On Sept. 1, a bill with the pithy title āAn Act Relating to State Preemption of and the Effect of Certain State or Federal Law on Certain Municipal and County Regulationā will take effect in Texas. The bill āsigned into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in Juneāwas given a much zippier name by its opponents: āDeath Star,ā because it could obliterate whole swaths of city and county laws and regulations.
āBasically, itās the greatest transfer of power away from the public and into the hands of a few people in Austin that weāve ever seen,ā said Texas state Rep. John Bryant. āThis handful of people that want to control our state do not want cities acting in their own interests. They do not want any city making policies that get in the way of their ideological and financial objectives.ā Maybe Bryant and other Death Star critics are rightābut weāll know how big the transfer of power truly is only after everyone figures out what the bill actually says and does, and only if it survives the legal challenges several of Texasā biggest cities have already filed against it.
The goal of Death Star is simple. The deeply conservative Texas Legislature wants to effectively deny citiesāthe stateās large Democratic-leaning cities, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin in particularāthe ability to pass local laws and regulations in eight major policy areas: agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, natural resource law, occupational law, and property law. And it does all this in a bill that is 10 single-spaced pages long, nearly one page of which is legislative findings, not actual law. Which is where the problems begin.
Death Star does not aim to affirmatively lay out regulations at the state level; it simply attempts to thwart local regulations. Thus, the entirely of the provision that denies local governments the ability to regulate the insurance industry is just this: āUnless expressly authorized by another statute, a municipality or county may not adopt, enforce, or maintain an ordinance, order, or rule regulating conduct in a field of regulation that is occupied by a provision of this code. An ordinance, order, or rule that violates this section is void, unenforceable, and inconsistent with this code.ā Thatās it. It then repeats this language across all the various other fields, although in a few cases it adds an extra clause or two to identify specific subfields it really wants to make sure are preempted.
Problematically, as the city of Houston points out in the lawsuit it filed last month challenging Death Star as violating the Texas Constitution, these provisions lack any clarity. The new law, for example, never defines what it means for state law to āoccup[y] a provision of this codeā outside of the few explicit provisions noted above, making it very hard for cities to know what regulations are at risk. Houston has argued that it is unconstitutionally vague and that the Texas Constitution and state Supreme Court decisions have made this sort of āfield preemptionāāin which the state does not replace local law with a state alternative but simply declares whole areas ineligible for local rule makingāunconstitutional under Texas law. San Antonio joined the lawsuit late last month.
The sweeping language of Death Star is likely seen more as a feature than a bug by the billās drafter, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, who all but brags that it is going to fall to the courts to decide what regulations are actually preempted. Importantly, the bill contains a provision that allows any individual or trade association to challenge any local regulation in courtāand, if they prevail, requires the county or city to pay all the challengerās costs and āreasonableā legal fees. Those who challenge a regulation and lose have to pay those costs only if the court finds the challenge āfrivolous,ā leaving the city to pay its own costs (though not those of the challenger) if it wins cases the courts see as non-frivolous. So, county and city governments assume financial risk if they attempt to defend a regulation and clarify Death Starās reach.
e; added bolding (which wasnāt in the original) and italicization (which was)
Even if I agreed with this law, which I donāt, it doesnāt make logical sense. Democratic cities make the money that fund rural areas. Destroy them, and we all suffer. Kansas already did this. The inability to think long-term is pervasive.
Thatās because they donāt care about the long-term. Most of the ones passing this kind of legislation are over 50 and know they probably wonāt live more than 50 more years. As long as whatever they do doesnāt negatively impact them anytime in the next 50 years and they get any benefit from it now they donāt care. The executives pushing for these kinds of policies also donāt care for the same reason, theyāre just trying to strip-mine whatever corporation theyāre currently infesting before they move on to the next one.
As for the rural voters that support these politicians theyāre so deeply in denial about everything and so massively ignorant of how their own states economies function they donāt realize how badly these policies will hurt them.
Theyāre dismantling everything that stands in their way now because the writing is on the wall for them in the long term politically and ideologically. They are losing, they only maintain power through gerrymandering and even that canāt last forever.
Gerrymandering already isnāt enough. Itās why theyāve also been doing everything they can to disenfranchise voters as well as engaging in voter suppression tactics. Then thereās the most recent twist which is all the voter fraud, election fraud, and the attempts to subvert the electoral college that all the current trials are about (most prominently in Georgia). They do know the writing is on the wall because their core platform, the thing that has remained constant ever since Nixon is racism, and as the baby boomers who grew up during desegregation die off thatās just not a winning platform anymore. Sure thereās still racism and racists, but theyāre just a bitter angry minority, they donāt have the numbers to support a major political party anymore. Itās why the GOP is frantically trying to pivot to an anti-LGBT platform, they figure thatās a minority group they can get traction with oppressing.
Yeah, it is truly terrifying how theyāve managed to hold onto as much power in government as they have considering that statistically they should have been rendered a nearly irrelevant minority 30 years ago. And yet, here we are.
Thatās also typically why you see efforts to raise the mandatory retirement age for publicly held offices, like this one on the Texas 2023 ballot
Theyāre thinking only about their bank accounts long term, nothing else matters.
