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Crazy in Texas Part II

There’s nothing like a crisis to highlight the ill-prepared and the incompetent. Texas has always been a state that puts business interests over its citizens. I wrote about this in my post Crazy in Texas. Now we have our top leaders stumbling over each other in a race to the bottom.

I’ll start with our Attorney General Ken Paxton. He and his cronies have done everything they can to strip away healthcare from Texas residents. They didn’t expand Medicaid under the ACA. They led the charge to get rid of the personal mandate of the ACA then filed suit to get rid of the ACA because the act relied on the personal mandate. They’ve filed lawsuits to strip planned parenthood of funding. Now Mr. Paxton is using the coronavirus to help promote his anti-abortion stance.

“I find it extremely distressing … that we are trying to respond to a purely political fight that [Gov. Greg Abbott] started. Patients who need abortions are on a time-sensitive deadline,” Massingill said.

Providers have already had to turn away patients, Massingill added, and delays of even a few weeks could render some abortions impossible if the patients’ pregnancies extend past legal deadlines.

Whole Women’s Health operates two Texas abortion clinics, in Fort Worth and in Austin. Amy Hagstrom Miller, the group’s president and CEO, said clinical staff had to cancel more than 150 appointments after the Governor’s order, something she said creates “a health crisis on top of a health crisis.”

Ken Paxton’s next step was to claim that gun shops were essential businesses.

Then there is our Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. This guy is so business-friendly that he wants everyone to go back to work, saying that older people like him can “take care of ourselves.” 

Leading the cast of dimwitted Republicans is our Governor, Gregg Abbot. He is so careful not to upset his campaign donors that he has yet to put in place a statewide stae-at-home order. In a recent NBC News article comparing actions by Democratic Governor’s responses to the coronavirus compared to Republican Governor’s, they highlighted several Republican Governors who are putting their citizens at risk. 

Dominguez ranked Reeves, DeSantis and two other Republican governors at the bottom for failing to be proactive in the face of the crisis, for doing a poor job of executing the state’s response, and for being “too concerned about making sure that their messaging aligns with the President’s actions and recommendations on curtailing the virus.”

“Social distancing has not been a priority,” Dominguez said. “They have done a poor job on transparency.”

They are Kay Ivey of Alabama, and Greg Abbott in Texas.

Abbott has been criticized for not issuing a statewide stay-at-home order, although it was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s suggestion that senior citizens would be willing to die for the U.S. to “get back to work” that made headlines.

“With the nation’s second-largest population, the highest uninsured rate in the country, and a legislature that doesn’t meet at all in even years, Texas is a state in which the governor’s role during a time of crisis is indispensable,” Hildebrand said. “Yet Abbott has ‘been’ behind the curve in nearly every protective measure – declaring a state of emergency, activating the National Guard, ramping up testing capacity, closing bars and restaurants.”

Additionally, Hildebrand said, Abbott “has shifted much of the emergency response to local municipalities.”

Neither I nor anyone else should be concerned about their health simply because we live in a Republican controlled state.

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Review of Tiger King

Review of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness
Rating *****

Joe Exotic

Joe Exotic wanted to be famous. The self-absorbed owner of the private zoo Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park had grandiose dreams. One day the whole world would know his name. He ran for president. After getting nowhere in that effort, he ran for Governor of Oklahoma. He managed to convince nearly 20% of Oklahomans to vote for him. Today, Joe Exotic has finally achieved his dream. Except he isn’t in a position to enjoy it. Instead, he sits in an Oklahoma prison serving a twenty-two-year prison sentence for his involvement in a murder-for-hire-plot. How he got there is the subject of the seven-episode Netflix docuseries.

Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joe Maldonado-Passage, is guilty of the crime of selling tiger cubs. Whether or not he is guilty of a murder-for-hire plot is another question. My personal opinion is that he was setup.

To say that this docuseries has an abundance of colorful characters is an understatement. It takes a unique personality to raise exotic animals. A full-grown tiger is not a pet. It’s also not cheap. The cost to raise one of these animals can range from $3,000 to $10,000 a year. Joe cut down his costs by using donated expired meat from Walmart. At his peak, Joe had 227 tigers. Joe generated money through donations and visitors to his animal park. He also made money selling tiger cubs to individuals and other animal parks, even though it’s illegal to do so. Joe also took the animals on the road where he would display them at malls. He would let people get selfies with tigers and then sell them the photographs.

Carole Baskin

The owner of another animal park, Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue in Florida, made it her mission to shut Joe down. She called malls to let them know that what Joe was doing was illegal. She reported Joe to animal abuse organizations. The fines and loss of income led to a longstanding feud between Joe and Carole.

