Three-Point Shots, Vol. 1, No. 17: A Paxton-Free Edition!
As obsessed as I seem with our Disgraced, Twice Indicted, Impeached Attorney General, there is plenty of other weird stuff going on in the Lone Star State.
Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Also, comments welcome and encouraged.
But first, your Moment of Zen … The constellation Scorpio in the summer sky, July 23, 2022. The head, pincers and body are in the upper right corner, and the long curved tail with the stinger at the end lies against the background of the Milky Way in the lover left.
My friend Marfawitz, of whom you have heard, told me the other day that he’d read Stephen Harrigan’s magisterial history of Texas, Big Wonderful Thing. You should read it. He confessed that, having labored to read the early history of Texas in Harrigan’s detailed prose, he “skipped ahead” to the 1930s, thus gaining much insight into a period of Texas history whose outlines he already knew.
It sounds like as good a way as any to gulp down our history. For Texas is indeed a “big wonderful thing” (he cribbed the phrase from Georgia O’Keeffe).
It would be impossible to hit the highlights of everything going on in Texas, but it is my treat this week to leave Ken Paxton aside and mention a few other excitements in the news.
1. Texas Drops Out of Top Five Best States for Business
All the way back in 2007, when Tom Craddick was House Speaker and the iPhone was just released, CNBC released its first “Top States for Business” rankings. Since then, Texas was in the Top Five every year, and was No. 1 in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2018. Texas was so successful that Governor Greg Abbott has a tattoo on his butt that said, “Texas is #1” followed in smaller print by “frequently, and is always in the Top Five rankings of Top States for Business.” Must be quite a tattoo, and I would love to see it.
Anyway, this year the streak was broken. Funny thing is, it wasn’t because we provided health care to trans kids or held drag queen story hours or let refugees from Central American dictatorships cross the Rio Grande. No siree, it was things like an unreliable electrical grid or a mediocre (#35 nationally) public education system, which many businesses apparently think are requirements for a good business climate.
But the coup de grace was that Texas fell to last in the country in a category called Life, Health & Inclusion (down, somewhat hilariously, from #49 the year before). Things like leading the nation in the percentage and number of uninsured people, and public policy that is openly hostile to LGBTQ+ people. The article quotes a science writer:
“The industries that Texas is trying really hard to attract are biotechnology industries, the startup companies, and the other kinds of tech,” she said. “You have to create a friendly environment for the employees, because without the employees, the companies are not going to want to go there.”
My take: It would be disrespectful not to assume the best intentions of your elected officials, so I assume they believed all the culture war battles – while ignoring the energy grid, health care and public schools – would actually make the lives of real Texans better. I mean, they had to assume that, right?
2. Allred, Gutierrez Lining Up to Take on Cruz
Ted Cruz is, well, something else. A 2015 Houston Chronicle editorial hit the proverbial nail on the head:
Unlike his predecessor in the Senate, Cruz isn't in Washington to get things done for his state. He's not there to govern. He sees himself as an agitator, a disruptive force who disdains crafting solutions to problems or compromising with his colleagues toward a pragmatic end. He's made a lot of noise during his time in Washington, but except for partially shutting down the federal government in 2013, it's hard to point to much of anything Cruz has done.
Eight years, one unsuccessful campaign for president and one too-close-for-comfort reelection race again Beto O’Rourke later, the bottom line on Ted Cruz has not changed. He now seems more engaged as a podcaster than in the day-to-day business of representing Texas in the Senate.
Which is why, even though the numbers would seem to indicate Texas is under Cruz Control, a couple of Democrats have already sprung forward for the chance to take on Cruz next November.
Colin Allred is a former NFL player and three-term Congressman from the Dallas area. He’s got a great personal story, is telegenic, and has been a reliable Democratic congressmen, by which I mean he’s done what Nancy Pelosi and, now, Hakeem Jeffries have told him to do.
Roland Gutierrez is a former San Antonio City Councilmember who served 13 years in the Texas House before joining the Senate in 2021. He was a pretty undistinguished House member, but fate intervened in his first session as a senator. His district stretches from San Antonio out to the Big Bend, and includes Uvalde, where 19 students and two teachers were massacred in May 2022. Almost overnight, Gutierrez morphed from middle-of-the-pack senator into Prophetic Voice, criticizing the DPS for its failures on that day and the state government for doing nothing about the carnage.
My take: Defeating Ted Cruz is the white whale of Texas Democratic politics, simultaneously the greatest challenge and the most likely to bear fruit. It is way too early to handicap the race: it’s Cruz’s to lose. But a lot can happen in the next 16 months, including things far outside the state of Texas, that might affect the outcome.
3. State Policy on the Border Goes from Worse to Worser
The Houston Chronicle had a terrific scoop the other day:
Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”
According to the Chronicle, the trooper’s tale gets worse:
… a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.
As Christopher Hooks wrote in a powerful Texas Monthly column, “Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star is an effort to make that splash, at extraordinary cost. By 2025, it will have cost $9.5 billion. … And the program’s budget keeps going up. Its efficacy is a secondary consideration to state leaders.… There will never be an accounting, in the Legislature, of whether all this money was well spent. Operation Lone Star is a parlor trick.”
My take: Hooks’ best insight comes later: “It is not intended to work as much as to be visible.” What he doesn’t say is that the intended audience is not the desperate migrants streaming north, but the jaded GOP voters wondering what Greg Abbott’s done for them lately. This is the true moral shame of Operation Lone Star.
Other stories for your weekend reading …
… A lot of people did not like Sinéad O’Connor, who passed away this week. And a lot of people do not like Russell Crowe. But this story of how they met does them both credit …
… Texas Monthly’s Alex Samuels asks the question on many peoples’ mind: Why is Will Hurd Running for President? …
Have a good weekend!
Great writer! Entertaining and true.