The Politics of Cruelty: Greg Abbott

This is not intended to amuse. It is no joke. You may not like what I have to say. Too bad. If you don’t, start your own blog. Nothing’s stopping you.

I suppose it’s no secret that I and a lot of other people don’t approve of what is going on at the Texas-Mexico border. Now, exactly what is going on is not entirely clear. I suppose you might say, “Hey, go down and see for yourself. Then start yelling.” That’s fair enough, but I’m afraid it isn’t going to happen. It’s been running around 106 to 107 degrees Fahrenheit in Laredo, and honestly, I’m not looking to die this week. Which is part of the issue, by the way. I don’t give a rat’s backside whether you take climate change seriously or not. The heat in the Southwest is killing people; we know that. And migrants are people too. Repeat that, slowly, to yourself. These are human beings. These are human beings.

I say that because sometimes I get the impression from some of my oldest acquaintances–friends they’re not, that they don’t quite believe that. You know, if you spent your life up in the Northeast, especially in the more affluent burbs of Philly, Texas is a long, long way from home. If you grew up in Delaware County or Upper Merion or some equally enlightened place, you probably can’t reflexively find El Paso on a map, much less Piedras Negras, or, God forbid, Falfurrias. Did you know there was a Pasadena, TX? I didn’t think so. You never been in one of these sunlit climes. And you got no real intention of coming, do you, unless it’s to bask on the cool waters of the Riverwalk in San Antonio like the C of C wants you to do, and go home raving about the food, the vaguely exotic population, and the margaritas. Have a few brews, maybe sin a bit, and then go back to the land of the picket fence. Bless yore heart.

I, however, live here. Here being South Texas, a scant 3 hours from the border. You know, grin, some of my best friends are Mexicans. Real live ones. Both in country and in exile. Speaking whatever language they speak–some of them better English than you when they don’t choose to spare your feelings. Yeah. On the level. Some of them even can read and cipher. Imagine that.

I bet Greg Abbott can’t.

Greg Abbott, you may know, is the Governor of Texas. He has a politically incorrect nickname among some native Texans because of his disability. I’ll spare you. I don’t know why. He wouldn’t return the favor. Besides, the toy is cute.

Legend has it that Mr Abbott is very smart. I mean he is a graduate of The University (in Texas, there is only one that matters, Trinity, Rice and A&M notwithstanding) and Vanderbilt Law. I have no idea about his intellectual capacities. I really don’t care. I only see him as an evil man. Yup. It’s personal. He’s not the only one. There are a passel of Texas Republicans I regard in more or less the same light. You know, Paxton, Cruz, Dan Patrick. Not all of them are native Texans. But Greg Abbott is. Check out his cloven hoof. No wonder he can’t walk.

When we were suffering under the reign of Rick Perry the Idiot, I figured stuff couldn’t get much worse. He was corrupt as Hell, maybe a few other interesting things too, but then he went off to DC where rumor has it he had some supervisory capacity over our nuclear weapons. No. I ain’t shitting you. Gov Whoops certainly did. https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/12/rick-perry-manager-of-nukes-000260/ Scary, huh? Trump at the wheel and Rick Perry riding shotgun. But Rick is off doing something else these days. It’s isn’t rotting in Hell, so I really don’t care.

Now I’ve always hard a hard time with Texas Democrats. I have always sort of blamed them for Jack Kennedy getting his head blown off in Dallas, a place I truly despise for its legacy of assassination, the Dallas Cowboys, and that miserable DFW airport. I’ll spare you the Yarborough-Connolly stuff that got JFK here to begin with. Anyway, that’s just brains under the overpass, like water under the bridge. Yup. They do love their guns in Texas, as JFK found out. But if anything, the latest iterations of the Texas dems have grown increasingly useless. For me, the low point was when Phil Gramm got elected over Victor “Pickup Truck” Morales in 1996. Morales didn’t have a campaign headquarters, didn’t particularly like raising money and was the darling of the Left. He got 43 percent of the vote against Gramm. Some idiot columnist in San Antonio said “It’s ok. Victor had his principles.” I was so incensed I wrote the guy a letter and said I’m sick of Democrats with principles. I want to vote for one who wins. Phil of course went on to give us the financial deregulation known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley that came to fruition in the near wipeout of 2007, the catastrophe that Phil called “a mental recession.” Imbecile, even for an economist from A&M who apparently could not read a balance sheet. But his bs sold well here, and I had to fight off an effort to keep the guy from getting ensconced my department after he retired from his life of public service. I won.

