When Rick Perry defeats Barack Obama in November 2012, he will become the first person to be elected president after never losing a race in his political career since John F. Kennedy more than half a century earlier.
Perry is a clown and is more of the same Bush retread. Obama will beat him if he gets the nomination, and I'll still be voting for Ron Paul.
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — [pauses] — shame on you. Fool me — [pauses] — You can't get fooled again.
When Rick Perry defeats Barack Obama in November 2012, he will become the first person to be elected president after never losing a race in his political career since John F. Kennedy more than half a century earlier.
Woot for the winner!
What's funny is that YOU don't even believe that and you're just trying to be annoying.
When Rick Perry defeats Barack Obama in November 2012, he will become the first person to be elected president after never losing a race in his political career since John F. Kennedy more than half a century earlier.
Woot for the winner!
JFK and Rick Perry in the same sentence. That is interesting in-of-itself. I will say, the line of progression in time and politics that sentence creates in my mind as a graph is not an ascending one. But I gotta give you this, usamamasan1: you are consistent in your beliefs.
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
A new Super PAC with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is laying plans to spend as much as $55 million to help him win the Republican presidential nomination, a sign that outside groups are likely to play a pivotal role in the party’s selection of its presidential candidate.
How fast is anti-federal govt spending Perry going to have his hand out for disaster money?
My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
When Rick Perry defeats Barack Obama in November 2012, he will become the first person to be elected president after never losing a race in his political career since John F. Kennedy more than half a century earlier.
Woot for the winner!
I'm not being rude but do you really think he will be the next president ? and why do you think so ?
I have tried to keep up with some of the runners and for the most part I'm still a little ....well left wondering
who best to vote for,what do you think Perry's strong points are ?
on a side note;I guess you will not be writing in Godfather on your ballot.
by the way I agree that Perry will defeat Obama.
Godfather.
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,426
Really, Godfather? I'm not being facetious or slighting you in any way, but do you really think Perry could beat, Obama? Are American's really ready to go that far out in any direction??
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Ill take Mickey Mouse at this point! Mickey will at least unite us! Unite us with compassion, love, charity and faith! We need someone who understands economics and who better than Mickey!
Theres no time like the present
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
Really, Godfather? I'm not being facetious or slighting you in any way, but do you really think Perry could beat, Obama? Are American's really ready to go that far out in any direction??
i doubt that we are stupid enough as a country to elect rick perry.
he was talking about secession last year, but he is running for the highest office of the country that he said tezas should leave???
i think he is going to be unable to defend that, and the dems are going to hammer him for it.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
I don't follow your (American) politics that closely, but I think that Obama's chances for reelection are pretty solid. This doesn't speak well of Obama as a leader; rather it has more to do with the fact that the Republicans have moved so far right that for many moderates there doesn't seem to be a viable alternative. Most right-wingers seem to be hardliners anyways, so I'm not sure where a guy like Perry is going to pull the votes he would need to win the presidency.
It's almost as if mediocrity is a prerequisite for being president. Obama has been pretty ordinary, but his competition makes it seem like nothing will change.
Really, Godfather? I'm not being facetious or slighting you in any way, but do you really think Perry could beat, Obama? Are American's really ready to go that far out in any direction??
everytime I turn on the t.v lately I keep seeing Obama's ratings drop like a stone the last I saw last night he was down to I believe 39% and it would seem just about anybody could beat him at this point with rating like that.
Perry on Obama's latest political speech/proposal??
"Like the president’s earlier $800 billion stimulus program, this proposal offers little hope for millions of Americans who have lost jobs on his watch, and taxpayers who are rightly concerned that their children will inherit a mountain of debt"
"America needs jobs, smaller government, less spending and a president with the courage to offer more than yet another speech.”
Miracle or mirage – what's the truth about Rick Perry's Texas?
