Texas -- a failed state

7 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

You clearly don't know anyone who desperately wanted a pregnancy and had to abort it and it shows.  Learn a little compassion.  It goes a long way.

No, I don’t know anyone that falls into this particular category. I also don’t really care if someone wants to 86 their baby. The law we had was fine by me; Clinton had it right. Doesn’t change my statement about its effect on the state in any capacity. 

22 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

You didn’t have a 210k bill that required your payment. You only had to cover your copay so why mention the $210k?

 

21 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

If I’d chosen to go to a different hospital with a different contract with UnitedHealthcare, I could’ve been on the hook for a portion or all of that $210K. It came down to luck I went to the right hospital. Healthcare costs shouldn’t come down to luck.

Not to butt in, but the most absurd thing Cooter said in his post, to me, wasn't that he'd be on the hook for some portion. It was that his claim was fucking denied basically on the grounds of "We're not paying for it because it never should have been found." WTF. But no, our system isn't broken. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by SydneyCarton

14 hours ago, royiv said:

Do you think Seton just smiles and moves along when they don't get paid on a high-end cardiac procedure? No, they factor that into their negotiations with the payers down the line and rates go up. Who pays for that? All of us do in the form of increased premiums. There's not some magic pot of money from the sky that keeps hospitals solvent. All of us pay to keep the doors open with our ever increasing premiums.

But explain than what you want in terms of who should pay for a very expensive cardiac procedure? We're talking about the cardiac stent example, right? I'm hearing that the insured person shouldn't be out the money. The insurance company shouldn't be out the money because they will just pass it onto the insured via higher premiums/copays. And that the hospital should accept a low amount of money regardless that a large team of highly educated/experienced people are saving this person's life.  

I'm not saying this is you, but I get the feeling that some people want to pay $100 for a major procedure and all parties should go along that the cost of cardiac stents = 10 meals at Chick-fil-a.

Or some people feel that they shouldn't be out money because it's not their fault that they have a major medical problem. Who should be out the money?

19 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

But explain than what you want in terms of who should pay for a very expensive cardiac procedure? We're talking about the cardiac stent example, right? I'm hearing that the insured person shouldn't be out the money. The insurance company shouldn't be out the money because they will just pass it onto the insured via higher premiums/copays. And that the hospital should accept a low amount of money regardless that a large team of highly educated/experienced people are saving this person's life.  

I'm not saying this is you, but I get the feeling that some people want to pay $100 for a major procedure and all parties should go along that the cost of cardiac stents = 10 meals at Chick-fil-a.

Or some people feel that they shouldn't be out money because it's not their fault that they have a major medical problem. Who should be out the money?

Well, in Europe, a large chunk of the profits that would go to insurance companies here go directly towards paying for these kinds of medical procedures...

15 hours ago, royiv said:

Do you think Seton just smiles and moves along when they don't get paid on a high-end cardiac procedure? No, they factor that into their negotiations with the payers down the line and rates go up. Who pays for that? All of us do in the form of increased premiums. There's not some magic pot of money from the sky that keeps hospitals solvent. All of us pay to keep the doors open with our ever increasing premiums.

THIS THIS THIS THIS

15 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

No, I don’t know anyone that falls into this particular category. I also don’t really care if someone wants to 86 their baby. The law we had was fine by me; Clinton had it right. Doesn’t change my statement about its effect on the state in any capacity. 

Any woman you know that had to have a D&C (because the baby died in utero) has had an abortion and now the state of Texas will not allow that until the life of the mother is in jeopardy.  So instead of doing it quickly when everything is good and outcomes are very positive, those women in Texas now have to wait until they become septic and are truly at risk of death before your state will allow the procedure.  My wife had 2 when we were trying for kids. Thankfully she was able to get medical care quickly for both and she recovered fully.

 

But keep on judging.  You're good at that.

Wy wife had the same with our first pregnancy.  She was able to have the procedure withing 12 hours of going to the ER with bleeding.  Today she'd be sitting at home waiting to get sicker.  It's medieval and cruel.  With today's law we wouldn't have tried to get pregnant in Texas.

