionaires, an Internet tax will cost Marylanders dearly in jobs and business opportunities lost to more enlightened and business-friendly states.

Indeed, Maryland only didn't lose seats in Congress after the 2010 Census because it is adjacent to Washington, D.C., and Washington, D.C. and its outskirts have boomed as the Federal Government has literally, physically grown. But the rest of Maryland shows a strong propensity for outward domestic migration. Let's take Baltimore, for example (Baltimore, the city, seceded from Baltimore County, long ago, so let's look at both):

City -------- County

A clear outward trend. Texas cities have absorbed many of those economic refugees.

It is now easier to pack up and move hundreds or even thousands of miles away than it has ever been in human history. Americans can and do "vote with their feet" on the policies they like and don't like.

Even in an era before locomotives and paved multi-lane interstate highways, before jet air travel and the Internet, the American Founders drew up a system that limited Federal overreach and gave states profound independence. As mass media and ease of travel have made our society more interconnected and our culture more homogenous, it would be tempting to argue that regional autonomy is a quaint notion. On the contrary, laboratories of democracy may be more important than ever before.

The Keynesian moment may have peaked, rhetorically, when Richard Nixon declared "we're all Keynesians now" in 1971, but the past few years have really been Keynes' time to shine. Turns out, the Keynesian experiment didn't work at the national level.

A few states did better than others, though, in recent years. Texas, foremost, dominated in job growth and people moving with their feet.

Imagine if we didn't have the examples of Texas and Michigan to guide us? Without state-by-state examples of success and failure, we may just assume that America is in an inevitable decline. Instead, we know that collectivism fails and liberty succeeds. This applies not only to States in America but to nation-states of the world as well:

This is why the Tenth Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."), and having a necessarily and intentionally limited national government, are so vital to to this ongoing American experiment.

The reality should be obvious. Since 1960, Americans have rejected big labor and big government:

Unfortunately, even something as stark and unequivocal as this...

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...is not obvious to people with a certain rigid "progressive" worldview. To hear liberals explain it, depending on their degree of cognitive dissonance, Texas is really a terrible place without jobs, or Texas has only thrived because of oil and because we have warm weather.

Indeed, "climate" or "weather" is often cited as an overriding reason why Texas is gaining population and jobs at the expense of those poor, cold places near Canada. These people have apparently never lived in Texas from about April through October. It's hot. It's either oppressively humid, East of I-35; or dry, dusty, and windy, West of I-35. We have by far more natural disasters-- more tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, dust storms, droughts, and wildfires-- than any other state in America:

Yes, we generally have great food and robust culture, and it's more often than not really nice outside from about Halloween through Valentine's Day, but many people choose Texas in spite of the weather or climate, not because of it. That's what makes the Texas economic success story that much more amazing.

Everyone should want to live in California, if beautiful scenery, gorgeous climate, and a diverse array of outdoor activities are your things. California is lush. It's fertile. The weather is just plain nice most of the year. Yes, they have mudslides and wildfires and earthquakes, too, but the whole state of California is really just a pleasant postcard waiting to happen.

Yet, despite strong foreign in-migration to the Golden State, it had such strong domestic out-migration in the 2000s that California won't be adding any Congressional seats or Electoral College votes for the first time ever as a state.

The Barack Obama model draws most strongly from the models found in California, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Illinois. High tax. Pro-big labor. Big government. Lots of regulation. They've generally lost far more jobs and people to domestic migration than the national averages.

The rest of the states shouldn't have to suffer under the failing one-size-fits-all policies of Obamanomics. And the struggling states shouldn't be subsidized or bailed out by the Federal Government and/or solvent states. Good ideas will win.

If we're confident in the power of our ideas, let's marginalize Washington, D.C. and let the states compete and drive policy everywhere toward what works-- economic liberty.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas' Economy Unequivocally Shines.

