Rick Perry has as much compassion and empathy for his constituents as would Beavis and Butt-Head.
For those who do not know, Beavis and Butt-Head are fictional cartoon teenagers that are socially incompetent. Both are hopelessly insensitive to the feelings of others. They are obnoxious, misogynistic, and boorish. In the cartoon series, Beavis and Butt-Head usually escape from their irresponsible shenanigans unscathed while those around them do not always fare so well.
Today Rick Perry wins the Beavis and Butt-Head Oscar award for showing, yet again, his heartless contempt for struggling Texans. This is strike three for the Governor who is as laser focused as his big and bad pistol in killing off federal programs that throw financial, educational and literal life lines for the jobless, school children and to those who cannot afford heath insurance.
Does a reckless and heartless cowboy preside over Texas?
I'd say you betcha he does. One does not hand out Beavis and Butt-Head Oscar awards unless a candidate goes well above and beyond, if not over the top in bringing such recognition to him or herself.
Cross posted on Texas Kaos and The Burnt Orange Report.
As with the federal Race to the Top educational program and the extended unemployment benefits for the jobless, Perry said no way, no how, hell would have to freeze over first, in your dreams, to state run high risk health insurance insurance pools.
The federal program would provide insurance for anyone who is a U.S. citizen, has not had health insurance for six months and has a pre-existing condition. The Texas pool requires a person previously to have had coverage for at least 18 months and been denied coverage due to health reasons or been offered health insurance that excluded coverage for a medical condition.
According to the Texas Medical Association, there are 5.4 million people in Texas who lack health insurance, including 1.5 million children.
Under the new federal law, if states opt out of running a pool, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would be allowed to create its own risk pools in those states or contract with an outside party. The pools would be in place until 2014, when health insurance companies no longer would be allowed to deny coverage to people in poor health.
The department announced Friday that 27 states had opted to set up pools to cover uninsured people with medical problems, according to the Associated Press. The department said 15 states had decided not to participate. Texas was not included in that list. Friday was the deadline for states to agree to participate or opt out.
Most of the states rejecting the insurance pools are run by Republican governors.
Our laser sighted pistol packing, coyote killing governor must be really proud of the fact that he presides over a state with the largest number of uninsured residents. And it should come as no surprise to anyone that Perry would refuse to take responsibility for uninsured Texans as he passes the buck to the evil doing big federal government.
For one who likes to rail endlessly about the evils of big government Rick Perry obviously enjoys swilling fine government provided champagne while Tex the Taxpayer who is stuck paying the tab for the governor's pricey bubbles can barely afford to buy a cheap beer for himself. Tex the Taxpayer must also pay the salary of a governor who obviously loathes him. And to add insult to injury Tex who cannot afford to buy health insurance for himself and his family is required to pay for Cowboy Rick's health insurance.
5.4 million Texans cannot afford to buy health care insurance for themselves.
Shame on Rick Perry.
Tex is also saddled with the governor's housing costs at the same time as Tex's bank demands mind numbing late fees and usury levels of interest for past due mortgage payments.
Despite Tex's hardships and suffering, however, Tex must nonetheless pony up $9,000 per month for a rental mansion for a governor who could care less about him and his troubles.
Yes indeed. Governor Cowboy Perry sure does have a bipolar dysfunctional relationship with taking taxpayer funded government money.
Tough cowboy Rick did not have a problem grabbing onto the big bad federal bucks for programs that would serve Perry's political interests at least in terms of covering up his irresponsible fiscal decisions.
- Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) said that he was rejecting $556 million in federal funds for unemployed Texans because it had too many strings attached.
Hypocrisy: Perry reversed his decision and asked the federal government for a $170 million loan to ensure the state is able to continue paying out unemployment benefits.
In the 2010 Congressional elections, U.S. voters MUST remember who courageously stood up for them, and who, instead, stooped to tend to their own political ends over the health, financial and well-being of American families.
Reckless Rick had no choice but to take the federal money because the state jobless fund that he refused to replenish had a $447 million shortfall.
Whoops.
AUSTIN (AP) _ Texas is projected to have a $447 million shortfall in its unemployment compensation trust fund on Oct. 1 following the temporary suspension of the unemployment replenishment tax at the behest of Gov. Rick Perry, according to officials.
The unemployment fund, which pays jobless claims, was flush with $90 million in savings nearly a year ago when Perry temporarily halted the replenishment tax, one part of the unemployment insurance tax.
The suspended tax was reinstated this month, but officials said it won’t be enough to cover the shortfall between the $414 million the state expects to be in the fund Oct. 1 and the $861 million it’s supposed to have.
