I would assume Republicans want to be able to privatize water, i.e. let businesses purchase all the water rights and then make everyone else dependent on their monopoly pricing. I'm really tired of these carpetbaggers just assuming we'll just sit back and turn our state into their feudal serfdom empire.
Their profits would be less if we the constitution guaranteed the people's right to public water.
I agree about the people’s right to water. Water access is a human right, or should be.
The capitalist set want to treat water like a new commodity, and sell our water back to us at a profit to them.
We need to rethink the « deepest straw » theory of water rights in Texas. Now that we all know the reality of aquifers and groundwater resources being giant underground interconnected caverns, the legal concept of Texas water laws as they are now can’t protect Texas the people or Texas the land. So we need to change the laws and I don’t know how to do this.
We have got to convince Texans of this before they start selling us water for a profit. I know people buying land near alpine thinking ahead towards monetizing that groundwater for SanAntonio in a decade. I hate them for that.
Remember Road Warrior, and the fights to find oil? I can envision a movie where it’s MadMax over water.
100% Laws that worked a hundred years ago no longer work. What we have now are carpetbaggers and ruthless amoral businessmen who will use these laws to exploit us.
Right now though I am glad I am not a native Texan because it is such a mess.I know two of our three leaders of doom are not natives but the main one is, and a prefer another native son to be in charge🙃
Of course! I believe that also. As far as Abbott goes for me, familiarity breeds contempt. 💙
The main issue with Republican non-natives for me is the exploitation a/k/a carpetbagging disguised as Texas values. What gets my goat is these particular Republicans adopt a stereotypical and ultimately insulting Texas pseudo-identity to justify their exploitation. Even Texas Republicans hate that. We do not like being told their self-serving bullshit is what Texas is about. It is not.
Chip Roy, for example, imposes a very narrow and ridiculous frame onto the Texas identity such that he thinks he can just shout “Texas” to justify his policies. It is one thing to invoke an identity for fun, i.e. the old stereotype of newbies buying a ten-gallon hat. It is quite another to further policies that hurt Texans while telling them they have to go along with it because it is what Texans like.
Michelle’s article lays that premise out very nicely.
My city already has problems with payment for water. We are not s member city of the water authority in North Texas so we pay more for our water and we have to pay extra for water not taken. In other words we had to agree to take so much and pay for it but due to the fact that our City was not really large we are not using all of it. We have grown certainly but regardless we pay whether the population "takes" the water which the customer would then pay the city for that water. We are not allowed by the board to be a member city either and influence decisions nor reap any rewards even though we are double the population of some member cities. We have been to the State to argue for changes and last I heard nothing was resolved on changes. So when one talks about water charges & access, it has been here for years.
Michelle, prop 5 seems to be less straightforward than we think.
From Steven Weintraub:
Proposition 5 - Exemption for animal feed - NO
<$27.7 million decrease in property tax, All Texans pay 3.4 million more tax, Business get tax break>
This amendment sounds like it is a tax cut for farmers and ranchers, it is not. It is a tax cut for the seller of the food. Texas businesses pay property tax on their inventory. This is a carve out of one type of inventory on the premise that the seller will then lower prices. Basic economics says this will not happen: if the market is already supporting an existing price that price stays until downward market pressure arrives. The animal food sellers get a double boost: the tax cut and the ability to raise the price. This tax cut is so inequitable, that all Texans end up paying more and only businesses get a tax break.
Thanks for that. Saves a lot of tedious research, especially when the ballot phrasing is vague word salad. Be sure and remind folks to turn out. We have more voice this November than we do in the "big" elections.
It’s one of the top 5 most gerrymandered states in the country. It all started in 2003/2004 with intense mid cycle redistricting at the whims of republicans over the voices of voters…
'Texas Republicans pushed through two sweeping measures Thursday—one targeting transgender people with a “bathroom bill,” the other aimed at cutting off access to mail-order abortion pills—cementing the state’s role as a testing ground for the right’s most extreme culture-war laws" - DK
I know, I watched them all day yesterday when I wasn’t in school. Debating whether to go back and make clips today, or over the three day weekend. It’ll probably be this weekend, since I’ll have a break and they don’t meet again until Tuesday.