10 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

Any woman you know that had to have a D&C (because the baby died in utero) has had an abortion and now the state of Texas will not allow that until the life of the mother is in jeopardy.  So instead of doing it quickly when everything is good and outcomes are very positive, those women in Texas now have to wait until they become septic and are truly at risk of death before your state will allow the procedure.  My wife had 2 when we were trying for kids. Thankfully she was able to get medical care quickly for both and she recovered fully.

 

But keep on judging.  You're good at that.

 

6 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

Wy wife had the same with our first pregnancy.  She was able to have the procedure withing 12 hours of going to the ER with bleeding.  Today she'd be sitting at home waiting to get sicker.  It's medieval and cruel.  With today's law we wouldn't have tried to get pregnant in Texas.

Yep, my ex had the same thing the first time we tried to have kids. 

We had three miscarriages between our first and second child, two of which were late and required D&Cs. Without them there's almost no chance we could have had been able to have a second. Fuck anyone who scoffs at that, seriously, burn in hell you worthless fuck.

Edited November 30, 2023 by 'stache

First miscarriage/D&C wasn't "easy", but we scheduled it very soon after and it was relatively painless.  Took an emotional toll obviously, but from bad news sonogram to outpatient discharge/pickup Rx was less than 10 days IIRC.  I think we were somewhere around 6 weeks so would likely still fall short/under most state's even harshest of definitions of "abortion." Vast majority of women can pass these types of miscarriages along easily and get back to normal within a few months.  But we were already 35/36 and couldn't wait any longer than we needed to, so wife opted (with small input from me and doc) for D&C.  

Second one, were somebody to just pull a list of recipients from Saint David's Woman's/Children's hospital up north, would look like to the untrained eye that we had a mid-term abortion and are baby murders.  We had decided to wait a little longer to learn the sex of the baby just because we thought it was better to focus on fetal health after the first go-around.  Yes, I realize that's superstitious nonsense but Catholic wife is funny that way and I'm not gonna disagree with her at that delicate time in our life.  So this was the 16th week checkup.  We're well into the second term, maybe even halfway there due to getting onto doc's schedule.  We're gonna do the full checkup first/heartbeat, then go next door for the full sonogram for organs and sex and toe counting and print pics for grandmas, and all that fun stuff.  First few months went well.  Doc's just doing the usual exam and then does a quick belly scan before sending us over for the 3-D workup.  But his face drops and he just pulls down his mask and removes gloves and says, "I'm sorry, there's just no signs of life."  Has the nurse verify.  There's nothing.  No sounds.  No movement.  Whatever he/she was, it was almost halfway there...and then something happened in the 2-3 weeks prior.  At this point we're 37.  Time is running out, and fast.  He says at this stage and age, there may be complications from any miscarriage of this late stage that can drastically effect future pregnancy chances.  But that's nothing compared to just letting the baby's body just rot inside her for a few more months.  With more consulting and prayer, we opt for another D&C.  This one was rough.  The procedure itself still caused some tissue damage on the way out that delayed us even trying again for another 6 months additional.  They even thought she had a more serious condition on top of that that turned out, thankfully, not to be the case.  But it beat us down for months and months.  Depression and a heavy fog of misery and doubt cast over our childless home like a dusk with no hopes for dawn.  I quietly began looking into adoption.  She quietly began looking into surrogates.  It tested our marriage, our faith, and our humanity.  We were halfway to a baby, not just some morning-after rash decision.  To the untrained, cold-hearted stupid fuck Christians in our state, this was a late-stage abortion.  Because they know everything.  They know that a woman has her "unclean time" 13 times a year so all she needs is 13 "sanitary napkins" and she's good to go per annum.  A woman in her late 30's still trying to start a family doesn't need to carry a dead fetus 9 months for you to have your faith validated.  That's not how Jesus works and you fucking know it. 

