We already know he's not too bright, so it's no surprise that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is glomming onto this tactic just as former Norquist followers are pulling back from strict adherence. And we know he isn't trying to get onto the Romney ticket, since they can't stand each other. I wonder what he's thinking:
Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist has held most Republicans by the scruff of the neck during recent tax debates due to their having signed the ATR anti-tax pledge, which states that the signees will not vote for a tax increase any time, for any reason. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), who received accoladesfrom Norquist during his presidential run, is aiming to start a similar pledge in the Lone Star State:
Borrowing a page from anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist’s playbook, Perry said on Monday, “Each and every member of the Legislature or anyone aspiring to become a member of the Legislature should sign on.” And right on the Governor’s website, individuals and lawmakers can sign on to the Compact: Yes, I stand with Governor Perry and I support his Texas Budget Compact. I want my state representatives in the Texas Legislature to sign on to Governor Perry’s Texas Budget Compact.
The compact calls for complete opposition to tax increases, as well as constitutional spending limits and restrictions on using the state’s Rainy Day Fund (which Perry previously pluggedusing federal money meant for education). While Perry isn’t personally tracking who signs his pledge, he said that outside organizations might.
Part of the compact calls for legislators to eschew budget gimmicks, even though Perry himself is quite fond of using such gimmicks to balance his budget. As Texas State Rep. Mike Villarreal said in a statement, “Governor Perry loves to talk about his principles in the abstract, but he doesn’t want to discuss the disabled kids who lose health services when he won’t close corporate tax loopholes, or the students crowded into full classrooms when he won’t touch the Rainy Day Fund.”
Poor Rick Perry. Back when he still had a chance, he couldn't string two coherent sentences together. And now that he's probably at the end of the line, he finally learns to play the game: Namely, to lie, exaggerate and deny with the best of them.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor Perry, thanks for joining us this morning.
PERRY: Good morning, George. How are you?
STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm doing well. Thank you. Less than a week to go in South Carolina, you're still lagging far behind. To borrow a metaphor from your home state, has South Carolina become your Alamo?
PERRY: I don't think so. But we get out every day and go take our message of job creation, and, you know, we're the most consistent fiscal conservative and social conservative in the race, and that's our message, both on the airwaves and out on the campaign trail. The retail politics in South Carolina has been awesome.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But as you know, Governor, that big group of social conservatives meeting in Texas yesterday, decided you're not the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. They want Rick Santorum to have that mantle. You didn't even make the final ballot.
PERRY: Well, that's what they said about Ronald Reagan as well, that, you know, he was unelectable, he was not the one that they wanted to pick. But South Carolina citizens said, you know what, he is. So we'll wait and see Saturday what the people of South Carolina say.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What is your message this final week?
PERRY: Well, it's all about jobs and getting this country back working again. I'm -- 11 years of executive governing experience that have created a million jobs in my home state, the 13th largest economy in the world. I keep the taxes low, the regulatory climate fair and predictable, a legal system that doesn't allow for oversuing. And in a state that's got quite a military history and a lot of veterans here, I think they're looking for a president who not only has worn the uniform of the country, but also has been the commander in chief of 20,000-plus National Guard troops that have been deployed multiple times. They know my commitment to the men and women of the military, and we'll stand with them and support them over the course of the years.
As we already know, Texas has a "weak governor," one whose powers and responsibilities are few. We see how well that same "executive governing experience" prepared George W. Bush to be president.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor, as you know, you have taken some heat this week from many Republicans for your attacks on Mitt Romney as a vulture capitalist during his time at Bain Capital. Want to read some of them here. Sean Hannity said, "it almost sounds like Occupy Wall Street." Rudy Giuliani, "it's ignorant and dumb." Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, "it really gives the Democrats a lot of fodder." Any regrets for using that phrase?
PERRY: I think the issue -- it's not a new phrase. It was used by Stewart Stephens (ph), who was one of Mitt Romney's consultants, against Meg Whitman. I think the issue for everyone is, look, this is something that we knew wasn't going to come up. And it's better to be talking about it here in January in South Carolina than it is in September and October with a nominee. So if it's a fatal flaw, then we need to talk about it now.
