This story originally appeared at Truthdig. Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books). It is unfathomable that yet another Texas blowhard governor has emerged as a front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. The persistent appeal of the mythology of Texas as a model for the nation defies the lessons of logic and experience, and yet here we are with Rick Perry, a George W. Bush look-alike, as a prime contender to once again run our nation into the ground.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has raised massive campaign contributions from a network of wealthy executives with business before his state and anti-environmental interests.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has joined the presidential race. Here are some questions he should have to answer.
The economy is a shambles, saved from a free fall only by the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented promise of free money for banks for at least two years.
The die has been cast. Obama’s deal to raise the debt ceiling is a disaster in the making.
To begin with, Texas is not and never will be a model for the nation unless the other states discover similarly rich deposits of oil and natural gas that account for one-third of jobs and supply 40 percent of tax revenues within those states. If Texas energy receipts and jobs helped float Governor Bush’s reputation, they have been nothing short of miraculous for Perry’s tenure. The price of oil rose from $25 a barrel when Lt. Gov. Perry replaced the newly elected President Bush to $147 in 2008 and has stayed at more than $80 a barrel since, to the dismay of anyone who has to buy gasoline.
In addition, thanks to breakthroughs in oil field technology that Perry had nothing to do with, there have been controversial new drilling techniques that have vastly expanded the exploitation of gas and oil reserves, producing many of the new jobs that the Texas governor claims. For a relatively ineffectual governor, in a state in which the part-time Legislature holds the power, to take credit for this job boom is as ludicrous as a Saudi prince bragging of his entrepreneurial skills as the source of royal wealth.
Unfortunately, the boom in the energy industry has not spread to those in the state stuck in less lucrative sectors of the economy. Texas remains tied with Mississippi for the largest number of workers earning wages equal to or less than the federal minimum wage. This is particularly true for the majority of nonwhite Texans, who account for a good portion of the state population increase that Perry brags about. It will be interesting to see how he handles the immigration issue in light of the fact that the manufacturing sector, particularly automobiles, is dependent on robust traffic of parts and workers across the border from Mexico.
It should be added that much of the non-energy job growth is in the public sector, which has been in part financed by the federal government that Perry lambastes. As the Austin American-Statesman newspaper points out: “… [A]lmost half of the state’s job growth the past two years was led by education, health care and government, the sectors of the economy that will now take a hit as federal stimulus money runs out and the state’s 8 percent cut in state spending translates into thousands of layoffs among state workers and teachers in the coming months.”
There is, however, something very important in the Texas experience that could serve as a model for the nation, and that is the state’s success in avoiding the worst effects of the housing crash. Texas has not suffered anything like the crushing foreclosure crisis that is the main source of joblessness in states from Florida to California. But Perry surely will not dwell on the reasons for Texas having escaped that fate, because his mantra of less government regulation doesn’t work in this instance. If lax environmental and zoning codes were the secret, neighboring Arizona and Nevada would not be the housing basket cases that they are. The difference for Texas is one that most free-market conservatives ignore: It was precisely the tight government regulation of the housing market that spared Texas a similar fate.
From the first days of statehood in 1845, Texas has maintained the strictest laws on home mortgages in the nation. The Texas constitution’s blanket ban on home equity loans, born of outrage over previous land grabs by banks, has been eased substantially over the years, but a firm commitment that the total amount in loans on a house not exceed 80 percent of appraised value, and other consumer-friendly restrictions on mortgage lenders, saved Texas from the home mortgage disaster visited upon many other states.
That put a crimp in the wild lending that fed the securitization of home mortgages that still proves to be so toxic to the nation’s economic recovery outside Texas. As a bit of irony, it was US Senator Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who pioneered the passage of federal legislation preventing government oversight of those mortgage-backed securities. Perhaps because Texas homeowners were better protected than those in the rest of the nation, the Texan Bush managed to be splendidly indifferent during his presidency to the dire consequence of the housing bubble.
Indeed, how can Perry seek the presidency largely on the basis of his Texas governorship without conceding that it is his Texas predecessor, himself purely a product of Texas state government, who is far more responsible for the economic meltdown than the current president?
Barack Obama “inherited a mess,” economist Nouriel Roubini—made famous by his 2005 prediction of the economic collapses, which Bush ignored—told the Wall Street Journal, adding, “We’re lucky that this Great Recession is not turning into another Great Depression.” In case his point was missed, Roubini reminded of the obvious: “We destroyed our fiscal sustainability before [President Obama] came to power.… We had guns and butter and low taxes. It doesn’t work, if you want guns and butter, you should have high taxes during wars.”
Bush, as Perry is doing, complained about big government in every area except lavish spending on the military-industrial complex, an important part of the Texas economy at more than $200 billion a year, double what it was a decade ago. But that’s all the hypocrisy we have time for in one column.
Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books).
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Interesting recent national GOP poll from Rassmusen: Perry 29%, Romney 18%, Bachmann 13%. Given how long Romney has been on the GOP stage and how much money he has spent, this must be keeping him and his advisers up late at night despite their public comments to the contrary.