We ended up with a healthy pregnancy about a year later.  But it was 3 really, really tough years with 2 D&C's mixed in.  Anybody wanna call us baby killers, I'll PM you my home address and we can discuss it in my front yard with my daughters watching.  3 years after she was born, wife tells me over the summer of 2018 that we're pregnant again.  I was elated, but understandably worried.  First couple months went by smooth as they could be for folks our age.  We went to the UT/Maryland game that fall in D.C.  Staying literally right across the street from the White House.  Last day there, I wake up to my wife screaming in the hotel bathroom.  She's standing in a pool of blood near the toilet.  I was sure we had lost another one.  We got into the doc's P.A. the next day back in Austin.  still don't know to this day what caused it, but baby was okay and she's turning 5 in a few months.  I remember walking through the doc's office on Labor Day past, surprised they were even open.  But didn't know that IVF couples are seen based on their "ideal" date, Sundays or Holidays be dammed.  We walked through a room of mourning couples who were just told their fertilizations didn't take yet again and had to maintain solemnity even though were overjoyed to learn our pregnancy was still healthy.  Some of those couples likely miscarried and had D&C's of their own and will now be on Abbott/Patrick's hunted list because guys like that don't know the fucking difference.  

Here's the fun part.  I know for a fact that an affair Donald Trump had once resulted in an abortion.  Because my cousin and his driver took her to the clinic.  It's amazing some of you call yourselves men. 

"yeah but all you guys got to buy a big fancy gun on your way home from the hospital so quit yer whining!"

 

4 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

Well, in Europe, a large chunk of the profits that would go to insurance companies here go directly towards paying for these kinds of medical procedures...

Yeah but those shareholders DESERVE to make money back off the backs of sick people! We would be socialists if we didn't exploit the sick and punish them for failing to shop around their life saving care. Just think of all the lake houses and boats that would go unpurchased just so those takers could live

On 11/29/2023 at 1:33 PM, Anastasis said:

Let's go through some of the specific issues that I raised. 

DTC advertising - I am not aware of any current legislation being proposed, but haven't really searched. Happy to discuss the legislation if there is some to consider. Durbin did something last congress (with GOP cosponsors), but it was only about publishing pricing as part of the DTC, and died in the Senate. 

Expanded HSA access - Variety of legislation in play: https://www.govtrack.us/search?q=HSA 

Pharma pricing, competitive market - S1114, intended to speed generics to market (D primary sponsor, R cosponsor); S1067, limits citizen petitions that slow generic entry (D sponsor, 3R/2D cosponsors); S113, requires FTC to report anticompetitive practices (R sponsor, 10R/9D/1I cosponsors); others here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/subjects/prescription_drugs/6184 . None of these really get to a functional market, but fwiw. 

Pharma pricing, gov negotiations - IRA obviously, we get to see how that plays out and has been discussed on other threads. Not familiar with any other current relevant bills. 

Economic analyses as part of regulatory approval process - lol, no. 

 

If you want to discuss any particular legislative proposals, happy to engage, but we should probably move it over to one of the healthcare policy threads. 

DTC advertising - I saw one bill about removing the tax credits for pharma advertising - No Tax Breaks for Drug Ads Act submitted by a Democrat. All advertising and marketing ads, for whatever reason, are tax deductible, but removing it from Phama would help curb the use of them.  Another, The End Taxpayer Subsidies for Drug Ads Act, was sponsored by a bunch of Democrat Senators in 2019, but I don't think it went anywhere. There was another proposal named the Banning Misleading Drug Ads Act, which was sponsored by Dems, to help reign in some of the messaging around drug ads and highlight the negatives. 

Pharma Pricing -  Medicare, which cost $747 billion in 2022, was not allowed to negotiate drug prices prior to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Of course Big Pharma is pushing back on this, and doesn't want any further drugs to be added to that list, but that's their war against taxpayers and American citizens right now. I'm not aware of any Republicans that support any effort to reduce drug prices, and zero voted for the IRA. I love this quote, "Gilead Sciences that asserted the industry would lose $455 billion over seven years if companies negotiated with Medicare."  You want to talk about reigning in Pharma pricing for the masses, well there you go, that's the way forward and Dems are the only party even attempting to forge it. You may not like it, but that's progress in the Pharma pricing arena, and there's still more to be done.

