Before I say anything else about the Texas disaster, I want to emphasis one point, one that I think gets a little lost in the scores-and-highlights madness into which mainstream media coverage of news descended long ago: it is first and foremost a human disaster. No matter who you are for or against politically, no matter where you live in the nation, and even no matter your economic circumstances, people have died and many more people are suffering greatly. They our more than our fellow Americans; they are our fellow souls. Many of them are children whose parents are as helpless as they are right now. So, before you read any further, make a donation to one of the charities listed here. Or, for that matter, any other you can find by way of personal knowledge or an Internet search.
I'll give you a moment or two. If the spirit moves you to do so, please use the comments section to let me and readers know, and share information about what all of us can do.
And, with that said, I'll dive into the political fray surrounding the disaster. There's quite a bit to dive into, unfortunately.
Texas, to make an obvious fine point, has become a very red state in the nearly half-century since Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to carry it in a Presidential election. It has, for decades, become a magnet for people and companies looking to escape the taxes and cold weather of Northeastern states, it is now a similar magnet for Californians to escape the taxes and overcrowding of that state. It has openly bragged about how its low taxes, minimal regulation, weak social welfare structure and freewheeling attitudes about firearms has made it an American paradise that all of us should envy. And anyone who has the temerity to poke into this assessment--say, to note the amount of money the Lone Star State receives annual from Washington--is cut off by the arrogant, vaguely threatening retort, "DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS!"
Enter Mother Nature from the wings, carrying with her the effects of the climate change. And the effects of that we've sadly all seen by now.
And how did the state's elected officials step up? Well, it depends on which ones you're talking about but, in the main, the answer is "hardly at all, really." Those who couldn't get away from it all blamed a second-term Democratic congresswoman from New York, based on legislation she has sponsored but not yet been able to pass.
And the others? Well, they tried to get away from it all … or, at least, from the people who depend on them for help. Based on what we will politely call his track record, it should come as no surprise that Ted Cruz attempted to lead this particular charge. Only the embarrassment of being outed for his cowardice stopped him from a perfect getaway, and forced him to make the appearance of responding to the bugle call of duty. And that embarrassment, sadly, did not prevent him from attempting to first blame his daughters and then his wife for the whole fiasco. But don't think, even for a single minute, that he was the only Texas politician to chose flight over responsibility. He was not.
And the messaging failures don't end there, by any means. While former Governor Rick Perry (also the former secretary of the Department of ... "Oops") told freezing-to-death Texans to feel good about this opportunity to show their fiercely independent nature, others were justifiably rethinking the whole concept of secession from the Union.
There's a lot to unpack here, but we need to start with damage control made necessary by the sheer volume of Republican dissembling here. Two points.
First, this is not a so-called "black swan" or once-in-a-millennium event. This is a manifestation of climate change, a human-created phenomenon that is accelerating the pace and severity of climate catastrophes. What used to be rare is now commonplace. We can no longer afford to play make-believe with it.
Second, we need to invest in making the physical components of our electric grid better able to function in extreme weather. This not only can be done, it HAS been done elsewhere. Alternative forms of energy generation work perfectly well in such cold-weather European countries such as Denmark. Texas, in any case, relies on fossil fuel sources of power for the lion's share of its energy generation. To make matters worse, Texas has not invested in upgrades needed to protect its electric grid from the effects of extreme weather. That is a function of Texas' deregulation of energy generation and disconnection from the national grid. The additional revenue produced by these measures is not passed along to the consumer in the form of badly-needed equipment upgrades, even when a catastrophe allows them to jack up electric rates. It ends up in the pockets of the owners of the power companies. And, even as the power goes out and rates go up, the deficient power equipment pumps even more pollution into the air.
Texas, in short, has a lot to learn and a lot to consider, going forward. Whether it will do so is at best a very debatable proposition. The truth is that the state's current crisis has lessons for all of us.
First, we need political leaders who are public servants, not extensions of lobbyists. Neither of our major parties are completely without fault, but the 40-year misdirection of national income predominantly toward the investor class has given its members more than enough money for their own purposes, which allowed them first to purchase existing politicians, and then to groom their own candidates who work exclusively for them.
Time was that the investor class was content to use lobbyists to influence office holders; now, they are able to directly install the lobbyists in the offices themselves. Eliminates the proverbial middleperson, thereby achieving cost efficiency at the expense of human lives. This is precisely how we have ended up with miserable excuses for leaders like Cruz, who is constitutionally unable to be either honest or anything other than self-serving. There has never, in my lifetime, been a greater need for campaign finance and voting rights reform. These are issues that, along with the $15-per-hour minimum wages, should be pursued hammer and tong by Democrats in Congress.
Second, we need to stop worshiping the golden calf of privatization. It is not the answer to all of our problems. Just as a nation needs two healthy political parties, it needs a strong public sector as well as a strong private one to compete against each other, and to generate answers to which one has the best answer or answers to a given need.
The truth is that climate change, and the search for cleaner generation of energy, is a big enough problem that we need the resources and unique capacities of both to successfully tackle it. But we need both of them to treat it as seriously as death. Right now. Or it truly will be the death of all of us.
Finally, we need to take Milton Friedman's advice to take advantage of a crisis, and, in the process, take advantage of innovative ideas to solve that which seems insolvable. He, of course, was talking about innovative "ideas" that in fact were very old or very antidemocratic ideas, repackaged in new rhetoric to appeal to audiences who had notice received a decent education in history. Conservatives have been heeding Friedman's advice for decades.
But it is the Democratic Party that is once again the party of good ideas. Perhaps its best such idea, reviled by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, is in fact the Green New Deal, the basic principle of which is the use of the climate crisis to create new, well-paying jobs to create an economic based on renewable or sustainable resources. It's high time to give it a chance. And it's high time Texas more seriously consider not only staying in the Union, but investing more of its energy profits into energy sustainability, so that the people who pay the bills can count on not freezing to death.
And Cruz? To hell with him. Literally. One of these days, he's going to end up in a place a lot hotter than Cancun.
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