Governor Rick Perry's 'economic miracle' could take him to the White House. But for many, his state is a land of hunger and poverty – even for some of those who have a job
Paul Harris in Austin, Texas
The Observer, Sunday 4 September 2011
They arrived before dawn to wait for the food truck. Middle-aged men, young women with children, the elderly and the retired, mixing with the low-paid on their way to work. As the sun rose high in a blue summer sky, several hundred people clustered in precious spots of shade in Dove Springs, a suburb of the Texan capital of Austin. Some brought garden chairs to sit on.
When the truck from the Capital Area Food Bank eventually came, each person patiently waited to pick up a box containing cans of spaghetti sauce, fruit juice, a few pounds of potatoes and some pears. Connie Gonzales, an Austin city official, watched the crowds of hungry and desperate people and said that they grew bigger each week. "It is the economy. It is bad. Any help these people can get, they really need it," she said.
It is not meant to be this way. Not in Texas. After all, this is governor Rick Perry's Lone Star state. This is the Texas whose record at job creation is at the centre of Perry's bid for the Republican presidential nomination. This is the state whose economic "miracle" is being hailed as a conservative blueprint for the future of America – "Texas exceptionalism" as rightwing columnist George Will glowingly called it. This is the state of low taxes and low regulation and which is so pro-business that corporations are booming here. It is the state that dodged recession and has roared back into recovery; an oasis of jobs in a devastated US economy.
Yet there is a dark side. It was on stark display in Dove Springs. This is the Texas of a collapsing education system that is failing to educate its children. This is the Texas where millions have no health insurance and a growing low-wage economy means having a job is not enough to provide the basics of life. This is the hungry Texas that the food bank serves.
Sharonda Buckley, 27, was a first-timer at the food handout, arriving at 8am and stunned to find herself 194th in the queue. Buckley has a job at a local technical equipment firm making oxygen canisters, and is also studying for an engineering degree. But her wages are so low, and her student fees so high, that she needed a food parcel to make ends meet.
"I have a job and I have education, but I still can't make it work," she said. "I had to put away my pride. I feel I should not have to stand in line for food." Then she gestured at her smiling three-year-old daughter who stood at her side. "I'm doing this for her," she said.
The low-wage economy is Texas's dirty little secret, and it is easy to ignore in swaths of the state. The sad scene at Dove Springs was unfolding only a few miles from the majestic domed state house in downtown Austin, a city which is famed for its vibrant music venues and world-class restaurants.
Austin is also famous for its growing technology sector and is becoming the Silicon Valley of the Texas hill country. It is in many places a city of well-to-do neighbourhoods, with manicured lawns and plush housing. The same is true of other Texas urban centres, such as Dallas and Houston, helped by an energy industry that has been buoyed by rocketing oil prices. The state also avoided the worst of the housing bubble.
Perry touts all this when he boasts of the legion of Fortune 500 companies that have flocked to make their headquarters here and he boasts that, since June 2009, about 40% of all jobs created in America are in Texas, a state whose economy is growing at twice the national rate.
But the devil is in the detail. Unemployment is stubbornly stuck at about 8%, below the national level but still leaving one million Texans out of work. In 2010 half a million people in the state earned no more than the minimum wage of $7.25 (£4.47) an hour. Texas, for all its glittering metropolises, has the joint highest percentage, along with Mississippi, of hourly paid workers earning the minimum wage or less.
Jim Hightower, a longstanding Texas liberal and radio host, has a simple description of Perry's Texas economic miracle. "It is a hoax. He is telling Perry-tales. You can't make a living off of these jobs," he said.
These are the hungry people waiting for handouts at Dove Springs. "The vast bulk of people we serve are working people," said John Turner, director of marketing at the Capital Area Food Bank. There are a lot of them too. Turner's organisation serves an enormous area several hundred miles wide. It feeds 48,000 people a week, including 20,000 children. These are people like Buckley, whose degree has not earned them a living wage.
Or people like Mendes Crencio, a 58-year-old baker. He smiled as he clutched his box of food and explained he had come on his day off from work to help feed his family. "Every little bit helps," he said.
Perry has not extended a helping hand to the working poor. Instead he has shown himself more likely to offer support to those who would make Texas extremely friendly to big business.
