The Inconvenient Truth About Rick Perry-Part I

"Good Time"Charlie Rangel might not have been too far off the point when he told reporters outside of a Rick Perry campaign stop in Harlem that Rick Perry for President might be the best thing to happen to Barrack Obama's campaign.  In part, this is because Rick Perry likes portray himself in ways that his record does not support. In the coming days I will look at a few of these stretches of the truth. The first one is his portrayal as a strong, fiscally sound governor.

For the last year, Texans have known that the state faced a large budget deficit when the legislature returned to Austin for its 2011 session. Candidate Rick Perry denied there was a problem. That alone should have raised red flags and set off alarm bells all over.  Needless to say, when the Austin Government opened for business in early 2011, fireworks would surely follow.  They did, in the litany of items being declared emergencies by the Governor to allow the GOP controlled Legislature to fast track through the process, not one of them dealt with jobs, revenue or closing the deficit.  Texas Horseman put forth a proposal that would have delivered thousands of jobs and billions in potential revenue to state coffers and that proposal never saw the light of day for debate on the floor while seeking to put guns on college campuses and voter intimidation initiatives receive the fast track emergency treatment.  All along Perry planned to cut spending on schools and social services to close his budget hole. In effect his actions, while not pulling the plug on grandma, did put grandma on the streets since many nursing homes are slated to be closed due to lack of funding.

Along the same lines, Slick Rick likes to paint himself as an ordinary Joe from Paint Creek, except in the decades he spent in government he acquired expensive tastes.  After a fire ravaged the Governor's Mansion, Governor Perry was moved into temporary quarters while the damage was repaired and the mansion habitable.  For someone who spent many years working in Austin, Rick Perry surprisingly had no local address to call his own. Using the money of the people of his fine state, the Governor rented a new mansion to live in during the repairs, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the midst of a budget crisis.  Given that the Texas Legislature meets for a few months every 2 years, some might see that expense as a bit excessive.  Certainly it would cost a fraction of that to set him up in a suite at a fine Downtown Austin hotel while the lege was in session and he could commute to his office from his home in College Station the rest of the time.  Perry obviouly thought differently, and reasoned that he needed to live in a swank mansion while his budget cuts to help pay for it would force grandma from her nursing home. In a nutshell that is GOP fiscal responsibility.

Next we examine Perry the Job Creator....

The Buffett Initiative: What you Need to Know

Today President Obama unveiled his grand plan which he submitted to the new Catfood Commission with a blueprint to cut the deficit nearly $4 trillion dollars over the next decade.  This plan reflects the popular public sentiment that a sense of shared sacrifice with both an increase in taxes on our highest earners coupled with some cuts in government spending with a pledge to achieve the savings without massive cuts to our social safety net. This notion of taxing the wealthiest among us at a higher rate is something that billionaire financier Warren Buffett has preached for many years.  Predictably, Koch/Murdoch fueled noise machine began to attach these proposals.  Here is the truth, and it does not support their claims.

     One of the popular myths that has been paraded around over the last couple years is that raising the rates on top earners would hurt job creation.  Facts don't lie, in recent memory our greatest period of economic expansion occurred after Bill Clinton raised taxes and the worst period of job loss occurred after George W. Bush passed his 2 tax cuts.  There is no correlation between low taxes and private sector job growth.  We see job growth when our citizens are working and earning good wages.  When they work they spend their wages in the marketplace fueling demand and thus creating more jobs.  Since the President's jobs proposal includes infrastructure spending which will put people back to work, this initiative will help boost jobs. (Though by most accounts the $50 billion must be considered simply a down payment since by most estimates we have $1 trillion in needed infrastructure work to be done.)
    
     So now it us up to us, the people to let our elected representatives know that we stand with Warren Buffett and that the wealthiest among us should be asked to bear a greater responsibility that comes with their higher station.  This is the ethic that the great Eunice Shriver instilled in the Kennedy clan, and an ethic that pays homage to the notion that America is the land of opportunity.  Aside from the squires and well born, many Americans who make it to the highest levels in our society benefited from the type of social spending that the right proposes to cut.  Many used student loans and grants to attend colleges, many of which were established with public money, just two of the programs which some would sacrifice to continue the Bush era cuts on the wealthiest among us.  Keep the pressure up on the likes of Ben Nelson, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell.