In Texas, stupid is as stupid does

 

Texas likes to fancy itself as being a “special” state, beginning with its “founding.” There have been many reasons proffered by historians as to why Anglos and some Mexican citizens “rebelled” against the Mexican government in 1836. Having just gained independence from Spain 15 years earlier, the Mexican government under Santa Anna was still trying to establish control over the country, and for the most part it employed methods inherited from Spanish rule, which along with cultural, religious and racial issues, caused problems with “Anglo” immigrants who were allowed to immigrate into Texas on the condition of becoming Mexican citizens, learning the Spanish language and converting to Roman Catholicism; few, however, were willing to do this.

One fact remains preeminent above all others: slavery. Mexico allowed free blacks to become Mexican citizens, but on the other hand allowed white Southern immigrants to bring their slaves into Texas. Slavery, which historically had little economic importance in Mexico because the land was not suited for the large-scale, plantation-type farm production found in the southern U.S., was officially abolished for good in 1829. The Mexican government felt that it was getting out of control as Anglos continued to bring slaves with them to work on new plantations in the eastern and coastal parts of the state. Naturally, the slaveholders were not about to give-up on their “right” to bring in and keep slaves in Texas.

There is no doubt that few Anglos would have immigrated to Texas at all if they had not been initially permitted to bring their slaves with them; however Texas would certainly have been part of the “sale” of the rest of Mexican territory north of the Rio Grande after the Mexican-American War had the Texas “revolution” never happened. Anglo Texans were pure Southern in their cultural and racial attitudes, and it was no surprise that Texas joined the Confederacy in 1861; its slave population was as high as 250,000 by 1865.

Like other Southern states, Texas enacted Jim Crow and other discriminatory laws in the century after the Civil War, and it was applied to both its black and its Hispanic citizens; in regard to the latter, historical tomes like The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas, and Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928 illuminates a part of history that is “conveniently” overlooked in a country that only sees the world in “black” and “white.”

Texas not only has a past that does not bear close scrutiny, in its arrogance it has managed to be one of the dumbest-run states in this country. Texas is what is known as a low-income, low-service state. For a state claims to be “well-run,” it has the highest uninsured population in the country, at near 30 percent. It was one of a dozen states that refused the ACA’s Medicare expansion program, claiming that it would cause medical costs to rise. But before the ACA was enacted, the state’s health care programs for low-income people were a scam, paying only a small portion of health costs up front and requiring the “insured” to pay the rest, which resulted in few actually using the insurance, or getting it all. 

I know what this meant, because the company I worked for at the airport had its “situs” in Texas, which was like a foreign consulate in this country being governed by the laws of its home country. The company was allowed to bypass the regulations of the Washington State Insurance Commissioner which mandated minimum coverage, and listed the “mini-medical” program of the company as a “scam."

Texas continues to be governed by ignorant people who place partisan politics and a “plantation” mentality above the public well-being. In the desire of Texas Republicans to continue to imagine theirs as the literal “lone star” state, they decided to establish their own energy gird in order to avoid abiding by the regulations of other states, particularly in insuring that it had proper “resilience” in the face of severe weather conditions, which is the reason for the recent winter storm blackout. After blaming “green energy” for that debacle, Gov. Greg Abbott took politics one step further: while Joe Biden was showing the leadership on the Covid-19 pandemic that Donald Trump did not, Abbott decided that the pandemic was not really a big enough “deal” to warrant the attention that the Biden administration was giving it, and decided to issue the following statement:

Today I’m issuing a new executive order that rescinds most of the earlier executive orders. Effective next Wednesday, all businesses of any type are allowed to open 100 percent. That includes any type of entity in Texas. Also, I am ending the statewide mask mandate.

Abbott went on to insert a “caveat” to the order, claiming that it would not necessarily “end personal responsibility,” and “personal vigilance” would still be “important” to “contain” the virus. But his assertion that “now state mandates are no longer needed” sends the opposite message. Abbott will allow a county judge to impose “mitigation strategies” if hospitals see rises in virus cases, but “no penalties can be imposed for failing to wear a face mask.” But again Abbott undermined that possibility by claiming that “we believe that there will not be the threshold met at hospitalizations for county judges to even consider implementing those strategies because Texas will continue to work collaboratively with all counties to speed the vaccination process.”

The problem at present is that only 7 percent of the state’s residents have been vaccinated, and “herd immunity” must be at least 75 percent. Abbott’s executive order was immediately attacked even in Texas, especially by officials in urban areas. With new variants of the virus on the horizon for which the current vaccines may or may not work against, they say it isn’t time to “relax” restrictions. Some businesses, like Target, Kroger, Walgreens, Best Buy and others stated that they would still require mask-wearing in their stores.

Abbott’s executive order also does not help those demographics who suffered the brunt of the pandemic in the state, particularly Hispanics. In Texas, Hispanics represent 40 percent of the population, but nearly half of the those who have died from the virus, and it could be even higher, since the state, according to a New York Times report, has been unreliable and inconsistent in its reporting of cases and deaths, especially in minority communities. A combination of working in close-quarter industries and the lack of affordable health care has hit low-income minority communities the hardest in the state. Does Abbott care? Probably not, given that the state is still in the forefront of trying to kill the ACA.

Abbott’s order is clearly more a political maneuver than a public heath one. Biden is treating the virus as a serious problem and is showing leadership, and Abbott is deliberately not showing leadership because he believes that in pretending that the virus is not a “big deal” anymore, Biden and the Democrats might appear to be “overreacting,” and keep Republicans—and Trump in particular—from looking incompetent and uncaring in the eyes of the American public. But all he is doing is proving that point.