Thank you SO MUCH, Michelle! Your descriptions are so concise!!! So much better than the legalize we'll actually see & the usual reporting closer to the election.
Michelle - I wanna know which ignorant Dems voted in favor of these amendments. That's the only way they ever saw the light of day on a ballot, right? They all passed and so many of them are just grift for special interests. I've looked and looked and can't find the voting record for them. I'm admittedly internetedly challenged. I know you're busy, but help a brother out, please?
Yes. Everyone is all up in arms about it. I have two very important deadlines to get through tomorrow, but I plan to dig into the nitty-gritty of the amendments, who voted for them, and link to previous articles. Give me the weekend.
I took a 2 minute scan thorough the list a couple weeks ago and just from the titles took a guess as to the read between the lines.
Then again several years of reading the entire TX Rethuglican Party Platform, the Heritage Foundation’s propaganda (cough cough press releases), and project 2025 all the way through twice has honed those chops pretty well.
Still being as radiation has commenced in the past week, it’s nice to know it hasn’t impacted rational thought processing.
After reading your assessments of same, was pleased to see my ability interpret the legislatures attempts to slide yet more handouts to the rich into law under the radar screen via not so clever wording remains in place.
Although I’m not too keen the believability of the “state will backfill bit”.
I haven’t seen them do a damn thing regarding anything vaguely approaching education that wasn’t about any of:
Gutting it wholesale to ensure our future voters are even more ignorant than their parents.
Raiding those tax dollars to ensure they get more millions in campaign donations by going a handout to the donor (cough cough carpetbagger) in question.
Rewriting our sordid history about slavery and general bigotry to simultaneously promote the vastly overrated and mostly undeserved notion of Texas Exceptionalism (kicks the shit outta the far wimpier American Exceptionalism cause Everything’s Bigger In Texas) and yield go to slug-lines that have as few words a possible and thus are easy for the lemmings to recall at all times (Remember the Alamo).
Weaponizing curriculum to further fuel the hatred and bigotry that keeps the populace focused on that to ensure they don’t realize that we really don’t give one flying fuck about them.
Expediting privatization to line the coffers of East Coast venture capitalist fucks in one of the more “obvious the most casual of passerby” bits of corruption that roughly goes like “Hm. You get vouchers though so I can clean up off them and I’ll dump x millions into your campaign fund. The x will vary with a bonus if you get it pushed through faster.” Abbot must have really gotten a good “X” due to the number of “special sessions” he held at O Dark Thirty AM to ram that crap though.
Reinforce the whole “homeschooling” thing which we’ll cheerfully provide zero framework or oversite for to ensure our parents will produce a new generation of Texas voters who will continue to vote against their own self interests.
Allow us to promote Wilks and Dunn style indoctrination camps for our lemmings children that are even more effective in producing whole fleets of 7 Mountains robots thus ensuring even more ChistoFascist voters.
Why so many Texans can’t see this stuff when to me I don’t even need to read the Texas Tribune or other folk’s articles on the lastest corruption de jour, I see the headline and the “under the hood” bit of which sector / business / individual who’s getting the taxpayer funded handout sticks out like a 50’ tall screaming red neon sign on the highway.
This week’s little tidbit of Abbot’s dictating curriculum to professors and the echo chamber’s support for it via the myriads of “don’t want no goddamn libtard brainwashing my children and turning them into fascists” posts on every platform out there just slays me.
Heard that literally word for word from a neighbor and (gotta give em credit, they’re consistent) and was sorely tempted to reply with “Oh I’m sorry, here, let me help translate that for you.
“Through my life long practice of intentionally keeping my head in the sand and thus not being able to comprehend how all these right wing policies have zero to do with my well being and all to do with the billionaire little boys club raiding the cookie jar and having me foot the bill, I’ve cheerfully signed away the education system’s teaching of anything vaguely approximating critical and independent thinking to ensure my children grow up even more ignorant than I am, but I hey, I REALLY NEED my ignorance, because it gives me one more thing to target my never ending rage at, and provides cover for my racism, obsession with getting over on others, and general misogynistic view of them wimmens that I disguise as religion, but mostly, it allows me to stuff my utterly lacking in any moral compass views of the world down as many throats a possible to cover for the internal self hatred and inadequacies I refuse to face, because any introspection and questioning of my own views as to where they came from and how I might be using them despite them being self and other harmful is for pussies.”