Then there's the $35 price cap on Insulin for Medicare Part D users, also part of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. The original intent was to cap insulin costs for everyone in America, but that was negotiated back to just Medicare recipients. Wanna guess who was pushing back? 27 million Americans have diabetes, saving them all $100-200 a month would be billions in savings. Why not make Insulin cheap and remove that profit margin from the Big Pharma industry for a necessary treatment?  Other countries pay even less than the $35 price cap the US is instituting, yet we are wasting billions on it. 

HSAs are just treating a symptom of the problem with the system, and are typically associated with high deductible plans. Putting away money for healthcare is a nice idea, but it falls apart when the person's costs greatly exceed what they are able to save in advance. Why bother making people guess what they are going to need to spend in the future? Again, healthcare is not a situation where we want people to say to themselves, "Ahhhh that's too expensive, I'll get it fixed next year..."  It's better to have healthcare covered than to hope everyone has excess income to save for a rainy (or bloody) day.  

Economic Analyses often say the US spends way too much on healthcare, and again I come back to, what are Republicans doing about it?  Trump is still 2 weeks away from getting us his plan. He made campaign promises about allowing insurers to operate across state lines, but never went through with it. We need an entire overhaul of the system, and the only viable solution I see thrown out there is Medicare for all. The US Health Insurance industry was over 1.25 Trillion in revenue last year and made somewhere around 40+ billion in profits off of it. The best way to return that money to taxpayers and put it to good use is to remove the middleman and expand Medicare. 

43 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

DTC advertising - I saw one bill about removing the tax credits for pharma advertising - No Tax Breaks for Drug Ads Act submitted by a Democrat. All advertising and marketing ads, for whatever reason, are tax deductible, but removing it from Phama would help curb the use of them.  Another, The End Taxpayer Subsidies for Drug Ads Act, was sponsored by a bunch of Democrat Senators in 2019, but I don't think it went anywhere. There was another proposal named the Banning Misleading Drug Ads Act, which was sponsored by Dems, to help reign in some of the messaging around drug ads and highlight the negatives. 

Pharma Pricing -  Medicare, which cost $747 billion in 2022, was not allowed to negotiate drug prices prior to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Of course Big Pharma is pushing back on this, and doesn't want any further drugs to be added to that list, but that's their war against taxpayers and American citizens right now. I'm not aware of any Republicans that support any effort to reduce drug prices, and zero voted for the IRA. I love this quote, "Gilead Sciences that asserted the industry would lose $455 billion over seven years if companies negotiated with Medicare."  You want to talk about reigning in Pharma pricing for the masses, well there you go, that's the way forward and Dems are the only party even attempting to forge it. You may not like it, but that's progress in the Pharma pricing arena, and there's still more to be done.

Then there's the $35 price cap on Insulin for Medicare Part D users, also part of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. The original intent was to cap insulin costs for everyone in America, but that was negotiated back to just Medicare recipients. Wanna guess who was pushing back? 27 million Americans have diabetes, saving them all $100-200 a month would be billions in savings. Why not make Insulin cheap and remove that profit margin from the Big Pharma industry for a necessary treatment?  Other countries pay even less than the $35 price cap the US is instituting, yet we are wasting billions on it. 

HSAs are just treating a symptom of the problem with the system, and are typically associated with high deductible plans. Putting away money for healthcare is a nice idea, but it falls apart when the person's costs greatly exceed what they are able to save in advance. Why bother making people guess what they are going to need to spend in the future? Again, healthcare is not a situation where we want people to say to themselves, "Ahhhh that's too expensive, I'll get it fixed next year..."  It's better to have healthcare covered than to hope everyone has excess income to save for a rainy (or bloody) day.  

Economic Analyses often say the US spends way too much on healthcare, and again I come back to, what are Republicans doing about it?  Trump is still 2 weeks away from getting us his plan. He made campaign promises about allowing insurers to operate across state lines, but never went through with it. We need an entire overhaul of the system, and the only viable solution I see thrown out there is Medicare for all. The US Health Insurance industry was over 1.25 Trillion in revenue last year and made somewhere around 40+ billion in profits off of it. The best way to return that money to taxpayers and put it to good use is to remove the middleman and expand Medicare. 

