On NBC Nightly News (8/16/11):

ANDREA MITCHELL: Perry's Texas swagger is his calling card, bred of a hardscrabble boyhood on the family farm and Aggie roots at Texas A&M. Perry's chief claim to challenging President Obama is the Texas jobs record. Perry says his state produced 40 percent of all the jobs created across America in the last two years, with an unemployment rate at 8.2 percent, well below the national average, partly because of the oil and gas boom, partly because of growing trade with Mexico and federal defense spending in Texas.

Since Perry's campaign is based almost entirely on his state's jobs miracle, it's not too much to ask that journalists get this straight.

An 8.2 percent unemployment rate is not "well below the national average."  The national rate is a little over 9 percent. So, yes, Texas is doing better than the country as a whole--but not by much. Compare Texas to other states, though, and things don't look so great: The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 26 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas.

The speculation about whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry will jump into the Republican presidential race boils down to one word: Jobs. Perry's state has been generating jobs at an impressive rate--which Perry likes to think is due to low taxes and lax regulations. Some of the coverage points to important caveats--the booming oil economy, for instance, and rapid population growth both make Texas fairly unrepresentative.

Today the Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece by Ana Campoy and Sara Murray  about the Texas miracle. The papers shows that many of these jobs are in the public sector; a million total new jobs over the past decade, but roughly "300,000 of the new Texas jobs were in government."

What's more, this graph accompanying the piece shows the rate of private sector job creation declining since 2008, while the rate of growth in  public employment* continues to rise:

The Journal includes this typical line from Perry:

"Government doesn't create any jobs," he said last month on Glenn Beck's show on Fox News. "They can actually run jobs away."

He's partly right. As the Journal points out, Perry's budget cuts will lead to job losses in the public sector, particularly in the public schools. While he might not deserve credit for the Texas job boom, he can claim credit for some likely job losses.

*Note: Corrected to more accurately reflect the chart (thanks to commenter Kyle O.)

The United Farm Workers have a new action alert (7/24/09) about "an education war going on in Texas" they note has "major national implications as Texas is such a major purchaser of textbooks and their state’s required curriculum drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide."

Specifically, "the Texas State Board of Education is currently preparing to adopt new social studies curriculum standards" informed by certain "experts" who

are arguing that the state’s social studies and history textbooks are giving "too much attention" to some of the most prominent civil rights leaders in U.S. History, namely Cesar Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

David Barton, one of these "experts," claimed Cesar Chávez "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others." Another of these "experts" evangelical minister Peter Marshall said, "To have Cesar Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin"--as in the current standards--"is ludicrous." He went on to say Chávez is not a role model who "ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation."

The same "expert" wants to eliminate Thurgood Marshall, a prominent civil rights leader who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of an important historical figure to be presented to Texas students.

To the UFW, complaints of an "over-representation of minorities" are particularly "ironic in light of the changing demographics of our country"--where, "sadly, Latino and African-American children have the highest drop-out rates in the country."

Take action against cultural censorship by telling the Texas State Board of Education chair and vice chair "to ensure schools are providing students with role models and historical figures whose experiences reflect their own."