I know, your version is shorter to say and easier because there’s no words with too many letters or syllables in them, and you can hang anything you want after “don’t want no goddamn libtard” as a shortcut to being able to actually think that has the bonus of coming with a little endorphin rush every time used.
Yah know, us neurodivergent types you hate because the word has too many letters for you to wrap your head around, call those repetitive actions to reduce discomfort in our environment self stimming.
If you weren’t so busy cheering on RFK’s building concentration camps for us, you might wanna look that up. At least we’re honest about it, we know exactly what it is, and why we do it, and in our cases, it doesn’t hurt any body else or ourselves.
When you do it it’s always self or others destructive, but of course that’s not something you’re even vaguely aware of.
We (BCDP) have a committee looking into this topic too. I quickly sent this to them. They saw it before me. ☺️
I believe they said their were similar. I can’t wait to find out how they were different. Today was so busy; I forgot it was a wash your hair day. Well, tomorrow is soon enough. 🙃
They have not published it. When it does get published. I will be shocked if it’s different. I will say the guy (who I shared it with) that is in charge of that sub-committee; I saw him on a zoom committee meeting said “Davis is good; I’m going to check if we said the same thing.” 😁. I can’t wait to see his.
Props 11 and 13 are confusing - and the endorsements are mixed. Wouldn’t a yes vote take away funding from public schools? Can we trust the state of Texas to backfill public school funding? Thanks for any additional intel- 🙏🏾
Agree. I sent a similar wish to my state rep & she responded with reference to how the legislature has to write them . Never did read it but hope to one of these days.
I just upgraded to a paid subscription because of this post. Thank you so much from Rockwall!
💙💙
"Public water is climate justice." OOoohh! Them's fightin' words for repubs.
Fuck the right. 😁
I would assume Republicans want to be able to privatize water, i.e. let businesses purchase all the water rights and then make everyone else dependent on their monopoly pricing. I'm really tired of these carpetbaggers just assuming we'll just sit back and turn our state into their feudal serfdom empire.
Their profits would be less if we the constitution guaranteed the people's right to public water.
I agree about the people’s right to water. Water access is a human right, or should be.
The capitalist set want to treat water like a new commodity, and sell our water back to us at a profit to them.
We need to rethink the « deepest straw » theory of water rights in Texas. Now that we all know the reality of aquifers and groundwater resources being giant underground interconnected caverns, the legal concept of Texas water laws as they are now can’t protect Texas the people or Texas the land. So we need to change the laws and I don’t know how to do this.
We have got to convince Texans of this before they start selling us water for a profit. I know people buying land near alpine thinking ahead towards monetizing that groundwater for SanAntonio in a decade. I hate them for that.
Remember Road Warrior, and the fights to find oil? I can envision a movie where it’s MadMax over water.
Water is the new oil.
100% Laws that worked a hundred years ago no longer work. What we have now are carpetbaggers and ruthless amoral businessmen who will use these laws to exploit us.
Right now though I am glad I am not a native Texan because it is such a mess.I know two of our three leaders of doom are not natives but the main one is, and a prefer another native son to be in charge🙃
Of course! I believe that also. As far as Abbott goes for me, familiarity breeds contempt. 💙
The main issue with Republican non-natives for me is the exploitation a/k/a carpetbagging disguised as Texas values. What gets my goat is these particular Republicans adopt a stereotypical and ultimately insulting Texas pseudo-identity to justify their exploitation. Even Texas Republicans hate that. We do not like being told their self-serving bullshit is what Texas is about. It is not.
Chip Roy, for example, imposes a very narrow and ridiculous frame onto the Texas identity such that he thinks he can just shout “Texas” to justify his policies. It is one thing to invoke an identity for fun, i.e. the old stereotype of newbies buying a ten-gallon hat. It is quite another to further policies that hurt Texans while telling them they have to go along with it because it is what Texans like.
Michelle’s article lays that premise out very nicely.