There is little doubt Texas has a working environment that makes corporations very happy. The low-wage economy provides a cheap and willing workforce. The lack of strict regulation, especially in areas such as the environment and construction permits, is extremely attractive to companies looking to slash their bottom line. Or to engage in practices that are frowned on elsewhere.
Perry has even reformed the legal system, drastically limiting the powers of individuals seeking to sue companies over allegations of malpractice or for damages. There is a fierce debate over whether Perry shaped this system or more or less left it as he found it. But either way the results are clear. "The tax and regulatory polices are more business friendly than in other large states," said Roger Meiners, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.
At the same time, Perry has been eager to provide cash or regulatory help to businesses. His Texas Enterprise Fund has shelled out more than $400m to companies that promised to bring jobs and riches to the state. Yet not all did. One study has showed two thirds of projects failed to meet their job targets.
Major presidential campaign donors have also tapped in to the public money on offer. The Texas Observer reported that 20 companies which received a total of $174m had also contributed to a Perry campaign.
A huge irony of Perry's reign is that one of the biggest engines of job growth has been the public sector. Yet Perry has decided to try to plug a massive budget hole by slashing the state education budget. Four billion dollars is being cut from education, scrapping programmes aimed at helping some of the state's most disadvantaged.
Ian Grayson, 34, a history and economics teacher at Austin high school, has already seen his class sizes jump by almost 50%. Some of his colleagues have left or lost their jobs. Grayson was dismayed at the attitude behind the Perry cuts. "They don't see education as of value," he said.
Cutting education severs a traditional route out of poverty in a state where 20% of people above the age of 25 do not graduate from high school – the highest rate in the country. "They are rationing opportunity. The long-term consequences are really serious," said Don Baylor, an analyst at the Centre for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.
Texas – rich in so many things – is overflowing with poverty. One in seven Texans are on food stamps. Latest census bureau figures show more than one in six Texans are living below the poverty line. The state also has the sixth-highest rate of child poverty in America, at almost one in four children. In healthcare the figures are also shocking. More than a quarter of Texans are uninsured, partly because so many of the state's employers do not offer, or are not required to offer, coverage to their workers.
Critics say Perry has presided over the establishment of an economy whose growing inequality resembles some in the developing world, not a 21st century America. For people like Hightower, it is distressing that Perry claims to want to expand this model to the rest of the country. "When Perry says he can do for America what he has done for Texas it is no idle threat," Hightower said.
It is a vow Perry might fulfil. On Friday the US reeled from the release of a dreadful set of job figures, showing that the national economy is steadily grinding to a halt and may soon be back in recession. Poll after poll shows President Barack Obama's approval ratings plunging to fresh lows. Perry, should he win the Republican nomination race he currently leads, could easily be in reach of the White House. His simple clarion call of job creation, mixed with his easy charm, could be a winning combination. "If things continue the way they are now, I think anybody could beat Obama," said Meiners.
In some ways that should not be a surprise. Pop culture experts often tout California as the ground-breaking laboratory of the great American experiment. But in recent years in US politics, it is Texas that has often led the way. After all, for 17 of the past 48 years, a Texan (if you count the Bushes, although both were born on the east coast) has occupied the White House.
In 2012 Perry would only be taking the same path to the Oval Office that George W Bush followed. He would also be doing it against a president stuck in a rut, whose own supporters are deeply disillusioned. While some labour unions already plan boycotts of the Democratic convention next year, a Perry candidacy would be supercharged by the activist zeal of the rightwing Tea Party faction he has wooed so assiduously.
At Dove Springs there is little talk of such high politics. That belongs to a different world than that of the daily grind of making ends meet. There is just a patient queue for food, under a brutal sun that has already sent the mercury soaring above 100F. One of those waiting was Ellen Tucker, 60. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat to keep her cool, but the toll of the wait was clear in the sweat that poured down her face. But she needed the food; just some vegetables and fruit to put in her kitchen.
