-By Warner Todd Huston
As the Texas legislature debates its own version of North Carolina’s bill to protect vulnerable women and children in public restrooms, some Lone Star lawmakers have fallen for a false report issued by the president of the Texas Association of Business (TAB) who has floated debunked claims predicting dire economic repercussions if the state passes the bill into law.
The state has been debating the merits of Senate Bill 6, also known as the Texas “bathroom bill,” meant to protect the privacy of women and children and maintaining that people must use facilities based only on their birth gender.
The measure is similar to North Carolina’s year-old HB2 which brought attacks from liberals across the country and sparked boycotts by entertainers and sports leagues.
North Carolina was hit with a series of boycotts by entertainers and sports leagues after it passed its own bathroom bill early in 2016. The threat of boycotts is what TAB President Chris Wallace warned about in his debunked report insisting that Texas would loose billions if it were to pass its own bathroom bill. Wallace warned Texas legislators that passing SB 6 would cost the state up to 185,000 jobs and as much as $8.5 billion in lost revenues, according to Breitbart News.
But even the purported “successful” boycotts launched against North Carolina were a dismal failure.
Despite the many boycotts, as 2016 came to a close it became clear that North Carolina suffered little by way of economic pain from the efforts launched to punish the Tar Heel State for a bill critics claimed was “transphobic.”
In spite of the boycotts, North Carolina appears to have realized little negative economic impact. In one case, the numbers show that hotel revenue saw no major dip. Indeed, “the state’s economy didn’t miss a beat,” according to the Washington Times.
North Carolina also ended 2016 coming in fourth place in the nation for attracting and expanding its businesses and jobs. Proof that the boycotts didn’t hurt this sector is seen in the fact that North Carolina was fourth in the nation in this category in 2015, as well. Clearly these boycotts had no impact on the business climate. In addition, the state’s unemployment rate saw no increase, showing business owners were not firing employees because of boycotts.
Earlier this year North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor, Dan Forest, scoffed at the boycotts saying that they may have only affected only a scant “one-tenth of 1 percent of our annual GDP.”
So, even as TAB’s Wallace warned Texas about ruinous boycotts, we already have proof that such boycotts are essentially toothless. But that didn’t deter Wallace whose report was filled with dire warnings.
In fact, as Breitbart News notes, the left-wing Politifact even helped debunk Wallace’s warnings calling his claims “mostly false” and saying TAB’s predictions of economic disaster was “shaky.”
Noting that many of the predictions that were made based on other states haven’t panned out, Politifact concluded, “not all the study’s numbers, calculations and assumptions proved solid and a key figure, reflecting on Indiana losing $1.5 billion in conventions, doesn’t appear to have a documented basis.”
So far much of Wallace’s outsized claims of financial ruin for the State of Texas are based on wishful thinking. Indeed, many suspect that Wallace is more interested in pushing a liberal political ideology than in truthfully representing Texas businesses with his thoroughly debunked report.
Dr. Steve Hotze, M.D., publisher of the Conservative Republicans of Texas News, points out that Wallace has a clear liberal voting record and his political donations “tell you everything about his political allegiances and philosophy.”
Chris Wallace’s political allegiances and philosophy are demonstrated by his voting record and by his political contributions to the Texas Democrat Party, to numerous Democrat candidates and to the No Nonsense in November PAC that opposed the Texas Constitution Marriage Amendment in 2005.
Wallace has made contributions to the Texas Democrat Party, Al Gore against George Bush in 2004, Obama for America in 2008, Bill White for Governor against Gov. Abbott in 2009 and 2010, Wendy Davis against Gov. Abbott in 2014, Leticia van de Putte against Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in 2014, and four separate contributions to the Human Rights Commission PAC in 2016. The Human Rights Commission PAC describes itself as the “largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization.” The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) PAC supports candidates who “have a solid history of support for lesbian and gay equality” (www.hrc.org). In 2016, the HRC opposed Donald Trump, while supporting Hillary Clinton. Wallace financially supports this homosexual front group.
Wallace has voted numerous times in the Democrat Primary, and yet he has been hired as the spokesman for conservative Texas businessmen.
So far, SB6 passed the Texas Senate on March 15 in a lopsided 21-10 vote. But the bill is headed back to the state House of Representatives where it may face a steeper hill to climb for passage.
The bill has yet to be scheduled for its House committee hearing and it is possible it may never be called and could die on the schedule. But supporters are hopeful.
“All we want is an up or down vote,” Harris County GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill told Breitbart Texas on Sunday. “The people should not be denied the right to know where their representatives stand on this issue.”
North Carolina and Texas are not the only states looking to pass some form of a bathroom bill to protect vulnerable women and children. Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, all have been considering similar bills.
Arizona introduced such a bill but it failed to pass and was withdrawn. South Dakota’s legislature also passed its bill but it was vetoed by the state’s governor.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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