Houston Mayoral Appointee Removed Over Remarks Made About Camp Mystic Campers
Inexcusable.
I don't care if she's only an appointee to the Houston Food Insecurity Board, and that's a minor political post at best, it's still a board position requiring a measure of public trust, and it also requires a sense of personal responsibility and judgment. Sade Perkins' comments, insensitive at best, racist at worst, have no place in her realm of responsibility, and they are about as irresponsible as anything a public official could say under the circumstances.
It's a heartbreaking tragedy, that 27 campers and staffers at Camp Mystic, a hundred year old Christian camp for girls, located among dozens of other similar camps scattered along the riverbanks, creeks, and small lakes of the Texas Hill Country, died as a result of circumstances well beyond their control and well beyond the grasp of the adults who were in charge of the camp to comprehend. Race, in this case, is immaterial and irrelevant to the circumstances and the best judgment that Perkins could have exercised would have been to simply keep her opinions to herself.
This kind of attitude, attempting to make an issue out of race, because of an observation this woman made as a result of the fact that all of the victims who were at Camp Mystic that had been identified so far were white, is the reason why Democrats sometimes get themselves into trouble, and why we lose votes. We lose sight of the real issue at hand, which is the horrible suffering caused by a tragedy inserting itself into the middle of a summer camp which is supposed to be fun, inspiring and a time of personal reflection and growth. Turning it into accusations of racism, based on photos of victims, was an exercise of incredibly poor judgment that warrants Perkin's ineligibility for any future public appointment, and also should include a public apology.
All I know about Camp Mystic is what I've learned about it from what's been reported in the news media over the past several days, and what I learned from looking it up on the internet. That's not enough to make any accusation about who they are when it comes to their social or cultural attitude. Summer camps are popular in Texas, a lot of them are single-gender, the Hill Country is a popular place for them because of the unique character of the landscape, which includes intermittent, normally small rivers that are excellent for canoeing or kayaking. The politics of summer camp can be discussed somewhere else, at some other time. Right now, the focus is on helping those who lost their loved ones in this tragedy grieve the loss.
Yet Another Example of Skimping on Public Works to "Cut Government Budgets"
Texas State Leaders Neglected Flood Control as they Put Money Elsewhere
Texas is a hard state to figure out when it comes to state government and budget priorities, and it is even a more difficult place to figure out, and to live in, when it comes to natural disasters. The state government can't decide whether it wants to be "less government," in a traditional Republican style, by allowing powerful home contracting companies to build subdivisions of thousands of homes below the flood plain all up and down the coast, or "more government" when it comes to invading women's health care by ridiculous claims which make it almost impossible for doctors to perform medical procedures involving the female reproductive system when she is pregnant, out of fear of being charged with murder for performing an abortion.
I lived in the state for 26 years total, which included moving away and then winding up moving back as job opportunities from previous employment presented themselves. During those years, I purchased and owned a home in a suburb of one of the large cities, and discovered the quirks of living in a place with confusing priorities, and a confusing tax system. We did not pay a state income tax. However, because the state proudly proclaims that it doesn't have one, it does allow dozens of other entities to levy taxes to replace money that would normally come from the state budget. This includes school districts, municipal governments, county governments, an entity in rural, unincorporated areas called a "MUD district," which stands for "municipal utility district" which provides water, sewage, garbage collection and other services, a "county road and bridge tax" which pays for the statewide system of "farm to market" roads, rural hospital districts and the port authorities in coastal cities.
By the time it all adds up, the amount of tax that is paid by private citizens in Texas exceeds what would be paid if there were a state income tax with limits placed on tax rates and tax increases. In Texas, of course, the only limits placed on the taxing entities is how much they can raise corporate taxes each year. That's a good example of how Texas looks at state government and its responsibilities to promote the corporate good at the expense of everyone else. And that's why there is no effective flood warning system on the rivers of the Hill Country.
This is a state where school districts invest millions of taxpayer dollars into 20,000 seat high school football stadiums with state of the art locker facilities, artificial turf and the best equipment, but won't invest in replacing antiquated, crumbling old school facilities, nor in a public education system that ranks among the worst in terms of reading and math proficiency in the country. When I lived there, one of the favorite lines of frustrated teachers, after mutiple revisions, known as "dumbing down" of the state basic skills test failed to produce good results, was "Well, thank God for Mississippi." Or, as I often heard, "Texas should consider annexing Mexico, in order to improve our test scores."
This is also a state that welcomes almost unrestricted real estate development, including the construction of homes in flood plains and flood-proned areas along the coast. My home stood exactly 60 miles from the coast, at an elevation of 54 feet above sea level. That placed it 4 feet above the flood plain of the Brazos River, which was about three miles to the west. We were not required to have the supplemental government flood insurance that everyone who lived to the south and west of us had, but I got it anyway, along with additional "cyclonic wind damage" coverage. It paid off. We didn't ever flood, though on two occasions, water came within a few inches of the doorway, but we did have to replace the roof, rafters, decking and all, along with the back fence, after a tornado in 2006, and had some damage to repair after a Cat 3 hurricane in 2008.
Our neighbors in Pecan Grove, Grand River, River's Edge, and Greatwood, were not so lucky. They've endured the river's rising to "hundred year flood plain" levels four times since 2010, including a catastrophic flood with Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which took over 100 lives and displaced 30,000 people.
So, in Texas, there exists this combination that has proven, once again, to be deadly. The freedom that screams, "The guvmint cain't tell me I cain't build my lodge, RV Park or summer camp in the known flood plain of the Guadalupe River," is combined with the frugality that declares, "We don't have the money to build more flood control in the Hill Country, or to provide an adequate warning system for those who want to build their lodges, RV Parks and summer camps in the Guadalupe River flood plain."
