Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been engaged in a bit of political extortion this week using a suggested threat that he could once again shutdown Texas if we don’t all be good little subjects of our masters and follow his lifestyle advice.
State Senator Bob Hall said it best in a statement:
“Texas has now gone full circle from a dictatorship to a republic, to a sovereign American State. Now it appears that as long as we allow the Governor’s actions under the Disaster Management Act, we are expected to live as if we have a monarchy,” Hall said.
“Who knew the flame of Texas Liberty would be extinguished, by the stroke of a pen, without a shot fired?”
The legal authority Governor Abbott had to “shutdown” Texas and order free citizens to “stay home” is itself questionable and is being challenged in court. But at least those original orders were made in the face of worldwide panic and at least a veneer of the lethality and infection rate of the new version of Coronavirus being unknown.
Abbott’s hypocritical virus presser at a DPS warehouse (note the pointless white coated folk behind him, that line stretched way across, well beyond this shot.)
However Texas local officials are still making new orders, with Greg Abbott’s consent and seeming support, based on virus numbers and a now well-known lethality rate that are so far from the early apocalyptic numbers used to justify overreach by government as to be representative of an almost completely different disease.
Greg Abbott has turned political extortionist, or maybe “monarch” in the words of Senator Hall, using local officials as henchmen to do his work so he can shed much of the blame, typical for a poll-driven politician, but remember that both an extortionist or monarch only has the power we give him.
See also:
- Abbott goes full stupid by ignoring law of diminishing returns
- Not admitting mistakes is subverting freedom
- Action that abridges freedom should be justified with empirical evidence
- Surrendering to the stampeding crowd on the virus is not responsible
- Officials are playing with a fire possibly more deadly than the virus outbreak
- Knee-jerk decisions have ensured suffering, virus & economic, will last longer
Impeach Governor Abbott or take away the authority he has to open and close Texas on a whim! I can say this because I voted for the fool twice! I’m ready to sign the petition to make him non-essential!
What a shame. Nueces county beaches are closed for the fourth, no cars on the beach rather crowded like livestock thru beach access roads. No where to park, what a cluster. I am a resident in Port Aransas this will create mobs of people concentrated all over the town instead of spread out down the beaches. Thank the governor, county judge and mayor of Port Aransas for this travesty. Wake up America!
I disagree, Gregory! State & local officials are restricting beach access due to health and safety reasons.