The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential hopeful the “Reverend” Rick Perry is claiming to have “the best economic record and executive experience in government of any Republican presidential candidate”, contrasting his credentials with those of his top two rivals, Mitt “Mittens or Flopsy Mopsy” Romney and Michele “Krazy” Bachmann.
“I respect all the other candidates in the field but there is no one that can stand toe-to-toe with us,” Perry said during in an interview at the start of his first full day campaigning in the leadoff caucus state of Iowa.
Is there some reason Rev. Perry is talking about himself in the third person? If he doesn’t like something does he proclaim, “We are not amused”?
The “Reverend” said if he were elected he would put in place a six-month moratorium on federal business regulations that he claims are holding back job growth nationally.
Yes that’s code for he’ll order government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency to look the other way while his masters (big business) do whatever they please. It also means banks and stock market executives will be able to speculate to their heart’s content, and to hell with the economy, and that troublesome things like the federal minimum wage are strangling job creation. In Perry’s America you’ll be paid whatever the boss decides and you’ll like or lump it.
If Perry was such a Zen Master when it come s to job creation, then why does Texas have an 8.2 unemployment rate? It can’t be the President’s fault because there are other states like North Dakota and Nebraska which have unemployment rates of 3.2 and 4.1 respectively.
On his biggest rival – “Mittens” Romney – Rev said, “There’s plenty of time to look at his four years in Massachusetts and my 10 years in Texas.”
Mittens has spent a lot time talking about his “decades in the business world”, including his time as an executive at Bain Capital, a venture capital firm he founded; though not so strangely he’s running away from his record as governor; so, in essence he’s running with a platform that a business man – even one who inherited his fortune and then used it buying up other companies, chopping those companies into little pieces and selling them off to the highest bidder, putting thousands of Americans out of work – trying to sell himself as the strongest candidate on the economy. He’s being challenged however on his reputation as a governor by former Utah Governor – and fellow GOTP and Mormon – Jon Huntsman for Massachusetts’ ranking 47th in terms of job growth, while Utah ranked No. 1.
Perry – for now – is avoiding any direct assaults on Romney directly, saying: “Trying to compare the job creation and the numbers of jobs with any other state is just not an apples-to-apples comparison.”
He has said however that – as someone who has worked in government for 27 years – being a business executive is not the only way to create jobs.
“I was in the private sector for 13 years after I left the Air Force,” Perry told reporters at the state fair when asked whether private sector experience trumps. “I wasn’t on Wall Street. I wasn’t working at Bain Capital. But the principles of the free market, they work whether you’re in a farm field in Iowa or whether you’re on Wall Street.”
Perry said that the more than 1 million jobs added to the rolls in Texas in his 10 years as governor make him the strongest choice for GOTP voters on their top priority. Of course what Reverend Perry failed to mention was that Texas has posted the largest 10-year upswing in federal, state and local government jobs, adding 286,800 positions, according to an On Numbers study of employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A total of 1,601,200 Texans held government jobs in April 2001, a figure that grew to 1,888,000 by last month.
Looks like we’ve got another Texas governor running for the White House whose past experience shows an inclination to grow the size of government not shrink it; another Texas governor under whom his state’s unemployment rate rise under his tenure instead of fall; another Texas governor under whom his state has created record deficits and whose state is $27 billion short of the money needed to continue current state services; another Texas governor under whom his state has imposed draconian cuts to Medicaid cut tuition aid to 43,000 low-income students and is weighing $10 billion in cuts to the state’s education system; another Texas governor under whom companies have received massive tax incentives to move to Texas; companies whose officers or investors are major Perry campaign donors and who Perry has allowed to keep their subsidies in many cases even when they fail to deliver promised jobs; another Texas governor under whom per capita income growth was the eighth slowest of any state in the country between 1998 and 2008.
Perry is spinning Texas size yarns about his economic abilities as a chief executive, and while Tea Party faithful may be dazzled by his tall tales; it remains to be seen if the general GOTP population will accept his version of the truth, or if the general American electorate is prepared to back another swaggering Texan.