Keep your socialism out of my Medicare!  /Republicans, aka, the dumbest among us

3 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

Trump is still 2 weeks away from getting us his plan.

Trump and the GOP are THREE decades late and TRILLIONS dollars short. 

9 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

DTC advertising - I saw one bill about removing the tax credits for pharma advertising - No Tax Breaks for Drug Ads Act submitted by a Democrat. All advertising and marketing ads, for whatever reason, are tax deductible, but removing it from Phama would help curb the use of them.  Another, The End Taxpayer Subsidies for Drug Ads Act, was sponsored by a bunch of Democrat Senators in 2019, but I don't think it went anywhere. There was another proposal named the Banning Misleading Drug Ads Act, which was sponsored by Dems, to help reign in some of the messaging around drug ads and highlight the negatives. 

Those are not active bills, but I think that this exemplifies aspects of our political dysfunction. We both agree that DTC advertising needs to go away. The solution, imo, is not selective tax code manipulation. Creating selective rules for how deductions for expenses work for different industries will only increase the complexity and incoherence of the tax code. Just straight up address the issue head on and ban it. The BMDAA similarly skirts the fundamental issue. 

9 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

Pharma Pricing -  Medicare, which cost $747 billion in 2022, was not allowed to negotiate drug prices prior to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Of course Big Pharma is pushing back on this, and doesn't want any further drugs to be added to that list, but that's their war against taxpayers and American citizens right now. I'm not aware of any Republicans that support any effort to reduce drug prices, and zero voted for the IRA. I love this quote, "Gilead Sciences that asserted the industry would lose $455 billion over seven years if companies negotiated with Medicare."  You want to talk about reigning in Pharma pricing for the masses, well there you go, that's the way forward and Dems are the only party even attempting to forge it. You may not like it, but that's progress in the Pharma pricing arena, and there's still more to be done.

Then there's the $35 price cap on Insulin for Medicare Part D users, also part of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. The original intent was to cap insulin costs for everyone in America, but that was negotiated back to just Medicare recipients. Wanna guess who was pushing back? 27 million Americans have diabetes, saving them all $100-200 a month would be billions in savings. Why not make Insulin cheap and remove that profit margin from the Big Pharma industry for a necessary treatment?  Other countries pay even less than the $35 price cap the US is instituting, yet we are wasting billions on it. 

This all rolls up under the IRA, which I acknowledged. I think that the IRA approach wrt negotiation is prone to unintended consequences, but am willing to see how it shakes out. The price cap on insulin has been discussed in other threads. It's wrongheaded in that it does not actually cap the costs, it just caps the cost share. Which will just result in increased premiums or other costs for those on Medicare and have no impact for those without coverage. If you want to cap the price of insulin, all for it. Cap the price of insulin. IRA does not do that.

9 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

HSAs are just treating a symptom of the problem with the system, and are typically associated with high deductible plans. Putting away money for healthcare is a nice idea, but it falls apart when the person's costs greatly exceed what they are able to save in advance. Why bother making people guess what they are going to need to spend in the future? Again, healthcare is not a situation where we want people to say to themselves, "Ahhhh that's too expensive, I'll get it fixed next year..."  It's better to have healthcare covered than to hope everyone has excess income to save for a rainy (or bloody) day.  

 

HSAs are awesome, and we should expand access to them, esp for younger workers.

9 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

Economic Analyses often say the US spends way too much on healthcare, and again I come back to, what are Republicans doing about it? 

This response doesn't have anything to do with generating data supporting price finding as part of the drug approval process.

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Anastasis

6 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

HSAs are awesome, and we should expand access to them, esp for younger workers.

This is just another fuck fuck game to get more tax free dollars injected into healthcare profit margins. HSAs are a bandaid on a sucking chest wound of inflated and exploited medical costs

6 hours ago, Captainant said:

This is just another fuck fuck game to get more tax free dollars injected into healthcare profit margins. HSAs are a bandaid on a sucking chest wound of inflated and exploited medical costs

Bandaids are an HSA eligible item. HSAs are not the problem, and could be part of the solution. 

