After recall election, Californians should count themselves lucky they don't have someone like Greg Abbott as a governor

 

After their recall election, Californians don’t even have to go as far as Florida to find out what kind of governor they could be having; Texas and their governor, Greg Abbott, is only half the distance, but all the way batshit crazy. Even among Southern states—and yes, Texas was a Confederate slave state—Texas tries so hard to be “special” that it can’t help but get tangled up in its own spurs.

For example, there is nothing “special” about stupidity. We saw that earlier this year with the massive power grid failure, which occurred because there was no “plan” in place in deal with a seriously cold weather event. As the Texas Monthly pointed out, the problem with Texas power is not so much a hardware issue, but a political one; even when it was determined that the lack winterization that affected all power sources (not just wind turbines) and the fact that the state was unprepared for a massive surge in electricity needs due to freezing weather, Abbot still kowtowed to private energy companies, who are not required to maintain sufficient energy reserves in the belief there was no need for it since the winter storm was a “one time thing.” 

The Monthly noted that for Republican politicians, their devotion to “free market solutions borders on religious fervor”—to the detriment, and even the lives, of the residents of the state. Even after the crisis subsided, the state power commission allowed rate payers to foot much of the bill for the disaster that was solely the failure of state laws, regulations (if they could be called such) and private energy suppliers. While the state admitted that at least 150 people died because of the winter storm, other estimates say as many as 700 died.

Then we see the desperate white nationalism of non-Hispanic white Texans—who comprise less than 40 percent of the population—not just in voter suppression laws, but in this year’s gerrymandering after the 2020 Census. 80 percent of the population growth in the past ten years has been by minorities, yet despite the increase in congressional seats, the new proposed redistricting has found a way not just to increase white majority districts, but decrease the number of Hispanic and black majority districts.

This is especially egregious given the fact that though they have roughly the same population as whites, the new seating arrangement allows Hispanic majority districts just one-third as many seats as white majority districts in the House of Representatives. Republicans are claiming that they are not violating the Voting Rights Act because they are redistricting by “politics” and not by race. But even Republican voters are not fooled by this; everyone knows that in right-wingspeak, race and political identity are one in the same.

And then of course there are the social issues, like abortion. Two U.S. Supreme Court justices—Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett—both have come out with ludicrous justifications for why they think that the Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the state law that bans abortions when a “heartbeat” is detected (with John Roberts voting with the liberals) isn’t a prelude to overturning Roe v Wade. And of course there is the continuing battle to maintain white supremacy in history and social studies in school books, with the phony issue of “critical race theory” being a particular crybaby whine of white nationalists and racists.

But the real reason that Californians should be happier to have Gavin Newsom instead of someone like Abbott is because he takes COVID-19 quite a bit more seriously than Abbott does (or at least he wants you too). While California currently still has the most virus deaths, because of its population size it is only thirty-third in the country in deaths per population. Florida went from position 21 to the “top-ten” in deaths in the past two months, but while Texas hasn’t made as great a “leap,” just give it time. California and Texas were about a month behind Florida in experiencing the full measure of the Delta variant, but the differences in at least the death counts could hardly be less dramatic. Since mid-August, Texas has recorded about 12,000 new COVID-19 deaths, while California has seen about 5,000 more.

At that rate, Texas could surpass California as the state with the most virus deaths by the end of the month. Fueling the surge (besides the unvaccinated and the state’s “open season” for being ignorant) is the fact that nearly 40 percent of deaths since the latest surge began is people under 60 years of age. Deaths from the virus are also made worse by the state’s infamously “low wage, low benefit” plantation mentality; Texas has twice the national average of uninsured, and according to a report by The Commonwealth Fund, Texas ranks last in the country in health care access and affordability. The report notes that Texas’ refusal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act is a major reason for this. Hispanics, of course, are the hardest hit by this, and not that Abbott and his fellow Republicans care; fewer potential Democratic votes suits them just fine.

Abbott and his main stooges, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and AG Ken Paxton, have done their share to make things worse than they should be. They are all adamant about denying local governments the right to impose mask mandates in schools, for example. Schools in Texas have seen more than 170,000 virus cases in the school year that has just begun, more than all of the previous school year. There are some school districts that are defying Abbott on mask mandates, and an Austin news study claims that schools with mask mandates have half the rate of infections as those that do not.

Texas is currently being sued by groups representing disabled students who say that their right to be safe in school is being violated by Abbott’s order. Then there is the potential mass shortage of nursing home attendants, where as many 40 percent are unvaccinated despite the threat that poses to the elderly. A federal mandate that all nursing home workers be vaccinated is of course opposed by Republican governors and by virus-deniers and anti-vaxxers even in the most threatened environments, and the expectation is that many, if not most, of these people in Texas will choose to leave their positions rather than be vaccinated.

So much for being “special.” So yes, things could be a lot worse in California if they had someone like Abbott or DeSantis as governor. Of course, you could just blame everything on illegal immigrants.