Oh, yes
My city already has problems with payment for water. We are not s member city of the water authority in North Texas so we pay more for our water and we have to pay extra for water not taken. In other words we had to agree to take so much and pay for it but due to the fact that our City was not really large we are not using all of it. We have grown certainly but regardless we pay whether the population "takes" the water which the customer would then pay the city for that water. We are not allowed by the board to be a member city either and influence decisions nor reap any rewards even though we are double the population of some member cities. We have been to the State to argue for changes and last I heard nothing was resolved on changes. So when one talks about water charges & access, it has been here for years.
Michelle, prop 5 seems to be less straightforward than we think.
From Steven Weintraub:
Proposition 5 - Exemption for animal feed - NO
<$27.7 million decrease in property tax, All Texans pay 3.4 million more tax, Business get tax break>
This amendment sounds like it is a tax cut for farmers and ranchers, it is not. It is a tax cut for the seller of the food. Texas businesses pay property tax on their inventory. This is a carve out of one type of inventory on the premise that the seller will then lower prices. Basic economics says this will not happen: if the market is already supporting an existing price that price stays until downward market pressure arrives. The animal food sellers get a double boost: the tax cut and the ability to raise the price. This tax cut is so inequitable, that all Texans end up paying more and only businesses get a tax break.
Thanks for that. Saves a lot of tedious research, especially when the ballot phrasing is vague word salad. Be sure and remind folks to turn out. We have more voice this November than we do in the "big" elections.
Yes. Plus, we have special elections at the same time, in SD09 and TX18.
Thanks for the reminder. Unless I've been gerrymandered out, I live in SD09. Gave Rehmet a little change. We need to defeat wantavowel.
They didn’t redraw the SD seats, so you’re good. 👍🏻
So how intense is the gerrymander in Texas? the last gerrymander they implemented was based on the 2020 census?
It’s one of the top 5 most gerrymandered states in the country. It all started in 2003/2004 with intense mid cycle redistricting at the whims of republicans over the voices of voters…
'Texas Republicans pushed through two sweeping measures Thursday—one targeting transgender people with a “bathroom bill,” the other aimed at cutting off access to mail-order abortion pills—cementing the state’s role as a testing ground for the right’s most extreme culture-war laws" - DK
I know, I watched them all day yesterday when I wasn’t in school. Debating whether to go back and make clips today, or over the three day weekend. It’ll probably be this weekend, since I’ll have a break and they don’t meet again until Tuesday.
Thank you SO MUCH, Michelle! Your descriptions are so concise!!! So much better than the legalize we'll actually see & the usual reporting closer to the election.
Michelle - I wanna know which ignorant Dems voted in favor of these amendments. That's the only way they ever saw the light of day on a ballot, right? They all passed and so many of them are just grift for special interests. I've looked and looked and can't find the voting record for them. I'm admittedly internetedly challenged. I know you're busy, but help a brother out, please?
Yes. Everyone is all up in arms about it. I have two very important deadlines to get through tomorrow, but I plan to dig into the nitty-gritty of the amendments, who voted for them, and link to previous articles. Give me the weekend.
Michelle, thanks for this.
I took a 2 minute scan thorough the list a couple weeks ago and just from the titles took a guess as to the read between the lines.
Then again several years of reading the entire TX Rethuglican Party Platform, the Heritage Foundation’s propaganda (cough cough press releases), and project 2025 all the way through twice has honed those chops pretty well.
Still being as radiation has commenced in the past week, it’s nice to know it hasn’t impacted rational thought processing.
After reading your assessments of same, was pleased to see my ability interpret the legislatures attempts to slide yet more handouts to the rich into law under the radar screen via not so clever wording remains in place.
Although I’m not too keen the believability of the “state will backfill bit”.
I haven’t seen them do a damn thing regarding anything vaguely approaching education that wasn’t about any of:
Gutting it wholesale to ensure our future voters are even more ignorant than their parents.
Raiding those tax dollars to ensure they get more millions in campaign donations by going a handout to the donor (cough cough carpetbagger) in question.
Rewriting our sordid history about slavery and general bigotry to simultaneously promote the vastly overrated and mostly undeserved notion of Texas Exceptionalism (kicks the shit outta the far wimpier American Exceptionalism cause Everything’s Bigger In Texas) and yield go to slug-lines that have as few words a possible and thus are easy for the lemmings to recall at all times (Remember the Alamo).