Meanwhile, jobless claims have skyrocketed because people are having a hard time finding jobs.
Fiscal irresponsibility.
As you'll recall, Gov. Rick Perry refused to accept a half a billion in federal unemployment stimulus dollars, saying there were too many strings attached, even though he knew the state's unemployment fund was projected to go broke within months.
Temple testified Thursday that the commission has had to double the tax rate for businesses in order to replenish the unemployment fund. And he conceded under intense questioning from Eltife that the hike wouldn't have been as high if we'd taken the half a billion.
Earlier this week, Commission Chairman Tom Pauken notified lawmakers that the agency may have to issue $2 billion in bonds to feed the unemployment fund as time runs out on the state's no-interest borrowing from the feds.
Eltife, the Tyler senator who had unsuccessfully championed legislation (it passed the Senate, died in the House) that would have allowed Texas to take the stimulus dollars, is still fuming that Texas passed on free money that not only could have helped business owners but unemployed Texans who would have become eligible for benefits if Texas had taken the money and implemented the federal requirement to modernize our unemployment eligibility.
Reckless Rick seems to be working really hard to cover his butt for a number of reasons.
I guess the question comes down to why does Rick Perry have serious problems with outreach programs, whether local, state or federal, all of which attempt to throw life lines to those who are in a desperate struggle, whether it is a financial burden, crippling health care costs, or top quality educational benefits for public schools?
While Perry works 24/7 to polish his tough and fiercely independent cowboy image, it has become more and more clear that the reckless cowboy Governor is completely out of touch with the extraordinarily diverse and rapidly changing demographics in Texas. Tough guy Rick's pistol killing of a coyote might be considered an awesome moment among gun lovers but those who live in large urban and diverse areas are disgusted and revolted by such behavior. Does one really need to jog with a laser sighted pistol when one has a taxpayer provided security guard for protection?
What is really Reckless Rick's problem with the poor and the disenfranchised?
Are struggling Texans undeserving of financial support, economic, social and educational outreach?
Perhaps our self-serving Governor, Reckless Rick, is merely another cookie cutter variety of a narcissist, like Sarah Palin, that seek higher and finer champagne, big mansions and bucks.
For themselves.
Reckless Rick and the ever Self-Serving Sarah will play whatever card necessary to achieve their goals.
The Bushies, however, have no power and no juice in the new conservative order. The former president is nearly as reviled in some Tea Party circles as Obama is. Even conservatives as seemingly above reproach as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina now invite the nastiest of blow-back if they fail Tea Party purity tests. When Graham had the gall to work with Chuck Schumer of New York on an immigration reform bill, the hard-line Americans for Legal Immigration punished him by spreading rumors about his private life as loudly as possible. Graham has been backing away from supporting the immigration bill ever since.
It’s harder and harder to cling to the conventional wisdom that the Tea Party is merely an element in the G.O.P., not the party’s controlling force — the tail that’s wagging the snarling dog. It’s also hard to maintain that the Tea Party’s nuttier elements are merely a fringe of a fringe. The first national Tea Party convention, in Nashville in February, chose as its kickoff speaker the former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, a notorious nativist who surely was enlisted precisely because he runs around saying things like he has "no idea where Obama was born." The Times/CBS poll of the Tea Party movement found that only 41 percent of its supporters believe that the president was born in the United States.
The angry right and its apologists also keep insisting that race has nothing to do with their political passions. Thus Sarah Palin explained that it’s Obama and the "lamestream media" that are responsible for "perpetuating this myth that racial profiling is a part" of Arizona’s law. So how does that profiling work without race or ethnicity, exactly? Brian Bilbray, a Republican Congressman from California and another supporter of the law, rode to the rescue by suggesting "they will look at the kind of dress you wear." Wise Latinas better start shopping at Talbots!
In this Alice in Wonderland inversion of reality, it’s politically incorrect to entertain a reasonable suspicion that race may be at least a factor in what drives an action like the Arizona immigration law. Any racism in America, it turns out, is directed at whites. Beck called Obama a "racist." Newt Gingrich called Sonia Sotomayor a "Latina woman racist." When Obama put up a routine YouTube video calling for the Democratic base to mobilize last week — which he defined as "young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women" — the Republican National Committee attacked him for playing the race card. Presumably the best defense is a good offense when you’re a party boasting an all-white membership in both the House and the Senate and represented by governors who omit slavery from their proclamations of Confederate History Month.
Rick and Sarah, 2012.
I wonder who gets to be on the top?