Apparently Rick Perry was a big hit at a big fancy Republican fundraiser in Manhattan hosted by one of former President Nixon's sons-in-law, Ed Cox, soon to be NY GOP Chairman.
During his talk Perry bashed President Obama and touted his state's strong economy and job growth.
Appearing as the keynote speaker at the New York County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner at Grand Central Station in Manhattan, Perry bragged about presiding over “the strongest economy in this country.” He cited government statistics indicating that 48 percent of the jobs created in the U.S. in the past two years have been created in Texas.
“We keep adding jobs while other states lose them left and right,” Perry said. “Those jobs flee other states because of factors like excess taxation, punitive regulation and frivolous litigation. To preserve our job-friendly climate, our Legislature didn’t raise taxes in balancing a budget that maintains essential services and keeps more than $6 billion in our Rainy Day Fund.
“In Texas, we can’t defer today’s tough decisions for tomorrow’s generation, and unlike Washington, we don’t have one of those Beijing credit cards to finance deficit spending.”
Cross posted on Texas Kaos.
I think the Wall St. plutocrats will pick Rick Perry. He excels at verbal contortions and unfortunately, the Governor has no conscience at all when it comes to throwing children, education, the elderly who are poor and a woman's right to choose under the bus. And as everyone in Texas knows he is a great liar to boot. What a perfect tool for Wall St.
Let's look at the reality of Rick Perry's wonderful low taxes, small government and how his conservatives policies yielded a $27 billion budget deficit.
I imagine all of those Wall St. fat cats and plutocrats licked their chops over the prospect of another Texas Republican cowboy occupying the White House. The last time one did the Tool in Chief for Business turned a blind eye to the Wall St. gambling casinos that burned 30% of the global economy in 2008.
In order to plug up their gambling loses and to avoid a global financial melt down called a Depression the Bush Administration emptied the U.S. Treasury into the pockets of bankers. Right now the fat cats are trying to figure out who will enable their gambling addiction all over again.
Let's look at the reality of Rick Perry's low taxes and small government agenda and how his conservative policies yielded a $27 billion budget deficit.
Texas has a strong economy. It had one before Perry and we'll have one when Perry leaves. The reason for this is because of the oil and gas industry. We are pumping oil like crazy. Most of the oil companies have headquarters established in Houston. We also have the Port of Houston which brings in international commerce. Texas has vast amounts of productive farms and ranches throughout the state. There are beach cities and towns along the Gulf Coast that bring in tourism. As does NASA. The city of Houston thrives because of its international business partnerships and its universities and the Texas Medical Center. Millions upon millions of dollars in federal grant money are awarded to these academic institutions for their cutting edge research and medical breakthroughs. UT M.D. Anderson Hospital is one of most well known cancer treatment centers that brings people to Houston from all over the world.
Rick Perry did nothing to make any of the above happen.
But what Rick Perry did do that led to his $27 budget deficit is a fly by night decision to rectify a wrong.
The Governor changed the Texas Franchise Tax from an income based to a gross receipts based tax. He did this because the Texas Supreme Court ruled that school financing was unconstitutional because it relied almost exclusively on property taxes. So Perry cut property taxes. To pay for it he tripled the amount of taxes the state would receive from businesses.
But when the economy tanked in 2008, thanks to the voodoo supply side economics zealotry of the Bush Administration, the revenues from business shrank dramatically. As a result Texas has a serious revenue problem but like a typical right wing Republican extremist, Rick Perry would never admit it.
If Rick Perry wants to talk about abysmal leadership maybe he should have a conversation with himself. At least President Obama is held accountable to the public for his words and deeds by the U.S. media. Rick Perry, on the other hand, avoids the Texas press like the plague. During the 2010 gubernatorial election Rick Perry refused to meet with editorial boards and he shunned a debate with Democrat Bill White.
Slick Rick is hardly popular in his own state. Four percent of Texans said they would support Perry as a candidate.
Rick Perry is not popular in Texas because of a number of reasons. One, of course is his unnecessarily cruel and heartless cuts to children, schools, education, teachers, librarians, state workers, the poor and the elderly.
Another reason why we do not like the Governor is due to his arrogance and lack of integrity. Rick Perry avoids transparency and accountability by appointing his cronies and political hacks to various state agencies and boards. Any emerging controversy or scandal is quickly snuffed. Lips are sealed tight. Requests from the media are largely ignored. In some cases employees are fired.
An astute reader of the Houston Chronicle's article about the GOP fundraiser in Manhattan has nicely summarized a long standing pattern of Rick Perry.
1.Rick Perry has been the primary supporter of the Texas Enterprise Fund, a public fund to give cash to companies to create jobs. After Texas distributed $363 million to various companies, the number of jobs created was disappointing, so much so that Rick Perry’s office had to amend the original contracts and according to one study, “quietly redefine success.”
2. 20 of the 55 companies to receive funds from the Texas Enterprise Fund were contributors to the Rick Perry campaign (Source). In addition, there are allegations that companies made donations to the Republican Governors’ Association – which in turn made campaign contributions to Perry’s campaign.
3. Amazingly, one beneficiary of the Texas Enterprise Fund was Countrywide Financial who received $20 million from the State of Texas before going bankrupt under allegations of fraud. Not only did Perry approve of giving funds to Countrywide, he actually made a point to give a speech touting it as the fund’s “crowning jewel” (Source). Countrywide later became known for being a primary cause of the subprime loan mortgage meltdown and “has become synonymous with the excesses that led to the housing bubble.”
4. Rick Perry rejected $556 million in federal unemployment stimulus dollars. (More). He did it because he felt the fed dollars came with too many strings attached. But that is not the point. The purpose of this stimulus money was to maintain consumer spending in the Texas economy. The end result is that unemployment taxes were doubled on Texas businesses.
5. Rick Perry solicited a $250,00 donation from BP to help restore the governor’s mansion. (Source). Later after the BP spill he described the spill as an “act of God” and said that the company “historically had a very good safety record from my perspective” despite the fact that BP’s violation of safety standards at the Texas City refineries were numerous and well known.
Oh, a third of those jobs Perry likes to boast about are part-time minimum wage that do not include benefits. One cannot possibly exist on these kinds of salaries.
Too many Texans are forced to work at two jobs just to get by.
Rick Perry can run around the U.S. and try to fool people about his Texas miracle but here in Texas we know that the notion of a miracle is a fairy tale that exists only in the heads of Rick Perry and the Texas GOP. For many Texans, Rick Perry's miracle is a nightmare.