Recent events had not been kind to Tucker. She works for the local schools system as a sign-language interpreter for the deaf. But a struggle with tendonitis in her hands meant she had to go part-time. Her wages were cut in half. Suddenly the bills mounted, credit-card debts accumulated and she feared she might fail to make payments on her house. Some money from her elderly mother helped out, but it was not really enough. "I worry that we are going to go bankrupt. I barely get by," she said.
She cannot look for another job because she needs the medical insurance her current post brings. A bit of free food would help, though, allowing Tucker to spend her grocery budget on other bills. But she was 175th in the queue and it was already close to 10am. She had a shift to do in a school nearby that started in a few minutes.
With a worried expression she approached an organiser and asked how long it would be for her turn to come. There were still 30 people ahead of her in the line. "People come here to start waiting at 6am," the organiser said.
Tucker nodded, sadly, saying: "I will bear that in mind next time," and walked off to her car empty-handed. She was grim-faced. She could not wait any longer for the food handout. She had to go to work instead.
Anyone see the way Rick Perry kept using his chair to rub his butt or something in that SC town hall? Weird. He was especially doing it when he was criticizing. Must be his lying or nervous tell. I'd so take his ass in poker or negotiations if I were a leader of another country. But he's so handsome and cocksure!
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win ."
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
But then, slogans and photo's are easier to digest than a reasoned exposition of the facts./quote]
im not so good with words. I will use anothers take who is more articulate than I.
The folks who are getting the free shit, don't like the folks who are paying for the free shit, Because the folks who are paying for the free shit,Can no longer afford to pay for both the free shit and their own shit, And, The folks who are paying for the free shit,Want the free shit to stop.
The the folks who are getting the free shit,Want even more free shit on top of the free shit they are already getting!
Now... The people who are forcing the people who Pay for the free shit, Have told the people who are RECEIVING the free shit,That the people who are PAYING for the free shit, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.
So... the people who are GETTING the free shit,Have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free shit, by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free shit,And giving them the free shit in the first place.
We have let the free shit giving go on for so long that there are Now more people getting free shit than paying for the free shit.
Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them.
The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 231 years ago. The number of people now getting free shit outnumbers the people paying for the free shit. We have one chance to change that in 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Rick Perry in the spotlight as Texas sets to work on controversial executions
Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate faces appeals for clemency in two highly charged death row cases
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011
Rick Perry, the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate in next year's presidential election, has just hours left to prevent a man being put to death in Texas in a case in which the jury was told the prisoner was a danger to the public – and should therefore be executed – because he was black.
Duane Buck is one of four men scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas, where Perry is governor, over the next eight days – an exceptional rate even in this execution-happy state. At Buck's sentencing hearing, the jury that set his punishment was informed by a psychologist that black people had a higher rate of violent behaviour, a statement used by the prosecution as its key argument against giving him an alternative penalty of life imprisonment.
On Tuesday night, another hotly contested case is scheduled to reach its climax with the execution of Steven Woods, who was sentenced to death for a double murder, even though an alleged accomplice later confessed to having pulled the trigger.
How Perry reacts to the demands for commutation and clemency in these two highly controversial cases will give an indication of how he proposes to deal with the death penalty issue, which has welled up in the presidential race for the first time. Perry, as governor of Texas, has presided over more executions than any other US official in modern times.
Perry was questioned about his enthusiasm for the death penalty at a televised Republican debate last week. When the TV moderator put it to him that his state had executed 234 prisoners since he became governor in 2000, the Republican studio audience cheered.
Perry said he had never lost any sleep worrying that some of those individuals might have been innocent. "I've never struggled with that at all," he said.
When asked how he felt about the audience applauding so many deaths, he replied: "I think Americans understand justice."
Lawyers for both Buck and Woods are engaged in frenzied last-minute lobbying to Perry and to the courts to try to put off the executions. If their efforts fail, Woods's execution on Tuesday night will be followed by Buck's on Wednesday night.
Responsibility for the execution going ahead, despite the controversy over the racially-tinged testimony, is now falling squarely on the shoulders of Perry. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has cleared away one of the last impediments to the ultimate penalty going ahead by refusing to recommend that Buck should be granted clemency.
That leaves Perry, who has power to issue a 30-day reprieve but who has very rarely done so.
