A modest proposal for the Texas Legislature's coming special session

Last edited Tue Jun 27, 2017, 09:27 AM - Edit history (1)

Gov. Greg Abbott's agenda for the Texas Legislature's special session next month looks a little light, so here are a few proposals he should add to his list.

* Change the name of Welfare, Texas, for obvious reasons, to Self-Reliance. The town has had 137 years to adopt a better name, but has failed to act. You know why? Because it's lazy.
* Require women seeking abortions to write letters of explanation to their fetuses, and to read them out loud.
* Shut down zoos' pro-homosexual agendas in Texas. Most people aren't aware, for example, that politically correct zookeepers at the San Antonio Zoo are housing three adult female elephants together — without any males. How much longer can these elephants remain just friends?
* Initiate a state takeover of Texas pawn shops, auto-title and payday loan companies, and plasma centers— the components of our state's robust poverty industry. Use the profits to fund property tax cuts. In years in which property values go crazy, lawmakers can provide additional relief by raising the interest rates on the state's customers and maybe trimming what it pays for plasma.

The first three items are straightforward. If our lawmakers can't agree that the name Welfare is a hideous coffee stain on our state map, that fetuses are owed an explanation or at least a heads-up, and that our zoo animals shouldn't be forced to be gay, we are lost — with a capital L.

My fourth proposal, however, is going to take some work. It's visionary, though it does kind of pick up where the Texas Lottery leaves off. And like anything that tosses out the old thinking, it will be wildly controversial.

Read more: https://www.tribtalk.org/2017/06/26/a-modest-proposal-for-the-texas-legislatures-coming-special-session/

*** All of this is snark in case it needs explanation.