And that's why politics is going to invade the tragedy of these Texas Hill Country floods.
The Current State Government Ranks Among the Worst Ever in the State's History
KSAT anchor goes viral for 'speaking the truth' about Texas leaders
It's hard to tell which MAGA minded government officials came first, Trump, or Texas?
I always thought that the bumbling, inept, incompetent George W. Bush would go down in history as the worst governor of Texas. When he came along, he only had the incompetent, and totally corrupt Bill Clements to compete with. If there ever were a term in political office during which a politician got nothing accomplished during the whole time, it was Dubya's time as governor of Texas. Sit back, sign a few bills, and campaign for President of the United States. That's all.
Then there was Rick Perry. And nothing could be worse than that bag of scum, and the corruption that came with it. It's harder to leave the office of Governor of Texas richer than when entering, though it is possible. Perry showed us how.
But Greg Abbott wins the "worst governor ever" title. He's been in office in Texas long enough to cover up as much corruption as he has instigated.
The attitude exhibited by Texas politicians explains it all. Falling all over themselves to impress an inept and incompetent Trump administration bureaucrat, like Kristi Noem, who deliberately delayed the arrival of FEMA aid to Kerr County by the way, and who appears frustrated because this surprise flood interupted her agenda of promoting Trump''s corruption, they made it clear that tending to her needs outweighed the importance of search and rescue, now recovery, of flood victims.
So thanks to KSAT reporter Stefania Jimenez for helping to redirect the misplaced priorities of Texas politicians.
And Finally, the Politics of Camp Mystic
What to Know About Camp Mystic
In all the years I lived in Texas, and taught school, I never heard of Camp Mystic. I knew that summer camp in the Hill Country was quite popular, but there are a lot of camps of all kinds along that thirty mile stretch of Guadalupe River in Kerr County. Every major Christian denomination in Texas has a camp out there somewhere, along with boy and girl scouts, civic groups who reach out to the disadvantaged, athletic oriented sports camps, all there to take advantage of the normally intermittent, small rivers for canoeing and fishing, and the relatively dry climate in settings between the hills that provide a perfect outdoor camp setting.
Along with the summer camps, there are multiple small lodges, and plenty of RV parks, to house the thousands of people who visit the area. Tourism is the top revenue producing industry in the county, and the camps account for a lot of that revenue.
It's not surprising to learn that Camp Mystic is a sort of uniquely Texas institution. A camp exclusively for girls, which blends outdoor activities with instruction in things like cooking, dance and aerobics, along with instruction in inner and outer beauty, blended with both Catholic and Protestant camp activities, Bible study and worship, has captured the culture of Texas. And while it doesn't appear that the program is overtly political, the camp has attracted the children of Texas politicians as diverse as those from the Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush families.
The real questions about the camp are more about its location, and the emergency action plan, the most recent approved by the state just days before the flood. It's become obvious, from the aerial photos, that the lower portion of the camp, situated on the South Fork of the Guadalupe River, was well below the flood line. The camp has flooded before, catastrophically, in fact. And while the Hill Country is normally a much drier, more arid climate, the unique feature of the Coastal Bend puts it in the path of tropical moisture, causing heavy storms to form, and stall out, over the rocky, hilly landscape. The rivers can swell to flows ten times their normal capacity in a very short period of time. But, noting that there are literally tens of thousands of homes across the state that lie in flood plains, it's not surprising that this camp did as well.
Taking weather warnings seriously is always a problem. When I lived in Texas, on the coast, warnings about hurricanes never got much attention. In 2003, the director of a Baptist encampment at Palacios, which was right on Matagorda Bay, got a lot of flack for ordering the evacuation of about 250 campers attending a week of youth camp, when a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico suddenly strengthened into a Cat 1 hurricane aimed at Matagorda Bay. When the storm did make landfall, just a few miles west of Palacios, as a Cat 2 with 100 mph winds, it was not the storm surge, which did not overtop the 12 foot levee surrounding the camp, that caused damage, but an F-1 tornado that tore through the camp, lifting roofs off two main dormitories and causing the walls to collapse, and toppling the roof of the historic tabernacle where campers worshipped in the sea breeze.
There were warnings. And over the next few days, we will find out how seriously they were taken by the camp staff. The focus is going to be on Camp Mystic, because of their high loss of life, but there are many other harrowing stories of escapes all along the river, from other camps as well as from RV parks and small lodges.
But we aren't likely to hear or see much in the way of criticism of public officials as a result. This is Texas. Their local news media, and the local government officials will do their dead level best to cover up any mistakes or wrongdoing that makes Republicans look incompetent. There will be little in the way of accountability for the chronic lack of flood control safety along these rivers, and no one will be blamed for the tragic loss of life, because Republicans don't accept that kind of responsibility. Efforts are already underway to cover up the fact that Kristi Noem deliberately delayed the appropriated FEMA aid. Was she trying to make herself look bad? Too late for that, but does she want the government to look that way on purpose?
I'll be curious to know if any of the parents whose daughters died in that flood will sue Camp Mystic for liability. Right now, every effort is being made to make it sound like they did everything right. If that's the case, then why did 27 campers and staff, potentially more to come, lose their lives?
So of course, politics is going to invade this story, and it's appropriate, in those places where it is relevant. But don't count on fair treatment or genuine transparency. These are mostly Republicans we are dealing with.
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