a very long time ago. He and his revolving door of donors and cronies have entrenched themselves comfortably in a tightly controlled gated compound that is filed with lavish opulence fit for kings and queens. There is a swimming pool, cabana, servants, a collection of fine wines and exquisite cuisine. The gates into and out of Perry's community are impenetrable. Not just anyone can live or go near Perry and his cronies. One must first apply for residency. A board comprised of the Governor's appointed community officials decide who deserves to live among their ranks. Usually one is deemed deserving if one donates generously to Perry's political campaign coffers and those who give the Governor advice on potentially profitable real estate.
Those living outside of the compound must support it by providing the Governor with a salary that includes benefits. Outsiders are also expected to cover the costs of the Governor's housing expenses and security detail. In exchange for all of these benefits, the Governor agrees to serve the people as their public servant. A Governor's mission is to serve all of the people in his or her state, not just those that voted for them.
Unfortunately for most Texans Perry may have taken an oath to serve but he has largely ignored his job description. The only ones served in Texas so far are Rick Perry and his cronies.
In the ten years that he has performed as Governor, Rick Perry has made himself a very wealthy man. Meanwhile our K-12 schools rank second to last nationwide and we have the highest number of uninsured residents. In 2002, Rick Perry promised that he would start cracking down on insurance companies but in 8 years, he's done little more than accept $1 million in campaign contributions from the insurance industry. Ten of his staff members have made out grandly too as all have earned millions serving as lobbyists for insurance companies.
This past Saturday's edition of the Houston Chronicle discloses the financial histories of both of the gubernatorial candidates, Rick Perry and his Democratic opponent Bill White.
In in my previous diary I had committed a terrible sin of omission.
I had charged that the Republican Party is so completely bereft of constructive ideas and solutions that the Party has little to offer other than the scorched earth politics of divisiveness, hate and fear.
A reader, however, had responded with a mild complaint. It seems that I had been terribly unfair to the Republican Party for I had failed to include the Party's numerous and sterling accomplishments over the years. After careful thought I must admit that the reader is 100% correct. And so to be fair this post is dedicated to showing some of the GOP's accomplishments since President Ronald Reagan's era. There is no doubt that Republican policies and ideologies since President Reagan through George W. Bush have had a significant impact on just about every level of our society.
Below is the reader's list of twelve of the GOP's very finest governing ideologies.
That would be the G.W. Bush era of criminal incompetence, an unnecessary oil war in Iraq and U.S. economic devastation 2000-2008.
On the NBC Meet the Press show on Sunday, TX Senator John Cornyn and TX U.S. House Rep. Pete Sessions clearly revealed the core belief system and agenda of the GOP.
First, the GOP is completely bereft of ideas and solutions for repairing our broken economy. Nor does the Republican Party have any plan on any table for creating new jobs for unemployed Americans.
Instead the GOP is totally focused on the negative and the cold-hearted: obstruction, obfuscation and the repeal of both health care and financial reform should the Republican Party take control of the U.S. Congress.
Repeat. The GOP has absolutely no viable ideas, solutions or plans for the future. The GOP is instead consumed and driven by racism as well as hate talk, fear mongering and lies.
The baby boomer Republican lawmakers, most of whom had conveniently evaded the Vietnam War draft, continue to demonstrate the party's appalling collective ethical bankruptcy where our military veterans are concerned.
The GOP continues to show its unbridled contempt for the needs of everyday people,especially those that had the courage to step up to serve in the military during war time. These are folks that possess and embrace the values of courage and principle.
The Republican Party obviously embraces the notion of endless wars.
But one should never expect a war mongering Republican to put one's own life on the line.
The GOP seems to be courage free and principle challenged.
War is great. War makes us strong as a nation. War is good for the economy.
As long as someone else does the fighting and dying. Anyone but me and mine.
Once again the Republican Party tells the unemployed, the middle and working classes of America to go f**k themselves.
It seems that Bush/Cheney Co. neoconservative policy of deep tax cuts for corporate America coupled with its crusade for acquiring the planet's oil through endless wars, failed to factor in the resulting economic and environmental devastation to the American people.
I betcha Louie Gohmert and Sarah Palin did not realize that their hysterical invocations of Hitler when bellyaching about President Obama's demands to BP have brought the Evil One back from the grave.
