03.10.11

The Shock Doctrine in Texas

Posted in Around The State, The Budget at 1:52 pm by wcnews

Not one Republican ran on a platform of massive teacher layoffs and increased class size. Nor did they run on closing nursing homes, or defunding programs that help those who can’t help themselves. There’s a good reason why. They would have lost, in a landslide.

Here’s a good video from a month ago when testimony was being taken in the Senate Finance Committee.

Of course, it’s understandable why Republicans didn’t run on that platform. Because very few agree with it, many even who voted for them in November. Just read this, Faces Behind the Budget Cuts.

Ronnie Evans is a self-described conservative. “I’ll say that I was backing some of the Tea Party stuff,” he says. But he never imagined the Tea Party victories last November would result in the Texas Legislature proposing budget cuts that would kick elderly people out of nursing homes—especially his nursing home.

[…]

The approach isn’t new—on the campaign trail, Perry and many conservative legislative candidates argued budget cuts were a way to trim fat. Evans liked the rhetoric then. “I think people were against wasteful sspending,” he says. “I don’t think spending money to care for somebody in a nursing facility is wasteful spending. … I’m not in favor of taxes. But I think if you ask most people, ‘Would you rather pay a little more in taxes or have your mom kicked out of the nursing home,’ I think I know what the answer would be.”

In speech after speech, Perry has grouped the state into two types of people—the needy ones and the hardworking taxpayers who support them. “As Texans, we always take care of the least among our population,” he declared at his Jan. 18 inauguration. “But we cannot risk the future of millions of taxpayers in the process. We must cut spending to keep our economic engine on track.”

There’s no place in that vision for Texans like Darlene and Ronnie Evans, hardworking taxpayers whose business relies on government programs. There’s also little room for people like Susan Skyler, a working single mother whose severely disabled son needs an attendant at all times, or Justin Carr, an 18-year-old who found himself homeless and destitute after his mother abandoned him. These folks, profiled below, would be in trouble if not for state programs—programs slated for severe cutbacks.

It’s hard to believe that people who vote, are still so ignorant and naive about what the Texas GOP plans to do to our state government. It’s not that they don’t believe taxes should pay for this stuff. The only difference is that they believe the money should go to their corporate donors, aka privatization, and not to the government who does it better and cheaper, since they don’t have to make a profit. Their plan will cost the public more, and the jobs will pay less.

To understand what’s going on it’s key to understand what the The Shock Doctrine.is. Here’s a great video that explains it really well.

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