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Texas Singlehandedly "Refudiates" Barack Obama's Entire Agenda; No Wonder Liberals Are In A Tizzy Trying To Knock It-

The establishment media see a threat to Barack Obama, their chosen one. While the nation remains mired in an President Obama-induced malaise, there is a place in the United States that has become the America of America. It's a place where private sector jobs are still being created. It's a place that, due to tremendous in-migration over the past decade, is gaining four all-important Electoral College votes, not to mention four new Congressional seats, at the expense of those states that lost their way.

There is still a land of opportunity in America, and it's called Texas.

No wonder, then, the establishment press, totally oblivious to facts, are out to paint Texas as some sort of failure of conservative economics. Whether or not Texas Governor Rick Perry does eventually decide to run against Barack Obama, it is the Texas limited government economic success story that single-handedly "refudiates" the entire Obama agenda.

While the nation has lost millions of jobs and generally been in a rut, Texas has remained resilient. From May 2006 to May 2011, Texas added more jobs than all other states combined:

The knock is usually that those are merely low-wage jobs. The truth? Some of those jobs are certainly low-wage jobs, of course, but Texas leads the nation in private sector wage growth in recent years. Texas also leads the nation in job growth in high-paying advanced industries like energy, manufacturing, aerospace, professional and business services, and financial activities.

CNN/NPR pundit Ruben Navarrette Jr. calls the Texas job story a "mirage." The New Repuplic calls the Texas economic miracle "phony." The Baltimore Sun calls the Texas economic resilience a "tall tale." The left-wing echo-chamber is loud and proud on this issue.

Back here in the real world, there's absolutely nothing phony or mythical about this:

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Texas is the real deal. Liberals can just claim "myth" all they want, but the numbers speak for themselves.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Is America's Shining City On A Hill.

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Former Republican Congressman Mark Foley's vague sex scandal (no lewd photos, no specifics, apparently no physical contact; just that he sent awkward text messages to young male pages) in the Fall of 2006 garnered more news coverage in September and October of 2006 than terrorism and the war in Iraq combined. It was the issue, peddled by the establishment media, in the 2006 campaign.

Indeed, the major television networks filed 152 stories on Foley in less than two weeks. Compare that to Democrat Congressman Mel Reynolds, a convicted child sex abuser:

Anthony Weiner benefited from this same establishment media double standard, as well:

In the first 12 days of that story, the networks “flooded the zone” with 152 stories (55 evening stories and 97 morning stories or segments).

By contrast, Democrat Weiner’s weeks of trying to avoid resignation didn’t draw a similar flood. In the first 12 days of the Weiner scandal (from May 29 through June 9), the networks filed only 56 stories (just 11 in the evening, 45 in the morning).

This includes partial stories, like Brian Williams introducing the scandal in a disdainful 20-second brief near the end of the June 3 newscast, in the midst of a news potpourri from politics to actresses who’d died. Williams lamented it was “the kind of thing that used to be people’s own business.”

....

the networks were twice as intense on the Foley story, long after he resigned (152 stories in 12 days is more than 12.6 stories per day) than on the entire Weiner scandal up to the resignation speech (113 stories in 19 days is less than six stories per day).

[populist rant]Every tweet you make. Every Facebook update you post. Every blog post you write. Every video you upload. Every newspaper subscription you cancel. Every action you take to create content outside the establishment media echo chamber, and every moment you consume alternative content outside the unfair and unbalanced network and newspaper media sphere, takes us a step closer to ending these biased, elitist Thought Oligopolies once and for all. They. Must. Be. Destroyed.[/populist rant]

Recently, there has been a great deal of controversy in Texas higher ed, particularly at Texas A&M and The University of Texas, about whether tuition and taxpayer dollars are being spent as efficiently and transparently as they should be.

Students are graduating with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and no great prospects for earning, and, increasingly, employers are saying that graduates are not even remotely prepared for the workplace.

Many professors and other faculty, it turns out, aren't really teaching that many, if any, classes. The excuse from the administration at our big public institutions is that they are busy researching. Research is a valuable endeavor (or can be, at least), but it turns out that only a tiny fraction of professors at UT are doing nearly all of the funded research.

