Thumbs up, down: Fighting farce with farce
Pennsylvania Dem offers vasectomy mandate; GOP ignores Texans of color in redistricting.
Texans can be forgiven if they have trouble these days detecting satire in a state where truth, especially in the Legislature, too often resembles a good punch line. Pennsylvania residents, on the other hand, should know an obvious parody when they see it. And yet, Keystone State Rep. Chris Rabb is drawing death threats after he sent out a memo announcing proposed legislation requiring vasectomies of all men, aka “inseminators,” over age 40 who have more than three kids — or pay $10,000 for noncompliance. Rather than read it for what it was — a sarcastic show of solidarity with opponents of Texas’ very real, very unconstitutional abortion ban — a Republican colleague feigned outrage and social media erupted with exploding head emojis over Rabb’s proposal of “forced sterilization.” Either they didn’t read the actual memo or they couldn’t pick up on its telltale sexual innuendo: “As we head toward climax on this heated discourse around this delicate matter, we should come together to address it with surgical precision.” Rabb finally had to reassure the humorless haters that he was indeed joking. And this time, his punch line was dead serious: “If men have problems with government deciding on their fertility, where’s the outrage on the imposition of government regulations on a woman’s uterus?” Good question, although it’s likely to land how the satire did: over their heads.
White people claiming
to be “color-blind” used to be a simple microaggression from folks who may or may not have known it’s offensive to pretend not to notice a key component of someone’s experience in this color-obsessed country. In Texas, though, this mythical blindness to race and ethnicity is standard legal strategy for Texas lawmakers trying to lock in Republican political gains in the once-in-a-decade process of redistricting. Republican Sen. Joan Huffman, who led the process of drawing safe maps for her fellow GOP senators, added no additional districts where people of color would make up the majority of voters — even though Black, Latino and Asian Texans are responsible for 95 percent of the state’s growth over the past decade. How did Huffman defend a plan that seems to blatantly discriminate? She feigned ignorance. “We drew these maps race blind,” Huffman said this week. “We have not looked at any racial data as we drew these maps.” What she should have said was there was no way she was going to let the growing minority populations in Texas stand in the way of keeping her people in office, no matter how much the electorate might change. But can Texas lawmakers ensure that political power at the voting booth is truly reflective of Texas’ population if Texas lawmakers don’t know who Texas’ population is? No. The ignorance defense didn’t work when Texas used it a decade ago, and it’s unclear if it will work this time. But it leaves us wondering: If a population grows in Texas and there’s no one around to count it, does anyone hear its many voices? Only if the courts can see the forest for the trees.
When we get down about the sorry state of politics in this state, we just look up and see a beautiful little white blur clearing the center field fence after one of Carlos Correa’s two dozen home runs and we feel proud to be Texans again. Wins by the Cougars and the Dash — along with the promise of the Rockets’ exciting young players — lift our spirits higher than Correa’s impending salary negotiations. It’s almost enough to make you forget a 40-point beatdown suffered by another Houston sports team earlier this week. But hey, how ’bout those Astros? “They’ve been here before,” manager Dusty Baker said after the Astros rocked the White Sox 9-4 before a sellout crowd Friday. “If you’ve experienced it, then belief is a big part of this game and belief will take you a long, long ways. These guys, as a unit, they believe.” In Texas, sometimes that’s all you can do.
And sometimes, Texas surprises you. Just this week, the Texas parole board, not known as a bastion of compassion, unanimously recommended a posthumous clemency for George Floyd on a 2004 drug charge in Houston. Advocates for the pardon aren’t basing it merely on the fact that Floyd’s brutal death at the hands of Minneapolis police launched a movement against police violence and nationwide racial reckoning but the fact that Floyd’s arresting officer in the old case has been widely discredited and accused of fabricating evidence. The former Houston police officer, Gerald Goines, has been indicted for murder and other charges stemming from a botched no-knock raid that killed a Houston couple and their dog and injured several officers. Allison Mathis, the Houston public defender who filed the application for clemency, which was also supported by District Attorney Kim Ogg, says Goines fabricated evidence against Floyd, too. Now it’s up to Gov. Greg Abbott to decide on final approval. We hope he sees fit to grant this small measure of justice in memory of a man who will never know justice himself.