August 21, 2011 7:45 AM
Who Is Rick Perry?
This does not mean I am endorsing Rick Perry. I haven't yet decided whom I will be supporting.
Just want to give you some clear background - passed on to me by my friend Ann:
Who Is Rick Perry?He is a fifth generation Texan, the son of hardscrabble west Texas tenant farmers - Democrats but conservatives through and through. He grew up in a farm town too small to be on the state map. Life was so hard that he was six years old before his house had indoor plumbing. His mother sewed his clothes, including the underwear he wore to college.
He is an Eagle Scout. After Paint Creek High School , he attended Texas A&M, graduated, and was commissioned into the Air Force where he became a C-130 pilot.
Now 61 years old, he has won nine elections to four different offices in Texas state government. In the first three elections he ran as a Democrat then switched to the Republican Party. He is currently the 47th governor of Texas - a position he has held for 11 years, the longest tenure of any governor in the nation.
He has never lost an election.
Rick Perry was the Lieutenant Governor to whom Governor George Bush handed over the office after winning the 2000 Presidential election. Since then, Perry won gubernatorial elections in 2002, 2004, and 2010, the last time by 55% against a field consisting of a Democrat, a Libertarian, a Green Party, and an Independent.
Since he became its Governor, Texas - a right to work state that taxes neither personal income nor capital gains - has added more jobs than the other 49 states combined. In the last two years, low taxes and little regulation led his state to create 47% of all jobs created in the entire nation. Five of the top ten cities with the highest job growth in the nation are in Texas . People follow jobs, so in the last four years for which data are available, Texas led every state in net interstate migration growth.
Perry signed ground-breaking "loser pays" tort reform and medical litigation rules that caused malpractice insurance rates to fall. Some 20,000 doctors have since moved to Texas .
Texas boasts 58 of the Fortune 500 companies - more than any other state. Since May 2011 Texas resumed its pre-recession employment levels. Only two other states and the District of Columbia have done that.
Texas ships 16% of the nation's export value. California trails at 11%. Of the 70 companies that have fled California so far in 2011, 14 relocated in Texas .
In this year's Texas legislative season, Perry got most of what he wanted. With no new taxes, a fiscally lean state budget was passed leaving $6 billion in a rainy day fund even as other states around the country struggled to balance budgets and avoid more deficit borrowing. A voter ID bill passed that was designed to prevent ballot box fraud and illegal
voting. A bill passed that makes plaintiffs pay court costs and attorney fees if their suits are deemed frivolous.Perry scored points even in his legislative failures. He failed to get sanctuary cities banned - Texas towns in which police cannot question detainees about their immigration status. The blame fell on the legislature. Perry also failed to get a so-called "anti-groping" bill passed that would put Transportation Security Administration agents in prison if they touch the genitals, anus, or breasts of passengers in a pat down. Federal
officials threatened to halt all flights out of Texas airports and the bill died in special session. That endeared Texans even more to TSA employees living in Texas .Perry jogs daily in the morning. He has no bodyguard with him, but his daughter's dog runs by his side and he carries a laser-guided automatic pistol in his belt. Last year while jogging in an undeveloped area, a coyote paralleled his jogging route, eyeing his dog. He drew his pistol and killed the animal with one shot, leaving it where it fell. "He became mulch," Perry said. Animal rights groups protested, but Perry shrugged it off. "Don't come after my dog," he warned them.
Recently, Obama asked Perry to delay the July 7 execution of Humberto Leal in order to comply with the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Perry refused. Therefore Obama asked the US Supreme Court to delay the execution because it would damage US foreign relations. The Court refused 5-4 and Perry ordered the execution to go forward as scheduled. Over the howls of diplomats, politicians, and the UN, Leal was administered a lethal injection at 6:20 p.m. Before he died, he admitted his guilt and asked for forgiveness.
The case has special implications for Perry, who is considering a run for the presidency in 2012. Even his critics resent federal interference in a Texas execution, which is related to a state, not a federal, crime - an alcohol and drug-fueled rape and murder 17 years ago by an illegal whose family brought him into the country 35 years ago as a child. The interference hinges not on the man's guilt, which Leal's advocates acknowledged, but on a technicality - failure to inform Leal that he could have gotten legal representation from the Mexican consulate in lieu of the court-appointed attorneys who represented him. Independent Texans saw Obama's interference as another intrusion of federal power into the affairs of a state, which could cost Obama support in other states.
Needless to say, Perry is a hard-edged conservative and a ferocious defender of 10th Amendments rights ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.") - an explicit restriction of the federal government to only those powers granted in the Constitution. Perry accuses the federal government, especially the Obama administration, of illegal overreach.
