So the GOP is hoping that Texas governor Rick Perry will step up and run for the Republican presidential nomination? Actually, that is what the Tea Party is hoping. Forget about Sarah Palin, first-class history major!
Let us take a brief look at some of the crap that Perry has pulled while partaking in the dismantling of the state of Texas.
Thinkprogress - still my favorite site -has the skinny.
#1 - Perry knowingly allowed the Execution of an Innocent Woman Man for a non-existent crime.
In 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Huntsville, Texas after being convicted of arson and the murder of his three children. Even after significant evidence emerged showing that arson had not caused the fire (thus exonerating Willingham), Perry refused to grant a stay of execution. Five years after Willingham was executed, a report from a Texas Forensic Science Commission investigator found that the fire could not have been arson. As the commission prepared to hear testimony from the investigator in October 2009, Perry quickly fired and replaced three of its members, forcing an indefinite delay in the hearing.
If the fire wasn't arson, then the deaths weren't murder - why was Cameron Todd Willingham executed?
#2 - Perry is against the 16th and 17th Amendments - and would like to repeal them.
In his 2010 book Fed Up!, Perry called the 16th and 17th Amendments “mistaken” and said they resulted from “a fit of populist rage.” The 16th Amendment allows the federal government to collect income taxes, which is the single biggest source of revenue, accounting for 45 percent of all receipts. The 17th Amendment took electing U.S. senators out of the hands of political insiders and allowed the American public to decide their representation instead.
So does Perry think the collection of Federal Income Tax is Unconstitutional, and that we'd be better off if people couldn't elect their Senators and instead they were chosen by State Legislatures? Really? I wonder what he thinks of the 14th Amendment?
#3 - Perry wants to let States Opt-Out of Social Security and Medicaid
Despite the programs’ importance and popularity, Perry has argued that states like Texas should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and Medicaid. Were Perry to have his way on Social Security, “the entire system would collapse under the weight of too many Social Security beneficiaries who had not paid into the system,” notes Ian Millhiser. On Medicaid, in addition to stripping 3.6 million low-income Texans of their health care, Perry’s proposal would actually hurt, not help, the state’s budget deficit. This is because, as Igor Volsky writes, opting out of Medicaid would take “billions out of the state economy that goes on to support hospitals and other providers,” while forcing hospitals “to swallow the costs of caring for uninsured individuals who will continue to use the emergency room as their primary source of care.”
Basically Perry would prefer to be able to leave the sick and elderly without any support system at all. And not forget to gut services for Children, where 25% of whom are already living in poverty in Texas. But all of that's on top of his next Pile 'o Fail.
#4 Under Gov Perry, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured individuals in the country, while Perry claims "Texas has the best Health Care in the World".
On Bill Bennett’s radio show last year, Perry claimed that “Texas has the best health care in the country.” In reality, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents of any state. More than one in four Texans lack coverage; the national average is just 15.4 percent. As such, there are more uninsured residents in Texas than there are people in 33 states.
When Perry says Texas has "The best Health Care in the World" - I wonder "Best At What" exactly?
#5 Texas has become the Nations Largest Polluter while Perry has sued to EPA to relax it's rules
Texas is the biggest polluter in the country, leading the nation in carbon dioxide emissions. However, when the EPA published its “disapproval” of the state’s air quality standards for falling short of the Clean Air Act’s requirements, Perry sued the federal government to challenge the ruling. Perry’s environmental record doesn’t end there. He is a global warming denier who called the 2010 BP oil spill an “act of God” while speaking at a trade association funded by BP.
So Perry's response to warnings about Global Warming is to deny it - so how then does he explain the Massive Firestorms that have plagued his state lately?
And remember when he was begging the Federal Government for help on that? Oh yeah, Rick Perry.
Lacking funds to deal with the disaster (Texas has the second largest deficit in the Union Perry wants to secede from), and having poisoned the well of political discourse with his anti-tax and anti-gummit bravado, Perry was left with the choice of asking for federal help or condemning it. He did both. In what was perhaps the most graceless act of political gaucherie since Nixon kept the puppy, Perry asked for federal assistance with the churlish complaint: “Why are you taking care of Alabama?”
#6 Rick Perry is a Stimulus Hypocrite
As the nation struggled to avoid economic collapse in 2009, Perry was a vocal critic of Congress’s recovery package, even advocating that Texas reject the money because “we can take care of ourselves.” Months later, after Perry was able to balance the state’s budget only with the aid of billions in federal stimulus dollars, Perry again repeated that he would reject federal funding, arguing that the government “spends money they don’t have.” Five months later, Perry again took advantage of federal funding to issue $2 billion in bonds for highway improvements in Texas. Even so, the state faces a $27 billion budget deficit.
So he talks out one side of his mouth, while taking Federal Money - even whining for it - out of the other.
On top of this Perry is a Neo-Successionist who argued that the Texas Constitution allowed them to "option" of leaving the Union. Right, except for that Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution which trumps any state Constitution and stuff. He's a Xenophobe who signed the Texas anti-Sodomy laws which led to Lawrence v Texas and even after it was struck down by the Supreme Court - who he called “nine oligarchs in robes" - he still refuses to have the Unconstitutional Law removed from the books. And like so many other Republican Governors he's joined the onerous attack on women health by signing so-called Emergency Legislation requiring invasive and medically unnecessary sonograms for women seeking an abortion.
From the perspective of anyone in the Democratic Party, or even an independent, this guy is a Nightmare. At least George W. Bush actually did have a fairly moderate record as Governor of Texas, and a history of working across partisan lines to find common solutions. He was a Stealth Wing-Nut as it turned out who hadn't yet revealed his true nature which his short stint in the Governor's Chair, but with Perry - it's all out there for everyone to see.
Naturally, the Tea-Publicans will love him. Good. That'll make him and them even more fun to destroy in the General Election.
Vyan
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