For those of you who are too young to remember, the Three Stooges were slapstick comedians that were immensely popular during the 1950’s, 1960’s. They amplified physical farces which made them belly hurting hilarious. Baby boomers like me grew up watching these guys on TV. They made us laugh our heads off. We chuckled because they were so hopelessly dumb and silly. We knew they were silly and dumb acts but we enjoyed every moment of their farces. Because comedy was pure entertainment. None of it hurt us. Laughing felt good. And it’s always nice to know someone can be sillier and dumber than one at one’s most dumb and silly moments.
But things are a little different where political, ideological stooges are concerned. Their acts are not funny at all because in most cases their sham shows throw a majority of hard working Texans under the bus. (Obamacare will bring us death panels! Ebola is going to kill us all! HB2 will protect women! Tax breaks for the rich will lift all boats! If we don’t invade Iraq there will be a mushroom cloud in our backyard!)
There are plenty of willful modern day political stooges such as the bunch below. Here we have the Angry, the Dumb and the Crazy Dumb Stooges. Not to mention there are dumb Stooges like the Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General of Texas. Now, these boys are not slapstick silly clowns like the original Three Stooges.
But they are pretty damned dumb. And mean-spirited to boot. They are not dumb because they lack a proper education or the appropriate credentials to serve in their offices. Well, perhaps except for our esteemed Attorney General, Ken Paxton, who has been indicted on three felony charges. And there is more breaking news, as I type, about our Attorney General’s past schemes and swindles.
But Texas is apparently accustomed to dishonest chameleons serving in high offices. And willfully dumb leaders in a state that promotes stupidity as something to be proud of, in no small part due to the snake oil Stooge from Baltimore.
In my view, the Texas top 3 stooges are dumb because their mendacious buffoonery is distinct and transparent.
Frankly, the stupid rocks/religious extremism/ideological chest pummeling coupled with thinly veiled bigotry and fear mongering is an act to cover up a very stark fact. And that fact would be that most, if not all, Texas Republican politicians are puppets for powerful big moneyed interests. They serve in office to take care of their cronies and fat cat donors. With the intention of enriching themselves in the process. We need only recall the case of the state’s cancer institute (CPRIT) in which our honorable leaders are known to loot state agencies’ piggy banks when no one is looking. There is a reason why Texas Republicans have an unholy aversion to oversight and regulation.
So, moving along, we have the very angry and fearful Stooge, the snake oil Stooge from Baltimore, MD who has a knack for changing his name and reinventing himself, as well as a smarmy crooked Stooge who pals around with a close buddy in an elected judicial office. Together these boys have a habit of throwing Texas taxpayers under the bus.
So. What does this mean for everyday average Joe and Jane Texan? The boys and girls in charge aren’t looking out for you or me. They are instead far more concerned about their own personal ambitions than they are of serving their state as elected public servants.
I apologize if I made you snort out your coffee. I know that the thought of any kind of servant serving the public meaningfully in the ruby red state of Texas is a fairy tale. I think the former Mayor of Houston, Bill White, is the only politician that I recall who viewed himself as a public servant.
So. How are the state’s Republican policies affecting you and me?
For starters, the Texas Republican’s war on women’s reproductive health and its assault on Planned Parenthood have resulted in nearly 240,000 self-induced abortions.
A new study quantifies some of those fears: At least 100,000 Texas women—and as many as 240,000—between the ages of 18 and 49 have attempted to self-induce abortions, according to a report released today by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP). The study also found that it is possible that the rate of women attempting to self-induce abortions is rising in Texas as a result of the state's additional restrictions on abortion care. The report points to previous studies that have explored the correlation between a rise in abortion restrictions and the prevalence of self-induced abortions. A 2008 national study found that about 2 percent of women reported that they tried to terminate pregnancies on their own. In 2012, a year after Texas passed several new abortion restrictions, a study of Texas women seeking care at an abortion clinic found that about 7 percent reported attempting to end their pregnancies without medical assistance before seeking clinic care.
It certainly is a farce that the intention for the anti-abortion law HB2 is to protect women. Let’s face it. The real aim here is to control and punish women, especially impoverished women and women of color. For having sex.
"This is the latest body of evidence demonstrating the negative implications of laws like HB2 that pretend to protect women but in reality place them, and particularly women of color and economically disadvantaged women, at significant risk," said Dr. Daniel Grossman, one of the study's co-authors and a professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California-San Francisco, in a press call Tuesday morning.
How else have GOP self-serving willful negligence and/or mean-spirited decisions helped we the people?
The refusal to accept federally expanded Medicaid has certainly rung the death knell for many of us.
