Texas is now distributing DNA kits to schools.  Abbott signed the law to do so at the end of the 2021 legislative session, feigning that they were to be distributed to identify children who were kidnapped and trafficked.  The occurrence child kidnapping is tragic, but rare.  What is more common, especially in Texas, is mass shootings by deranged young men who are legally allowed to purchase assault rifles and unlimited ammunition that can kill dozens of kids in just a few minutes.  The law was passed after the mass shooting at a public school in Santa Fe.  The state says the kits are to be used in the event of an “emergency” and are trying to make it about kidnapping, but since bullets fired from an AR-15 cause massive injuries, including decapitating 6 year old school children, the kits are necessary to identify the bodies of victims of these now commonplace shootings.  In Uvalde, some of the children’s bodies were so mangled that they had to be identified by their shoes.

The answer to mass shootings is unbelievably “complicated”, and only 32 of 33 advanced countries around the world have figured it out.  The only way we stop these shootings is banning these weapons and the ammunition shot from them.  We can only do that with brave leadership.  Because Americans don’t vote like they should, that brave leadership will never materialize and the problem won’t be fixed.  The gun and DNA kit manufacturers are perfectly happy with the status quo.

Texas has been in the iron grip of Republicans since 1995.  The results are obvious – total corruption of state leadership including a talk radio host and bar owner on the verge of winning yet another election for lt. governor, the top law enforcement officer who’s been under felony indictments for over 5 years headed for re-election, and hyper gerrymandered state house and senate districts that are non-competitive.  In the 27 years of GOP leadership in the state we have slid from US leadership in personal rights, education, science, healthcare, and livability to 49th, according to CNBC’s latest livability study.  Not surprisingly, Texas was ranked as 5th for business.

And, if people don’t turn out to vote, it’s going to get worse.  Texas Republicans, like those in over 30 GOP controlled states, have passed dozens of laws to suppress the right to vote and even take away the votes of millions if the party doesn’t like the result.  Using The Big Lie as an excuse, they’ve enacted crushing laws that make it harder to register, harder to vote, both in person and by mail.  In Arizona right now, armed thugs are “guarding” ballot drop boxes intimidating voters and following them home.

Texas won’t be saved from actual fascism if they don’t start voting.  I really don’t give a damn if they vote Dem or Repub, but they need to vote.  Single party control has never worked, and never will.  Texas and the US will never survive without a vigorous democracy that includes lively debate based on facts.  You can’t reason with radicals.  You have to just beat them at the polls.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t have said it better.  Trump’s and McConnell’s packing of the SCOTUS has now successfully destroyed all hope of the judicial branch protecting our Constitution and the rights it enshrines for all Americans.  Yesterday, the court inexplicably allowed Texas’ game playing with legislation to, as Sotomayor accurately described it,

“…the Court’s dangerous departure from its precedents, which establish that federal courts can and should issue relief when a State enacts a law that chills the exercise of a constitutional right and aims to evade judicial review.” and “…the Court effectively invites other States to refine S.B. 8’s model for nullifying federal rights.”

The court left the law in effect, denying a Constitutionally protected personal right for all women in Texas to control what happens to their own bodies.  Gorsuch’s ruling was so badly constructed by his concocted rationalizations that states have now been provided a roadmap for nullifying any Constitutional right they don’t like.

With the court’s ruling, it’s time to now to test this rewriting of US law by turning the tables by legislating private enforcement against other constitutional rights.  How about a law against individual gun ownership?  Example: anyone caught carrying a firearm, whether licensed or not, can be sued by any individual with a minimum $10,000 award to the plaintiff.  How about a law that bans wearing of MAGA hats?  How about personal enforcement by lawsuits against those who discriminate against minorities like LGBTQ individuals, African Americans, and other racial minorities?  The list is endless where states can simply nullify any federally protected individual right by delegating enforcement of laws against those rights to individuals.  Vigilantism can now displace our entire constitutional judicial system and over 200 years of case law that protects it.

The US is inexorably sliding into a post-democracy era where governments are ineffective at protecting personal rights, allowing one class of Americans to force their belief system onto everyone else.  With compromise no longer possible in our political system, aided by the complete disassembly of our court system, the exclusive right to make policy will fall to the party in control.  Texas is the perfect example of this warping of our political system where the governor, aided by the courts and a single party controlled legislature, is now simply a dictator, nullifying local government’s efforts to protect its own citizens through his arbitrary orders while hiding in the governor’s mansion.  He’s now protected not only by non-existence of corruption laws, but by the SCOTUS itself.

Our only hope of blunting this nullification of individual rights is for states like California, New York, Delaware, and others to take advantage of this activist court’s new legislation from the bench by hitting the very people trying to take away our rights by taking away theirs.  How about a law that allows individuals to sue Fox News every time Tucker Carlson tells a lie?  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Let’s hit ’em where it hurts.