Hitler is back and he is foaming at the mouth with rage. It looks like Hitler's ghost is going to haunt Smokey Joe and his GOP for a very long time.
The loony fringe of the Texas GOP continues to fall all over itself standing by their big sugar daddy, BP. Louie Gohmert took extremism to a new level when he compared President Obama's demand to BP for $20 billion to who else but Hitler.
Is there a head doctor in the house? President Obama's demands for accountability and responsibility from BP seems to have driven the Texas GOP stark raving mad.
There they go outing themselves again. Republicans are the ones that are easily led idiots who will believe anything a demagogue says. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are perfect examples. And as I recall, W. whined about how much easier it would have been to rule as a dictator instead of a democratically elected President.
Our esteemed Texas Republican lawmakers, especially U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, seem to have their lips perpetually super glued to the derrieres of BP and big oil.
I guess our Texas Republican lawmakers are completely incapable of thinking outside of any box that is unrelated to stuffing bucks into their personal campaign coffers.
As we all know by now, Governor Rick Perry has also super glued his lips to the derrieres of any big money that moves in his direction.
Meanwhile, back in a reality residing outside of the Texas GOP world of groveling and self serving pimpitude to corporate interests, there are grave and challenging issues that must be dealt with on national, state and local levels.
Last week at the BP Congressional hearing TX U.S. House Representative Joe Barton bluntly revealed the Republican Party's ideological view on the role their elected lawmakers believe they are supposed to play while serving in office. Despite his apology for the use of "shakedown" when referring to President's Obama demand for a $20 billion escrow account to pay for damages and despite his retraction of his apology to BP, behind closed doors most, if not all, Republicans are on the same page as Joe Barton. John Cornyn certainly is. When the BP Congressional hearing concluded it would not surprise me if all of the Republicans present sent text messages to their most generous BP contributors and wrote the following.
I am so very sorry that Obama forced you to pay $20 billion to the U.S. Please understand that I have to pretend that I am very angry at you right now, but you should always know how much I love and respect you. Please understand, from the bottom of my heart, that I will always work to loyally serve and obey you. And I promise, as soon as we can take back the House, Senate and White House, I will see to it that you get deep tax cuts. We will transfer your burden to taxpayers just as we did to bail out Wall St. Hugs and kisses, from your closest and dearest tool in the U.S. Congress.
It should be clear to any informed voter that Texas Republicans do not work for the people of Texas. They never have and they never will. Anyone who believes otherwise should pull one's head out Rush Limbaugh's, FOX cable TV news and Glenn Beck's trash cans.
Perhaps a rudimentary definition of the role of government would be worth mentioning given Joe Barton's unhinged apology to BP yesterday. On what planet has Joe Barton been living? Maybe Rush Limbaugh and his hate talk and profit driven corporate lobbyists have overwhelmed and confused Republican politicians like Joe Barton.
According to elementary school level civics, the federal government, as established by the Constitution, is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Joe Barton and John Cornyn, too, have obviously forgotten why they run for office and who they are supposed to represent. Contrary to Texas Republican belief we are not, gentlemen, a government run by corporations, for corporations, and of corporations. In other words, you dudes work for us, i.e. we the people. You do not work for BP and your deep pocketed campaign contributors.
Get the message or get fired by your bosses. That would be people like me and not BP CEO Tony Hayward.
It looks like even some hardcore Republican loyalists are as fed up with Governor Perry as we are.
According to reporter Joe Holley of the Houston Chronicle stalwart Republicans say they support Bill White.
When his candidate for governor, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, fell to Gov. Rick Perry, he switched his support to Democrat Bill White.
Madden is one of a number of former Hutchison supporters who have crossed parties to support the former Houston mayor, including Houstonians Matt Simmons, CEO of Simmons & Co. International, and James Flores, CEO of Plains Exploration & Production Co.
It won't be a cakewalk to bring life long Republican loyalists over to our side but if any Democrat can do it, Bill White is the man.
If this is not proof that big oil owns the Texas Republican Party I do not what else is. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for President Obama's successful demand for $20 billion commitment from BP in order to help make reparations for those that have been financially devastated by the disaster. This includes fisherman who can no long fish for a living, the tourism industry and oil workers who are out of work b/c of the temporary ban on deep water drilling in the region.
Ol' Joe is obviously more worried about his own campaign coffer than he is the people in the Gulf region. Joe has received $33 million from big oil during his career in office.
