There’s a lesson here, and it’s not very subtle. When a man in Marietta, Texas, shot at an armadillo last week, the critter’s tough hide sent the .38-caliber slug ricocheting back at the Darwinially challenged assailant, striking him in the face.

In other words, don’t mess with Texas armadillos.

As the Reuters news agency reports, “the man was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where his jaw was wired shut.”

In Texas, we call that justice.

Which brings us to TheNew York Times’ Paul Krugman, who just can’t stop predicting the demise of the Texas economy.

“So it’s interesting to note that Texas is looking a lot less miraculous lately than it used to,” Krugman wrote in June. “To be fair, we’re talking about a modest stumble, not a collapse. Still, events in Texas and other states – notably Kansas and California – are providing yet another object demonstration that the tax-cut obsession that dominates the modern Republican Party is all wrong.”

Here’s the problem with that statement. Texas is doing just fine, economically.

“A funny thing has happened to the economic miracle in Texas that liberals predicted would go bust along with oil prices,” the Wall Street Journal reported last month. “America’s foremost state job creator of the past decade continues to produce opportunity and employment. Last week’s ‘beige book’ release from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas shows that despite the struggling oil and gas industry, the Texas economy is still enjoying moderate growth. Since prices in the oil patch began sliding a year ago, pundits on the political left have been waiting for evidence to declare the Texas model a failure. They’re still waiting.”

Lacking any actual evidence, Krugman falls back on the straw man argument about the “Texas model”: “conservatives have long held Texas up as a supposed demonstration that low taxes on the rich and harsh treatment of the poor are the keys to prosperity.”

That’s not the model, of course, nor is it even an accurate summation of Republican aims. The Texas model, instead, is low taxes for everyone and a regulatory environment free of barriers to prosperity.

“The Texas strategy of avoiding burdensome taxation and regulation has attracted a variety of businesses across many industries that have diversified the state economy,” the Journal explains. “Texas still has no personal or corporate income tax. New Gov. Greg Abbott has been annoying the left even more by taking a hatchet to business franchise and property levies.”

In fact, Abbott has gleefully been traveling the country, working to lure companies from high-tax states to Texas. Companies such as Caterpillar and Kubota have responded.

That must disturb folks like Paul Krugman, who has been writing off the “Texas unmiracle” since at least 2011.

“What you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment,” he claimed back then.

Careful, Dr. Krugman. Taking a few shots at Texas is all well and good, but that hide is pretty tough.