NEW: List the illnesses that lead to severe Covid-19 complications and you will have described much of South Texas. I embedded in a hopsital and witnessed both new life and death at close range. The region is overwhelmed and there's no relief in sight. https://t.co/LDcI073Vl7— Caitlin Dickerson (@itscaitlinhd) July 19, 2020
...to most Texans "the Valley" doesn't even exist.
I'd like to think the low insurance coverage in Texas combined with the economic disaster and the completely failed state government response will make people fundamentally reassess what they expect from government in Texas. LBJ helped that along tremendously, at least in Central Texas.
But even that is taken for granted now, despite what it continues to do for the common good. Even this crisis won't change anything. If it even deposes Greg Abbott in two years, I'll be astonished.
Texas has sytematically starved its schools of funding, and even lowered the amount of taxes they can collect in the last session. Now schools need to supply laptops and internet access or force teachers to face contagion five days a week, which will mean "work or die!" The State imposes more and more burdens on schools (testing, reduced taxes, takes tax money from districts to "redistribute" to other districts based on a broken formula), and provides fewer and fewer resources. Texas prides itself on electing everyone from dog catcher to Governor, and all state offices in between, but school district elections cost money, and the state takes money away from school districts more and more every year.
We're gonna have to figure out if we want democracy, we have to pay for democracy. Elections are not free. School is not free. Health and safety are not free. But we pretend like they should be.
And the poor, who are all over Texas, not just in the valley? Invisible. I don't see that changing, either.
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