Meanwhile, administrative staff and other overhead costs have continued to climb, and students and taxpayers just keep shoveling more and more money into the system, while taking on crippling levels of debt.

The question then turns to "excellence." It takes a lot of money and a lot of overhead and bureaucracy to create an excellent university, the thinking goes. Well, UT still has an embarrassingly low 4-year graduation rate, and both UT and A&M have not moved up in any significant way in any of those all-important national rankings over the past decade or so, even as their budgets have exploded.

Unfortunately, most media coverage on this issue has not really focused on affordability, transparency (isn't the press supposed to be pro-transparency?), accountability for tuition and tax dollars, or stagnation in the rankings. The focus has been on personalities. The reformers-- Governor Perry, his donors, and appointed Regents; versus the establishment-- State Senator Judith Zaffirini and UT President Bill Powers.

Lost in the shuffle: students, parents, taxpayers, and alumni. Not to mention big employers and entrepreneurs who need a high quality workforce to compete in the global economy.

Recently, a UT student decided to change the trajectory of the discussion:

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Texas Singlehandedly "Refudiates" Barack Obama's Entire Agenda-

Between April 2001 and April 2011, Texas created more net private sector jobs than all other net job-adding states combined:

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Go check the data yourself:

The inventory of private-sector jobs in Texas increased by 732,800 between April 2001 and the same month this year, according to an On Numbers analysis of new federal employment data.

No other state registered an increase of more than 100,000 private-sector jobs during the decade. Only 19 states and the District of Columbia posted any gains at all.

It bears repeating. Texas entrepreneurs and businesses created more new jobs over the past decade than those in all other states combined, and if you take the 31 job-losing states into account as well, it actually looks even more lopsided in favor of Texas.

No wonder the buzz about drafting Texas Governor Rick Perry to run against Barack Obama just continues to grow.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Right To Work States Beat Forced Unionism States; Texas Beats All.

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Everyone Should Have The Right To Work, Without Being Forced To Join Big Labor-

Some important stats on Right To Work states versus forced unionization states, courtesy of Senator Jim DeMint, who is doing his best to fend off the Federal Government's National Labor Relations Board, specifically regarding their decision to put the kibosh on Boeing opening new operations in South Carolina, a Right To Work state.

Right To Work states account for only 40.3% of the U.S. population:

But Right To Work states accounted for 59.4% of new private sector businesses since 1993:

And Right To Work states are growing faster in population, as people pack up and move to where the jobs are:

Forced-unionism states have lost a total of 25 Congressional seats over the past 30 years to Right To Work states.

Right To Work states added a net 497,041 private sector business establishments from 1993 to 2009, which is 46% greater than the 339,834 new private sector businesses added in forced-unionism states over that same period. Again, this is even more remarkable when you consider Right To Work states have a significantly smaller population:

Indeed, job creation is far more robust in Right To Work states (income growth, too):

Texas, a Right To Work state, has benefited from this distinction, but it has also helped to carry the load of the right to work state figures. Indeed, Texas is the only state among the top 20 in size to have more jobs than five years ago:

Indeed, in the last five years, Texas has created more jobs than all other states combined. Texas has created more private sector jobs, more manufacturing jobs, more exporting jobs, more high paying jobs, more financial sector jobs, and so on and so forth, over the past year, several years, decade, and just about any other reasonable time frame.

America could, as Michael Barone notes, learn a lot from Texas.

Indeed, look at the past ten years of private sector job growth (or lack thereof), via The Business Journals:

Texas has enjoyed an unequaled economic boom the past 10 years.

The inventory of private-sector jobs in Texas increased by 732,800 between April 2001 and the same month this year, according to an On Numbers analysis of new federal employment data.

No other state registered an increase of more than 100,000 private-sector jobs during the decade. Only 19 states and the District of Columbia posted any gains at all.

