Texas Republicans in Katrina

My local paper, the Houston Chronicle, has a phenomenal inside look at the racism in some of the Katrina efforts out of Texas.

This is a great picture of one segment of the Republicans of Texas, but I want to emphasize that this is just one part of the Republicans down here. We'll call them, oh, the Bush Republicans, because they are part of the legacy of patronage he left here in Texas. There's also a more fiscally Republican but socially liberal crowd in Houston who threw in lots of money and effort into the thing, so don't cast everybody in that net.

But certainly Gov. Rick Perry and his staff, and Tom Delay don't come out very well. (Walt, Wilson, and McCraw are the governor's staffers.)

"I have real concern developing about lawlessness breaking out in Texas as a result of our generosity," Walt wrote. ....

On Sept. 2, Wilson wrote McCraw and Perry staff that someone with the Sugar Land Republican's office called, wanting to know whether Perry planned to call the National Guard to "protect Houston" from what was happening in New Orleans. ....

"DeLay's office called again," Wilson wrote 18 minutes later. This time, DeLay's staff said the city of Houston was asking for the Guard to patrol the perimeter of Reliant Park and the George R. Brown Convention Center and to provide logistics support.... (Not true. Houston did not request Nat'l guard - mike)

A couple of hours later, Wilson wrote, "DeLay's staff called again and DeLay was standing right there. He REALLY wants to talk to the gov-especially about the national guard.".

WTF was Delay doing getting involved in this at all? He has no jurisdiction, and Sugarland is a good 30 miles from the Astrodome/Reliant complex. This is a long article with alot more in it.

And let me say again, this does not diminish my pride in my city's reaction to Katrina. We have no party affiliation in city races, but the clearly Dem leaning mayor Bill White and the strong Republican county chief Bob Eckels worked through their differences and together opened the arms of this city to offer everything we had.

The offer for sanctuary in Houston happened before the governor or federal officials even opened their mouths.

It's rare in a big city that city governments do something that makes you that proud to be a citizen, but I will always hold those two local officials in a special place because they said to the people of New Orleans, "lean on us" and allowed the citizens of Houston to all pitch in during those horrible days and help to carry the weight. Like so many others, I went around hitting up everybody I know for donations and clothes and whatnot, and there was not a single person I talked to who wasn't doing something to help.

While the Governor and Tom Delay were apparently worrying about marauding blacks raping white women and eating babies.