Beyond the economics and politics, lives are at stake. Lack of insurance will certainly mean more deaths. How many more? Approximately 9,000 a year, according to Dr. Howard Brody, director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Brody calculated that figure by extrapolating from a recent Harvard University study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that found that states that expanded Medicaid saw a 6.1 percent reduction in the death rate among adults below 65 who qualified for the program. In a recent op-ed in the Galveston Daily News Brody wrote, “This means that we can predict, with reasonable confidence, if we fail to expand Medicaid . . . 9,000 Texans will die each year for the next several years as a result.”
We already knew from past and current ideologies and decisions that the cold and cruel GOP aren’t that concerned with the suffering of the “undeserving” poor. But in a state in which conservatives like to crow about their fiscally responsible policies, their stubborn noncompliance with Medicaid is costing us billions. Former Governor Rick Perry and current Governor Greg Abbott shrug off the plight of the uninsured poor. They relegate their health care needs to hospital ERs in which taxpayers pick up the tab. How unsurprising for the anti-tax firebrands to stick additional taxes and fees on we the wee ones.
So far Greg Abbott is proving to be a leader leading by his worst impulses. He must listen 24/7 to right wing hate talkers, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Houston’s Michael Berry, or he over consumes Breitbart and Fox propaganda. Most of which is ugly conspiracy theory, opinion, falsehoods and bigotry. Abbott certainly did not hesitate to jump on board the Tea Party’s fear mongering over the U.S. Jade Helm military exercises in S. Texas last summer. The feds are coming in to take away our guns and lock us up in FEMA camps! Everybody panic! Obama is on his way! Run before the black dude gets here!
There’s nothing like throwing in with a bunch of paranoid sociopaths. Of course, palling around with the loony tunes crowd is probably easier than governing and making hard choices on behalf of all Texans.
Before and after an election.
When running for office Greg Abbott promised pre-K expansion.
His State of the State address was the most soporific I’ve seen, and his agenda for the legislative session is not exactly inspired. His much-talked-about pre-K expansion, for example, turns out to be not even a half-measure; the proposed $130 million increase doesn’t even return Texas to pre-2011 funding levels. In the standoff—at least at press time—between the House and Senate over which massive tax cut to undertake, Abbott has been conspicuously absent. Is he shrewdly not showing his hand, or does he not have one? Abbott has been generally AWOL during the session, prompting the routine question: Where’s the governor? Occasionally he’s found on Twitter, retweeting half-literate border fearmongering from Breitbart, or hustling into a Capitol elevator.
I haven’t heard a peep about pre-K expansion but there is a lot of talk about our Governor’s call for a constitutional convention to take back states’ rights. This is certainly a very loud attention getting scheme. And it does jack squat for the state’s educational needs, healthcare challenges, infrastructure and poverty.
Don’t be fooled by right wing political stooges and drunk monkeys that are running this state. They don’t have our best intentions in mind. Vote R at one’s personal peril. And I mean it literally for all of us who live in states run by GOP Governors who are blindly following ALEC agendas and who receive campaign donations from the Koch boys.
Please remember that early voting for the primary elections will start, at least in the Houston (Harris Co.) area on February 16. Election day is March 1. Please also remember to know who your down ballot candidates are during general elections.
It’s the candidates on the bottom: school board positions, a county tax-assessor/voter registrar/clerk, district attorney, judges and commissioners who impact our daily lives. Much more so than Austin and Washington, D.C. , though that is where the exciting races are. With plenty of media coverage to boot.
Sometimes it seems that Austin and D.C. are more like sources for political entertainment, compliments of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
That said, it’s uplifting when we have Presidents and Governors who share their inspirational and positive visions for the future. During his recent and final State of the Union Address President Obama proposed a federal initiative to find cures for cancer. This would empower the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation and the National Cancer Institute to grant funding to research institutions that aggressively explore cures. Research scientists could refocus their efforts on healing and recovery. Thousands of lives could be saved.
With the state’s oil and gas industry in a deep dive mode at this time it sure would give us a boost to receive federal injections of cash and human resources for scientific research. Despite its craven leadership, Texas can boast some of the most distinguished and respected academic and scientific research institutions in the U.S. MD Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University are among others. These could work in concert with the resources offered by the NIH, NSF and the NCI to find cures for cancer. Funding would also create jobs for scientists, technicians and administrators.
But we live in a state in which it's cool to know nothing, one that scorns science and where some of us pretend Moses is a founding father of the U.S. and on in which slaves were “workers.” Ignorance is a value. Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton want to keep it this way. Because their visions do not extend beyond themselves.