Perry has traction with all three main Republican groups: Business, Tea-Party, and Christian-right, whereas Romney only has traction with business Republicans.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that Perry is the REAL GOP candidate against Obama in 2012.
Can we get this research in the mainstream media? I heard it on MSNBC. It needs to be repeated and replicated.
Here's a nice tidbit...
Survey's surprising finding: tea party less popular than atheists and Muslims
http://tinyurl.com/3rkvdwv
The professors were following up on research they conducted in 2006 and 2007 for their book "American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us" and decided to add the tea party and atheists to their list of survey queries. By going back to many of the same respondents, the professors gleaned several interesting facts about the tea party.
One of their more surprising findings, Campbell concedes, (and one drawing national attention) is that the tea party drew a lower approval rating than Muslims and atheists. That put the tea party below 23 other entries--including Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Republicans and Democrats--that the professors included on their survey of "a representative sample of 3,000 Americans."
End excerpt.
Well, well, well. What a pleasant surprise. Hey, wait a minute! I'm an atheist muslim. What the f$ck?!
:D
Obama, Perry, Bachmann, Romney, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam
A couple of points...
1) My first reaction to a potential Rick Perry run for potus--months back--was essentially, that dog won't hunt. Based on all I've seen since then, that assessment still stands. [Yeah, I know, the Pugs are--ostensibly--down to three douchebags and Perry is one of them. He won't be their nominee. Period.]
2) As I've been repeatedly pointing out on these blog threads, Obama is a disaster of a potus himself--basically, Bush's third term with a nice smile, cute kids and wife--only he has (ominously) successfully bamboozled the so-called Left, leaving any effective opposition mostly toothless.
It's pretty simple. In the final analysis, as Dylan Ratigan pointed out earlier this week on his MSNBC program, "our" government--BOTH Parties--is completely bought out by the Big Six:
Giga-banks, big energy/oil, the "defense" establishment, health care/big pharma, agribusiness, and the telecommunications racket.
Any questions?
Okay, let's hit the streets, folks. Alternatively, you can surrender now.
www.october2011.org
Another blowhard governor? Will that work?
Naah. Here's the winning strategy:
Run a young guy, young enough that he still has disdain for people having views or backgrounds he is unfamiliar with, but not so young that he hasn't accumulated some unsavoury connections to his local political fixers, somebody handsome or at least athletic, but with no executive experience, maybe legislative experience but only if he can smile a lot and avoid voting as much as possible so as not to leave an embarrassing paper trail, a degree from an expensive Ivy League school - better yet, a postgraduate degree in something like Law or Critical Studies.
Victory, budget surpluses and full employment! I can feel the paradigm shifting!
1. posted by: Michael Green at 08/17/2011 @ 2:31pm
I don't know. We're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Libya. We're still pumping obscene amounts of money into the pentagon without question. We've continued almost all of W's programs. The Obama in the White House must be the evil brother of the good Obama that campaigned for president, because they sure as hell aren't the same guy.
But Robert Scheer thinks Obama is no better than the Republicans, so what's the difference? The answer, of course, is that there is a big difference, and it's about time that Mr. Scheer woke up to the sheer stupidity of his own criticism of Obama. Maybe his awareness of Perry is a sign.
Perry not only is from Texas, but looks and sounds like Bush even though W was a little less of a bible thumper (I find this hard to say, but it seems to be the case). I don't know what this country needs for the next president, but I don't see one person running on either side (including Obama) that has shown that they can be president of this country without running it into the ground. We need someone in the oval office who will fight for working class people and take on the banks, wall street, pentagon and energy lobbies instead of sucking up to them.
Perhaps Warren Buffet would be someone to consider running. I don't know which side of the fence he's really on, but I don't think he's for sale like the people running for president are.
Most of them are looking to protect their investments, have the lifetime secret service protection along with that lifelong retirement pay and perks ex-presidents get. Yes indeed, they all hate those tax dollars going into paying for perks for public employees. Hypocrites on the right side of the isle....each and every one of them.
Thanks for writing this. Perry cannot take credit for job growth in Texas either - the new jobs have grown in Texas since Anne Richards' time, and continued throughout George w Bush's time in office.
How this guy maintains a reputation as a fiscal conservative is not hard to fathom - he did manage to get the legislature to close a $27 billion deficit in the two-year budget, but only by cuts that some would call draconian. The cuts included 13% from public education in a state where the per pupil support already ranks down there with Mississippi; almost 8% cuts in support for higher education; some public schools will be charging tuition to students to maintain early childhood education programs - something really needed in this state; nearly was 25% cut from health and human services - but he kept the state's plutocrats happy by avoiding any tax increases. But UT Southwestern Medical Center will lay off more than 100 employees and eliminate 250 unfilled jobs, and there are cuts to other services included in the cuts. of course, those affected by the cuts can always attend a prayer breakfast with Rick Perry and hope for better times!
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