Still, it was illustrative of the nebulous zone of quasi-reality in which a lot of Texans (especially Republicans) seem to live. After all, Trump’s bs had its own shock troops here, so go figure, if you can keep your lunch down. Ole Greg presided over the catastrophic freeze of February 2021 in which over 200 Texans died. We went through the best part of the week with no heat and no power, surviving mostly by periodic trips to our car to warm up or to recharge phones. Greg let the energy “market” in Texas known as ERCOT fix that by allowing electricity prices to rise from $30 to $1200 to balance excess demand with a collapsing supply. That worked real good (a rising relative price will not, in the short run, remove a hard supply constraint, like lines freezing or windmills freezing up. You’re basically telling people to pay, pray and freeze. The “magic” of the market. Higher prices don’t magically unfreeze a grid), Greg. You should’ve run off to Cancun with Rafa Cruz. But, hey, it didn’t matter did it? You killed people and still got reelected, and they were Texans. Hell if they are Messicans or some kind of other furriners coming across the Rio Grande to be greeted by razor wire, no drinking water, and a shove back into the river, it ain’t like they vote? So you go, boy.

Abbott, like Dubyah (George W Bush, hijo) is what they call here a “good ole boy.” You know, you go screw up an entire country, but then get taxied to a navy carrier and strut around (slightly green at the gills) in a flight suit while “Mission Accomplished” signs decorate your presence. Good ole boy. Kept them grapefruit in the Valley safe from Commies during Veet Nam. You gotta understand, this preference for political nonsense goes way back, to 1836, and the Alamo, where a bunch of slave-owning Rebels against the authority of the Mexican government (which had abolished Black slavery) decided that they were gonna preserve freedom by keeping their Blacks enslaved and defying Mexico. Texas. Born in slavery! Got it? That was the Alamo. Now them nasty Mexicans put Davy and Travis and the rest to the sword–as if shooting rebels is anything unusual (well, there is the case of Trump and January 6, but that one baffles me even more). You know, we hang together, as the said in the American Revolution. Or we hang separately. Yup. That’s the way it works. Except in Texas. Then you get a high school named after you. Maybe a missile base.

Which brings us to why Texans just HATE government and taxes. You know: government is tyranny. Except when we benefit from it.

https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2022/sep/military.php

Damn. Military spending contributes 67 billion dollars to gross output in Texas. That’s billion, with a “b.” Even the Comptroller of the Lone Star state admits it (click the link for facts, as opposed to baloney).

And man, if we hate government in Texas, we really hate taxes. That’s Texas, Not Taxes. Cute. Except it’s nonsense. The average tax burden in Texas is about 8 percent, which is actually higher than Pennsylvania. 50 percent of it is excise and sales, which means it is–can you spell regressive?– it is paid by those with the lowest capacity to pay. What is low is tax on personal income, since Texas has no personal income tax, where Texas really shines. Otherwise, Texas is about average, actually 10 percent below the national average.

So what’s with Taxes? Texas is, by some standards, awful. The second most regressive in the country. But what the Hell, that simply means the poor pay, and if you have a high income, Texas wants You!!!! Yeah, you’ll love it here, if the heat or the cold doesn’t kill your first. You want facts. CLICK. THE. LINK. Taxman not gonna bother you that much. Great!

Heaven for the rich. Hell for the poor. Just as God in HIS wisdom (and it is HIS) intended, right? Why should anyone give a damn about the poor?

http://text=Washington%20State%20is%20the%20most,most%20regressive%20state%20tax%20systems.

Now, if you haven’t heard of Jesus, believe me, come to Texas and you will. Honestly. I see His name on billboards here. I could swear I saw an official Texas license plate with three crucifixes on it, although the heat may have gotten to me. No. I wasn’t dreaming. It exists. Here’s the proof. Now, if I recall my catechism and Bible study classes correctly (maybe not, I am Catholic, not Baptist), Luke 6: 20-21 said

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh

Ohhhh, shit. I mean, in Texas, even the Jews are Christians. So if you are a Christian, Jesus, the dude on the license plate there, said the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor.

Really?

I thought in Texas it was blessed are the poor, for we shall tax them. It’s taxes, not Texas.

So, when you come right down to it, his Lowness, King Abbott, is really just a reflection of the state he governs. A monument to hypocrisy, greed, and ethnic hatred. Sort of like the Alamo, but bigger. Abbott does what he does because it gets him elected. And what gets him elected is what Texans hold dear. You don’t like it? Tough.

And people vote for Abbott because they like what he stands for. Cruelty. Philistinism. Anti-intellectualism. Racism. He is like the Tastykake of Governors. All the good things wrapped up in one, as we used to say in Philly.

Well, if Texas is, as they say, minority-majority, why not just vote the rascals out?

Hey, Abbott and his buddies have worked on that one too. It’s hard to vote in Texas, believe me. Almost as difficult as it is anywhere in the USA. Don’t believe me? Click the link.

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/elj.2022.0041

I have personally filed four complaints in one election about things I saw at the polls. Fat lot of difference it made. I know people who have been disqualified for no apparent reason at all–except maybe they ain’t Republicans.

I am going to stop, because you have probably heard enough.

Yesterday, I talked to someone in a car with California plates. I told them to think hard about what they were doing. Because big mistakes are not easy to undo. Dude laughed. You make a choice, you live with it. I

I guess my neighbors don’t particularly mind. What the Hell. Texas. Not Texas.