Sowing Chaos is the plan

On most days, I scan the news landscape by opening two dozen sites, including The Associated Press, The Washington Post, New York Times, Houston Public Media and Google News.

Today I noticed a pattern of content having to do with Trump’s cabinet and other leadership roles in his upcoming administration. Most of the pundits focused on how poor these choices are. Some are in over their heads, others know nothing about that which they will supervise and so on. What these choices have in common, these BigMedia talking heads assert, is their loyalty to Trump. Therefore, they will sow chaos, as will Trump, across the entire federal government.

While all all of these lamentations are partly true, they miss the bigger picture. These proposed appointees aren’t really Trump’s picks. He doesn’t know enough about the government to make those picks. They are are chosen by the operatives of the billionaire plutocrats and oligarchs behind the the dismantling of our democracy. And, yes, they will cause chaos, but that’s only a tactic. The real strategy is to destroy government. As Dr. Nancy MacLean points out in “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America,” Charles Koch and his allies — a cast of thousands — want to tear government out at its roots.

Remember, this is a long-term game. At its heart, this is the epitome of white privilege and racism that caused a civil war in the Nineteenth Century. Those feelings didn’t go away. They just flew below the radar. But they were energized by Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that separate education wasn’t equal. This is at the core of the right-wing radical movement. Immediately after the ruling, the so-called segregation academies popped up as private schools for whites only. ProPublica’s series (https://www.propublica.org/series/segregation-academies) traces this movement. But that was just the start. Voucher plans to destroy public education are operationally no different now from the ones 70 years ago.

And topics that raise ire and are “hot button” reactions like abortion, contraception, union busting, crime, immigration, LBGTQ rights fossil fuels and climate change are the wedge issues designed to divide people and sow chaos. That’s why we’ve been subjected to them. Even worse, they’ve been normalized as the right-wing American Enterprise Institute’s Jonah Goldberg points out, “But now it seems the odor has dissipated, at least among political scientists and operatives. Sure, there are still some ugly wedges, but wedge issues as a generic category or tool are now recognized for what they always were: normal politics.”

The truth is that most of the right-wing, at least the secular part, really doesn’t care about the cultural issues like abortion and gay rights. But they rile up the crowds, don’t they?

So, the chaos, you see, has been a tactic all along; and, so has disinformation, which has been turning definitions on their head. Tyler Cowen, the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University, Koch-funded intellectual mothership of the radical-right movement, wrote, “the freest countries [defining freedom as economic liberty] have not generally been democratic.” MacLean quotes Cowen in “How the Koch Network Uses Disinformation,” Chapter 5 in “The Disinformation Age: Politics, Technology, and Disruptive Communication in the United States.”

MacLean continues by writing that her research “adds to our understanding is its exposure of the core ideas guiding these efforts and how those ideas, in turn, explain the reliance on radical rules change (including change to the Constitution) being secured without alerting the public to the real endgame.”

Read that again. It’s began long ago with stacking the judiciary with Federalist Society judges, overturning Roe v Wade, gerrymandering, voter suppression and eliminating voting sites. But these were for two reasons: to undermine the voice of the people and to distract from the long view. This stealth project wants to change the Constitution to lock down the unfettered economic power of the ruling class. The next step is a Convention of the States, under Article V of the current U.S. Constitution. I am not going to dwell on this, but I urge you to look at: https://conventionofstates.com/

It really doesn’t matter whether the Trump appointee is incompetent. The pandemonium is the plan and the rhetoric will ramp up calling for the dismantling of whatever the government activity is. That will open the door for shutting it down. Then think about what’s left when the government has only two functions: law enforcement and national defense. Posse Comitatus be damned.

Gov. Greg Abbott's order on forcing hospitals to grill immigrants flies under local media radar

A little more than a week ago, hospitals began questioning undocumented immigrant patients who come to the emergency room or are admitted. Greg Abbott signed Executive Order GA-46 on August 8 collect data on undocumented immigrants being treated a the hospital. Included in the data are demographic and cost information that must be reported to the Health and Human Services Commission every three months and yearly. Those questioned can decline to answer without jeopardizing getting care, according to the order.

