The Washington Post<\/em><\/a> that explains it better than I can.) Bad weather makes me worry, especially when it\u2019s weather that\u2019s out of the ordinary for that time and place.<\/p>\nBut it was the collapse of all the systems necessary to provide energy and water to people that did me in. That was avoidable, just another example of government not doing its job and leaving millions of people in the lurch.<\/p>\n
If it wasn\u2019t as bad as the nightmare management of the pandemic, that\u2019s only because it was mostly in Texas and a lot fewer people have died. Sure, Texas has 29 million people and at least 20 million of them were affected, but it didn\u2019t affect everyone in the entire country like the pandemic has.<\/p>\n
(Many other states had weather emergencies, but only Texas had a collapse of all basic systems.)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s starting to feel like every time I start to feel like things are getting better, something else comes along to show me we\u2019re in perpetual crisis. <\/p>\n
Beginning in mid-January, I saw things start to shift. The change from a criminal con man to a president who actually cares about doing the job healed the stomach ache I\u2019ve had for most of the past year.<\/p>\n
Then I got lucky enough to get my first vaccine shot. And the virus numbers finally started to come down in our county. I began to hope we might finally get this pandemic under control.<\/p>\n
While the impeachment hearing made it all too clear that \u201cthe former guy\u201d and his cronies are still out to destroy everything worth having in our country, it was also clear that the adults in the room were in charge and had his number.<\/p>\n
But then the vote to convict failed, reminding us all that a large number of people elected to public office in this country are willing to throw the rule of law and the basic tenets of democracy under the bus so they can hold onto power. That depressed me, made me realize that the change we need is still hanging by a thread.<\/p>\n
And now most of Texas is suffering.<\/p>\n
As a rule, major failures during weather emergencies do in politicians when it happens on their watch. I hope a lot of Texas politicians go down for this one. It certainly looks like Ted Cruz might.<\/p>\n
Watching his idiotic effort to escape the Houston deep freeze by going to Cancun \u2014 which included traveling internationally during a pandemic \u2014 I was reminded of another Republican senator from Texas and how he responded to a disaster.<\/p>\n
John Tower was elected to the Senate from Texas in 1961 in a special election necessitated because Lyndon Johnson had insisted on running for both Senate and Vice President at the same time and won both races. Too many Democrats jumped in the race and Tower ended up with the job, which gave Republicans a foothold in Texas back in the day when the state was run by very conservative Democrats with an occasional push from more liberal ones.<\/p>\n
I never voted for Tower. No one in my family ever did either. I deplore most of what he did in office.<\/p>\n
But in 1979, a massive tornado hit Wichita Falls, a north Texas city of about a hundred thousand people. It took out 20 percent of the housing in town (in both rich and poor neighborhoods), knocked out the power to the whole city, killed 45 people, and put 800 in the hospital.<\/p>\n
Two days later, I was working at the big disaster relief center, giving legal advice to people who had lost everything. This was pre-FEMA, but the feds already had people on the scene providing help. Tower came in, with his wife, and walked around talking to people, shaking hands, seeing what was needed.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t just do a photo op. He went back to Washington and convinced Congress to roll back the interest rate on loans made to disaster victims. It had been raised to 7 percent; he got it rolled back to 3 percent and made it retroactive. That helped a lot of homeowners whose insurance coverage hadn\u2019t kept up with the cost of housing.<\/p>\n
Six months later, my parents got flooded out because a tropical storm stalled over their house and dumped 42 inches of rain in 24 hours. That was the North American 24-hour rainfall record for almost 40 years. You can look it up. The records say \u201cnear Alvin, Texas,\u201d but trust me, it was pretty much on top of my parents\u2019 place.<\/p>\n
That loan rate made it possible for them to build a new house, because they didn\u2019t have flood insurance. As I recall, they needed some help with their application and Tower\u2019s office helped them out even though, as I said, they never voted for him.<\/p>\n
The country wasn\u2019t a perfect place in 1979 and I still think Tower was a terrible senator in most ways. But he knew how to take care of his people.<\/p>\n
The Republicans in power today, especially the ones in Texas, can\u2019t even be bothered to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The incredible failure of basic systems in Texas this past week sent me over the edge. Again. Mind you, I\u2019m not in Texas. I\u2019m in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the weather\u2019s been mild and mostly sunny (though we are worrying that we\u2019re not getting enough rain). But I\u2019m from Texas and I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,17],"tags":[223,222],"class_list":["post-1037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-life","category-rants","tag-disasters","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1039,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions\/1039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}