29 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Bandaids are an HSA eligible item. HSAs are not the problem, and could be part of the solution. 

Sure, but what does that money go to when they spend it? A 30% upcharge margin on admin costs and premiums - not to the actual fucking care that they need. I agree that having a tax-advantaged way of saving for healthcare costs is good. But I'm less enthusiastic when the 30% saved on taxes instead goes to the shareholders. 

 

 

Texas GoP !

8 minutes ago, speed817 said:

 

 

13 minutes ago, speed817 said:

 

 

I mean, it's been quite obvious for a while.

 

Take a listen to Rinaldi's response...

On 12/2/2023 at 5:40 PM, speed817 said:

 

 

 

 

I for one appreciate that the Republican Party of Texas is telling us exactly who they are, and who they want to be able to associated with.

This guy?  And... am I seeing his IG account name correctly?

https://www.instagram.com/civil_rights_lawyer/?hl=en

I have to say, I'm quite impressed with his choice of acting roles in community theater.

Lest we forget, later next month is the official Holocaust Remembrance Week in Texas, as passed by the Texas Legislature.

Now that the racists are no longer even trying to hide their racism in Texas, it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out.  I'm sure the Legislature will still be in an Abbott-called special session.

 

We have schools shooting. Our leaders response is "don't limit access to guns, bro, hire more security at the schools." Ok....let's pass funding for the schools to develop more secure campuses. NOPE, the assholes can't be bothered to vote on it. Now they are blaming each other.

Here's a fucking idea. Why do we even need a bill to support this??????  The state has a huge excess in the Robinhood school funding. Austin alone gave ~$800M to Robinhood. Austin ISD's contribution alone could pay for this fucking program. Why doesn't the state use that excess Robinhood money to help ISDs pay for security? Nope, they'd rather used the excess money to brag about reducing the state budget but then they have to raise a separate bill for this.

Fuck you if you still vote for these assclowns to stay in office?

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-schools-disappointed-after-legislature-leaves-800m-for-safety-on-the-table/

 

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Some Texas school leaders are feeling frustrated after state lawmakers gaveled out, likely for the rest of the year, without passing funds already set aside to help school districts pay for new safety and security measures mandated by the state.

BACKGROUND: Texas Legislature finishes fourth special session without school vouchers, public education funds and more
Left on the table included a proposal that would have funneled $800 million for school safety initiatives, which school districts have struggled with meeting under a new law.

Senate Bill 5 from the fourth special session was tasked with various school funding measures, including “doubling the per campus allotments and per student allotments” for improved safety measures made into Texas law earlier this year under House Bill 3.

House Bill 3 in the regular session this year made it a requirement for every Texas campus to have an armed person. The measure proved difficult for school campuses to fulfill, as HB 3 allotted only $10 per student for funding the safety measures and $15,000 per campus. Arnett said his school constitutes and him have had go into “reserves to identify other efficiencies” to meet the requirements.

“It costs somewhere around $100,000 per officer just to get them equipped, get them trained, and put them on campus,” Jarrell Independent School District Police Chief Sharif Mezayek told Nexstar in August.

Dr. Jeff Arnett, superintendent of Eanes Independent School District, said he was “disappointed” the legislation didn’t get across the finish line once again.

“We’re responsible for, as a school district, to now provide additional funding hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Depending upon the size of the school district it is extremely complicated, if not impossible,” he said.

Arnett said he appreciates the Legislature’s focus on school safety measures, but was upset to see politics get in the way of passing the bills to help districts fund the mandates in place to help keep students and faculty safe.

The failed school safety bill, amongst other bills, were casualties of a broader debate around Gov. Greg Abbott’s key priority and main reason for the third and fourth special sessions — education savings accounts, also referred to as school choice or school vouchers.

