Campaigning through a legislative summer
The illustrious, glutton-filled glamorous Goat Rodeo in Austin has finally ended, 10 months and 140 days of the Texas Legislature doing pretty much nothing other than to ignite its Republican base with a bunch of raw meat that should entice them to vote these guys and gals with applause and acclaim in the upcoming primaries.
Problem is, they didn’t focus on anything worth a crap.
Oh no, at the end, they did throw a bit of real red meat to Texas voters, by raising the homestead exemption from $25,000 to $45,000. It will save the home owner about $15 bucks more a month. But hey, that’s progress.
Otherwise, the time was spent on what is considered conservative issues, such as an almost-ban on abortion, free carrying of fire arms, insisting on the National Anthem to be played at all sporting events (already is), and making it harder to vote.
What the Legislature missed out in a big way was addressing the debacle we experienced this past winter when all of a sudden we didn’t have electricity in our homes.
The winter storm was strong, and our electric grid shut down, causing several hundred deaths, and billions in economic damage.
Two bills were passed, one meant to require weatherization for power infrastucture to make it through cold winters without failing, and improving the grid’s emergency communication system. The other brought new members to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
As for the winterization, all parties involved were powerfully enforced with “best practice” ideology, which meant they should try really, really hard to make things better.
On the flip side, a $150 permit fee would exclude them from acting on winterizing their pipelines and such because they were not prepared at this time to respond.
At the same time, the Legislature decided to attack possible problems in public education with “critical race theory”, a subject that is not only disingenuous but non-existent. But hey, this might give conservatives a chance to ban a couple of dozen books from the school libraries, despite the fact most all Texas high school students have found alternative sources of racial and societal discourse on their iPhones that would shock you blind.
Three special sessions were called by the Goat Masters in Austin, and they managed to pass bills not limited to making it harder to vote; limiting access to abortion-inducing pills; adding $180 billion towards border security; and censoring social media from banning political views.
A third session brought the property tax relief, new redistricting maps that favor the party in charge, and a bill regarding the safety of dogs chained outside that Gov. Abbott previously vetoed.
Hopefully, Abbott will receive more primary votes. The rest of us, Republicans included, will get jack squat down the road.
