Yes, he actually said that
Move aside, Bushisms. There’s a new moron in town. He goes by the name of Greg Abbott, and he’s got glimmers of red flags.
Our beloved governor gave yet another press conference today, along with the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and a few others.
If you didn’t catch it, here is the video. If you can’t stomach it, to recap, Goldman Sachs will be giving $50,000,000 in loans to small businesses in Texas. Then, Abbott lied a bunch, said everything was hunky-dory, and Texas was doing great.
Goldman Sachs
I could list 101 reasons why Goldman Sachs is an atypical crony-capitalist organization or the dozens of Goldman Sachs executives currently or previously in bed with Trump. But, it likely wouldn’t even scratch the surface of why they are a big part of the problem.
Ironically, Goldman Sachs and all of those other too-big to fail banks are expected to release their quarterly earnings report in two days, 4/15/2020. The day after that, we’ll get our new unemployment rate, which is currently over 14%. Brace for it, the next few weeks are going to be hard economically.
So, what does this have to do with Texas?
It’s all about Texas’ number one highest producing commodity. That’s right, oil. If you haven’t seen much oil-related news lately, there has been an oil price war. In laymen terms; Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the U.S. agreed to a coalition in major oil-production cuts. Then, this led to a Saudi-Russian feud, which caused oil prices to drop drastically.
Aside from the fact that we’re running out of places to store oil and even though we are about to return to being a net importer of oil, no word from either Greg Abbott or Donald Trump about clean energy initiatives to end our dependence on oil.
Texas is the fourth largest source in the world for crude oil. And although some have been pushing for Texas to cut their production as much as 20%, how much Texas will cut is up in the air.
The Texas Railroad Commission, who sets oil outputs, will hear arguments in favor of and against limiting the state’s oil production via its statutory power of pro-rationing, tomorrow. It will be live-streamed on the internet. It doesn’t take a genius to know these big Texas oil companies are going to be arguing not to limit oil production.
Abbott has an image to upkeep
Greg Abbott prides himself and brags at every turn about how Texas is so business-friendly. The coronavirus isn’t just hurting us, it’s also hurting oil-executive and big-business.
We all mustn’t forget that Abbott has pulled in more cash from donors than any other governor in history. Our governor has received mountains of cash from almost every industry in Texas. You bet, he has an obligation to get Texans back to work making money for the executives who give him all of his money.
And by golly; Republican hero, Greg Abbott is going to maintain his image as the most business-friendly governor, even if he has to kill Texans in the long run. That’s why he lied about testing and how bad things are in Texas. He’s going to get Texas up and running, even if it kills us.
Glimmers of hope, with a bunch of red flags
He’s an idiot. He wants us all to know that everything is going to be OK. He said that our glimmer of hope was last week, Texas had a lower number of positives than any other week. (Despite the fact there are still testing shortages all over the state) Then he said, the red flag was that in previous weeks they also reported lower numbers on Sunday.
Here is the line chart of coronavirus positive case growth in Texas, directly from the Texas DSHS’ website:
That doesn’t look like a glimmer of hope. It looks like a big fat red flag. There is community spread in Texas, we don’t have the tests to identify and isolate the positive cases, and our governor has been telling us everything he’s been doing has been working.
By the way, even with the limited access to testing, the John Hopkins map is currently reporting Texas’ cases at 14,011 (as of 4 pm on 4/13).
You can tell Texas is turning blue when reporters finally start asking the hard questions
Several of the reporters today, again, quizzed Abbott about the lack of adequate testing in Texas. He spoke in circles and never answered directly.
He said that he is forming a task force (just like Trump), to help determine how and when he can get Texans back to work. He’ll be relying on them for medical advice, to which he added, “I’m sure that means adequate testing.”
Greg Abbott also told us that he had been speaking with both Pence and Dr. Birx, about testing strategies. Yea, the same Dr. Birx who supposedly told Abbott Texas was close to reaching their peak. What was that? 10 days ago?
When asked how much he was being guided by the White House, he responded saying it was a two-way street. He just talked to Trump this last weekend and Trump shared with him what he should be expecting.
Greg Abbott has blood on his hands, but at least he got us some sweet loans from Goldman Sachs.