Weaponizing curriculum to further fuel the hatred and bigotry that keeps the populace focused on that to ensure they don’t realize that we really don’t give one flying fuck about them.
Expediting privatization to line the coffers of East Coast venture capitalist fucks in one of the more “obvious the most casual of passerby” bits of corruption that roughly goes like “Hm. You get vouchers though so I can clean up off them and I’ll dump x millions into your campaign fund. The x will vary with a bonus if you get it pushed through faster.” Abbot must have really gotten a good “X” due to the number of “special sessions” he held at O Dark Thirty AM to ram that crap though.
Reinforce the whole “homeschooling” thing which we’ll cheerfully provide zero framework or oversite for to ensure our parents will produce a new generation of Texas voters who will continue to vote against their own self interests.
Allow us to promote Wilks and Dunn style indoctrination camps for our lemmings children that are even more effective in producing whole fleets of 7 Mountains robots thus ensuring even more ChistoFascist voters.
Why so many Texans can’t see this stuff when to me I don’t even need to read the Texas Tribune or other folk’s articles on the lastest corruption de jour, I see the headline and the “under the hood” bit of which sector / business / individual who’s getting the taxpayer funded handout sticks out like a 50’ tall screaming red neon sign on the highway.
This week’s little tidbit of Abbot’s dictating curriculum to professors and the echo chamber’s support for it via the myriads of “don’t want no goddamn libtard brainwashing my children and turning them into fascists” posts on every platform out there just slays me.
Heard that literally word for word from a neighbor and (gotta give em credit, they’re consistent) and was sorely tempted to reply with “Oh I’m sorry, here, let me help translate that for you.
“Through my life long practice of intentionally keeping my head in the sand and thus not being able to comprehend how all these right wing policies have zero to do with my well being and all to do with the billionaire little boys club raiding the cookie jar and having me foot the bill, I’ve cheerfully signed away the education system’s teaching of anything vaguely approximating critical and independent thinking to ensure my children grow up even more ignorant than I am, but I hey, I REALLY NEED my ignorance, because it gives me one more thing to target my never ending rage at, and provides cover for my racism, obsession with getting over on others, and general misogynistic view of them wimmens that I disguise as religion, but mostly, it allows me to stuff my utterly lacking in any moral compass views of the world down as many throats a possible to cover for the internal self hatred and inadequacies I refuse to face, because any introspection and questioning of my own views as to where they came from and how I might be using them despite them being self and other harmful is for pussies.”
I know, your version is shorter to say and easier because there’s no words with too many letters or syllables in them, and you can hang anything you want after “don’t want no goddamn libtard” as a shortcut to being able to actually think that has the bonus of coming with a little endorphin rush every time used.
Yah know, us neurodivergent types you hate because the word has too many letters for you to wrap your head around, call those repetitive actions to reduce discomfort in our environment self stimming.
If you weren’t so busy cheering on RFK’s building concentration camps for us, you might wanna look that up. At least we’re honest about it, we know exactly what it is, and why we do it, and in our cases, it doesn’t hurt any body else or ourselves.
When you do it it’s always self or others destructive, but of course that’s not something you’re even vaguely aware of.
Right there with you. You read them exactly how I do, and I wish you smooth sailing with the treatments.
We (BCDP) have a committee looking into this topic too. I quickly sent this to them. They saw it before me. ☺️
I believe they said their were similar. I can’t wait to find out how they were different. Today was so busy; I forgot it was a wash your hair day. Well, tomorrow is soon enough. 🙃
I’m kind of curious how I did, too.
They have not published it. When it does get published. I will be shocked if it’s different. I will say the guy (who I shared it with) that is in charge of that sub-committee; I saw him on a zoom committee meeting said “Davis is good; I’m going to check if we said the same thing.” 😁. I can’t wait to see his.
Let’s get out and vote in November!
Michelle-As always--such well-considered information. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
💙💙
Props 11 and 13 are confusing - and the endorsements are mixed. Wouldn’t a yes vote take away funding from public schools? Can we trust the state of Texas to backfill public school funding? Thanks for any additional intel- 🙏🏾
Agree. I sent a similar wish to my state rep & she responded with reference to how the legislature has to write them . Never did read it but hope to one of these days.