After George P’s decision to stiff Houstonians by denying federal flood funds, he drew the ire of all Houston politicians.  But it’s worse than that…he’s now drawing the ire of Houstonians themselves.  Last night, he tweeted this, lying and trying to blame Biden for his own stupidity and pandering to Trump.

Houston, I hear you. pic.twitter.com/urAK0uL7xw

— George P. Bush (@georgepbush) May 26, 2021

It’s not going well.

A watered-down medical marijuana bill passed the Texas Senate this week, with the full knowledge that the Texas House and likely the Governor wouldn’t sign it into law anyway. KXAN reports:

House Bill 1535 grows the state’s medical marijuana program to include all Texans with cancer. People with debilitating medical conditions would also qualify, but the Senate removed part of a House provision that would have added all chronic pain patients. HB 1535 was amended in the House to include all forms of diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), rather than for veterans with PTSD as it was initially introduced.

The legislation was amended to raise the limit for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana — from 0.5% to 1% by weight.

I’m happy that all PTSD and cancer patients were included in the bill, even if it will never pass. I’m a true believer in medical marijuana. I know a little boy with epilepsy. He was born here in Texas and throughout his life had uncontrollable seizures. When Texas passed the first medical marijuana law to allow children with epilepsy some THC, his doctor wrote him a prescription, and he never had another seizure. It’s been something like three or four years since the last time this child had a seizure. It’s what religious folks would call a miracle.

Texas should include medical marijuana in the next legislative session and should allow patients with chronic pain access to a drug that will keep them off of opioids. It’s common sense. Too bad the Texas GOP has none.

I’m a chronic pain patient and I have “incurable” chronic pain, meaning two separate neurosurgeons, along with a team of physical therapists, my general physician and an orthopedic surgeon have all examined me and determined that I am beyond help. There is no cure for my problems until a bionic spine becomes available. I would LOVE to be free of opiates. I would LOVE to not have to take so much Ibuprofen that my doctor says it’s “when” not “if” my kidneys start to fail. That’s my choice, I can walk or sleep today, but my kidneys will fail in the future.

My last hope is that maybe THC will relieve my pain enough to back me off of the harsh opiates and ibuprofen. The Texas government is currently withholding that choice from me.

The Texas Legislature only meets every other year for 140 days. That’s all we can stand. This session ends May 31st and they haven’t even started with redistricting. One member of the Lege describes today —

Best I can figure, that’s also pretty much every day.

The Lt. Gov, where all the real power in Texas government is vested, is already calling for a special session to begin in June.  Here’s his agenda.

The bills sought to ban transgender students from playing on sports teams based on their gender identity, prohibit local governments from using taxpayer funds to pay for lobbyists and punish social media companies for “censoring” Texans based on their political viewpoints.

Because, you know, those are major issues to the life and liberty of all Texans.  Plus, we ain’t got any other problems because they already passed that you don’t have to have a permit, background check, or training to carry a gun and made it super hard to vote. So, Texas is practically heaven except for those transgender people and that Republicans can’t recruit for their next insurrection on Twitter.

And under the category of Quit Forking Around, we have Comfort High School (just north of San Antonio) where half the senior class was suspended, including the valedictorian and salutatorian.

SUSPENDED❗️ Half the senior class at Comfort High School has been suspended after participating in a senior prank last week. The extent of the damage? See the pictures below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/OrDHmPfxE8

— Morgan Burrell (@Morgan_Burrell) May 20, 2021

They stuck plastic forks in the football field. No property was destroyed. They put balloons all over the floor of one classroom and tilted a mounted animal head.

I saying they were tourists.

If they suspended kids for doing stuff like that when I was in high school, I’d still be in high school.

You’ve seen this before. Someone complains about working hard and seemingly not making it while others get to sit on their duff and collect a government paycheck. I have to admit, it’s a tempting thought process. I allowed myself to go down that road one or two times. It can be a comforting place to be when you are struggling personally. It is a thought process built on two intricate cons.

First and foremost, life is not a zero sum game. My success or lack of success has little to do with anyone else. Sure, we have direct competitors for the jobs we want but most of the vitriol being spewed is spewed at people that have nothing to do with us. So, when I don’t succeed, that has nothing to do with 99 percent of the people around me.