More like short term. They care about whatever money they can get right NOW. Doesnāt matter for the future because then theyāll just think of others ways to screw over others to get another burst of money for their accounts.
Thatās the thing that gets me though. Long term their bank accounts will shrink because they destroyed the economy. Canāt buy things when the money is worthless. Is it spite?
They know they wonāt have control or be around forever. How many of them will even be alive in 20 or 30 years?
Milk it dry and F everyone else.
Yes it is spite. If they can destroy everything, then whatever small advantage they have will be better then everything else.
Conservativism does not want change, growth, or improvement. It is inherently static and anything which causes improvement is a threat to itās existence.
Honestly it would be better if the GOP was truly static. Under that definition the DNC is closer to a conservative party than the GOP is. The GOP isnāt conservative, itās regressive. They want change, just in the opposite direction. They desperately want to rewind the clock, to undo everything that has been done. In their mind theyāre trying to achieve some idealized rose tinted vision of the past that has literally never existed because theyāve convinced themselves they would be better off that way when the reality is theyād almost certainly be worse off.
Nah, that only affects the Poors. If they take enough bribes, they can afford to fly to Cancun whenever there are problems
When youāre not going to be around to deal with the hyperinflation your policies may cause, and have instead cashed in on physical assets like real estate or equity in major corporate businesses then what the rest of the economy does after youāre dead doesnāt really matter.
The other part of it is that basically the entirety of the modern conservative movement is a death cult by design. Once the christian-nationalist & crypto-fascist movements aligned themselves with the wider conservative ecosystem in the United States they slowly worked to take over the GOP from the inside out, and essentially unopposed from within their own party.
I hate to be so brash, but it really does come down to this:
The arch-conservative oligarchs who control the modern conservative movement are sociopathic, narcissistic, moral monsters who are using the social programming of their āflockā to attempt to fuck up the architecture of government so badly that the damage they have done cannot be easily undone again.
Wrong, power matters. Abbott is primarily interested in power, specifically power to oppress.
Iām sure that helps, but you think theyād still be there if they werenāt getting paid? Money is power, they go hand in hand.
Would Abbott still want power over a state if he didnāt get paid his paltry salary? Yes. Would he want the power to fuck over vulnerable populations even if itās not one of the most profitable paths? I think so. Money and power go hand in hand but not all see it the same. To some money is a means, power is the goal.
I see people in like two overlapping groups I call āpower bonersā and āmoney bonersā. Examples
Abbott and DeSantis are power boners, they do want to be or are rich, but appear primarily motivated mostly by power.
Ken Griffin is a money boner, he wants power and has it, but is appears primarily motivated by money.
These are effectively (not a doctor) different subtypes of psychopath.
This is the same way they worded the abortion bill. Completely vague.
The problem is that when women took the law to court to, not even overturn the bill, but just to clarify the language and situations in which the bill applies (concerning medical emergencies), the texas ag office immediately stayed the courts ruiling that doctors could use āgood faith judgement,ā kicking the can further down the road till next year.
The state claims that the law is explict in these situations and that the doctors are at fault for misinterpretating it, which is BS. The language is vague and they want to make sure it stays that way so they can apply it at whim.
Conservatives are dangerously unintelligent and should not be permitted to hold any position if power. Ever.
The ones that get into office are often (not always) intelligent. This law is clever in that it can be wielded at enemies very effectively. Their voters are stupid af for electing them.
Their voters are stupid af for electing them.
Good thing theyāreā¦ checks notes ā¦ removing libraries and banning books and not teaching evolution and hardly paying teachers and pay parents to not have their kids in school
Man, the repugnicans really hate democracy. Seems like they are trying to do everything they can to solidify power before the youth vote boots them out.
This is straight up fascism.
Idaho does this with at least minimum wage. County and city governments canāt set higher minimum than the state minimum (which is conveniently set at the federal minimum because Idaho).
This is a big problem in the Palouse area because it borders Washington, so people commute for higher wage. Meanwhile people who canāt (read: teens, disabled, old people) are stuck working for local min wage in an area where cost of living reflects Washington min wage, or move and take their experience with them.
Yep, In areas close to WA like Coeur Dāalene the wages are the same. They canāt get people unless they pay more. The Oregon border has the same effect ($14.20/hr minimum).
Farmers are also having to pay more for field workers because they will migrate to higher paying jobs in other states. Many guys are $20-23/hr and still not able to get labor. Not when the warehouses, processors, and dairies are paying $23-26/hr with benefits.
There is huge pressure for the expansion of the H-2A program to fill this gap. I actually have heard farmers asking for revision to this program so they can sponsor workers for greencards. I never thought that would happen.
The party of small government, ladies and gentlemen.
This is basically a āTexas commits economic suicide by destroying its own citiesā law.
Good luck with that, guys.
Ugh, I really hate my state. We need to move.
I encourage it. I left TX for CA in 2011. Best decision of my life.
And so, Abbottās war on trees advances. He wonāt stop until none of the leafy green bastards are left standing.