God forbid should the government work on behalf of the American people.
I would like to remind the drill, baby, drill and deregulate, baby, deregulate crew and the Texas Republican whiny boy politicians that is there is a reason why we blame Hitler for World War II.
The Republican Party and its decades long held belief in an unrestrained free market ideology and its crusade to deregulate all federal oversight agencies holds the lion's share of responsibility for the present devastation of the economies of the Gulf region. The economic carnage, thanks to reckless and unfettered deep drilling oil practices, include the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas.
Maybe the Texas Republican imperative to drill, baby, drill was not such a good idea after all.
Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson,(R),top aide to former Secretary of State, Colin Powell (R), squarely laid the BP oil disaster at the feet of Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration.
Col. Wilkerson must be the only Republican left in the GOP who will take ownership of and responsibility for the actions and/or inaction of his irresponsible and reckless party.
Rick Perry's Texas radical right wing supports anti-immigration and hate.
Aside from hate, racism and xenophobia, what else do Rick Perry and the Texas Republicans have to offer?
So, how will Rick Perry and the Texas Republican politicians break the bad news to the employers that hire undocumented workers? Rick Perry might find himself between a rock and hard place for the biggest employers of undocumented workers that get away with paying slave wages, demanding long hours with no benefits or sick or vacation leave are likely among Rick Perry's biggest and most generous donors.
The Texas GOP held its convention in Dallas on Friday and as we suspected, the Party continues to be pathetically bereft of fresh ideas and viable and concrete solutions for the challenges that face the state. Rick Perry beat on the same tiresome, unproductive and worn out drums of anti-Washington everything, anti-tax, anti-immigration and pro-states rights rhetoric. The tea party secessionist faction continued to call for secession. It seems that states rights and secession are the only concepts that Republicans are for. The tea party wing of the GOP showed up in full force with all of its John Birch paraphernalia, too. Lovely. What viable solutions do Birchers have to offer other than burning everyone who does not agree with them at the stake?
The conservative wing of the GOP demands a new era of fiscal responsibility, according to the attendees. Aside from uttering the words "fiscal" "conservative" and "responsibility" no one said how Rick Perry should make up his $18 billion budget shortfall. How will he do it? Apparently no one brought it up and on one asked. What are Perry's plans to make up the shortfall? Does he have one at all? Maybe he intends to rob a few banks to deal with the issue. Perry would likely rather do that instead of increasing taxes, as long as someone else is doing the actual robbing of course.
Maybe Rick Perry's highly paid PR strategists and spin doctors forgot to include a major talking point in his fired up hate talk rhetoric. Like, people need well paying jobs and benefits.
How will Rick Perry create new jobs in Texas? How will Governor Rick Perry cover his $18 billion budget shortfall?
Why do crickets continue to chirp all of the time in Rick Perry's Texas?
Rick Perry must be running scared and desperate for he is in his Rovian full scorched earth politics mode. Perry had no problem stooping into the gutter in order to burn, torch and demonize his primary opponents Debra Medina and Kay Bailey Hutchison. Now, a more desperate and ethically compromised Perry has shown his willingness to step into the sewer to save his sorry political butt.
Rick Perry's hired and highly paid political guns have its targets focused on Bill White.
There are no lowest of lows where Rick Perry is concerned.
According to the Houston Chronicle Governor Perry, a life long politician is obviously terrified of losing an election. I mean, what else would Rick do if he can't live off taxpayer bucks and political donations?
A terrified Rick Perry called in all of his horses and all of Perry's tools to manufacture a scandal to save King Perry's butt.
A desperate and broken king Perry accused Bill White of profiteering during Hurricane Rita in 2005 while White served Houston's mayor.
Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday accused Democrat Bill White of engaging in profiteering during Hurricane Rita in 2005 by directing a local water authority to award a contract to a company to which he had financial ties.
Rick Perry and the Texas Republican Party will find every opportunity possible in an effort to bash and vilify the big bad federal government whenever opportunity knocks. This imperative becomes especially loud and shrill during an election cycle.
But when no one is paying much attention Rick Perry and the Texas GOP will predictably grovel, beg and crawl all the way to Washington on their knees, if necessary, in a desperate effort to find bucks to cover up Perry Co.'s fiscal incompetence, its aversion to taxes, its tax scheming and history of ignoring the interests and needs of the people of Texas.
