Rick Perry: The Biggest Little Hypocrite in Texas

[Better Believe It]

The Biggest Little Hypocrite in Texas
by Robert Scheer
August 16, 2011

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.

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 Gov. 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.

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: “… 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% cut in state spending translates into thousands of layoffs among state workers and teachers in the coming months.”

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.

Read the full article at:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_biggest_little_hypocrite_in_texas_20110816/