Five Anti-Capitalist Things You Didn’t Know About Texas Governor Abbott
Most People Don’t Know of the Socialist Texans Already in Power
You don’t believe me and think Texas is the most business friendly capitalist state run by the all-red capitalist party. Well, it may be big business friendly, but that doesn’t make it capitalist. It just makes it dependent on the rich and powerful for donations.
People get into power for money, where big business lies. By one estimate, 7 of the top 10 wealthiest people of all time were totalitarian rulers (democracy divides wealth, what a bummer). While Stalin and Genghis Khan made the list along with Bill Gates and JD Rockefeller, Hitler, who died a billionaire after being born into relative poverty, did not. (In all ‘fairness’ to Hitler, he did ‘earn’ $152 million in royalties to the book he wrote, Mein Kampf, of the $3 billion or so of his net worth.)
There’s ideology, and then there’s big money. Don’t confuse the two or get confused by the Powerful who are making the confusion.
Here’s your top five anti-capitalist Texas items in no particular order:
1. The car dealers are forced to close on Sunday. Wait, what about capitalism? “My right as a dealer should be to open when I want,” I hear the GM dealer say, or the small used Latino car lot owner. “I’m not going to have the GOP State Governor like Abbott tell me not to wear a mask. And so, I’m not going to have him tell me not to open my dealership on Sunday. Are you kidding? This is the biggest day I can have next to Saturday to get families to come into my showroom to try out a new or used SUV or crossover. Why is he hurting small businesses and big businesses? Monday? Give me a break, everyone is at work on Monday. What does he think, we’re Chick-Fil-A? Let that chicken store shot themselves in the foot. It’s their choice. At least they have the freedom to make that choice not to open on Sunday. It wasn’t imposed by The State.” A fair complaint. Other restaurants do great business on Sunday and so do groceries stores. One of the top hundred biggest privately held businesses in the U.S., H-E-B, the Texas-based almost-upscale grocery chain, even started beer delivery on Sunday. It’s Anticapitalism to take away a business’ choice.
2. Make all counties wet. Why do we still have dry counties Governor? There are still “wholly dry” counties. Why do you let small-minded local officials crush the right for small businesses like gas stations trying to sell beer and wine and even craft whiskey on Sunday? Fancy Austin tattooed-bearded liberal capitalists get to sell their specialty crafted small-batch vodka and beer on Sunday in the capital of Texas. Your capital. Affluent suburbanites with second homes in hill country, the famous wine region of Texas, get to buy homemade chardonnay in trendy hill country restaurants on Sunday, but small counties without a high percentage of Texas-city liberal rich elites don’t? Just because they vote red and are much poorer? Why are you letting these local officials punish small business and restaurants? Let the people decide if they own their business what to do with it. It’s not capitalist to forbid a gas station to sell alcohol before a football game.
3. Censorship. You passed a law to censor businesses. Making business decisions is for businesses, not for Governors. Yes, private businesses will now be censored by Texas big Socialist-Government Abbott and his communist chief attorney AG Ken Paxton. They passed a law that says The State has a right to censor and sue businesses for their business practices that they don’t like. If you get kicked off Facebook for example, they can sue on your behalf Facebook, because FB, a private company, chose not to have you for a member. It’s a private Capitalist business, hello! I’m a member of Costco. If Costco denies my membership, can I sue them? Aren’t there other membership businesses? Don’t all businesses have a right to kick you out since, you know, they are businesses? Private companies! The Socialist State of Texas needs to stay out of business! They have no right to say who can and can’t be a member of a private business. Next thing you know they will tell the businesses how to run themselves and then nationalize them.
4. Banning book content. OK, it’s more censorship in a sense, but this one targets book companies. Book companies don’t have a right to put what they want to in the textbooks they sell. I say let educators read the textbooks and let them decide. Or maybe vote for which history book to use and which ones not to. All seventh-grade history teachers get the summer to preview next year’s book form five different publishers and then each one gets a vote they submit to the school district they serve in. That sounds kind or fair, too, though there are some other solutions I’m sure you can think up. But having the State Governor and his political party dictate what a publisher can and can’t put in a history book? Socialist! That’s sounds actually like centralized Communism, or whatever -ism that guy who runs Turkmenistan is called that makes every student study only a book he wrote. But it’s not capitalism. Real American capitalists would not let The State decide to ban the discussion of systemic racism in schoolbooks. That is telling capitalist publishing companies what to do. It’s fascism, not capitalism. In capitalism, book companies can state the facts, all the facts, even unpleasant ones. Let the market decide. Let the students, who are the market, decide what they want to believe or what ‘ism’ they want to build with the facts. But give them all the facts first: the number of beatings annually of blacks and white for all Texas history, the murder rate, the laws passed and who they targeted, the year racism really ended, the year blacks were allowed to buy houses, etc. At least they get to decide, like people do in, you know, a capitalist state.
5. The Texas power grid failure in winter burdened some mattress store owners. I’m talking about the failure of the Texas power grid, in capitalism, failure is an option. ERCOT, the grid operator is a proper business as it appears and not a State agency. True, it’s a monopoly, a corporation that controls all electricity providers in its own grid. A membership corporation. A non-profit corporation. OK, wait, that does sound anti-capitalist. But I was actually thinking about at least one mattress and furniture store owner, Mattress Mack, owner of Gallery Furniture, was put upon to put up freezing citizens at his store. The pictures looked sad. The State should house these people that its electricity monopoly corporation can’t and doesn’t feel obligated to (because it’s a capitalist corporation and allowed to pay its board members and executive all the extra money, normally called profits, and invest it in shelters for people it freezes to death). It should house them on an emergency basis because it is not the job of furniture store owners to use their showrooms, set up at great capital expense from their own bottom line. Let businesses be businesses, capitalist engines of our society that employ people and motivate them to bring in more money for the company to get better wages and increase quality while decreasing prices to win the competition. Don’t let some non-state-owned monopoly corporation like ERCOT not invest in emergency shelters and infrastructure upgrades instead of paying heaps of its excess non-profit earnings to its board members and CEO. And don’t let them lie on their taxes when they say, as in 2019, they “successfully” run the electricity grid. (Sorry ERCOT, but I can “raise concerns” over antitrust liability). The State should help the people in need, as it is part of the Common Good, not businesses. And rely not a bunch of employees.
OK, so those reasons might seem tongue-in-cheek. But I’m serious. When the state dictates when and how to do business, that’s interference by the government, which the GOP hates. Supposedly. That’s capitalism or socialism or fascism or communism or Kim Jong-Un-ism. It is real State Control, or anti-capitalism.
The censorship law, the law to ban public mention of system racism in schools, the car dealership closures, the corporate monopoly (non-profit) power grid corporation, — that is real interference and is no joke. It doesn’t matter if the company involved is a massive multinational like Facebook or a mom-and-pop corner store not allowed to sell alcohol. The governor is clearly violating his own principles he professes to.
He needs to be called out to show that he does not actually practice his belief in capitalism. He only believes in it when it’s convenient to support certain businesses he can pick and choose from, ones that will support his campaign. His anti-capitalist tendencies should be concerning to all Fox viewers, regular liberal elites, and Texas gun owners.
Can you name more anti-capitalism things Governor Abbott or your governor is doing? I’d love to hear some of your ideas in the comments below.
