The UK is suffering a deep gasoline shortage, with panic buying, long lines and even violence at gas stations breaking out all over the country.  Oh, there’s plenty of gasoline, but it can’t get to gas stations.  Why, you ask?  No truck drivers.  No truck drivers? Where did they go?  The answer? Back to their homes in Eastern Europe.  When isolationist conservatives in the country managed to pull off the almost impossible task of pulling out of the European Union, all free immigration between member countries and the UK came to a screeching halt.  So, not only did EU trade agreements end with Brexit, so did immigration.  So, the jobs that Brits don’t want, wait staff, dishwashers, slaughterhouse workers, housekeepers, and yes, truck drivers, have gone unfilled because of the isolationist policies of conservatives who push the same policies pushed by Trumpist Republicans in the US.  Boris Johnson has just put the British army on standby to put them into trucks to move gasoline from the ports to gas stations.

If you’re looking for how Trump’s plan to stop immigration would work out, you only need to look at the UK. Trying to wall off the country doesn’t work, has never worked, and will never work.  Countries’ economic prosperity is dependent on being a member of a global society which includes global markets and the ability of people to move to where the jobs exist.  That’s not what we’re seeing the in the UK, and conservatives in the US are trying to run us over the same cliff.

Though seemingly impossible from the seat in his wheelchair, governor Greg Abbott has been doing the Texas Side Step now going on two weeks since the days-long massive power failure and other cascading events, including the failure of water systems throughout the state.  He’s blaming everyone but himself, backed up by a chorus of other conservative Republican libertarian politicians.

Let’s again place blame where the responsibility for this catastrophe actually lay – in the laps of every statewide and legislative politician who has served at any time during the last 25 years.  Late last week, Texas Monthly laid out the history of power deregulation in Texas and the disaster it predictably precipitated.  Not only is Texas an island unto itself when it comes to power, this island is less reliable, AND Texans get to pay more for that privilege.

The fallout from this disaster is an open wound to Texas voters, even as Abbott has shot a few hostages and is now urging the state to “move on”.  He’s urging an investigation into ERCOT, the state’s grid manager, but has ignored the actual problem – him, the two previous governors, Perry and GWB, and the state legislature that has had a single party death grip on power for 19 years in the House and 25 years in the Senate.  Even after calls for tightening regulations after the 2011 and 2017 blackouts, the legislature, under conservative Republican libertarian leadership let every single bill mandating standards and winterizing to die in committee, just so no conservative Republican libertarian would have been forced to vote against it.  And Abbott has now blamed everyone but himself and the cronies he installed at the real problem, the Texas PUC.

This is the point of conservatism Repubulicanism libertarianism power – you get all the perks, but don’t take responsibility when something goes wrong.  Here are some other really clear examples of conservatism Repubulicanism libertarianism that has gripped our state and federal government now for decades: 1) The US Senate and House delegating their Constitutional trade authority to the president; 2) Delegating acts of war to the President (Patriot Act, and others); 3) Pushing the responsibility of care for the mentally ill to the states, but unfunded (Reagan); 4) Privatizing (prisons, air traffic functions, military support functions, and numerous other functions totaling hundreds of billions of dollars per year; 5) Failing to address the Coronavirus pandemic; 6) Delegating all pandemic response to the states (unfunded).  It goes on and on.  Even conservative Repubulican libertarian Florida governor Ron DeSantis declared this last weekend that he believes NO vaccine distribution plan for his state is best.  You see, if you don’t make a decision, you can’t get blamed.

Conservatism Repubulicanism libertarianism works great until it doesn’t.  This is not a matter of ideology here; this is the difference between people who believe in government and those who don’t.  We have now had a state controlled for two and a half decades by those who don’t believe in a functioning government, and the results are not pretty.

Will freezing Texans in the dark for days change votes?  One would only hope.