Abbott has asserted that Texas taxpayers are overly burdened by the cost of providing care to non-US citizens, although the verbiage in the order is clearly political and inflammatory thus raising questions about the right-wing’s real agenda. If one’s ear is to the ground in the health/medical, the drum beating of concern, anger and GOP overreach is audible. Yet, as important as this issue is, it looks like the Nov. 1 implementation date flew under the local media radar.

For example, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network issued a statement raising several concerns, including that the order will frighten immigrants to the point of not getting care. The network also noted that a Harvard study “explained how a similar policy in Florida puts immigrants in an ‘impossible position: avoid the hospital and risk a loved one’s health, or seek care and potentially risk deportation.’”

Every Texan, formerly the Center for Public Policy Priorities, slammed the order.

“Abbott’s Executive Order will lead to fewer Texans and their families seeking medical care when they need it, even when dire medical needs make expensive health care necessary at the emergency room,” writes Lynn Cowles, health and food justice programs manager at Every Texan,. “These are Texans who generally already avoid less expensive medical care in settings like clinics and health centers because they are uninsured and often concerned about the cost and documentation requirements.”

She also called it anti-immigrant rhetoric “intended to scare people into not using any kind of public benefits program.”

The economy will be hurt as non-citizen construction, agricultural and service sector workers avoid the hospitals’ interrogations, Every Texan stated, adding “Meanwhile, Texas families will suffer the governor’s policies as he threatens their rights to seek medical care in emergencies.”

I reached out to DeTar Hospital Navarro and Citizen’s Medical Center on November 4 asking about how each facility might implement the order. Neither hospital has responded to me by the time this blog publishes.

But the Texas Hospital Association, responded within minutes, of my email. Carrie Williams, spokesperson for the health care trade group, said the major concern is that patients will be concerned about immigration questions and defer medical care.

“The bottom line for patients is that this doesn’t change hospital care. Texas hospitals continue to be a safe place for needed care,” Williams added. “On the particulars of implementation, all hospitals are different. Hospitals across the state are working on the backend to determine how to comply with the reporting guidance and meet the state’s deadlines.”

A Halloween horror story: the Roberson case

 The right-wing blood lust in Texas is strong and no better illustrated in the fight to save Robert Roberson from execution. On one hand, Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott and other far right Republicans continue to push for Roberson’s lethal injection. On the other side are those who assert that Roberson is the victim of “junk science” — the now discredited “shaken baby syndrome.” Further, Texas’ 2013 so-called junk science law” in and of itself should provide Roberson with a new trial. The Texas Tribune has a comprehensive review of the Roberson case.

Non-critical thinkers may be puzzled. Why, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the case needs a full review if not a new trial, are GOP stalwarts so bent on killing Roberson? What all of us must understand is that this case is another form of intimidation from the far right. The advocates for executing Roberson want to send the message that the far right Republicans in charge of the state can find a legal way to kill anyone it chooses. Remember that old saw: “With the right prosecutor, a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich?”

Take note that those leading the stampede into the death chamber include Paxton, the clearly corrupt Texas attorney general, and Abbott, the governor who touts his devotion to Roman Catholicism except when the church talks of justice and the death penalty. But it’s also the Texas judiciary and the Abbott-appointed Pardons and Parole Board turning deaf ears to modern science and the facts of the case.

The Innocence Project, a leader in exonerating condemned inmates, is among those calling for restraint and revisiting the case in full. Allies in this quest include a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers on the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence who succeeded in forcing a stay for Roberson’s scheduled October 17 execution.

What is important at this moment is to understand this part of the Texas political ecosystem is up for election on Nov. 5. To keep the far right officials in power is to risk the lives of those who would disagree with their dystopian and violence-fueled agenda. To vote to replace them with officials who are Democrats can turn the tide and redirect Texas to a more compassionate and rational place to live.