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cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

 

by Bob Buzzanco

Matkin’s Offensive against the First Amendment gets worse!

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote, and the Green and Red Pod

cast interviewed, two professors from Collin College who had just been fired–Suzanne Jones and Audra Heaslip. See, “Professors Fired for Covid Concerns.” and Podcast interview, at “Professors Fired from Collin College. Retaliation in Texas.”

As we’ve seen with right-wing Texans, when they’re

caught doing something despicable (as in their handling of COVID and the recent power grid failure), they double down.

And so it is with Collin College, as President Neil Matkin, a right-wing ideologue himself who fired Jones and Heaslip simply for questioning the schools COVID reopening policies and being active members of the Texas Faculty Association Union (and he wasn’t cryptic about it, making it clear publicly that the reason for their termination was clearly retaliatory) has now fired another professor, Lora Burnett.

cross-posted from Medium

wo weeks ago, a polar vortex hit my home state of Texas. The heating Arctic pushed cold air far south and temperatures plummeted below freezing. In a state that has been hit by hurricanes, drought and wildfires, the climate crisis coming home to roost in one of the most pro-oil and gas states in the country is nothing out of the ordinary. Despite decades of dealing with the aftermath of these climate disasters, the notoriously libertarian state fails at providing for the needs of its residents over and over. But a polar vortex hitting Texas was completely new and it’s leadership even more unprepared for the disaster.

Gas and coal-fired power plants lacking winterization had their facilities freeze and shut down. In a state of 29 million, this led to over four and a half million people without power in frigid weather. Residents living in homes built for the tropics shivered in the dark. Some froze to death. The next phase of the disaster had more than twelve million Texans lose their water or put under “boil advisories,” (which means you have to boil your tap water before you drink it.) More than 130 of the state’s 254 counties were experiencing water outages or potential contamination, and more than 250,000 residents had not had water service for three days, according to state data. Some still don’t have water.