The governor has said he would veto any education legislation that comes to his desk without a done deal on ESAs, which the House killed before the Thanksgiving holiday. Arnett asked lawmakers to consider the education bills — which also had included proposals for teacher pay raises and increasing the basic allotment for public schools — by themselves.

“Please consider these things individually on their own merits, if you’re going to mandate them, then understand the need understand the cost of implementing these measures. And all of these deserve debate and discussion. But consider them separately so one is not tied to the other. We’re not leveraging one to gain the momentum behind another measure,” Arnett said.

SB 5 was passed by the Senate last week, but was never brought up in the lower chamber. In a Tuesday press conference, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick slammed House Speaker Dade Phelan for not bringing up the school safety funding bill, along with another unrelated bill, to the floor in the last week of the special session. Patrick appeared to intentionally mispronounce Phelan’s last name as “Fail-in” on numerous occasions throughout the press conference.

“We passed the bill over there for $800 million now for school districts. It died today because Dade Phelan said ‘I can’t do anything in six days.’ If you can’t pass it on six days and you’ve got the wrong job and he needs to resign,” Patrick said.

Phelan tried to quash the notion that the House is to blame for failed school safety funding in a statement he shared online after the Senate passed SB 5. The speaker pointed numerous measures the House passed during the regular session to fund school safety measures, but were not taken up by the Senate.

“Now the Senate has proposed an entirely new bill…so that Dan Patrick can take to social media, pretending to care about adequately funding school safety while blaming others for the ramifications of his own inactions,” Phelan wrote.

Abbott has not indicated if or when he will call a fifth special session to address all of the education issues that failed in the 2023 sessions.

Edited December 7, 2023 by crash_davis

You know what would have at least as much effect on school safety and wouldn't cost a thing other than political courage? Some minimally sane gun control measures, like 18 year olds not being able to buy firearms.

Nothing like celebrating the holidays while declaring openly that nazi’s are a-ok with the Texas GQP. Any of you sticking around in that state better be doing it for family reasons. If you can get out just do it and find a place to live where there is either some semblance of sanity, peace or both.

27 minutes ago, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

You know what would have at least as much effect on school safety and wouldn't cost a thing other than political courage? Some minimally sane gun control measures, like 18 year olds not being able to buy firearms.

Bro, Jesus loves guns and capitalism. What you do hate America and Jesus?

 

Insanity at best..

 

And then there is the inconsistency around conception and abortion...and more forced birth..

 

 

 

This is the kind of government that we have allowed to be created in our names as citizens of Texas. If there is to be change, we have to do it. No other help is coming.

1 hour ago, pacman said:

Insanity at best..

 

Holy fucking shit, I thought that was a joke, but clearly they hate America and hate Texans who vote.

33. State Sovereignty: Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas shall be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified. Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.

34. State Electoral College: The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment creating an electoral college consisting of electors selected by the popular votes cast within each individual state senatorial district, who shall then elect all statewide office holders.

37. Article 5 Convention of States: The Texas Legislature shall extend the call for a Convention of States to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.

 

State electoral college bullshit sounds like somebody is fucking terrified of liberals voting.

The bible is very clear when life begins 

 

Howdy Arabia.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

This is the kind of government that we have allowed to be created in our names as citizens of Texas. If there is to be change, we have to do it. No other help is coming.

Allowed?

These guys have been winning by large margins. Abbott has never won by less than 11 percentage points. We are not just allowing it. Collectively, this is what Texas is.

We don't really know what it is as Texas is a state of non-voters.

11 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Holy fucking shit, I thought that was a joke, but clearly they hate America and hate Texans who vote.

33. State Sovereignty: Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas shall be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified. Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.

34. State Electoral College: The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment creating an electoral college consisting of electors selected by the popular votes cast within each individual state senatorial district, who shall then elect all statewide office holders.

37. Article 5 Convention of States: The Texas Legislature shall extend the call for a Convention of States to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.

 

State electoral college bullshit sounds like somebody is fucking terrified of liberals  a non white majority voting.

FIFM

3 hours ago, DaysOff said:

We don't really know what it is as Texas is a state of non-voters.

Not voting at this point is complicity.

Not voting at this point is complicity.

