THE YOKEL FILES

My head is on the verge of explosion again because of one smarmy, calculating politician.  I loathe him with every fiber of my being, and he's my governor.  Sucks for me.  Yes, Governor Good Hair is back in the news causing people all over the country to again engage in talking smack about my beloved Texas and its people.  My memory holds that Texas has always been held in high regard among the rest of the states for its policy; a pattern by which to follow.  "As goes Texas, so goes the nation," is a phrase I've heard plenty.  It was a warm, fuzzy feeling to this Texan, akin to being a Cowboys fan in the 70s when they were America's team.  That is, until Rick Perry got the bright idea that he could easily follow another certain Texas governor, right into the highest office in the land.   Well, now that's all shot to hell.  We are talking about Rick Perry.  The average joe from rural west Texas.  The below average student at A&M who earned a Bachelors in Animal Science.  This is Rick Perry the once-Democrat.  The Rick Perry that was raised by a locally-active father who was a longtime Democratic commissioner for Haskell County.  But, Rick abandoned the Democratic values and principles rooted in service to the people, for the allure of the Republican capitalists and corporate money.  His lust for power and riches ate his soul many years ago leaving a heartless sell-out governing the people of Texas.  Perry exposed himself as the pandering, fake, ill-qualified official he is during his presidential campaign.  But like a lot of other high-ranking Republicans around the country, Perry's antics have been the catalyst for responsive activism among women and the thinking people of the country.

When Perry refused our state's federal Title X allotment earlier this year as a vehicle by which to snub Planned Parenthood, and thus cutting off access for economically-oppressed women to family planning and preventive services, women (and men) mobilized and began a counter-attack.  We have been busy registering voters in our community, campaigning for progressive candidates, keeping the phone lines busy to him and our representatives in Washington and Austin, and using social media to awaken our peers. We're doubling our efforts here in Texas, now that our selfish governor has struck again.

In response to the Supreme Court upholding the PPACA, Perry refuses to abide by the law of the land, and implement the PPACA with help from the federal government to the tune of $13 billion.  Our people will again take a hit that may be the death blow for millions of the poor and impoverished among us.  This damn yokel can spend $25 million of our hard-paid tax dollars, and take four years to renovate the Governor's Mansion, further costing taxpayers $9000 monthly for his rented home, but he won't find the tax dollars to insure the estimated 2.3 million Texans who would be picked up during the Medicaid expansion?  Hell, he probably ordered or knows quite a bit about the burning of the Mansion in the first place.  I wouldn't put it past him.  The sheer inhumanity of Perry's abusive decision is more than my liberal heart can bare.  What really gets me is what Rick Perry has done will cost Texas taxpayers more in federal tax dollars in the long run when the federal government steps in to set up the insurance exchanges.  Yet, the conservatives praise him for defying government intrusion into the sovereignty of our state.  Further proof of the blind, ignorant allegiance all because he stood up in a stadium in Houston as some man of God?  Presidential candidate?  Latest, self-serving televangelist?  If these people understood that his actions are costing them money, they'd be in the streets banging pots and pans and protesting to the high heavens, wouldn't they?   They should be in the streets carrying banners and demanding change with the rest of us. 

As a domestic-abuse survivor, I have mastered the art of being driven by fear.  And, earnestly, what Perry is getting away with at the expense of the people of Texas is frightening.  It scares me that people support and applaud his costly political grand-standing.  Will Texas have to look like a third-world country before these people wake up?  It already does in the inner cities, the barrios of south Texas, the street corners where the homeless beg.  It scares me that these extreme right-wing fundamentalists are turning the Republican party into something unrecognizable in the history of the two-party system.  It scares me that their influence ousted many good Democrats and moderates, in favor of TEA Party Republicans, during the mid-term elections in 2010.  Their elected choices have already started chipping away at the constitutional rights of every American.  They vote during every election.  And our state and country slowly go down the toilet.

Friends, I will not go down without a fight against people like Rick Perry, and those who support him.  Our democracy is vanishing before our eyes at the hands of the powerful and the rich, the corrupt politicians who are bought and paid for, and the people who keep voting for them.  Find what drives you, and join the fight.

PLS ~
Martha