Texas shows us all how the corruption that overwhelmed the GOP has reached a crisis point and is killing people.
president Dwight Eisenhower said“If a political party is not based on a determination to advance a right and moral cause, then it is not a political party; it is just a conspiracy to take power.”
Unfortunately, Eisenhower’s Republican Party is here now: it has not ruled since the Reagan Revolution to protect or aid the people at the federal or state level. Today they just deal with one instead corrupt Form of political performance art as they cram their pockets with corporate money.
Example today: Greg Abbott.
Corrupt Texas Governor Greg Abbott is the figurehead of selling the corrupt Republicans to the fossil fuel industry. And the consequence of that will almost certainly kill hundreds of Texans this summer. But Abbott really doesn’t want you to think about it.
His latest scam to divert Texans’ attention from this wrongdoing is to proudly declare that Texas is asserting its rights to refuse supervision or even advice by the federal government in the context of the 10th additional article.
Texas, like most red states, takes in more federal dollars than they send to Washington DC; Rather than just referring to Governor Abbott as “corrupt,” it is probably time to call him a “welfare queen,” a phrase very much loved by Republicans, at least when they apply it to black women.
But the real “welfare” that Abbott and the whole riot of Texas Republicans have lived on for decades is the money pouring down the throats of the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it has created each year through campaign contributions and dark money endorsements .
For example, in 2014, the good citizens of Denton County Texas who were fed up with fracking air and water pollution, passed a voting initiative that forbids it in their district by over 60%.
The sold-out Republicans of Texas responded immediately House bill 40, which Governor Abbott enthusiastically signed, which “gives the state exclusive jurisdiction over oil and gas operations and prohibits local communities from enacting ordinances that prohibit, restrict, or regulate oil and gas operations …”
That’s the Republican Republican motto of Texas: “Fuck the people; we’re only doing what is necessary to help the fossil fuel billionaires who own us.”
Back in 1999, then Governor George W. Bush, himself a multimillionaire with fossil fuels, separated almost the entire power grid of Texas from those of the neighboring states in order to avoid state supervision. He transferred the then largely privatized network to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
Bush called it, “The Nation’s Largest Experiment in Electrical Deregulation.”
It turned out to be an extraordinarily expensive and deadly experiment that continues to weigh on Texas to this day.
As The Wall Street Journal noted months ago: “These deregulated residential customers in Texas have paid $ 28 billion more for their electricity since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates billed to customers of the state’s traditional utilities, according to the Journal’s analysis of Federal Energy Information “Administration.”
This money, of course, flowed mostly into the pockets of wealthy investors, CEOs of power companies, and filled the campaign coffers of Texas Republican politicians. It certainly did not do much to strengthen or make the state’s power generation systems or distribution network more robust.
The result was that last winter, when climate change sent a massive cold spell to Texas, estimated 800 people died and the state suffered billions in property damage.
Of course, individual Texans and small businesses take up the lion’s share of this tab. It’s the Republican way, after all: privatize profits, distribute them among corrupt Republican politicians, and burden the public with the costs.
Now it’s NOAA Predicting one of the hottest, driest summers in Texas history because of the climate crisis, and already at temperatures this week only in the 80s and 90s, ERCOT and Abbott had to ask Texans to set their air conditioners above 78 ° C so that the network does not fail.
Abbott – with much pomp and ceremony – gave one Implementing ordinance that prohibits private and public institutions from requesting masks to protect himself from a deadly pandemic, but it seems to do him good to tell people they can’t enjoy their air conditioning so he can pour the fossil fuel money into the horribly corrupt Republican Party of Texas.
The prospect of enduring brutal heat and expecting massive blackouts throughout the summer doesn’t exactly make Abbott and his Republican cronies popular with the average Texan voter. As a result, Abbott has developed a ton of activities to make it seem like he’s actually doing something.
As mentioned earlier, under the 10th Amendment, he only declared the state “sovereign”, as if that were one thing. When he announced it on Twitter, he was buried amid mockery and questions from Texans what this has to do with their lights not going out this summer.
Dig deeper and deeper into the warm embrace of fossil fuel billionaires The Texas Legislature has just SB 13. adoptedthat “would require the state of Texas and its institutions (including state pension funds and the state’s huge K-12 school equipment) to cut ties with companies that refuse to invest in fossil fuels.”
Correctly. If your company is looking to do business with the state of Texas or invest in your company’s stocks or bonds, make damn sure you are throwing money into the fossil fuel industry, or at least owning a huge pile of inventory.
As Indivisible Texas Notes: “SB 13 creates a complicated system of lists, reports and oversight of companies who, for whatever reason, prefer not to do business with fossil fuel companies!”
Corruption like this is no joke; it has already cost Texas taxpayers $ 28 billion and 800 lives, and more is in the pipeline. And the answer from the Republican politicians in Texas is to make it harder for Texans to vote.
In one state after another, Americans see the GOP transform from a legitimate political party into an arm of giant corporations and the billionaires they have created, all while manipulating the system to stay in office.
In some states the GOP mostly dances with the fossil fuel industry, which is destroying our climate and poisoning us; in others, it is the health insurance or big pharma industries that are helping bankrupt and addicting Americans, or the student or payday loan industries that are shattering the American dream.
The arms industry makes billions while America sees mass shootings every day that Republicans do nothing about.
In their wake every year are over 30,000 dead from firearms, 500,000 Bankruptcies because someone in the family got sick, young people who for decades have not escaped debt, and a landscape full of ruined lives and suicides.
None of these things happen in any other developed country. But no other developed nation has a major political party that has become a serial killer of their country’s people and rules like the mafia.
As Eisenhower warned, the GOP has become “just a conspiracy to seize power”. And the tragic result is a weakened, potholed, polluted and impoverished America.
If the party cannot reform it must follow the Whig path and be freed from its misery. The American people – even Republican voters – deserve better.
This article was created by Economy for everyone, a project by the Independent Media Institute.
Comments are closed.