The issue has been about who's best prepared and who has the background of creating jobs, and that's what those comments were always about, was that, who is the job creator that's on that stage, and I will submit to you that my job creation record is incomparable when it comes to the other candidates on that stage.
Oh yeah, there's the little fact that most of the jobs created in Texas were federal jobs.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you don't buy Mitt Romney's argument that at Bain he created more than 100,000 jobs?
PERRY: I think, you know, the issue is, what is the total -- it's just like Sarah Palin, when Sarah asked that question, she said, you know, that's really what this issue is all about, not whether or not did the Bain Capital is a job creator or not, but did they really create that many jobs? So, yes, I think the question is out there, and it's a good conversation to have. We're going to get tested by Obama and his group. So, you better have all of these answers done early. No surprises in September and October.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But I think what a lot of Republicans are worried about, is they're going to hear that phrase "vulture capitalism" coming out of your mouth, from President Obama and the Democrats in the fall?
Texas’ Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice, Don Clemmer, later testified that his office didn’t have the resources to investigate allegations of sexual abuse at a TYC facility in Ward County because at the time the local agent was busy investigating charges of voter fraud by a 68-year-old Hispanic woman.
For six years, Gov. Rick "Law and Order" Perry dragged his feet on attacking systemic problems with child rape in the state's Texas Youth Commission facilities. I'm sure his reluctance had nothing to do with his major donors from the GEO Group, the company to whom he'd bestowed prison privatization contracts:
Mary Jane Martinez's son Jimmy entered the Texas criminal justice system in 2003 because he missed his school bus. He was charged with truancy and destruction of property (for throwing rocks) and sent to live in a county juvenile detention center for a sentence of six months. After five months, instead of being released, he was transferred to an academy 400 miles away, managed by the Texas Youth Commission, the agency that oversees detention and treatment centers across the state. Jimmy finally came home, four years after he was sent away, a period his mother now describes as a living hell. His best friend had been murdered, and Jimmy had been beaten and raped—both, Mrs. Martinez testifed, by TYC guards.
"It just made him worse," Martinez says of the treatment. "My son has PTSD now. He's schizo." Unable to find a job after getting out, he was arrested for burglary and landed in a prison facility eight hours away from his native San Antonio.
He wasn't the only victim. Go read the rest.
In response to the outcry, Perry appointed his former chief of staff, Jay Kimbrough, to investigate the abuses, and hired an independent ombudsman to sit on the board.
But reports continued to pile up. In late 2007, Texas shut down three TYC facilities in quick succession, the last coming in October, when it shuttered a Coke County juvenile detention center after the ombudsman reported unsanitary conditions, such as feces in the shower and blocked-off emergency exits. Two months later, seven former inmates filed suit alleging that they had been sexually abused by guards at the facility, which was operated by the Florida-based private contractor, GEO Group.
There was a lot not to like during the Reagan Library GOP Debate last night, where presidential candidates attacked science, 999, and called Social Security a Ponzi scheme among a host of other insane ideas, but nothing shocked me more than when the audience started cheering Rick Perry's appalling record of executions in Texas.
Republican voters at Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate expressed their approval of the death penalty by giving Gov. Rick Perry's record on executions some of the loudest applause of the night.
"Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times," NBC's Brian Williams told Perry as the conservative audience broke into cheers and applause. "Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?"
"No, sir, I've never struggled with that at all," Perry flatly stated. "In the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is you will be executed."
The audience again cheered at Perry's mention of "the ultimate justice."
"What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?" Williams asked.
"I think Americans understand justice," Perry explained. "I think Americans are clearly in the vast majority of cases, supportive of capital punishment. When you have committed heinous crimes against our citizens, and it's a state-by-state issue, but in the state of Texas, our citizens have made that decision, and they made it clear, and they don't want you to commit those crimes against our citizens, and if you do, you will face the ultimate justice."
