Every time I’m about to admit that I’ve become a Texan, headlines erase that inclination. They remind me that Texas is not only big on the Tea Party ― seeing itself as the TP’s birthplace ― but also that it leads the war on women.
It bears that honor now almost by default. Is there another State that thinks less of its women than Texas? If so, there are legions of Texas health care workers who’ll be hard to convince.
These are the health workers who deplore and resent the loss of two-thirds of the Planned Parenthood Clinics that were shuttered by the Good’ol’Boys who control the legislature and the Capitol in Austin. A majority of the Texas women who most need access to contraception now cannot get it within reasonable driving distance. This blight is most devastating in southern-most Texas, the triangle between Brownsville, Laredo, and Corpus Christi.
In the most poverty-stricken area, around Brownsville, the only family planning left in play is provided by volunteer Latino women, prompting one doctor to remark, “It’s sad that Texas doesn’t care about its women.”
Texas is leading the nation in the growth of both jobs and poverty. Some analysts see both irony and poetic justice in the job growth, fueling the gradual recovery from the Great Recession, which has been the fallout of the dishonesty of the Bush-Cheney White House, a Texas duo with a reckless appetite for war. It is bound to be judged by history as the most destructive presidency in American history, saddling the people with unprecedented debt. The duo is an embarrassment to clear-thinking Texans.
But it is Austin and the Good’ol’Boys who control the Capitol that deserve the larger credit for the unprecedented poverty. Americans living in poverty today far outnumber those that were so stricken in the Great Depression, and Texas is the leading showcase, despite its surge in the labor market. Yet the Republicans ruling the Legislature don’t see it, or prefer to ignore it ― they’re too concerned about women making choices for themselves. Rather than allow it, they make abortion so restricted that the population of unwanted children, poverty, and gangs can’t help but go on growing. They gift-wrap it in billowing bluster. Austin lawmakers long ago raised bluster to an art form.
Too many of the jobs coming into the market now are minimum-wage, which is no longer a living wage in America. It hasn’t been since this century began. It epitomizes the war on women, for obvious reasons. Even in the best jobs, women still trail men in pay at the same job. Women are a large majority of the nation’s single parents, too many of them in jobs that pay only the minimum wage. Could Congress care any less about children and the debt-ridden future they face?
Today’s minimum wage is obviously contributing to the spread of poverty. It goes on growing as a weapon in the war on women. President Obama has jumped it to $10.10 per hour for workers under federal contractors, in effect challenging Congress to match it for everyone. But it’s choking the Republicans in Congress, notably the Tea Party band who are running the House.
Minimum wage could be a pivotal issue in the 2014 Congressional elections. It should be. It should bring women and progressives to the polls in droves. It’s an opportunity to both raise and level the floor of opportunity, the original promise of America the Beautiful. But don’t count on Texas to help.
Frank Mensel ― March 2014