Buck, 48, shot and killed Debra Gardner, his former girlfriend, and a friend of hers, Kenneth Butler, in a drunken explosion of jealousy in July 1995. His guilt is not in dispute, but the testimony presented to the jury at his sentencing is.
At the hearing, a psychologist, Dr Walter Quijano, was called by the defence and testified that he did not believe Buck would be a future danger as the murders had been a one-off crime of passion. But under cross-examination, the prosecution pressed him about Buck's ethnicity as an African-American.
"You have determined that the … race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons. Is that correct?" the prosecution asked.
"Yes," replied Quijano.
The prosecution later exhorted the jury to make their decision on the basis of Quijano's testimony. The jury found that Buck did pose a future danger of violence, and put him on death row.
In 2000, the then attorney general in Texas, John Cornyn, admitted that the racial testimony of Quijano had wrongfully been allowed to prejudice sentencing in seven separate cases. Six of those cases were reheard as a result, but, in a legal oversight, Buck's never was.
Buck's lawyer, Katherine Black, is petitioning Perry to commute his execution to allow resentencing. "This case violates the US constitution and undermines our moral values. A person has a right to be sentenced based not on the colour of their skin," the petition reads.
Further pressure has been brought to bear on Perry by a senior Texas lawyer who acted as prosecutor in Buck's original trial. Linda Geffin has written to Perry calling on him to delay the execution. "It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system," she wrote.
Steven Woods, 31, who will die barring a last-minute stay of execution, was one of two men accused of murdering Ronald Whitehead and Bethena Brosz in a drugs turf war in May 2001.
Woods was brought to trial in August the following year. The prosecution alleged that he had planned and carried out the shootings, and he was convicted and sentenced to death.
Three months later, his alleged accomplice, Marcus Rhodes, who had cut a deal with prosecutors, was given a life sentence, despite having confessed that he had personally carried out the shootings. Rhodes was given life imprisonment, while Woods remained on death row.
Amnesty International has issued an urgent action alert, accusing Texas of treating Woods unfairly in a case "where one defendant receives a death sentence and another who pled guilty to personally shooting the two victims receives a life sentence".
Mary O'Grady, a specialist in death row based in Austin, said that under the so-called "law of parties" in Texas, death penalties can be inflicted even on those who did not pull the trigger. Being present at a murder, knowing that an accomplice intended to kill, is sufficient.
"A lot of people with no blood on their own hands get executed in Texas," O'Grady said.
The prospects of Perry granting clemency for Woods are not great. The governor has only once in 11 years shown clemency to a death row inmate unless forced to do so by the courts.
"When it comes to death row, Perry is completely unfeeling and unemotional," said Ray Hill, who runs the Execution Watch website and radio show in Texas.
"It never strikes him that he should value the lives of those who are accused, even wrongfully."
Next week two further executions are scheduled, of Cleve Foster on Tuesday and Lawrence Brewer on Wednesday.
Comments
Woot for the winner!
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — [pauses] — shame on you. Fool me — [pauses] — You can't get fooled again.
George Bush
What's funny is that YOU don't even believe that and you're just trying to be annoying.
Poorly.
Much like how Rick Perry governs. Poorly.
JFK and Rick Perry in the same sentence. That is interesting in-of-itself. I will say, the line of progression in time and politics that sentence creates in my mind as a graph is not an ascending one. But I gotta give you this, usamamasan1: you are consistent in your beliefs.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
A new Super PAC with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is laying plans to spend as much as $55 million to help him win the Republican presidential nomination, a sign that outside groups are likely to play a pivotal role in the party’s selection of its presidential candidate.
http://makeusgreatagain.com/
woot
Does he have anything left from that bailout package that he received from Obama?
Let's hear it for corporations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41Lu98a1wc
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
I'm not being rude but do you really think he will be the next president ? and why do you think so ?
I have tried to keep up with some of the runners and for the most part I'm still a little ....well left wondering
who best to vote for,what do you think Perry's strong points are ?
on a side note;I guess you will not be writing in Godfather on your ballot.
by the way I agree that Perry will defeat Obama.