So that'sthe Texas miracle: Pass the buck to the federal government, and then attack the federal government for spending too much money!
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry has asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for nearly $350 million to cover the costs incurred detaining illegal immigrants in state prisons and county jails.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Perry criticized the federal government hasn't been doing enough to secure the border with Mexico, thereby allowing illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. and use taxpayer-funded resources, including prisons and jails. It's a claim the Republican governor has made many times before.
The letter was dated Aug. 10, three days before Perry formally announced he is running for president.
Reached after-hours Friday by phone, DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said he wasn't in position to comment and said he could not confirm that the DHS had even received the letter.
Perry has been criticized by some fellow conservatives as being too lenient on illegal immigration issues. Unlike fellow GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann, Perry does not think the U.S. should build a wall spanning the entire Mexican border. Perry also has supported discounted tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants at Texas universities, and he has said Arizona's tough-on-immigration law wouldn't be right for Texas.
In his two-page letter to Napolitano, Perry described the formula he used to determine the costs, including $94.4 million to cover the costs incurred by county jails.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who has the highest unemployment rate in the country tried to pull the usual conservative victim card on Andrea Mitchell. She questioned him about Rick Perry's over the top rhetoric. Immediately Barbour played the librul media card. See, you all, he's a right wing Christian conservative so the liberal media will pick apart every single word he says. He needs to be more careful and get used to that treacherous treatment and uncalled for scrutiny, the poor man. Andrea Mitchell corrected him and said it wasn't the liberal media attacking him, but Karl Rove and other conservatives, he didn't bat an eye.
MITCHELL: Do you think that Rick Perry has to clean up his language? Karl Rove said that what he said about Ben Bernanke is not presidential. Others and also Bob McDonnell, who succeeded Rick Perry as head of the Republican Governors Association, was on with me this week and he doesn`t agree that President Obama may not love his country. He said that he thinks that President Obama is a patriot. What about Rick Perry refusing to say that he believes President Obama loves the country?
BARBOUR: I think Rick Perry has to get prepared for the fact that he`s going to be nitpicked by the liberal media league for everything that he says and that he has to be very careful because anything that he says that can be taken out of context will be taken out of context. When you are a conservative, Christian, southerner Republican, you have to expect that.
MITCHELL: Governor, with all due respect, it isn`t the liberal media that`s taken on Rick Perry. We`re talking about Karl Rove, we`re talking about Bob McDonnell, we`re talking about a lot of mainstream and conservative Republicans, John Podhoretz, who say that what he said about the Fed and Ben Bernanke and the president`s patriotism was not appropriate, was not presidential.
I've been reading about the Dominionists (in this case, Seven Mountains Dominionists and Christian Reconstruction) for more than ten years, and the more I learn, the scarier it gets. The most important thing you should learn is that they believe in lying and cheating their way into power because it's to do "God's will." The second is that there is no room for non-believers in their vision of America:
With Tim Pawlenty out of the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the GOP candidate will either be Mitt Romney or someone who makes George W. Bush look like Tom Paine. Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional.
Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. Most writers, myself included, who explore it have been called paranoid. In a contemptuous 2006 First Things review of several books, including Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, and my own Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era.”
Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), one of the country's most prominent defenders of the 10th Amendment, is making an exception when it comes to gay marriage. After initially telling reporters that it's "fine with me" if states like New York legalize same-sex unions through their own legislature, Perry is pulling a 180 and calling for a Federal Marriage Amendment.
Perry, who is flirting with a presidential bid, clarified his position to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in an interview.
"I probably needed to add a few words after that 'it's fine with me' and that it's fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights to decide an issue," he said. "Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me. My stance hasn't changed."
Perry said he supported changing the Constitution in order to ban gay marriage, a position that he characterized as supportive of states' rights even as it would overrule New York's own decision on the matter.
