Any
op-ed about the 84th Texas Legislature should just really
write itself – the setup, the joke, the punchline. It's a
formula the late-great Molly Ivins mined for decades.
A
corrupt Texas pol proposes a bill for reasons so venal only a moron
could possibly buy into it. The reader, now in the know, slaps his
forehead, muttering, “Those idiot Texas legislators.” Then tilts
his head back for a good, long chuckle. But in the end, who is this
joke really on? You, me, us.
And
this legislative session, with its compendium of bad bills that sound
like a horror movie film festival: “Open Carry,” “Open Carry
Goes to College,” “The Vouchers That Ate Public Ed,” is just
choke-full of punchlines.
Take
perhaps the worst bill of a very bad lot, Representative Phil King's
HB40. This bill is explicitly designed to take power away from the
people, so that energy companies have the inalienable right to frack
where and how they want.
Poor,
poor Big Energy. Doesn't your heart just bleed? Those mean ol' Denton
voters banned fracking, but Big Energy saw right away that kind of
grassroots democracy had to be stopped and now.
What
if other cities and towns got in their heads that they had the right
to ban fracking? Anyway, what's more important – the will of the
people or Big Energy? In today's Grand Old Party, the answer is
clear. Screw. the. people.
But
not only are our legislators making Texas safe for disposal wells and
the earthquakes that will surely follow, but, dripping with the milk
of human kindness, seek to protect that most endangered of all
species, the plastic bag with – I love this – “The Shopping Bag
Freedom Act.”
Such
blue cities as Austin, Dallas, and Laredo had the temerity to
restrict the use of plastic bags. These restrictions, Republicans
claim with a straight face, would lead to the Californication of the
great state of Texas. Such a non-reason is beneath contempt, to be
believed only by those poor wretched souls forever trapped in the
right-wing echo chamber on the Planet Crazy.
The
upshot is, towns and cities, the governments closest to the people,
must not be allowed to pass bills in their citizens' self-interest
when the energy sector is even slightly inconvenienced because in
Texas Big Energy trumps all.
My
own senator, Konni Burton has taken this a step further. She now
covers her ears, saying, “Lalalalala,” whenever a lobbyist from a
city is within earshot. But what makes Senator Burton even more
extra-special is that, bless her heart, she is the walking, talking
embodiment of the deep doo-doo we're now in.
As
I watched her “debate” Libby Willis back before the November
elections, I couldn't help but wonder what exactly was the Republican
vetting process for their candidates. During the debates, Burton came
across as, to put it charitably, an intellectual lightweight and a
political dilettante. In fact, I defy any one, regardless of
political affiliation, to watch those debates and think the best
person won the election.
But
what her ultimate triumph at the polls showed was that now Republican
voters will vote for anybody with an R by their name, even an obvious
incompetent like Burton. In what is pretty much a one-party state
now, that's frightening as hell, and probably explains better than
anything else why there are so many bad bills this session.
To
console ourselves, we might be tempted to snicker at the over-sized
clown car that is the 2015 version of the Texas Lege, but the truth
is, bad government isn't funny. It's deadly. Just ask those people in
West. Taking money away from public schools, and giving Big Energy a
blank check will make us all poorer and less healthy.
And
while historically Texas government has been conservative, this new
breed of science-denying, evidence-ignoring, Koch-brothers-backed
coterie is so, so much worse.
One
political savvy friend wryly observed that because so few Texans
bothered to vote we now have the government we deserve. But the truth
is -- nobody deserves this. In fact, I believe all of us have an
inalienable right to good government, one that works for the average
person and the common good. But how we get there is up to us.
What
we shouldn't do is give up hope. Yes, Big Money, gerrymandering, a
God-awful voter ID law, and apathy are going to be very hard to work
against. But with jokers like Konni Burton and Jonathan Stickland
gumming up the works, a revival of progressive populism cannot be
far off.
