Texas Gov. Abbott - Stop Fearmongering and Sabotaging Texas' Future

Dear Gov. Abbott:

We had hoped that when Gov. Perry left that Texas would join the 21^st century, a high tech global economy that needs Texans with high tech skills. Instead, we have seen a leader that has made us less safe and wasted billions while failing to invest wisely.

I say that as someone who is a Texan and has negotiated worldwide and seen what we are up against.  Gov. Abbott, I can see that you are setting up Texas to fail our citizens and their future. Thanks to you, our roads will be potholed and crowded as we double in size even as our road debt soars; thanks to you our kids will be on the bottom rung of the ladder as kids with high tech skills from other states and countries take the best jobs of the 2st century leaving Texans behind.

Governor, you claim to be “pro life” but everything you are doing is the polar opposite. In fact, your policies are better described as “pro death.”  How else to describe denying the expansion of Medicaid?

Texas leads the nation in uninsured, yet to hear you talk one would think that having access to medical care is horrible and to be sabotaged at all costs.   That's pretty sick and disgusting. Even Mexico provides medical care to its poor.

Rather than expand Medicaid at no cost to our state, you cut access to low cost medical care provided by Planned Parenthood which serves poor women  across the state who need mammograms and prenatal care (only 3% of their services are abortion related.)

Instead of promoting sex education and access to contraception that would reduce abortions, you do the opposite. Instead of believing the 97% of scientists who say climate change is real and caused by us, you fight it even as the seas rise, threatening our coast. Did you know that you are the only conservative party in the entire world that doesn't acknowledge climate change? That makes you either pretty ignorant -- or a prostitute for the fossil fuel industry that is destroying the planet.

Like Gov. Perry, you are wasting millions of Texas taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars on frivolous lawsuits against the Federal government (and gifts for Ag. Commissioner Sid Millers friends) while throwing nearly $1 billion away by sending the Texas guard to the border -- to sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting to wave their guns at unaccompanied, unarmed children fleeing the death gangs of central America.

You stoke fear of refugee children, rather than providing a mature welcome and leading this diverse state like a mature adult who cares about the least among us (as Jesus did.)

Instead of investing in our kids’ education and upgrading our transportation needs , you have governed as if Texas is a never-ending GOP primary requiring the most extreme position – guns on campus, guns in classrooms, guns in churches, guns everywhere, yet no medical care for the poor, no help for Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS, no equal pay for equal work, no paying for road improvements with cash instead of borrowed money that your kids have to pay back.

In short, Gov. Abbott, you are sabotaging Texas future. You should resign along with your indicted Attorney General Paxton and make way for a real leader who will invest in Texas schools and update our transportation system to handle 21st century demands; someone who would stop the senseless fearmongering about children refugees; someone who would cease encouraging people to wear a gun to eat a hamburger. That's nuts, and making us more dangerous than the 50 plus countries I have been in so far.

Texas deserves better than what you and the GOP are providing.  I know you won’t resign (or respond to this letter) and Texas will be the loser as a result. We can only hope either you come to your senses -- or the voters do in 2018.

Michael Fjetland, BBA/JD
Author, Better Times Ahead April Fool