The trouble is that the conservative con has made us believe that this is the case. So, when I don’t succeed there is usually someone (or a group) I can immediately blame for my lack of success. This is where the xenophobia comes from. Immigrants are coming to take your job. Of course, we all know that’s not true, but the con is an emotional con. We don’t think well when we’re angry and scared.

The second con is essentially a con of conflation. Look at all the free stuff people get. This con has been going on since the Reagan years with his Welfare Queens that are almost certainly black and driving around in their Cadillac. It’s a complex web they weave. It’s built on a number of lies and half truths but it focuses on misdirection more than anything.

Even if we consider ourselves enlightened enough to see through one of the major lies, we find ourselves vulnerable to the others. Sure, many of us know that most people on welfare are white. Congratulations. You saw through one of the major lies. The second question we have to ask ourselves is how good do they have it really?

Notice how few details you see. There are always stories of people buying Air Jordans, T-bone steaks, and lobster on their Lonestar card. Yet. there is rarely any hard and fast data about how much someone actually gets on government assistance. They really don’t want you to know. The dirty little secret is that it’s not much. It’s certainly not the kind of life 99 percent of us would want to lead.

It doesn’t mean there isn’t waste or people that game the system, but we really have to ask ourselves what that all matters. If that money goes away and returns to the government coffers does my life become any better? If we make their life miserable and force them to fend for themselves am I any better off? We really need to ask ourselves why we think denying others the basics of human life makes our lot in life any better.

A large part of the con is that this money has never made it back to us. That is unless you are in the top one percent financially. If you are then I’d kindly accept a donation to keep this blog up and running. Otherwise, it’s not going to you and me. So, when we find ourselves struggling to get by it is fair to ask what’s in it for me. It’s at this point that we have to remember both parts of the con.

First, this is not a zero sum game. You can help the vast majority of people all at the same time. That of course brings us to the second part of the con. When we are struggling it makes no sense to ask why they get help and we don’t. That diverts our attention away from us and onto them. It is more productive to simply ask why we don’t get help. Who is it that isn’t helping us? Who is it that actually is actively making our lives harder than it needs to be? The answer is usually related to those pushing the con.

UPDATE: Just yesterday, the Texas House made it mandatory for professional sports teams to play the National Anthem before all games.  This pressing issue was a legislative priority of Radio Disc Jockey Dan Patrick, along with voter suppression and bathroom access supervision.

ORIGINAL STORY: This year, Texas has faced historic challenges – the global pandemic, the Big Freeze, and The Big Lie.  Add that to existing problems like a teetering education system, a failing healthcare system, crumbling infrastructure, and now a housing crisis, the governor and TXLege had their plates full.  So let’s have a look at that they did to address these issues:

• The Global Pandemic – Abbott, urged on by the Know Nothing wing of his party, played down the risk.  Abbott took away the authority of local leaders to protects their citizens, lifted science driven guidance for social distancing and quarantine recommendations way too early, and slashed recommended unemployment payments to Texans who were suffering.  He also dumped distribution responsibilities for PPE, and later vaccines, on local authorities in his own version of The Hunger Games, making cities/counties compete against one another.  All this caused untold sickness, suffering, and death.  What did the TXLege do this session?  Nothing.
• The Big Freeze – Over 20 years ago, Texas decided it was a good idea to have a “free market” for powering its grid, so the TXLege unwound the state’s regulatory framework, making the power regime in Texas “voluntary”, with no deliverability requirements and no penalties for failing to deliver power.  State air quality standards were also made voluntary.  This system was put in place on a grid that was already mostly disconnected with the grids in other parts of the country, so when it failed in February, no one could come to our aid by delivering power.  Over 200 people died and billions of dollars were lost.  What did the TXLege do to solve the problem and prevent it from happening again?  Nothing.
• The Big Lie – We all saw what happened after months of Trump’s ridiculous lie that an election that he had decisively lost was stolen from him.  When the US Capitol was stormed, hundreds of people were injured and 5 people died.  Trump actually attempted to overthrow the US government in order to stay in power.  Everyone with a hint of insight knows The Big Lie is false is corrosive to our democratic system.  What did the TXLege do to address The Big Lie? They amplified it, repeated it, and used it to pass the most restrictive voter laws in the US to make it harder to vote and to protect their minority power.
• Failing Healthcare System, Crumbling Infrastructure, Teetering Education System– Texas ranks 48th among the states in access to healthcare. Our education ranking is similar. Our crumbling roads, and poor public transportation systems rank among some of the worst in the country.  Under more than two decades of single party rule, our state has steadily declined in a number of measures, but especially healthcare.  Today, race, economic standing, and geographic location are predictors of healthcare outcomes, and the suffering from the pandemic followed these predictors.  The poor and minorities suffered greater infection rates and worse outcomes from the virus which compounded the other issues caused by lack of access to competent healthcare.  What did the TXLege do to address these inequalities?  Nothing.

