Holding up a huge slab of baloney Rachel Maddow debunks the myth about Rick Perry's Texas miracle.
Rachel is right. Both the Texas Miracle and Rick Perry are baloney. What may be a miracle for Slick Rick Perry is in fact a horror show for many middle, working class and poor Texas families.
Another fairy tale surrounding Slick Rick and his Hall of Shame is his spin BS about the wonders of small government. The reality is Rick Perry needs a big fat bloated government in order to sustain his lavish life style.
Cross posted on Texas Kaos.
Rick Perry's narrow minded and short sighted policies are also job killers.
The Governor's ideological extremism and his pathological aversion to increase revenues has resulted the firing of teachers, librarians, hospital and other state workers. Now we will have more people on the unemployment dole. College students who are majoring in education will have no place to work for the next few years. What are they supposed to do with their degrees? How are the students with loans going to be able to pay them back? Never mind. Rick Perry doesn't care about the future. He is simply into today and he how can best serve himself.
Here are several more reality checks on Rick Perry's mythical miracle.
“THE TEXAS MIRACLE IS A FRAUD
Conservatives Like to Tout Texas as an Economic Powerhouse because of its Conservative fiscal policies, but the Reality is that they have huge problems that they've been trying to hide form the public.
1. They've been pretending that they have a low debt, but in reality they have $27-billion debt that they've been hiding.
2. Texas uses a two-year budgeting process, so they've been able to avoid talking their budget problems until this year.
3. Last year Governor Perry was able to hide $12 billion of his debt using OBAMA'S STIMULUS MONEY.
4. Texas has the 8th worst Poverty Rates in the country. (By the way, the states with the worst poverty are Conservative, Red states.)
5. They have some of the lowest wages in the country.
6. They have the lowest health insurance coverage in the country and the highest insurance prices inspite of the fact that Texas are allowed by insurance over state lines had have 22 insurance companies working in the state.
7. Perry likes to brag that Texas is more business friendly and attracts more businesses than California, but that is false. California ranks 7th in attracting new busines and Texas ranks 18ths.
Texas' infrastructure is crumbling. It lag behind Texas in Major Research Universities, Patents Produced, High Tech Infrastructure and Venture Capital.
The only "Texas Miracle," is the miracle that they get away with fooling the public.
Rick Perry shrouds himself in secrecy, while the Governor lives in a taxpayer funded, government run $10K monthly rental mansion. Texas taxpayers shoulder the burden for Rick Perry's opulent lifestyle. He asks for the people to tighten our belts and yet the Governor is incapable of tightening his own. Rick Perry freely spends taxpayer funds for security detail on his frequent trips out of the state. But the Governor doesn't want we the little taxpayers to know about the details surrounding his expenses.
Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News writer Peggy Fikac reported last October that Texas taxpayers had spent close to $1 million for security during 23 foreign trips taken by the Perrys over a seven-year period.
More detailed records used to be available; for example, records showed expenditures in 2005 for golf cart and scuba diving equipment during a trip to the Bahamas.
Austin attorney Bill Christian, representing the newspapers, noted those details "would be lost forever" if the state releases only lump sum expenditures.
Jeff Cohen, editor of the Houston Chronicle, said the governor was wrong to keep the information secret.
"It's not his money. It's ours," Cohen said. "We have a right to know where he is going and what he is doing and what his entourage is doing."
Read more: http://www.chron.com/...
Rick Perry's unwillingness to be transparent does not sound like someone who fully embraces democratic principles. If anything the Governor's behavior in this regard seems more reactionary and dictatorial. These are fatal character flaws that seem to afflict Republican Governors like Perry, Walker, Kasich and Scott, all of whose approval ratings are in the toilet. These Governors have demonstrated their unbridled contempt for their constituents. None care about the suffering they impose upon the people because of their sick and twisted aversion to raising taxes. All march in lockstep to the orders of their biggest donors who want to pay few if any taxes and they want labor to be as cheap as possible.
Maybe all of these boys should run as dictators for a banana republic.
Maybe Texas taxpayers should demand an intervention group therapy session with our Governor for his fiscal recklessness and for his unwillingness to hold himself accountable to we the little people. Not to mention his cruel and heartless cuts to children, the poor and the elderly while the Narcissist of Texas trots himself out on the national trail promoting himself and his myths. I guess secessionist Rick Perry wants to secede himself from Texas to the place he said he hates the most. Where else but Washington. D.C.?
Is there a psychiatrist in the room?
And then there are the decades long rumors about the Governor's personal life that never seem to go away.
The rumors persist but there is no smoking gun to give them credibility. And yet the rumors resurface every few years.
Well, this is Texas where politics is a blood sport. But politicians might want to exercise a modicum of caution and restraint. They might remember when they choose to live by the sword they will most likely die by the sword.