A Column for Skunk I'm Working On

So this is raw and needs to be reworked, but I am pissed at the Texas State Legislature. So that's what column #86 for Skunk Magazine, the only mag that ever gave me a column, is going to start with. Here's what I'm thinking...

DRUG WAR FOLLIE #86

Rights? You ain’t got no stinking rights! Just ask Texas or the Feds: if they get away with what they’re trying, it’s gonna be more of a freaking mess than it already is.

Ah, Texas! You’re dry, mostly flat, largely desert, regularly attacked by monster hurricanes and gigantic, killing tornadoes, and you’re run by a handful of good old boy families that keep most of the money to themselves and then make most of the laws the rest of us live with. And the U.S. Congress isn’t much better, though it represents a considerably more beautiful land mass.

   Why mention Texas in a column? Because if you don’t live here you cannot imagine what the politicians propose. They want to make it illegal to video police officers beating or killing people. They are trying to revive a bill that would force women to look at pictures of their fetuses prior to abortions, forbid women to have abortions after 20 weeks, even if the woman’s life is in danger. Hell, a few of the pukes tried to pass a bill that would force a mother to carry a fetus to term even if it was declared dead. You see why I’m pissed off? I don’t have to love the democrats to hate the extreme republicans. And down here in Texas we have what’s called home rule. That means that any city or municipality with a population over 5,000 can make rules they like. It mostly applies to traffic speeds, whether or not you can have an old mobile home on your property, what local sales taxes will be. That sort of thing. Not always nice, but pretty regular stuff. But they’re on the brink of making a state law—which always supersedes local law—that cities and municipalities cannot make rules regarding gas drilling--a bane down here in natural-gas-rich Texas--that are considered unreasonable. What that means is that if a town votes to not allow gas wells within 1,000 feet of homes, hospitals or schools, and the state says 300 feet is reasonable, the local law will be abrogated. Towns that have banned hydraulic fracking of gas wells have already been put on notice that those bans are unreasonable. They want the gas, they’ll get it and the hell with what the local city wants. This is the same group that criminalizes truancy for kids as young as 12, and is demanding federal monies for schools with the right to use the money as they see fit rather than having it earmarked for schools. This is the same group that insists that Creationism be taught as history alongside—and as equally possible—as evolution, that the world is 6,000 years old, that Jesus rode dinosaurs, and that religion belongs in public schools.  The same group that listens to TransCanada say that the Keystone Pipeline will produce about 46 permanent jobs and then claims it will produce 250,000 jobs. This is the same group that is insisting that Jade Helm 15 is not a military exercise but a military operation that will imprison or kill several million Texans this summer.  Oh, and two bills that will kill anti-LGBT-discrimination laws are making their way through the Texas legislature as well. Ain’t these legislators special? As in ‘specially fucked humans’ of course.

     I’m a balancer. I’m here to balance the insane rhetoric of this group of politicians who know nothing with some sense and sensibility. But I am way fucking outnumbered here in Texas.

    And the Feds ain’t much better. A caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives just voted to make it a law that doctors who perform abortions should be arrested and face five years in jail, despite abortions being legal.

    Wake up and smell the shit, everybody. You’re probably facing similar repressive nonsense in Canada from people who call themselves Conservatives and who claim to want less government involvement in their lives. They are all lying through their teeth. I’m upset and I hope you motherfuckers know it. We need to say that roses are roses and shit is shit. And yes, you can video those cops who kill unarmed people who are already in cuffs.