Nature isn’t entirely to blame for mess in Texas

SAN DIEGO — California and Texas are stuck in a big state rivalry.

I’m the product of a mixed marriage; mom is from South Texas, dad is from Central California. My maternal grandfather, Samuel, led his family of migrant workers to the Golden State in the 1950s on a rumor that farmers out west paid 50 cents more per hour.

In California, the people are crazy, but the weather is great. In Texas, the people are great, but the weather is crazy.

And brutal. You name it, Texas endures it. Boiling hot summers, icy cold winters, and at least a dozen pleasant spring and fall days in-between. Tornados and hurricanes, freezing rain, humidity, hail the size of golf balls. If locusts descend from the heavens, you know where they’ll be headed.

Even disasters are bigger in Texas. This month, Mother Nature messed with the Lone Star State — big time. But let’s remember the human factor. It was state and local officials who set up Texas to get hammered.

Maybe nothing could have prepared Texans for a once-in-a-century snowstorm impacting most of the state, and all the destruction it wrought when the dominoes began to fall.

But isn’t the No. 1 job of government to protect its citizens by preparing for the unimaginable and the unthinkable?

Sorry, we Californians can’t help you there. Our state got clobbered over the last year because California wasn’t any more able to handle COVID-19 than Texas was able to handle Snow-mageddon.

In both states, disaster exposed the flaws and failures of government.

Conservatives have claimed for years that Democrats ruined California through high taxes, oppressive regulation, top-heavy bureaucracy and a government that runs every aspect of people’s lives.

Fair enough. Even as a native Californian who spent four-fifths of my life in this beautiful but sometimes troubled state, I’ll allow it.

But I did spend five years living in Dallas, while writing for The Dallas Morning News. So I was not surprised to see that — with their low taxes, loose regulation, cardboard infrastructure and a government that lets people fend for themselves — Republicans broke Texas.

No matter what is printed on T-shirts, the slogan of the Blue Bonnet state really isn’t “Don’t Mess with Texas.” It’s “You’re On Your Own, Partner.”

Apologies for my media colleagues who move from topic to topic like bees go from flower to flower. Tired of covering blackouts and water shortages and what will be the long process of reinstalling plumbing and rebuilding homes, they’re more concerned that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, went to Cancun with his wife and daughters during the crisis.

Bless their hearts. The Fourth Estate can be first-class idiots.

Meanwhile, back in Texas, millions of people need groceries, gas, water, plumbing, home repairs and anything else you can think of.

Most Texans never gave a thought to the Electric Reliability Council Of Texas, which operates the electric grid and manages the deregulated energy market for 75% of the state. Turns out, ERCOT isn’t very reliable at delivering electricity, and many of its board members don’t live in Texas.

Texans must look back nostalgically to January, when all they had to worry about was a pandemic that has now resulted in the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans. At least, that was manageable if you follow the rules — wear masks, keep your distance, close businesses, get a vaccine.

The breakdown of Texas is complicated. Here you have a supposedly “pro-business” state that — when it comes to serving and protecting its own citizens — can’t take care of business.

It’s not enough to say that Texans woke up this month in a Third World Country. Without electricity or running water, many of them found themselves in a whole other century.

Think about all the people, and businesses, who — over the last 10 years — fled California and other high-tax states to move to Texas, because it has no state income tax. Welcome to State Economics 101. No state income tax means the state runs on a shoestring. Sometimes, the string snaps. When that happens, see above. You’re on your own, partner.

Republican officials in Texas have spent the last 30 years creating their own religion out of self-reliance, smaller government, lower taxes.

Texans are so tough that they go it alone. They don’t need a hand up from the government. That’s for the wimps and in the high-tax blue states.

How did that work out for y’all?