When it comes to creating jobs, creating wealth, and improving mankind, forced unionism is an antiquated notion. Low taxes, limited government, having the right to work without forced unionism, and limits to frivolous lawsuits have helped Texas surge and thrive, which might explain why so many people want to draft Texas Governor Rick Perry for President.

For the record, no politician should ever get sole credit for the economy, but Governor Perry "gets it" unlike almost any other elected official today when it comes to government doing a very few things right, preventing bad things from being done, and then getting the heck out of the way and letting the private sector do what the private sector does best (creating wealth and new jobs).

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Higher Education Productivity.

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Room For Improvement At The University of Texas at Austin-

An interesting new study out today highlights the vast disparities in teaching and research at UT:

Looking only at the UT Austin campus, if the 80 percent of the faculty with the lowest teaching loads were to teach just half as much as the 20 percent with the highest loads, and if the savings were dedicated to tuition reduction, tuition could be cut by more than half (or, alternatively, state appropriations could be reduced even more—by as much as 75 percent). Moreover, other data suggest a strategy of reemphasizing the importance of the undergraduate teaching function can be done without importantly reducing outside research funding or productivity.

....

* 20 percent of UT Austin faculty are teaching 57 percent of student credit hours. They also generate 18 percent of the campus’s research funding. This suggests that these faculty are not jeopardizing their status as researchers by assuming such a high level of teaching responsibility.

* Conversely, the least productive 20 percent of faculty teach only 2 percent of all student credit hours and generate a disproportionately smaller percentage of external research funding than do other faculty segments.

* Research grant funds go almost entirely (99.8 percent) to a small minority (20 percent) of the faculty; only 2 percent of the faculty conduct 57 percent of funded research.

* Non-tenured track faculty teach a majority of undergraduate enrollments and a surprising 31 percent of graduate enrollments.

* The most active researchers teach nearly the average of all faculty; increasing teaching loads of others would trivially impact outside research support.

Now time for the charts and graphs.

Teaching loads versus faculty costs:

Despite teaching 57% of the student credit hours, these 840 faculty account for only 28% of the total faculty costs at UT-Austin, or less than half of their teaching proportion. In terms of external research grants, these 840 faculty members generate 18% of the campus’s research funding –nearly their proportion of the total faculty.

....

Although this 80% of faculty carries a minority of the campus’s teaching load, it accounts for 72% of all faculty costs to the Austin campus.

....

Curiously enough, the explanation of such a low teaching load for the 20% of faculty with the lowest amount of teaching is not that they are otherwise occupied by research. Indeed, they bring in a disproportionately low amount of external research funding (13% of all external research grants)...

Another way to look at the productivity of the five quintiles:

Maybe this is just how any organization is-- the top quintile carries the rest of the group, but that's not an excuse for just letting it persist.

The excuse for data showing so many non-teaching professors was that they were busy doing research. Unfortunately, there may not as much research going on as we were made to believe:

20% of the faculty at UT-Austin accounts for over 99.8% of all research dollars; 10% of the faculty account for 91.2% of all research dollars at the University. Whereas 57% of the teaching is done by 20% of the faculty, in terms of externally funded research, roughly only 2% of the faculty conducts 57% of the funded research.

I am sure there are plenty of anecdotal exceptions to these data. I am sure there are some brilliant professors who do remarkable things that somehow don't show up in the data. That may very well be the case, and more analysis is probably needed to explain those exceptions, but this study is a great first step toward improving the efficiency at our big public institutions of learning.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Foreclosure Rates.

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Texas Dominates Again-

The Texas mortgage foreclosure rate in April 2011 was roughly half the national rate, and far below the rate in California:

Meanwhile, sales tax collections in Texas were up 11.4% in April, relative to April 2010.

Obamanomics isn't helping America get out of our national economic funk nearly fast enough.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: It Ain't Bragging If It's True.

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Texas Cities Dominate-

Forbes magazine just named its Best Cities for Jobs 2011 list, and Texas cities once again dominate:

...no place displayed more vibrancy than Texas. The Lone Star State dominated the three size categories, with the No. 1 mid-sized city, El Paso (No. 3 overall, up 22 places from last year) and No.1 large metropolitan area Austin (No. 6 overall), joining Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood (the No. 1 small city) atop their respective lists.

