GOVERNOR RICK PERRY’S “TEXAS MIRACLE” IS A TOTAL FARCE

…The former Texas Governor, Rick Perry and a Corn Dog

This former Texas governor is currently under indictment and is not qualified to run the nation.

Well, the Texas Governor Rick “OOPS” Perry has now made his intentions public for going after the US presidential “gold” for a second time.  So now, we can once again, check out the governor’s performance as the longest ever serving Texas governor.

Now, this governor also has another “first” that no other potential candidate has ever had while running for their party’s nomination.  Governor Perry is the first potential presidential candidate to run for the highest office in the land while he is under a Grand Jury Indictment for his abuse of power in his official capacity as the Texas governor.

Last year, the Texas governor was indicted on two counts by a Travis County Grand Jury.

The first charge of the indictment is abuse of official capacity.  This is a first-degree felony charge, for threatening to veto $7.5 million in funding for the state’s Public Integrity Unit.  This is a state public corruption prosecutors department.

The second charge is coercion of a public servant, a third-degree felony charge, for seeking the resignation of Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat.  Perry was attempting to replace the Democrat with a Republican only because Ms. Lehmberg had spent some hours in jail for a one-time DUI charge.  Perry has pleaded not guilty to both charges.

It has become fairly obvious that the governor was attempting to get rid of the Democratic District Attorney that deals with the states corruption issues.  With all the Republicans now holding office in Texas, the governor obviously wanted a friend in the local District Attorney’s office.  He apparently was using Ms. Lehmberg’s unfortunate DUI for going after her position.

But, getting back to the governor’s performance, the last time Governor Perry tried to run for the national office, he made a big deal about how his state was the number one in the nation for job growth during the Great Recession. 

What you didn’t hear back then was that even though the governor could boast about the quantity of its job offerings, it could never boast of the quality of those jobs.  On two of the most crucial measures of job quality, Texas still rates dead last.

The first measure of quality is the share of Texans without health insurance which is the highest number in the nation.  This is mainly because the governor refused to accept the federal offer for expanding Medicaid.  Also, this number of uninsured is so high due to the states large number of ineligible undocumented immigrants.

Now, California has an even larger number of undocumented immigrants than Texas, but they have managed to insure a far greater share of those residents.  That is partly due to the fact that their share of jobs that come with insurance coverage is much higher than in Texas.  And this is because Texas has long been a state with one of the lowest levels of unionization.  This situation is usually a fair predictor that Texas will continuing be a state with skimpiest benefits and lowest wages.

Now that’s just the first measure of Texas’ poor job quality.

The second measure is the share of working people that still qualify for government poverty programs.

A national study was recently released quantifying the number of Americans that were receiving food stamps, welfare, children’s health insurance coverage or the earned-income tax credit.  It was also for those who have an unemployed family member. The study showed that low-paying jobs have become so prevalent that the yearly tab of federal dollars going to working families was $128 billion. The state with the highest share of funds going to such families was of course, Governor Perry’s Texas.

It must be noted that this is only federal aid, not state aid, because Texas is well known for being a highly stingy state. 

In other words, it’s the taxpayers in the other 49 states that subsidized the event in the last election that Governor Perry called, the “Texas Miracle”.

Without all the federal help, the number of the Texas working-poor would have been similar to other third world nations.

And the governor’s so called “Miracle” is also made worse by its: favor-the-rich-and-soak-the-poor tax policies.

This is due to the state’s lack of an income tax and their high sales tax.  The poorest 20% of Texans pay 12.5% of their incomes in state and local taxes which is one of the highest levels in the country.  But the governor’s very wealthy donors in the state pay just 2.9% in local and state taxes.

The Texas governor continues to boast as to how all the major international companies are looking at Texas to move to, for building new factories and providing more jobs.

The reality is that these companies are looking to Texas because they will be able to hire low-paid workers with the fewest restrictions and regulations and they would also pay the state some of the lowest corporate state taxes in the nation.

Of course, from Texas' point-of-view, they will just look to the other 49 states to provide the federal monies for supporting these new corporations.  A situation that should be the total responsibility of the state of Texas.

Governor Perry has recently boasted: “Without Texas, America would have lost 400,000 jobs” between 2008 and 2014.”  But without the federal government monies from the other 49 states supporting all those low-quality jobs, what would the actual number and of what quality would those 400,000 jobs have been?

Based on history, that question has already been answered.

Copyright G.Ater  2015