I tell ya, as a Texan, I sit up and cock my head to the side like my own dog does when I say something puzzling to her, whenever I see Rick Perry--our very own governor of the past endless decade--swaggering across the world stage, then dropping everything to rush home and declare that "the visuals are powerful" in his own state when it pretty much burns to the ground thanks in large part to his own policies.
Since the wildfires that destroyed every acre of our own small ranch--and would have our home if my husband had not battled the blaze, hand-to-hand, with the help of a couple of cotton farmers and a neighboring rancher, back on April 15 of this year (ironically, tax day)--as documented in my two previous blogposts--Texas has seen more than 3.5 million acres go up in flames in the worst drought and extreme heat conditions in recorded history.
Over the past few days, more than 1,000 homes in the Austin/Bastrop area of Texas have been destroyed by the ravaging fires, which provoked the curious comment from our garrulous governor. I suppose the "visuals" would be "powerful" if you were viewing them from a posh hotel or your own luxury taxpayer-funded home (which costs many times more than the governor's mansion he refuses to live in)--rather than if, like my husband, you were fighting them yourself with a garden hose, buckets, burlap sacks, and shovels.
Because the truth is that this is what most folks have had to fight these fires with. You see, in the whole sprawling state of Texas, there are only 114 paid fire departments. Most firefighting--particularly the kind that eats up country acreage--is done by volunteer firefighters: some 879 departments.
He also cut the Texas Forest Service budget by more than a third--they're the ones who come in with the helicopters and the big planes bringing firefighting chemicals and big loads of water, without which these fires simply cannot be stopped.
And as you can see, they are not being stopped.
So, Gov. Perry is doing what all state governors--even secessionist-spouting Tea Bagger governors do when they have slashed their own budgets to the bone only to face disasters beyond their ability to bullshit--they beg for FEMA money. You know. GOVERNMENT money. Like, from the FEDERAL government. The very government money they claim to hate and want to put a stop to, should they actually become president.
Perry was asked about that, and his answer was pure Rick Perry: slick as a puddle of oil on a truckstop parking lot in the rain--looks like a rainbow but stinks up close:
"The issue is taking care of these people right now," Perry insisted. "We can work our way through any conversations about how to make agencies more efficient...There are a lot of issues we can talk about, but the fact of the matter is now is not the time to be trying to work out the details of how to make these agencies more efficient. Let's get people out of harm's way."
Let's take a closer look at that statement, shall we?
"THE ISSUE IS TAKING CARE OF PEOPLE RIGHT NOW."
Yes, isn't it?
Back when George W. Bush, the previous Texas governor who was responsible for making Perry governor in his place when HE went on to become president, appointed a top fund-raiser of his to run FEMA, as a little reward dontcha know--he wasn't thinking much about taking care of people, was he? Then of course along came Katrina, and he had to think about it, but it was too late, then.
Governor Perry knows a little something about appointing cronies to sit on prestigious state boards and commissions and run various state agencies or get special dispensations to do as they please in the state, so he'll be an old hand at it when it comes time to run the country.
You can expect him to do exactly the same thing nationwide--just as his predecessor, George W. Bush, did--and with the same sorts of results.
Remember Katrina?
"NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO WORK OUT THE DETAILS OF HOW TO MAKE THESE AGENCIES MORE EFFICIENT..."
Oh, it's simple. I'll tell you how Rick Perry makes government agencies more efficient. He slashes their budgets to the bone and leaves them to die, then he takes government money that was earmarked to shore up those same struggling agencies and uses it to "balance" the budget, so he can brag about it in campaign ads, THEN, he denounces that SAME government money as somehow evil and pretends that he hates it.
(But he doesn't tell the local school budgets how they must find those budget cuts. They have no choice but to lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers. He then makes straight-faced speeches stating that HE is not responsible for teacher lay-offs; that it was a "local decision.")
Then we got the Smoke and Mirrors tactic, see.
This is when Perry obfuscates what is happening by grandstanding and throwing media attention off the REAL problem by complaining about something ELSE, as when he complains that the federal government isn't acting FAST enough to bring Texas the help they so clearly need. The help, you know, that he has denied them for a decade or more. The same federal help he has slammed in ads, on websites, in speeches, in his book, and in interviews--now he claims it's not coming fast enough. Or, there's not enough of it. This shifts the attention from the dismal state of affairs HIS mismanagement has caused and focuses it on something else for the media to chase after rather than HIM.
If the reporters are doing their jobs, though, they're talking to people besides just Rick Perry, like the Los Angeles Times staff who reported heartsick homeless victims crying, "They didn't have the trucks, they didn't have the people, they didn't have the equipment. They didn't have anything," as they watched their home burn to the ground.
You see, what these slash-and-burn no-tax freaks refuse to face is that our tax dollars pay for services we all enjoy, from police officers who protect us to fire fighters who save our lives and property to our armed forces who fight for us to our hard-working school teachers who educate our young each and every day--to the disaster agencies who swoop in to rescue us when the hurricanes and tornadoes and catastrophic fires come along.
And that doesn't even COUNT the highways that connect our cities and towns, the bridges that span our waterways, or the railways that carry goods across this great nation--all on taxpayer-funded biways.
A certain tax base is GOOD and NECESSARY for our country to FUNCTION.
To work from the premise that ALL taxes are evil and ALL tax cuts are good is INSANE.
There is no income tax in Texas. We've gotten by with this through the years because of all the oil money flowing through our commerce-veins. Oil businesses pay property taxes, and so on. So we haven't needed an income tax. But that oil business has slowed down in recent decades, and with it, the tax base. And 16 long years of Republican rule has refused to consider any other way to run the government than constant tax cuts, deregulation, and budget-slashing.
Well: YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER THE CONSEQUENCES.
It may sound all well and good on a campaign ad or a badly-lettered posterboard rally sign that budget cuts are the only way to run a government, but I'm here to tell you that WHEN YOU CUT 75% OF THE BUDGET OF YOUR FIRE FIGHTING FORCE YOUR FUCKING STATE BURNS DOWN.
I would dearly love to see how FEMA would function when ITS budget gets cut 75% in a President Perry budget-cutting frenzy. Where would he turn THEN when the next natural disaster strikes?
Similarly, when you cut $4 billion from education in a state where the education budget has never been cut, hundreds of thousands of teachers are laid off in every school district in the state, adding to the unemployment you refuse to admit even exists.
Unemployment? In the "miracle state"???
Oh yeah. But that's another blogpost.
One of many. Because there is no end to the sleight of hand, the smoke-and-mirrors, the bait-and-switch, the lickety-split that is Rick Perry.
FOR A COMPREHENSIVE, BUT BRIEF & EASY TO UNDERSTAND ARTICLE ON JUST HOW THE FIRE FIGHTING BUDGET CAME TO BE NOTHING MORE THAN AN ACCOUNTING TRICK TO BALANCE RICK PERRY'S BUDGET, READ THIS HUFFINGTON POST PIECE.
UPDATE: If you would like to help in relief efforts for the victims of the Texas wildfires, particularly if you live in that area, but even if you only have access through social media, here is an excellent site to get you started: Bloggers Without Borders.
