Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The Very Overrated Rick Perry

Michael Brendan Dougherty takes an important and serious look at Texas Governor Rick Perry and finds Perry has been running Texas the way recent presidents have been running the country, with an added twist of religion (My numeration):

1.While Perry has lately crafted the image of a more-Republican-than-thou conservative, he was actually a Democrat in the 1980s. He supported Al Gore in the Democratic presidential primary in 1988. And he supported a massive $5.7 billion tax-hike in 1987, which was opposed by most Texas Republican legislators...

2. While Texas can claim to have added 37 percent of all American jobs since the beginning of our anemic economic recovery, Massimo Calabresi points out that in that same time period, Texas’ unemployment rate has actually gone up from 7.7 percent to 8.0, leaving it in the middle of the pack of all states. Texas adds jobs, sure. But their labor force is growing faster. And many of the new jobs are low-wage; the Lone Star state has the largest percentage of minimum wage jobs in the country...

3.Texas’ debt has doubled from $13.7 billion to $34.08 billion since 2001. Texas had its largest ever budget deficit last year, $27 billion. Perry and his Republican legislature closed the gap by delaying a $2.3 billion payment to schools by a day to push it into the next year. He also had the state’s accountants revise their prediction for the growth of land values, and his budget writers assume that Texas will maintain the exact same number of children in its public schools, despite the fastest growing population in the country...

4.He approved mandatory HPV vaccinations for all Texas public school girls above the objections of the religious right...

5. Perry’s religiosity goes beyond investing common American political maxims with Biblical language the way Obama does. Perry has encouraged Texas residents to pray for rain, a decision that was widely mocked. And he is holding a Day of Prayer and Fasting on August 6 that will include a panoply of pastors whose views go beyond the Evangelical mainstream...

7 comments:

  1. 1 thru 4 are the reasons we HATE Rick Perry in Texas.

    5 is the reason he is still governor.

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  2. Perry is as FOS as his fellow opportunist buddy, Glenn Beck.

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  3. Additionally on #2, if you subtracted out new government jobs, there was no net positive job creation.

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  4. All the more reason people should rent rather than own a home and be tied to the land (serf, anyone?) to be able to vote with their feet when the situation demands. Voting with their feet is more effective than the ballot box.

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  5. This guy is pond scum, and very thick. Everything is bigger in Texas as the saying goes, including skulduggery by this puppets of the elite. This scumbag would not support the removal of the TSA gropers from the state, he caved in to the Washington puppet masters. This guy is sickening. Morally superior ass?

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  6. I hate to say this, but . . . who is Rick Perry?

    It is laughable that both the Republicans AND the Democrats are so busy trying to foist these kind of 'celebrities' on the country. They are not leaders, let alone statesmen. It is no longer a case of voting for the lesser of two evils. I can no longer vote for EITHER party right now. I used to think we couldn't get to the 2012 election fast enough. Now I don't know what this country will do.

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  7. What's the difference between Rick Perry and Elmer Gantry?

    One is a meglamanaical hypocrite who feigns piety and exploits his victims' fears and prejudices for personal gain.......and the other is a fictional character is a Sinclair Lewis novel.

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