The animosity Joe had toward Carole Baskin manifested itself into alarming social media posts, videos, and outright threats of physical violence. Those social media posts hurt Joe later at his trial. Authorities took Joe’s verbal threats seriously after talking to informants with questionable motives. To get a conviction, however, there had to be more than just verbal threats. There had to be a payment to a hitman. At this point, I believe entrapment was involved. The hitman wasn’t credible. He testified under oath that he was in Florida, where Carole lived. Yet there is no evidence of that. The evidence indicates that he never went to Florida. The supposed cash payment is equally murky. Joe testified that he gave Allen, the supposed hitman, $3,000 at the direction of Jeff Lowe, one of the informants. Jeff had his reasons for cooperating with authorities. Taking over Joe’s animal park was one strong motivator. Avoiding criminal charges was another.

Lost in all the chaos are the animals. There’s no question that all of the players in this bizarre world had good intentions at the start. As things started to collapse around Joe, greed and self-preservation took over. There’s one scene toward the end involving two chimpanzees. The two chimps lived in adjacent cages for ten years. Joe eventually sold the two chimps to another facility, one with larger enclosures that allowed the chimps more freedom. When the two chimps encountered each other, they hugged. It’s a powerful scene. The fact that Joe is now the one in a cage is not lost on the viewer.

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Review of the Netflix Docuseries The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez

Rating *****

An eight-year-old boy dies from suspicious circumstances. Who is responsible? The mother and her boyfriend? Social workers, who failed to do the proper follow-ups? Police officers, who did a cursory investigation when alerted to possible child abuse? Those are some of the questions dealt with in this excellent six-episode docuseries.

As you come to find out in the last episode, what happened to Gabriel is not an isolated incident. But don’t let that discourage you from taking a deep dive into this particular case. There’s a lot to learn from Gabriel’s short life.

The title of the series refers to the criminal trials that came as a result of Gabriel’s death. At first, I was frustrated with the way the filmmakers jumped forward and backward while covering the trials. The reason for this becomes evident in the last episode. Along the way, we meet the people who cared for Gabriel in his first seven years.

Gabriel’s mother didn’t want the pregnancy nor the child. The father, who was incarcerated, was unable to care for Gabriel. Relatives offered to care for the baby. A gay uncle and his partner took care of Gabriel the first few years. Homophobia among family members and the deportation of the Uncle’s partner put an end to that loving relationship. The grandmother took over and also provided a safe environment.

Gabriel’s spent the last year of his life under the care of his mother, Pearl, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre. I’ve had stress in my life, but I can’t imagine the amount of stress Gabriel endured that last year. There were beatings, verbal abuse, physical abuse, cigarette burns, and even shots in the face from a BB gun. Different people saw the bruises and cigarette burns, and the missing teeth. These people reported what they saw. But somehow, no one took the necessary steps to investigate the claims more thoroughly. Gabriel fell through the cracks.

In my opinion, Gabriel’s mother was the one person most responsible for his death. Isauro caused the injuries that led to Gabriel’s death, but I don’t believe he would have done what he did without the participation of the mother. So, what was the incident that triggered the final beating? Gabriel was playing with his sister, an act Pearl and Isauro saw as reinforcing his gay tendencies.

At least with this docuseries, Gabriel has left a mark in this world. Don’t miss this one. See it on Netflix.

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Review of Ameican Prison

Review of American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer Rating ****

This book is full of stories of injustice, but there was one story that stood out for me. It came at the very end of the book. It involved an inmate who had been shot by police. After a brief stay in a hospital, officers placed him in a cell and left him there unattended. During the night, the man pleaded for help. No one came to his aid. They found him deceased the next morning. A prison employee whose job was to investigate such incidents gathered statements from other inmates, which implicated the prison for the man’s death. The warden of the prison told the investigator to discard the inmate statements. No one was held accountable. That lack of humanity permeates throughout this behind the scenes account of a for-profit prison.

Author Shane Bauer, who himself spent two years in an Iranian prison, wanted to write a story about private prisons. Rather than set up interviews with staff and PR people, he decided to get a job as a corrections officer. In doing so, he was able to write about prison life as seen from the viewpoint of an underpaid, overworked prison guard.

The story of the author’s four-month employment at a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) prison takes up half the book. The other half contains a history of incarceration and the creation of the for-profit prison concept. The author alternates the two stories from chapter to chapter. I found the history chapters to be the more interesting of the two. The chapters detailing life inside a prison only reinforced my negative opinion of that aspect of the criminal justice system. As one inmate told the author, “you’re doing half my time with me.” I felt like I was doing time as well.