Godfather.
Really, Godfather? I'm not being facetious or slighting you in any way, but do you really think Perry could beat, Obama? Are American's really ready to go that far out in any direction??
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Ill take Mickey Mouse at this point! Mickey will at least unite us! Unite us with compassion, love, charity and faith! We need someone who understands economics and who better than Mickey!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
he was talking about secession last year, but he is running for the highest office of the country that he said tezas should leave???
i think he is going to be unable to defend that, and the dems are going to hammer him for it.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
It's almost as if mediocrity is a prerequisite for being president. Obama has been pretty ordinary, but his competition makes it seem like nothing will change.
everytime I turn on the t.v lately I keep seeing Obama's ratings drop like a stone the last I saw last night he was down to I believe 39% and it would seem just about anybody could beat him at this point with rating like that.
Godfather.
"Like the president’s earlier $800 billion stimulus program, this proposal offers little hope for millions of Americans who have lost jobs on his watch, and taxpayers who are rightly concerned that their children will inherit a mountain of debt"
"America needs jobs, smaller government, less spending and a president with the courage to offer more than yet another speech.”
COURAGE----
THIS IS WHAT AMERICA NEEDS!
corn dogs are tyt!
Miracle or mirage – what's the truth about Rick Perry's Texas?
Governor Rick Perry's 'economic miracle' could take him to the White House. But for many, his state is a land of hunger and poverty – even for some of those who have a job
Paul Harris in Austin, Texas
The Observer, Sunday 4 September 2011
They arrived before dawn to wait for the food truck. Middle-aged men, young women with children, the elderly and the retired, mixing with the low-paid on their way to work. As the sun rose high in a blue summer sky, several hundred people clustered in precious spots of shade in Dove Springs, a suburb of the Texan capital of Austin. Some brought garden chairs to sit on.
When the truck from the Capital Area Food Bank eventually came, each person patiently waited to pick up a box containing cans of spaghetti sauce, fruit juice, a few pounds of potatoes and some pears. Connie Gonzales, an Austin city official, watched the crowds of hungry and desperate people and said that they grew bigger each week. "It is the economy. It is bad. Any help these people can get, they really need it," she said.
It is not meant to be this way. Not in Texas. After all, this is governor Rick Perry's Lone Star state. This is the Texas whose record at job creation is at the centre of Perry's bid for the Republican presidential nomination. This is the state whose economic "miracle" is being hailed as a conservative blueprint for the future of America – "Texas exceptionalism" as rightwing columnist George Will glowingly called it. This is the state of low taxes and low regulation and which is so pro-business that corporations are booming here. It is the state that dodged recession and has roared back into recovery; an oasis of jobs in a devastated US economy.
Yet there is a dark side. It was on stark display in Dove Springs. This is the Texas of a collapsing education system that is failing to educate its children. This is the Texas where millions have no health insurance and a growing low-wage economy means having a job is not enough to provide the basics of life. This is the hungry Texas that the food bank serves.
Sharonda Buckley, 27, was a first-timer at the food handout, arriving at 8am and stunned to find herself 194th in the queue. Buckley has a job at a local technical equipment firm making oxygen canisters, and is also studying for an engineering degree. But her wages are so low, and her student fees so high, that she needed a food parcel to make ends meet.
"I have a job and I have education, but I still can't make it work," she said. "I had to put away my pride. I feel I should not have to stand in line for food." Then she gestured at her smiling three-year-old daughter who stood at her side. "I'm doing this for her," she said.
The low-wage economy is Texas's dirty little secret, and it is easy to ignore in swaths of the state. The sad scene at Dove Springs was unfolding only a few miles from the majestic domed state house in downtown Austin, a city which is famed for its vibrant music venues and world-class restaurants.
Austin is also famous for its growing technology sector and is becoming the Silicon Valley of the Texas hill country. It is in many places a city of well-to-do neighbourhoods, with manicured lawns and plush housing. The same is true of other Texas urban centres, such as Dallas and Houston, helped by an energy industry that has been buoyed by rocketing oil prices. The state also avoided the worst of the housing bubble.