Texas also produced three other of the top 10 smallest regions, including energy-dominated No. 4 Midland, which gained 41 places overall, and No. 10 Odessa, whose economy jumped a remarkable 57 places. It also added two other mid-size cities to its belt: No. 2 Corpus Christi and No. 4 McAllen-Edinburgh-Mission.

Whatever they are drinking in Texas, other states may want to imbibe. California–which boasted zero regions in the top 150–is a prime example. Indeed, a group of California officials, led by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, recently trekked to the Lone Star State to learn possible lessons about what drives job creation.

Let's break those down a bit more.

Out of 243 small cities, Texas had 3 of the top 4, 4 of the top 8, and 7 of the top 25:

Looking at medium and large sized cities tells a similar story:

Of 90 medium-sized cities, Texas has 3 of the top 5, plus number 18.

Of 65 large cities examined, Texas had 4 of the top 5, plus number 15.

Then there's CEO Magazine, which yet again named Texas its number one state for business, just this week.

Not to mention: Texas' major cities all have unemployment rates below the national average and especially below the rates in California cities:

It's not bragging if it's true. Despite Barack Obama's clear targeting of Texas, Texas thrives. That must be driving him a little bit crazy. No wonder he lost his cool with Texas reporter Brad Watson:

Texas is in Obama's head, but in all the wrong ways.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Versus Other Top 20 States.

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Texas Adds Jobs, Nobody Else Does-

The past few years have not been so good to the economy of the United States of America. Looking at the top twenty states in population, Texas is the only state to have more jobs today than it had five years ago:

Meanwhile, Texas is cleaning up the air faster than nearly any other state and its educational outcomes are outpacing the nation.

The Obama administration has Texas in its cross-hairs. We can't let them undermine the Texas success story.

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Previous Trivia Tidbit: Texas Versus Michigan.

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Texas > Michigan-

The motor city is in a funk, despite the Chrysler television ads depicting a classic, gritty resilience in Detroit.

Detroit lost a quarter of its population over the past decade:

Detroit's population plunged 25% in the past decade to 713,777, the lowest count since 1910, four years before Henry Ford offered $5 a day to autoworkers, sparking a boom that quadrupled the Motor City's size in the first half of the 20th century.

The Motor City's 237,493-resident decline helped make Michigan the only state to experience a net population loss since 2000.

According to 2010 Census figures released Tuesday, the city lost, on average, one resident every 22 minutes between 2000 and 2010.

....

Fueled by the implosion of the domestic auto industry, the Motor City's 237,493-resident decline helped make Michigan the only state to experience a net population loss since 2000.

Overall, the state's population fell by about 54,000, a 0.6% decline at a time when the nation's population grew about 9.7%. Michigan's population in the decade peaked in 2006 and has been declining since, according to Census figures.

Here's what that population decline looks like, as people have moved out of union-and-liberal-dominated Detroit for greener pastures:

People in Detroit packed up and moved to places like Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas.

Contrast that with Williamson County, a suburban county bordering Travis County (Austin) in Texas:

While Detroit lost roughly 175 thousand people in the past decade, Williamson County, Texas grew 64.3%, adding roughly a quarter million people over the same time.

Williamson County is not unusual in Texas, either. Montgomery County (The Woodlands, North of Houston) grew 52.4%, adding more than a 150 thousand people. Denton County, just North of Fort Worth, added more than 200 thousand people, growing at a rate of 52.1%. Tarrant County (Fort Worth) itself grew by 23.8%, adding more than 300,000 people.

There's a reason Texas is gaining new Congressional seats and Michigan is losing them. There's a reason Texas is adding more jobs than any other state, especially Michigan. There's a reason Texas, not Michigan or California, is by far the top exporting state in America.

If you're actually sitting there wondering what the reason(s) might be, go peruse the WILLisms.com archives for a little while and report back.

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