This tweet, which has been passed around a bit in certain circles, reminds us that politicians will be politicians:
There has been a lot of attention directed to Nancy Pelosi’s gambit this week, which aimed at grabbing all the social change territory she could get while the getting was good. Most of her proposals were not to our tastes, but neither would we have handled things as the Republicans have done. Our proposal for economic crisis intervention is sharply targeted to the problem that needs to be solved, rather than rank pandering to constituents who are not nearly serious enough.
Here in Texas, the politicians have been doing the same thing. Since the milk of intellectual honesty flows through our veins, we’ll start with the right, which decided that the pandemic was the perfect moment to make a gratuitous anti-abortion gesture:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday issued the clarification of Governor Greg Abbot’s earlier mandate on non-essential medical procedures.
A statement from Mr Paxton’s office said “no one is exempt from the governor’s executive order on medically unnecessary surgeries and procedures, including abortion providers”, according to the Texas Tribune.
It noted any providers in violation of the order – which expires 21 April – could be fined $1,000 (£853) or jailed for a maximum of 180 days.
Yeah, because the trivial number of abortion clinics in the state are going to be oh so critical to the coronavirus fight.
What a maroon.
Naturally, Paxton’s interpretation got him all the attention that he wished it would, and it drew the required lawsuit in response.
One need not be pro-choice to see that Paxton, by grandstanding on a wholly unrelated issue in the middle of this crisis, is just not being serious.
Here in Blueberry Town, we have seen a similar sort of gesture from the left, although carried off with the liberal’s usual flair for sneaky legalisms. Two days ago, Austin’s Mayor Stephen Adler (who, it should be said, has generally been ahead of most other cities by a couple of days, probably to Austin’s benefit) issued a “Shelter in Place” order, the text of which is here. By and large it works like other cities in Texas, with one big exception: It bans all construction work, except insofar as it relates to “Critical Infracture,” which is defined as follows:
[a. … o.]
Wait. What?
The backdrop, of course, is that the activists on the Austin City Council hate all the luxury housing going up (even as they use it as an excuse to massively jack taxes), but they have been pushing for one or another wholly counterproductive measure to promote “affordable housing,” and massive government spending on “affordable housing,” for years.
What better opportunity than a global pandemic and economic crisis to shut down housing construction in Austin, except “affordable housing”? Are we actually expected to believe that masked and gloved construction dudes working outside on a tear down in Old West Austin pose a greater risk to the public than Team Affordable Housing?
Again, not serious.
We admit to having generally regarded politicians as narcissistic authoritarians whose purpose in life is to boss other people around in the service of some imagined better world. We very much wish that in the current moment, when we actually need our government, they discredited our prejudices rather than confirming them.
No Comments