Perry said "no thanks" to the feds whose stimulus offered taxpayer dollars for education and unemployment assistance. The strings on "free money" from Washington , he said, would restrict Texas in managing its own affairs. Perry even depleted all state funds to fight recent wildfires before asking Washington for disaster relief. His request has been ignored, which comes across as an unvarnished federal power play, further pitting Perry and Texans against the federal government.
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Comments
as a Texan who remembers recent history, I have 3 words for you: Gard.A.Sil. only an apology for that, along w/ a complete retraction would convince me that he cares about personal liberty.
Posted by: kristen s. | August 21, 2011 3:14 PM
Barbara, I wanted to like Rick Perry, but wow did he come solidly out against parental rights, in a troubling deal with Merck, for an unproven vaccine, and in an executive order, at that. Michelle Malkin on this issue.
Posted by: Kimberly | August 21, 2011 5:50 PM
Wow! He had me at "don't come after my dog!" I can't wait to vote for this guy.
Posted by: Ron Cutsinger | August 21, 2011 7:37 PM
Keep in mind I'm just reprinting this. I find some things about Rick Perry disturbing - like the Gardasil mandate, which I haven't forgotten. I recently saw a headline that said "Rick Perry: Trojan Horse of Statism." The thought that we could elect someone who would betray conservatives is chilling.
I urge everyone to proceed with caution.
Posted by: Barbara Curtis | August 21, 2011 9:28 PM
I'm still waiting for Sarah. Game On!
Posted by: Debra | August 22, 2011 10:40 AM
Rick Perry has come out and said that he was wrong about the Gardasil vaccine.
His rational for it was because he is pro-life and he wanted to do everything he could to protect life. The vaccine wouldn't be required to be covered by insurance policies unless it was a required vaccination.
I really believe he had good intentions, but as he now recognizes, he got out of touch of the will of the people. Once he realized that, he backed down and actually signed a law reversing his Executive Order.
Posted by: Lauren | August 22, 2011 1:46 PM
Rick Perry 2012...this Texan and my whole family will be voting for Rick perry!
Posted by: Gail Allen | August 23, 2011 1:15 PM
Here is another point of view regarding Rick Perry:
http://www.naturalnews.com/033410_Rick_Perry_Big_Pharma.html
And he didn't apologize about Gardasil until he declared his presidency. I appreciate that he admits he was wrong, but let's call it what it is. He is in the back pocket of Merck, so no thank you to Governor Perry. We need a president that stands alone and doesn't create legislature based on who gave him/her campaign money!
Posted by: Melissa | August 23, 2011 8:13 PM
He shouldn't be issuing Executive Orders dealing with public health at all! I didn't know when you elect a state governor, you're electing someone to make medical decisions too.
I can't believe in this day and age people actually take politicians at their word. We deserve what we get for being that stupid.
This man gave instate tuition to illegals, is lax on illegal immigration, said "full speed ahead" for the North American Union, supported pro-abort Guiliani in 2008, and pro-abort Al Gore in 1988, he has raised "franchise fees" through the roof, making life hard on small businessmen. This guy's record goes on and on.
Posted by: republicanmother | August 24, 2011 10:53 AM
Gardasil.
And the TransTexas Corridor was his baby, too. This was to be a superhighway from Mexico through TX and there was quite a bit of "eminent domain" that wreaked havoc on family ranches and farms. Oh, and it was going to be built and financed by foreign nations and it was going to be a toll road- with the tolls going to foreign governments!
He opposes a border fence and signed in to law the in-state tuition rate for illegal immigrants. He doesn't like Arizona's immigration bill.
Still, IMO, he has a better chance of being elected than most other candidates, and he's better than Romney, so I'll probably end up voting for him.
And as for prolife? Well, not really. He IS anti-abortion but that's different from pro-life. He VETOED a ban on executing mentally retarded convicts.
Posted by: Milehimama | August 24, 2011 9:32 PM
Boy do I hear you. I think Perry is tremendously complicated. I am hoping someone else will enter the race who has the passion and no compromised history.
Posted by: Barbara | August 25, 2011 1:41 PM
I'm a Texan and I have some big problems with Mr. Perry for the reasons listed above. BUT, my husband has just gotten a great job because of factories closing in other states and moving the business to Texas. My brother just moved to Tx from NY because his company relocated to avoid the excessive regulations and fees in NY. That is the thing that is going to win elections. Jobs, I mean.
Posted by: Sue | August 25, 2011 9:55 PM
I can confirm the excessive regulations and fees in NYS. We make the joke around here, "Welcome to NYS. Please empty your wallet here.
Posted by: Sue from Buffalo | August 26, 2011 6:25 AM
