Last Friday, as an advocate for the National Spinal Association’s Roll on Washington visiting various representatives and senators’s offices around the country via Zoom, we attempted to speak with a staff member from Ted Cruz’s office, but failed to be granted an appointment.
However, the four of us from Texas, representing four different viewpoints of what we need from Congress by way of bills to help educate and provide more access, was granted 15 minute meetings with staff members from one Democrat representative and three Republican representatives, as well as, Senator John Cornyn. All who listened to our concerns with interest and were willing to look into whether they would support bills that would help us with our lives. We are often handicapped by spinal cord injury without the needed support and assistance. Every year, 20,000 more Americans become spinal cord injured and it greatly changes our lives and lifestyles. There is much ignorance about our needs and abilities that needs to be addressed both within all of the state governments and the federal government.
Ted Cruz’s family left Cuba to Canada to escape Castro and entered the oil business there before coming to Houston and becoming very wealthy in the oil business. Ted was one of the original candidates for the far right Tea Party that has basically taken over the Republican Party.
I believe the reason that Ted Cruz does not care about the spinal cord injured is because of his buddy, Greg Abbott, the Republican Governor of Texas who is paraplegic from an accident when a tree fell on him while jogging. Abbott is a lawyer and was able to file a lawsuit against his neighborhood and win a $22 million settlement. Making him a great example of a successful spinal cured injured person like FDR from polio. Wealth trumps almost everything else when it comes to politics.
However, the majority of spinal cord injured find themselves financially strapped from their injury and many go into poverty just to get Medicaid. They lose relationships, jobs and much more from the ignorance that surrounds what spinal cord injured people are and do. We are not just in a wheelchair where one size fits all. Our wheelchairs have to be professionally fitted and updated if we are to remain healthy and vital. Our brains an attitudes are generally not affected even though sometimes we are depressed by the way other people treat us. Especially when they tell us we are better off or blessed.
When Ted Cruz was up for reelection in 2020, he challenged Jimmy Kimmel, the popular late night talk show host, to a one on one basketball game at Texas Southern University’s Athletic Arena that I had a part in building when we were granted as a predominantly black university underfunded by the state, surplus general tax funds to build two new buildings by the Democratic governor at the time in 1983. I served TSU for 30 years and watched it change from being very academic with famous professors and students to becoming run by an inadequate board creating a republican-controlled, overpaid and overstaffed administration ignoring the students and the faculty. Probably why the game was granted at TSU.
Most voters are noncommittal and not political. They don’t vote until the presidential elections like in 2020. They often vote like I have, by name recognition rather than anything else because they don’t know the candidates. Why celebrities often are elected to high office having never been involved in politics before. Ted Cruz or his staff knew that he would get national attention and the attention of black voters by pulling off the game on national TV. So Jimmy Kimmel not only lost the game, but unwittingly put a poor performing, undemocratic senator in the national limelight so that he would be reelected simply because people saw him in the news or even watched the game like I did.
Ted Cruz is at it again. Today, he made national news for promoting a bipartisan bill to force social media to remove un-consented images, particularly sexual ones, of young people from the Internet. Who can be against that? I am all for it. What most voters in Texas don’t know, is that his campaign chest is 2/3 made up of donations from two West Texas billionaires no one has ever heard of who also fund the campaigns for many judges and offices all the way down to school board members all over West Texas keeping the state very red. Ted Cruz is a ringleader in the stalemate between the parties when it gets to getting government action for the people and a strong advocate for the wealthy like he is.
Copyright 2024 Ronald W. Hull
6/19/24