"The real fear is states like New York will change the definition of marriage for Texas," he said. "That is the reason the Federal Marriage Amendment is being offered. It's a small group of activists judges and really a small handful, if you will, of states and these liberal special interest groups that are intent on a redefinition, if you will, of marriage on the nation for all of us, which I adamantly oppose. Indeed, to not pass the Federal Marriage Amendment would impinge on Texas' and other states' right not to have marriage forced upon them by these activist judges and these special interest groups."
His latest statement represents a major about-face and may be a preview of how he might court social conservatives should he run for president. At a fundraiser in Colorado last week, Perry was extremely clear in his support for New York's right to determine their own definition of marriage.
Perry’s claim that he supports states’ rights to govern themselves, while simultaneously supporting the anti-gay “Federal Marriage Amendment” is impossible to reconcile. The FMA provides that:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
So Perry’s position is that we should ram his anti-gay views down New York voters’ throats by rewriting the Constitution to make marriage equality illegal in all 50 states. The states can have any law they want, so long as Perry approves of them.
In other words, Perry doesn’t actually care one bit about the 10th Amendment — he doesn’t even care all that much about his own twisted tenther interpretation of the 10th Amendment — he just wants to force everyone to live the way he wants them to live.
Does America really want another Governor from Texas elected as President? He certainly shares the flip-flopping quality that defines Mitt Romney's political career. But his kowtowing to the religious right is straight out of George W. Bush's playbook.
It's important that Democrats inform themselves all about the dangerous religious extremists with whom Texas Gov. Rick Perry is aligning himself:
So you have to wonder: Is Rick Perry God’s man for president?
Schlueter, Long and other prayer warriors in a little-known but increasingly influential movement at the periphery of American Christianity seem to think so. The movement is called the New Apostolic Reformation. Believers fashion themselves modern-day prophets and apostles. They have taken Pentecostalism, with its emphasis on ecstatic worship and the supernatural, and given it an adrenaline shot.
The movement’s top prophets and apostles believe they have a direct line to God. Through them, they say, He communicates specific instructions and warnings. When mankind fails to heed the prophecies, the results can be catastrophic: earthquakes in Japan, terrorist attacks in New York, and economic collapse. On the other hand, they believe their God-given decrees have ended mad cow disease in Germany and produced rain in drought-stricken Texas.
Their beliefs can tend toward the bizarre. Some consider Freemasonry a “demonic stronghold” tantamount to witchcraft. The Democratic Party, one prominent member believes, is controlled by Jezebel and three lesser demons. Some prophets even claim to have seen demons at public meetings. They’ve taken biblical literalism to an extreme. In Texas, they engage in elaborate ceremonies involving branding irons, plumb lines and stakes inscribed with biblical passages driven into the earth of every Texas county.
If they simply professed unusual beliefs, movement leaders wouldn’t be remarkable. But what makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government. The new prophets and apostles believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take “dominion” over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the “Seven Mountains” of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world. They believe they’re intended to lord over it all. As a first step, they’re leading an “army of God” to commandeer civilian government.
In Rick Perry, they may have found their vessel. And the interest appears to be mutual.
If you watch or listen to enough Conservative propaganda, you'll believe that Texas is teh awesomest place to live in because of its tax rate and for job creation and it's all because of Rick Perry. His record of job creation is the same as Ann Richards by the way.
Texas Is a Shining Example of Right-Wing Governance in Action and That's Why It's a Complete Basket-Case.
Conservatives claim the "Texas Miracle" is a model for the nation, but it's actually a blueprint for winning the race to the bottom.
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In this, Perry is absolutely, 100 percent correct. He slashed taxes to the bone, handing out credits to his political cronies like they were candy. He decried the evils of Big Government while hypocritically using federal stimulus funds to help close Texas' budget gap in the short term, and now he's using the state's longer term fiscal disaster – one of his own creation – as a premise for destroying an already threadbare social safety net serving the neediest Texans. As a result of these policies, plus immigration and other external factors, his state's added a lot of low-paying poverty jobs without decent benefits. He's added very little in the way of “prosperity.”