So, what did the TXLege spend its time on this session? Here’s its list of accomplishments:

• As stated above, pushing the most restrictive voting measures in the US supporting Trump’s Big Lie.
• Passing a new abortion law that bans virtually all abortions, ignoring health, rape, or incest.
• Pushing criminalizing healthcare treatments for transgender kids.
• Passing unqualified carry legislation, making it legal for any idiot to carry whatever firearm said idiot wants to carry, making it virtually impossible for law enforcement to protect citizens from mass killers.
• Abbott criminalized mask requirements which imposes a $1,000 fine on any public official requiring masks, no matter local health conditions.

This is what you get when a minority party has cemented itself into power, taking away accountability to the public.  The GOP has had an iron grip on Texas for over two decades, aided by radical gerrymandering, lack of term limits, lack of spending limits, and lack of ethics laws.  The governor and the TXLege are now totally corrupt and pledged fealty to a criminal who so far has evaded prosecution and continues attempts to overthrow our democratic system of government.  Until The People wrest power away from such corruption, this state, among many other red states, are lost for the foreseeable future.

This is one of those topics that I hesitate to write about. It’s a personal topic that some people have difficultly relating to. This is also not a space where we wallow in our own stuff. So, we walk a fine line between talking about our own issues and looking at issues dispassionately with no personal connection whatsoever. I have to admit that I got inspiration from another spot.

I realize that around these parts the topic of faith and Christianity in general might be taboo, but I drudge on anyway. The phenomenon Pavlovitz noticed has actually been going on longer than that. When I sat on the pastoral council of my old parish we noticed that church attendance and donations were down. This was long before 2016 when Pavlovitz’s writing began to take off and he began addressing this malaise more directly.

As a council, we suggested that we conduct exit interviews (or a survey) to get to the bottom of why church attendance was dropping. Our pastor wouldn’t hear of it. He asserted that people were simply moving away. This was in spite of the fact that they are continually building new neighborhoods and new homes and people are moving into those homes faster than they can build them.

Statistics clearly show that church attendance and faith in general is on the decline. Obviously, for some this is not an issue at all. For some of us it is an issue felt deeply. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but what I see is a schism between the beliefs that most Christians have and how the faith is practiced in most denominations in the American church. When one can no longer reconcile a benevolent God with all of the hate being spewed by people that call themselves Christian they no longer go.

Complex problems have complex solutions and any number of people to blame. While religious conservatives have played the biggest role in this problem, I don’t think progressives can get off without blame. Jesus was a progressive. When you read the gospels there is no way to come out with any other conclusion. The values of helping the poor and showing compassion to all are clearly progressive planks.

Yet, we have allowed Christianity to be hijacked by conservatives. So, progressives that are also Christian really have three choices. They can stop being progressive and give into the conservative message. They can stop being Christian so they can adhere to a progressive message. The final possibility to continue to be both. However, that requires that they bang their head against both walls. I often feel like that is where I’m at.

The problem with allowing the numbers to get smaller is that those remaining have abandoned progressive ideals. It’s similar to what is going on in the Republican party. Think of it as the Liz Cheney problem. If Cheney gets primaried then gets primaried by a guy that impregnated a 14 year old when he was 18. It seems nice to just assume a Democrat would win, but that’s not likely in Wyoming. So, you replace an ultra conservative with someone more conservative and less reasonable. Multiply that a few dozen times and that’s what’s happened to Congress.

If the same things happens to the American church things will just get worse. I’d rather have a good portion of the church stand up and say in one voice that Jesus was a progressive. Jesus loved his neighbors and condemned no one. Jesus fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and healed the sick. Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, transgender, or any other wedge issue. He spent more time on social justice issues than railing against sin. Maybe if we say these things we can save more Christians from leaving the flock. Maybe if we say these things we can attract more people to the progressive side because we can convince them that voting progressive is a full expression of their faith and not something they do in spite of it.