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Bribery Nixes Compassion in Texas
Robert R. Odle, Ph.D.
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What do you think of when you think of Texas? Cowboys, the Alamo? How about big oil and bribes (it's alright they are legal). I grew up in Texas when Eisenhower, a Republican, was in office. What a damn wise man. We need his spirit to rise up and lead us.
Tesla is not allowed to sell its cars in Texas.
Tesler only sells its cars via the Internet straight from the factory or customer store (think Apple stores) to the consumer. No middleman. Well, if you live in Texas, that is not allowed. Big business stopped that and said that tesla must sell through dealerships. Yep, you guessed it dealerships contributed to the campaigns of the governor and other key legislatures. Isn’t this the modern, legal bribe?
So the people of Texas are denied access to clean technology, the environment suffers, and Republicans continue to claim to be supportive of free market. More like a free market for bribery.
… the poor don’t count in Texas ....
Denton Citizens not allowed to ban fracking inside their city.
Big bigness came in and told residences they were not allowed to ban fracking in their city, next to schools or anywhere else. Big business, via the Railroad commission would tell the citizens where it was safe to have fracking. Banning fracking was banned … Big oil contributes a lot to the governor’s campaign … modern bribery?
Medical Treatment via Skype Restricted (Teladoc)
Rural Texans thought they had found a way to get basic medical care by talking to a doctor via a Skype-like app and then getting basic prescriptions by the doctor on the other end and/or told their condition was serious enough to make the journey into the big city to see a doctor/clinic or similar. But, established Big Business said that was not safe (they were going to lose some profits perhaps) and the practice has been severely restricted in Texas. Most other states are okay with it. Can you imagine telling a cowboy he’s not allowed to talk to a doctor over his phone?
A Modern Bribe is defined as a Campaign Contribution.
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No Federal Money Accepted for Health Care
When Obamacare came in, the plan was to help people above a certain income level get health care. Good that happened. But there was a gap between those that qualified for medicare (the really poor) and low income people (that just needed some help). This intermediate group was supposed to get healthcare because the federal government was to give the states additional money to raise the upper limit of medicare to reach up to the lower limit of Obama-care. In Texas, that was millions of people and billions of dollars.
Meanwhile there is a law that public hospitals must help sick or injured people that come to the emergency rooms. However, the federal program that helps hospitals pay for the uninsured patients that show up in ER is expiring…. since the new plan, called Obamacare covers those people … or, better stated that was the plan.
But thanks to the governor of Texas, all these funds were rejected since they were determined to fight Obama-care and resist supporting it. Of course, guess who is suffering. Yea, the poor people without healthcare and the State is now looking at huge budget shortfalls as hospitals start losing money treating all the uninsured people. Currently, due to the brilliance and lack of compassion of Greg Abbott, the governor, 25% of the uninsured for the entire nation live in Texas. So thanks to Big Government, Texans have the highest uninsured rate in the nation, more people are not getting health care in Texas than anywhere else in the nation --- and it is fixing (that’s Texan) to get a lot worse. The Governor is proud of the misery he is creating. He showed Obama his state is not going to be pushed around and he is willing to let people die to prove it. I don’t think the word compassion exists in Texas.
So is this the Texas I grew up in?
Republicans say they believe in Free Markets … but, Tesla and Teladoc disprove that lame theory. Republicans say they believe in local control, local democracy. Denton more or less disproves that silly assertion.
What do the Republicans in Texas believe in. They believe if you contribute enough to their campaign then you get what you want (Denton, Tesla and Teladoc). And with the largest amount of uninsured in the nation, they show they don’t have a lot of compassion for their people that can’t cough up a substantial bribe. Big business and Big Oil win in Texas every time.
In Texas the new bribe is a large campaign contribution. Is this the America we want to live in? How do we change it?
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