The pundits are busy telling you what the “tea party takeover” in the Texas primaries means. These range from making being Hispanic illegal to saving us from crony capitalism. It’s likely that neither is true. But more to the point, the Tea Party, now the new boss, will quickly become “same as the old boss”, unless it finds its own independence.
Think about it. What if Tea Party leaders decided to bust the unsavory deal between the two parties that currently threatens Texans’ economic independence and the further destruction of our land, water and the very air we breathe?
Today, once again, the state of Texas hid its head in the sand with an unsurprisingly inability to tie water contamination to fracking. Be sure to read the hilarious comments.
It’s no surprise that the Texas Republican establishment, which had its head handed to it in the primary runoff on Tuesday, has been locked in an embrace with the King and Queen lobbies for a long time. The King is real estate and the Queen is oil and gas. What is generally not known is that the Republican establishment has also enjoyed a sweet deal with the establishment Democrats in their mutual embrace of the King and Queen.
Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that the leading lights in the Texas Democratic Party rarely ever peep a bad word about the King and Queen? Always a good example is Senator Kirk Watson (D-Austin). Watson is a leader of the “growth lobby” that recently made Austin the fastest growing city in the United States. Of course, Perry had a hand in that too. Neither Perry nor Watson wants the world to know that while the King and Queen focus on huge profits in real estate and oil and gas, they are risking the destruction of our local economies.
Using central Texas as an example, the Austin area is experiencing a net growth of 110 people per day. Meanwhile, current residents must deal with unsolvable traffic nightmares, a thoroughly gamed property tax system for million dollar mansion owners (they get 25% under-appraisals), large-scale commercial developers and land speculators (who, together, get 40% under-appraisals), and the offloading of the costs of growth by developers. Did you catch that last one? Current residents are forced to pay for most all of the costs for infrastructure (roads, safety, schools, etc.) for the newcomers. For more, click here.
Top it off with the news that hit nationally this week — Texas is beginning to run out of water. Meanwhile, no one on either side of the aisle will raise a voice to stop the oil and gas lobby from using potable water for fracking and likely contaminating our groundwater. For more, click here.
The frightening prospects for Texas water policy is not even our biggest problem. Try this one on for size. Texas local governments (taxpayers) are mostly powerless to stop water grabs, eminent domain abuse for increasingly dangerous pipelines, landfills, toxic waste dumps and contamination of our groundwater, to name a few. Any semblance of local control is slated for extinction in the 2015 legislative session. Is the Tea Party going to go along with this madness or are they going to fight for Texas? (Go to our “Beefs” section to read about all of these issues.)
Our biggest problem may turn out to become our saving grace. Millions of Texans — including many tea partiers and progressives — are waking up and beginning to work together to topple the King and Queen. Our demand is as it must be – to have the power to protect ourselves where we live. We want local control.
Though politics is not now, nor will it ever be, a true science, there is one scientific law that applies well to politics. That would be Newton’s discovery that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Our (the independents’) question is how do we orchestrate the reaction. One thing is for sure. We won’t find the answer to that without YOU.
Come to the first Regional Round Up of the new League of Independent Voters of Texas, to be held in Bastrop on Saturday, June 7th from 6 to 8 pm at the American Legion Hall, next to Bastrop State Park. Click here for more information and bring your friends or forever hold your peace!