The self-serving, pocket stuffing and desperate Texas state officials and politicians, called upon their loathed Big Daddy the Fed to pay for a project that Perry's busted and broke state cannot possibly fund.
The effort to fix a dangerous and congested rail intersection near downtown Fort Worth known as Tower 55 may finally be on track.
Texas Department of Transportation officials said Thursday that they will formally endorse an application for federal funding for the Tower 55 project, a $93.7 million proposal to modernize crossings often used by children on the way to school.
What would the Republican lawmakers do were it not for Big Daddy the Fed? Who would bail them out of their self-imposed messes?
It seems that we voters need to hold or obtain doctorate degrees in psychology or medical degrees in psychiatry to understand the twisted and dysfunctional behavior emanating from our fearless Republican leaders in Washington and Austin.
Both Senators Cornyn and Hutchison have trashed the stimulus bill (The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act,) railing against its waste and its abysmal failure to deliver cash infusions to our state while they extol the bill's virtues at the very same time. Maybe a little bird told the Senators that the recovery act they've been attacking for all kinds of reasons is actually a success.
To further complicate the Senators' stand on the stimulus package that both hate but love, John Cornyn has begged the EPA to deliver bucks for clean diesel projects in San Antonio and Houston.
Kay Bailey Hutchison praised the Port of Houston for its clean air strategy. Residents of the area may have a different definition of "clean air."
The Wall St. Journal obtained letters written by stimulus bashing Republicans who solicited federal recovery money for their states. When the funding is awarded the Republicans that hate the stimulus bill in Washington take credit for it in their home districts.
The Wall St. Journal included letters submitted by Senators Cornyn and Hutchison.
The Environmental Protection Agency received two letters from Sen. John Cornyn of Texas asking for consideration of grants for clean diesel projects in San Antonio and Houston. Mr. Cornyn is the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
One of the letters was signed jointly with Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, also of Texas. The letter said that the Port of Houston Authority "has informed me of the positive impact this grant will have in the region by serving as a foundation for PHA's Clean Air Strategy Plan, creating jobs, and significantly reducing diesel emissions." Houston received millions of dollars in diesel funding.
Meanwhile, outside the Washington D.C. beltway bubble, our revered Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a fatwa against the EPA.
Gov. Rick Perry announced today Texas would legally challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming endanger the public's health and welfare.
The federal agency issued the finding in December in an attempt to regulate the heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act.
Texas is the nation's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, releasing enough each year that the state would rank seventh worldwide if it were a country.
The Senators and Rick Perry's behavior would be downright comical and would make great material for a new series of Homer Simpson cartoons or a Three Stooges redux except that the consequences of their hypocritical stupidity is downright dangerous to our financial security.
With this kind of leadership in power, I think we can safely assume
Texas we have a huge problem. If we don't fix it we are screwed.
Now is the time to throw at least one of the bums out. By 2014 we may have a modicum of responsible and sane leadership in both Austin and Washington.
It won't happen unless we Vote, Baby, Vote.
The polls opened yesterday.
So said President Barack Hussein Obama at the State of the Union Address on Wednesday night. And, as one can see from the poll cited below, most Americans agree with the President.
You were sent to Washington to serve the people, not your personal ambitions.
Most unfortunately for Texans, Texas Republicans did not get the message. Senator John Cornyn, in a typical act of cowardice, attempted to wash his hands of the economic and financial carnage he and the Bush Administration visited upon us. According to Cornyn, in an appalling act of sheer cowardice, President Obama owns the entire financial debacle b/c, after all, Mr. Obama has been office for one year.
Earth to the spineless, irresponsible John Cornyn: It took you and W. 8 years to drive our economy into the ditch.
You and W. own this depression, aka "recession." Stand up, be a man, if you can, and take responsibility for the horribly poor choices and decisions you made.
John Cornyn and Texas Republicans are obviously confined within a very narrow mid 20th century mind lock that is completely out of synch with 21st century realities.
Fast forward to January 27, 2010. The American people have spoken. Texas Republicans seemed to have forgotten that the American people have elected President Obama by an overwhelming majority.
Texas Republicans may also like to know that a poll reveals 83% of Americans approve the President's State of the Union Address. 70% believe the President shares the same priorities for the country that they do.
If the GOP does not share the same priorities as 70% of the American people, I'd say the Party has a serious problem with everyday people and their realities.
