A most predictable response

I kind of knew this reaction would come as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked the federal government for help in combating the state’s terrible flooding. It comes from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who served in the Clinton administration Cabinet back in the 1990s.

This is what he wrote in his latest Facebook post.

“Texas Governor Greg Abbott finally requested federal disaster relief, and the President has just signed the order, as record flooding continues. I don’t begrudge Texas billions of federal dollars — we’re all part of the same nation, after all – but I do recall just five weeks ago the same Greg Abbott assuring Texans who believed a federal military training exercise was a plot to takeover the state that he would call out the Texas national guard to monitor the exercises.

“Not incidentally, Texas’s congressional delegation contains some of the nation’s most outspoken deniers of human-induced climate chaos, such as Representative Lamar Smith, who charged that the White House report on climate change was designed ‘to frighten Americans,’ and whose congressional committee just slashed by more than 20 percent NASA’s spending on Earth science, which includes climate change.

“As I said, Texas deserves federal disaster relief. But wouldn’t it be nice if the Lone Star State acknowledged it can’t go it alone, and embraced reality?”

Precisely.

Except, Mr. Secretary, not all Texas believe as you have suggested.