Op Ed

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It’s all too easy to despair over the right-wing assault on poor and middle-class Texans. We’re well past the halfway mark at the Texas Legislature, and the Republicans show little willingness to avoid cuts to the budget that will cripple the state. With outnumbered progressives, and even moderates, taking a backseat to the anti-government forces at the Capitol, the situation seems bleak.

But there is reason for hope. In mid-March, 11,000 teachers, parents and students from 300 different school districts rallied in Austin against the Legislature’s proposed $10 billion sucker-punch to public education. The cuts to public education would be devastating, possibly leading to school closures, increased class sizes and layoffs of as much as one-third of Texas’ teachers.

The rally, boisterous and refreshingly grassroots, showed that diffused anger and frustration (the non-Tea Party kind) can be collected and focused, even in Texas. If you expected docility from schoolteachers, you would have been disappointed. At times, the speakers mounted a sweeping critique of the state’s political leaders. “Millionaire senators cut my pay back to minimum wage and still I will march into that classroom full of children who need me,” shouted John Kuhn, the superintendent of Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District, to the cheering crowd.

Every social movement has its catalyzing moment. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker’s radical effort to eliminate collective bargaining spurred non-stop protests in Madison and seems to have breathed new life into the moribund labor movement. Of course, unlike Texas, Wisconsin actually has robust unions. Texas is a “right to work” state dominated by Big Business and wealthy ideologues. Still, the “cuts-only” budget is so severe that it has stirred Texas educators—already pushed to the brink by mindless testing regimes and a failed school finance system—to take to the streets.

One rally won’t alter the course we’re on, but it’s a start. Educators should join with other potential victims of the budget—students, senior citizens, public employees, veterans and working-class Texans—and call for the full use of the state’s $9 billion Rainy Day Fund, advocate for a fairer tax structure, and pressure lawmakers to invest in social institutions.

This is not about pleading; it’s about pushing. Progressives in this state all too often have a hangdog, woe-is-me attitude. Well, folks, here’s your chance to stand up and fight. You can start by attending the “Save Our State” march, rally and lobby day on April 6th. As the old slogan goes: “Don’t mourn, organize.”

Change is not the same as progress. Change can be the exact opposite. It can be regressive, as we’re now learning from—where else?—Congress.

A flock of Tea Party-infused Republicans has changed the political dynamic there, and exultant GOP leaders are claiming that they are now the voice of “the people.” Most people won’t find themselves represented by this change, much less see it as progress.

That’s because the newcomers in Congress, whether Republican or Democrat, tend to live high up the economic ladder, way out of touch with the people they’re representing. Forty percent of newly elected House members are millionaires, as are 60 percent of new senators. While the great majority of workaday Americans are struggling to make it on about $30,000 a year—having, at best, puny pensions and iffy health coverage—these incoming lawmakers tend to be sitting pretty on accumulated wealth. Their financial reports show them holding extensive personal investments in outfits like Wall Street banks, oil giants  and drug makers.

Their wealth and financial ties might help explain the rush by the new Republican House majority to coddle corporate powers. From gutting EPA’s anti-pollution restrictions on Big Oil to undoing the restraints on Wall Street greed, they’re pushing for a return to the same laissez-fairyland ideology of the past 20 years that got our country into massive messes. At the same time, they’re out to kill a green jobs program, bust unions, cut Social Security, defund Head Start and generally stomp on the fingers of working families.

The change is Congress in taking America backwards, not forwards, for the new majority literally is the voice of millionaires. That’s not progress.

 

Find more information on Jim Hightower’s work—and subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown—at www.jimhightower.com

Texas Republicans love to call themselves fiscal conservatives. But is it fiscally conservative to spend millions in taxpayer money addressing “emergencies” that don’t exist?

Republican legislators, prodded by Gov. Rick Perry, have pushed through “emergency” legislative items to ban so-called sanctuary cities, require women to undergo an invasive ultrasound procedure before abortions and make voters show photo ID at the polls. The three bills curry favor with social conservatives. As moderate and progressive legislators have protested—correctly—they represent government overreach at its worst. But one aspect of this culture-war pander-fest has been largely ignored: the cost.

It’s a given that, if passed, all three bills will be heavily litigated on constitutional grounds. It’s ironic that a political party that champions lawsuit reform could generate so much fodder for lawsuits. And litigation isn’t cheap.

Arizona is expected to spend upwards of $10 million defending its own harsh anti-immigrant law in court. Last summer, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer had to start a donation fund to keep paying the attorney expenses, which have already surpassed $500,000.

A sonogram bill similar to the one currently flying through the Texas Legislature has been litigated in state courts in Oklahoma since 2009. In the last two years, Oklahoma’s attorney general has spent hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars on the case. Then-governor Brad Henry had the good sense to veto an ultrasound bill last spring. (The veto was overriden.) Not only was it an “unconstitutional invasion of privacy,” he said, it would also needlessly squander state funds. “You have to be careful about blindly passing legislation that you know will be challenged and very likely will be determined unconstitutional, because that costs taxpayers a lot of money,” Henry warned.

Texas’ governor has taken the opposite tack. The single most pressing “emergency” for Rick Perry and the Republican leadership was nonexistent voter fraud. Voter ID’s cost to taxpayers won’t just arise from litigation on behalf of the elderly, rural and minority voters who will be kept from the polls—there will also be substantial costs to administer the bill. To pass Constitutional muster, states that require photo IDs must provide them free to any citizen who needs one to vote. In Missouri, the cost has been estimated at $6 million for the first year of Voter ID. In North Carolina, the costs have run to nearly $20 million.

In a legislative session with a $27 billion budget crater, this is political theater Texas can’t afford.

Not all bullies are in schoolyards these days—quite a few have graduated to the executive suites of Corporate America.

Take Charles and David Koch, multi-billionaire brothers whose lives of privilege and bloated sense of entitlement have turned them into such spoiled brats that they can’t take a joke.

Last December, the Kochs’ oil operations became the object of a spoof by tricksters called Youth for Climate Truth. Not only is Koch Industries Inc. a notorious polluter, but the brothers have recently been exposed as longtime, secret funders of various right-wing front groups trying to debunk climate change.

The young folks made fun of all this by issuing a fake news release on what appeared to be Koch Industries letterhead. The release said the Kochsters had seen the light on global warming and would be strong environmental advocates. A pretty harmless joke.

The grumpy billionaires not only failed to laugh, but also resorted to bullying. They’ve unleashed a pack of lawyers to demand that the identities of those who produced the parody be given to the Kochs so they can sue them for damages. What damages? The lawsuit says the brothers want reimbursement for “costs associated with spending time and money to respond to inquiries about the
fake release.”

Good grief—Charles and David are two of the 10 richest people in America, and they’re whining about a $10 phone bill! What the Kochs are trying to do,
of course, is to bully their critics. Make fun of us, they’re saying, and we’ll bury you in legal bills.

By the way, these billionaire bullies have also financed front groups that attack public interest lawyers. Why? Because, say the Kochs, these lawyers file
“frivolous” lawsuits.

 

Find more information on Jim Hightower’s work—and subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown—at www.jimhightower.com