In communities of color, it takes longer to vote usually and hourly workers also have harder time taking off work and traveling to polling locations.

In rural counties, the wealthy usually live closer to the polling locations, which are few and far between.

And, we have very few contested elections, so it seems it’s never worth it.

So much of that is just batshit insane, I can't even think of what the reasoning behind some of it is. They must be really scared of losing the popular vote in Texas this decade if they want to rig the Governor elections with a new EC.  

1 minute ago, Dutchrudder said:

They must be really scared of losing the popular vote in Texas this decade if they want to rig the Governor elections with a new EC. 

A foundational tenet of the modern GQP is "make sure the people we don't like don't vote, and/or find a way to not count or dilute their votes."  The GQP is so fucking morally bankrupt and lacking in any principles adhered to by any decent human being that their electoral strategy is way more about who does not vote/gets their vote counted than about who DOES vote/gets their vote counted.

It's not much more complicated than that.  Voting is a bad thing that must be prevented or diluted.

Since the Joint Resolution Annexing Texas allowed the formation of up to four new states, maybe we should do that.  Each of the metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas-Ft Worth, Austin, and San Antonio can break away and form their own state.  Let the rest of Texas become a fascist pseudo theocratic dictatorship if that’s what they want.

Because of the electoral college and how the Senate is composed to give hateful assholes a vastly outweighed say in national legislation, I'm coming around to limiting federal authority and letting states run things more closely, so long as the right to move between states remains inviolate. Texas and Oklahoma want to be facist theocracies? Fine, I'll gtfo, and the states can lose all their high end talent and run their economies off pillow manufacturers and conspiracy websites. A constitutional convention won't help because like the senate and electoral college the facist fucks in small red states get to dictate how California and New York treat their citizens. Fuck that, I'm done with it all, let chaos reign. 

The 2023 population estimates from the Census for states came out yesterday. In the past, I had the hope that Texas's growing population and the influx of folks moving here from other states would moderate our politics.

But what seems to have been borne out is that a slim majority of those migrants tend to be more Republican-leaning, and a goodly portion of those "conservatives" are straight-up kooks and fascists. So, at this point, we can all assume they alone won't save us from the worst among us.

Then we have the matter of the redistricting process where the GOP majority in the lege has shown no shyness in repressing the non-Anglo and/or liberal vote, either through splitting them up among several districts or concentrating them into tightly-bound homogenous ones.

Anyway, this is all a preface for the maps and tables posted below and makes me fear what the growth of Texas and Florida's populations will do to our national politics.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-trends-return-to-pre-pandemic-norms.html

 

And here's the kicker if the 2020-2022 trend continues (NOT UPDATED FOR NEWEST 2023 DATA). Some of the shrinking population in California and the Midwest moderated/reversed in 2023 (see the first map above), but it still gives me pause.

https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-forecasted-apportionment/

 

8 minutes ago, bolverk said:

The 2023 population estimates from the Census for states came out yesterday. In the past, I had the hope that Texas's growing population and the influx of folks moving here from other states would moderate our politics.

But what seems to have been borne out is that a slim majority of those migrants tend to be more Republican-leaning, and a goodly portion of those "conservatives" are straight-up kooks and fascists. So, at this point, we can all assume they alone won't save us from the worst among us.

Then we have the matter of the redistricting process where the GOP majority in the lege has shown no shyness in repressing the non-Anglo and/or liberal vote, either through splitting them up among several districts or concentrating them into tightly-bound homogenous ones.

Anyway, this is all a preface for the maps and tables posted below and makes me fear what the growth of Texas and Florida's populations will do to our national politics.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-trends-return-to-pre-pandemic-norms.html

 

And here's the kicker if the 2020-2022 trend continues (NOT UPDATED FOR NEWEST 2023 DATA). Some of the shrinking population in California and the Midwest moderated/reversed in 2023 (see the first map above), but it still gives me pause.

https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-forecasted-apportionment/

 

tldr; this (shitty, fascist fucks) is who we are.  Stop saying "we're better than this."  We're not.  And it's only going to get worse.