We are close to surviving 2023 and — politically speaking — good riddance. I hope you had many other good things to mark the year but for those who cared about such things as individual rights, freedom of thought and the reality of history, it was not so good.
No, not good at all.
One bright spot: Mostly conservative Republicans from East Texas and other rural areas managed to repeatedly forestall attempts by Gov. Greg Abbott to allow state tax money to be used to help fund private and religious schools.
Abbott’s push was falsely labeled as “school choice,” but that’s a sham. Parents can send their children to any private school they wish — or school them at home. Public education only works, though, when it is adequately funded for all.
Current funding is tenuous at best and Republicans continue to try to cut the ways local school districts can get local tax money. They call this “cutting taxes,” when it is really exerting state control over local issues.
If local taxpayers want to tamp down tax rates, they have the perfect way to do it by electing school board members who will keep taxes low. But locals might want great schools and facilities and be willing to pay what it takes (Read: Highland Park ISD).
Why should the state dictate how much money that district can spend?
I digress, the issue is the funding of private schools. All you need to know is in the title: Private schools, which means they should be privately funded without money from the state which should go to (stay with me) public schools.
Every cent taken from public education (yes, I know this gateway law doesn’t do that immediately) hurts the education of the vast majority of public school students.
Will the brave legislators who fought Abbott continue to hold out? That’s one of the major challenges to be faced in 2024. Abbott has promised to make certain to support an opponent against each of these legislators. I would like to think that he would fail in those challenges but the voters in each area will tell the tale.
Do they want to continue to resist state control over every bit of their schools? We can only hope they will fight Big Brother.
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Our legislature only meets every other year, with the year in-between as a time for elections. This means there is a real opportunity to change the make-up of the legislature, most importantly the Texas House of Representatives.
So-called “experts” have suggested that Texas will “turn blue” for years, but I just can’t see it happening anytime soon. Gaining ground in the Republican House, though, would be huge and this would seem to be a good time to strike.
The state has had more than one instance of women who had valid medical reasons to have an abortion been forced to flee the state to get the procedure done. For every one of these tragic instances we hear, there are likely multiple other such stories which never get told.
The wealthy or connected can make the escape to take care of their personal business but most are in vastly different circumstances. They are left to just bear burdens, which include endangering their own health.
Yes, there are people who earnestly believe that a woman’s life should be forfeit rather than allow an abortion and right now, some of those people sit in the legislature.
A change is needed but it isn’t going to happen unless people actually get out and vote. Judging from past elections, the people who are often affected most by the laws are those who sit at home on election day, thinking their vote doesn’t matter.
That’s never been true, and it certainly won’t be true in 2024. Voting has been made a more difficult over the last few years, but those few hurdles are not an excuse for not casting a ballot, especially in these circumstances.
One other thing you can do: Encourage others to run for office. Some who would be good leaders and might win, don’t get the “push” that would help them make a decision to run. Good candidates are needed, and they are out there. Help prompt them to sign up for the primary.
This is not just concerning the Democratic primary, by the way. If you normally vote in the Republican primary, you may well want some more thoughtful Republicans elected — like those who just stood up to Abbott. They are out there. Find them.
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I’m guessing most of you might remember that little gathering on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. They were just a bunch of innocent tourists, right? They just wanted to have a look-see around but the doors to the capitol building were shut.
So, what else would you do but rip open the doors and attack police officers, beating some to a pulp and spraying pepper spray in the faces of others?
Then you would naturally scour the building looking for Nancy Pelosi but most especially for then-Vice President Mike Pence so that the other nice fellows could meet him.
Or, as the crowd as chanting, so they could, “Hang Mike Pence!”
That is probably what some white MAGA Republicans were thinking on that January day. Those calling for Pence’s neck were just a-funnin’.
I suspect it was not what most Black Americans were thinking on that day because they have seen it all before in frightening technicolor.
What we all were witnessing is more properly called a “lynch mob,” and it is burned into the collective memory of every Black American.
Officially, roughly 300 people were lynched in the days when it happened the most, after the Civil War until the 1920s. Unofficially, we have no idea how often it happened, but it was much more common, though the methods used were not always the traditional sort.
Not everyone who suffered being lynched was black. At times a suspected white murderer was spirited from a jail by a mob. Also, when whites were suspected of helping Blacks, they could hang,
Hanging was only one method of lynching. It was not uncommon for a man to be burned at the stake and that allowed for torture to be administered while he was still alive. Women were also lynched, but that did not happen often.
You can quibble if you’d like about Jan. 6 being an insurrection urged on by Donald Trump but there isn’t much doubt in my mind that he incited a lynch mob that went after Pence fully intending to take action.
It isn’t that cooler heads prevailed it is just Pence’s luck that the mob could not find him. Vote Trump if you approve of the lynching mentality (former U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert voting against the federal anti-lynching law) because that’s what you will get.