The author covers a lot of ground, touching on a wide variety of subjects, including cash bail, the 13th amendment, recidivism, punishment vs. rehabilitation, prison violence, overcrowding, low pay of prison staff, lack of medical and psychological treatment for inmates, and mass incarceration. It all adds up to one more piece of the broken criminal justice system.

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Ford vs. Ferrari my Oscar confession

Ford vs. Ferrari written by Jez Butterworth, John Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller, Directed by James Mangold rating *****

Every year I attempt to see every nominated movie before the Oscars. This year I saw every film but Ford vs. Ferrari. The showtimes didn’t match up with my schedule. And, to be honest, I’m not a fan of racecar movies. I missed the boat on this one. It may not have gotten the buzz like 1917 or Parasite, but I felt that Ford vs. Ferrari was the overall best picture from last year.

I liked everything about this movie. I’ll start with the acting. Both Christian Bale and Matt Damon were great. But so was everyone else. Every supporting character had a moment to shine. That says a lot about the script. It should have at least received an original screenplay nomination.

Before I saw the film, I watched the documentary The 24 Hour War, which I highly recommend seeing either before or after watching Ford vs. Ferrari. Having watched the documentary, I knew about the story and the characters going in. I think the filmmakers did an excellent job of telling a compelling story while still sticking to the facts.

The premise of the movie is how Ford, known for its box-like family cars, decided to change their image by building a racecar to compete in the 24 hour Le Mans. That effort coincided with the release of the sporty Mustang. If all you saw was the trailer, you might think that Carol Shelby and Ken Miles had just 90 days to make a car from scratch that went on to win. That’s not quite how it goes down.

More than anything else, this film is about the people behind the racecars.

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Review of the Netflix Docuseries The Pharmacist

Review of The Pharmacist Directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst Rating *****

Ever since Making a Murderer started streaming on Netflix back in 2015, I’ve been a fan of docuseries. If you go to the sitemap page on this site and choose docuseries under categories, you’ll find an extensive list of excellent docuseries to stream. You can now add The Pharmacist to this list.

The Pharmacist is a four-episode docuseries available on Netflix. The innocuous title belies the seriousness of the subject matter. The first two episodes deal with a father’s search for his son’s killer. Dan Schneider’s son Danny is murdered while out trying to score drugs in a poor section of New Orleans. When the police fail to do a proper investigation, Dan sets out on his own to find the killer. Against all odds, Dan’s efforts are successful. You might expect that to be the end of this one-man crusade to right a wrong, but Dan is just getting started. He soon finds himself at the epicenter of the nascent opioid epidemic.

OxyContin, Heroin in a pill

Working as a pharmacist, Dan starts noticing an alarming trend regarding prescriptions for OxyContin. He sees that over 98% of the prescriptions are coming from the same doctor. He sees similarities to his son in the young people who hand him prescriptions that seem out of line with their age and weight. Dan sets out to learn more about this doctor and her practice. What he uncovers is a burgeoning pill mill. Dan starts keeping track of individuals who come to him for their OxyContin pills. He secretly records them. He begins building a case against Dr. Jacqueline Clegett.

Dan reaches out to the FBI and the DEA to warn them of the dangers he has uncovered. The authorities, however, seem reluctant to do anything. Unbeknownst to Dan, the DEA is aware of the growing problem with Dr. Clegett, but the district attorney’s office refuses to prosecute. While the DEA and the district attorney’s office bicker over the seriousness of the problem, overdose deaths in New Orleans continue to rise. It’s not only frustrating to Dan but the viewer as well.

The opioid epidemic started in Republican-controlled states where opposition to regulations allowed pill mills to proliferate. Florida, under Governor Rick Scott, was adamantly against regulating the industry. Instead, they went after the users of the opioids, sending them to prison in record numbers. Meanwhile, companies like Purdue and the Sackler family made billions as legalized drug dealers. You can read more about this in the book American Pain. It took nearly a decade, and thousands of overdose deaths, before sensible prescription monitoring regulations were put into place.

Eventually, Dan Schneider helped put an end to Dr. Jacqueline Clegett’s business. He is an example of what one determined individual can accomplish. Once the cost of addiction treatment and emergency room visits started to overwhelm entire states, states attorney finally started going after the sources of the problem like Purdue Pharma rather than individual users. Unfortunately, their efforts were too little too late. The Sackler family shifted billions to overseas accounts and then filed for bankruptcy, leaving states to deal with the damage caused by their lack of oversight.

The filmmakers were lucky to stumble upon Dan Schneider. Not only was Dan a passionate advocate against injustice, he was meticulous in documenting all that he uncovered, which included documents, video, and recorded audio. On top of that, he served as the central narrator throughout.