Those of us who reside in Texas know that, after almost 25 years of single party control, it is now a mere empty shell of the once Great State.  This fact was confirmed yesterday when CNBC published it’s annual study of states for business and livability.  While Texas ranked 4th for states friendly to business, and ranked as second worst in the nation for livability.  In rendering its verdict, CNBC pointed out that Texas is the hardest state in the nation to vote, has no laws against discrimination, and scored an F in livability.  It also said that the only thing that kept it from falling below Arizona was the fact that Democrats walked out during the regular session of the legislature to thwart Republicans’ efforts to make voting even harder, if that’s even possible.  After all these years of single party rule, Republicans have succeeded in destroying Texans’ access to healthcare, education, and the ballot box.  It’s turned our school curriculum into propaganda churning out ignoramuses who have warped understanding of our history and even science.  It’s worked tirelessly to deny healthcare for women, the economically disadvantaged, and the elderly. Even while making life miserable for anyone but the rich, the GOP also bungled our response to the pandemic, causing over 53,000 deaths so far, and allowed our power grid to fall into literal ruins, failing to provide power when it is needed most. The corruption and continuous lying from our politicians and RW networks have made truth unknowable, allowing bullshit to proliferate convincing people that Youtube videos are more reliable than scientists, doctors, and engineers.  They have played to people’s worst traits to cling to power while suppressing votes.

As our friend Mimi Swartz wrote this week in the NY Times, Texas has truly broken our hearts.

Since Dems went to DC to air their grievance over voter suppression laws, Texas Trump Republicans are twisting themselves into knots trying to vilify them.  There’s talk from everyone from Abbott down to Brisco Big Hat Cain talking about vacations, fundraising, “cushy private jets”, so on and so forth, but the one that takes the cake is Trump Republican strategist Corbin Casteel, who said, “[The Democrats are] walking out the door right when they have an opportunity to get their staff paid when they’ve been complaining about it.  It’s a double-edged sword. They may be able to hold off on the voter integrity bill but they’re also screwing their own staff.”  Casteel is referring to the legislative staff, who’s paychecks stop on August 31 due to Abbott’s pocket veto of funding as retaliation for not getting his top priority bill passed in regular session.  That priority to fix the power grid, you ask?  No, silly, the voter suppression bill that makes it harder to vote in that state that is already the hardest in the nation to vote.

So, Abbott and the GQP are resorting to the same mob tactics as Trump – break something and then threaten the victims who don’t cave in to their demands.  Abbott could fix the problem he created with the stroke of a pen, and pressure will mount on him because he’s punishing Republican staffers with the same mob tactic.  We all know, including the Republicans pushing The Big Lie, that the whole “election integrity” issue is bullshit.  This entire issue is a desperate effort to cling to power.

So let’s be clear who the villains are – Abbott and his enablers in the statehouse, who are taking unprecedented actions to pander to their Trump base and keep people from voting.  It’s anti-democratic, unAmerican, and most certainly unTexan.  They must be stopped, and that will only happen at the federal level.

Yesterday, with great fanfare, Greg Abbott signed bills that would do virtually nothing to fix the power grid that massively failed during the Polar Vortex in February, knocking out the power in almost 5 million homes and causing the deaths estimated by some to be as high as 700.  Let’s be clear – the electrical power grid in Texas is managed differently than ANY OTHER STATE, and it doesn’t work.  It’s never worked, and never will work as long as incompetent politicians like Abbott stay in charge.  Texas is not connected to the national grid; the system is deregulated to the point where there are no requirements for minimum baseload generation; the system is designed to maximize profits for the generators and retailers and offers virtually no assurance of maintaining power for consumers during weather events such as hurricanes, extreme heat, or extreme cold.  AND, Texas consumers in the ERCOT system pay MORE for the privilege of having less reliable power than all those other poor slobs in the rest of the country who labor under the socialist thumb of regulated power companies that do their jobs and are held accountable. The Texas system is broken, and Abbott’s pronouncements yesterday that everything is fixed is simply false.  He’s lying to us, he knows he’s lying to us, but is lying nonetheless because that’s what is donors and base want to hear.  Period.

Here’s what the bills DIDN’T include: relief to consumers for gross overcharges of power during the Polar Vortex; any baseload power requirements; any weather hardening requirements with set penalties for not doing so; interconnections with the national grids; no minimum reliability requirements.  Here’s what the bills DID include: handing oversight board selection over to the legislature and governor.  Now the PUC and ERCOT are completely controlled by Republicans who HATE government oversight.  The bills also provided for generators and suppliers to issue state guaranteed bonds to pay for the exploding overcharges during the Polar Vortex.  Who pays for those bonds?  YOU DO, through surcharges to your monthly bill.  Yep, YOU.  The only positive in these bills is that floating wholesale style pricing for consumers has been disallowed.

The result of this new legislation?  Texas consumers in the ERCOT system are still at great risk for brownouts and blackouts during  extreme weather.  We’re still standing alone from the national grids with still no reliability requirements or programs to add generating capacity outside of the “free market” which actually isn’t free.  In short, Abbott and the legislature have once again shirked their duty to serve Texans while getting their pockets lined by those profiting from the existing system.  So, when you’re boiling this summer or freezing next winter with no power, remember who did it to you and maybe think about changing your vote at the next election.  After all, you get what you vote for.