(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Texas Republicans should be held accountable for flood deaths [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-07-10

To be a Republican is to believe, post-Eisenhower, that you know best what to do with your money and to demand that you are asked to spend as little on services that others receive as possible. Most Texas Republicans believe their poor neighbors aren’t entitled to any safety net, whether it be from illness, hurricanes, power failures, or raging flood waters. Republicans have this misguided perception of the role of government—that it exists to hire soldiers to protect their economic interests around the globe, to pay police to protect their property from the poor, to create bankruptcy laws that allow their businesses to avoid paying legitimate debts while providing a legal system that allows them to collect what they are owed, to authorize their monopolies for needed services like utilities and internet service, and to write laws to limit the rights of “others” to vote in elections so Republicans never lose control. Republicans believe the only good government is the one that shifts money to them from the general population by privatizing school lunch programs, public education, and the space program, while ensuring that their insurance companies continue to make profits off of medical services when going to a single payer plan would reduce the costs of services.

The Republican view is small and selfish, not realizing that we are all, despite the size of our bank accounts, dependent on each other. The local farmer doesn’t get his product to market without the infrastructure that built our roads, the schools that educated the engineers and mechanics that manufacture and maintain their farming machines, and the myriad of other systems that create customers who can afford their product. But those who dominant the GOP know that they are only electable when they can convince their voters the government cannot afford to build essential safety systems for them. Now is the time to talk about how the Republican notion of economics and government makes us less safe, not only from the floodwaters of the Guadalupe River, but from the real problems created by changing temperatures of ocean waters and the GOP policies to put more money in the pockets of oil and coal companies.

The evidence has been getting clearer and clearer that the Guadalupe River was experiencing more frequent and extensive flooding over the last few decades. The 4th of July event was foreseeable, not just as the national weather service posted warnings for the deluge that came, but over the years. There was a need for an efficient warning system to be in a place where cellphone service was spotty. But none was—because the role of the state to take care of its citizens doesn’t exist in Texas.

Because their brand of politics is that everyone has to fend for themselves. If a Texan community doesn’t have the money to pay for the needed system, it doesn’t seriously think about raising taxes to cover the cost. And the state of Texas doesn’t think about covering the cost of the system in a community that makes a living off of tourism though it benefits from the tourism dollars that community earns. Because that is not how modern Republicans think. Those who have enough live in communities that have those essential services or they, as individuals, are able to purchase them from commercial providers; those who are squeaking by in Texas are hard pressed to pay more to make their lives safer. Texas has built a tax haven for billionaires because it doesn’t provide the services to all of its citizens that a successful government would in the 21st Century.

By comparison, Oregon, which coincidentally has a median income only slightly above Texas (which immediately follows Oregon on this chart showing the 2024 data usadatahub.com/...) has developed an extensive tsunami warning system along its coast. Oregon is much less likely to have a tsunami than the Guadalupe River is likely to have flash flooding and its citizens are in no stronger financial position to pay for such services, but Oregon is a state whose majority realizes that government is the only way to provide those services for which there are no free market incentives to do so. The best managed countries around the world have systems that not only monitor climate and other types of risks to their population but have procedures to protect their citizens and visitors from eminent dangers. Not every death is prevented, but such systems reduce the suffering their communities must endure.

Hopefully, the average Texan will realize how they are being played by the rich who run their state for their own personal benefit and how they are unwittingly making their own lives more complicated by voting for political leaders who do not see the role of government as the organization that provides those services that don’t exist in capitalists economies unless the government recognizes its obligations to soften the hard edges of market economics.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/10/2332714/-Texas-Republicans-should-be-held-accountable-for-flood-deaths?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/