Oh, Texas, your misplaced priorities never looked so certifiably insane.
In rejecting a referendum this past week that would have authorized $217 million in bonds to turn the Houston Astrodome into a meet & greet for billionaires, 53% of voters in Texas (those who can still vote, anyway)decided that they’d rather spend between $29 million and $78 million to destroy it.
Opened in 1965, the Astrodome was home to MLB’s Houston Astros and the NFL’s Houston Oilers. It was spacious enough to fit an 18-story building under its 208-foot high roof. The stadium also was home to the city’s rodeo and hosted concerts and other events, including the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King in 1973.
But it hasn’t been home to a sports team since 1999 and has been closed to all events since 2009. While still structurally sound, the iconic stadium had fallen into disrepair. On Saturday, thousands of people bought stadium seats, pieces of AstroTurf and other items at a “yard sale” and auction of Astrodome memorabilia.
The stadium’s most prominent use in recent years was as a shelter for Louisiana residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
They’re literally blowing up money in Texas, while 27% of the population continues to go without insurance, leading the nation in that criminally-negligent statistic.
While Gov. Rick Perry refuses Medicaid expansion, thanks to the Supreme Court, and Sen. Ted Cruz runs around telling people that he’s “just doing his job,” Texas Republicans, like their Federal kin, are a smiling ‘death panel’ for the poor and uninsured if there ever was.
Blowing shit up is an aesthetic solution to a Texas-sized disparity of morality. Kind of like subsidizing the lipstick on the corpses of the uninsured. Smile for the country!
34% of children live in poverty in Texas.
21% of adults aged 18-65– in poverty.
17% of the elderly are living in poverty in Texas.
It’s telling that even when Texas voters do the right thing, people still die. I notice there was no referendum on the ballot to force the governor to expand Medicaid? Huh.
Maybe they were just trying to eliminate one more place where the “refugees” of their climate change policies can find shelter? Kind of like, “This state’s taken, Moochers!”
Either way, they’re telling us that we’re broke, and cannot afford to provide for the poor, but there’s always plenty of money to blow shit up in Republican America.