Perry touts all this when he boasts of the legion of Fortune 500 companies that have flocked to make their headquarters here and he boasts that, since June 2009, about 40% of all jobs created in America are in Texas, a state whose economy is growing at twice the national rate.
But the devil is in the detail. Unemployment is stubbornly stuck at about 8%, below the national level but still leaving one million Texans out of work. In 2010 half a million people in the state earned no more than the minimum wage of $7.25 (£4.47) an hour. Texas, for all its glittering metropolises, has the joint highest percentage, along with Mississippi, of hourly paid workers earning the minimum wage or less.
Jim Hightower, a longstanding Texas liberal and radio host, has a simple description of Perry's Texas economic miracle. "It is a hoax. He is telling Perry-tales. You can't make a living off of these jobs," he said.
These are the hungry people waiting for handouts at Dove Springs. "The vast bulk of people we serve are working people," said John Turner, director of marketing at the Capital Area Food Bank. There are a lot of them too. Turner's organisation serves an enormous area several hundred miles wide. It feeds 48,000 people a week, including 20,000 children. These are people like Buckley, whose degree has not earned them a living wage.
Or people like Mendes Crencio, a 58-year-old baker. He smiled as he clutched his box of food and explained he had come on his day off from work to help feed his family. "Every little bit helps," he said.
Perry has not extended a helping hand to the working poor. Instead he has shown himself more likely to offer support to those who would make Texas extremely friendly to big business.
There is little doubt Texas has a working environment that makes corporations very happy. The low-wage economy provides a cheap and willing workforce. The lack of strict regulation, especially in areas such as the environment and construction permits, is extremely attractive to companies looking to slash their bottom line. Or to engage in practices that are frowned on elsewhere.
Perry has even reformed the legal system, drastically limiting the powers of individuals seeking to sue companies over allegations of malpractice or for damages. There is a fierce debate over whether Perry shaped this system or more or less left it as he found it. But either way the results are clear. "The tax and regulatory polices are more business friendly than in other large states," said Roger Meiners, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.
At the same time, Perry has been eager to provide cash or regulatory help to businesses. His Texas Enterprise Fund has shelled out more than $400m to companies that promised to bring jobs and riches to the state. Yet not all did. One study has showed two thirds of projects failed to meet their job targets.
Major presidential campaign donors have also tapped in to the public money on offer. The Texas Observer reported that 20 companies which received a total of $174m had also contributed to a Perry campaign.
A huge irony of Perry's reign is that one of the biggest engines of job growth has been the public sector. Yet Perry has decided to try to plug a massive budget hole by slashing the state education budget. Four billion dollars is being cut from education, scrapping programmes aimed at helping some of the state's most disadvantaged.
Ian Grayson, 34, a history and economics teacher at Austin high school, has already seen his class sizes jump by almost 50%. Some of his colleagues have left or lost their jobs. Grayson was dismayed at the attitude behind the Perry cuts. "They don't see education as of value," he said.
Cutting education severs a traditional route out of poverty in a state where 20% of people above the age of 25 do not graduate from high school – the highest rate in the country. "They are rationing opportunity. The long-term consequences are really serious," said Don Baylor, an analyst at the Centre for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.
Texas – rich in so many things – is overflowing with poverty. One in seven Texans are on food stamps. Latest census bureau figures show more than one in six Texans are living below the poverty line. The state also has the sixth-highest rate of child poverty in America, at almost one in four children. In healthcare the figures are also shocking. More than a quarter of Texans are uninsured, partly because so many of the state's employers do not offer, or are not required to offer, coverage to their workers.
Critics say Perry has presided over the establishment of an economy whose growing inequality resembles some in the developing world, not a 21st century America. For people like Hightower, it is distressing that Perry claims to want to expand this model to the rest of the country. "When Perry says he can do for America what he has done for Texas it is no idle threat," Hightower said.
It is a vow Perry might fulfil. On Friday the US reeled from the release of a dreadful set of job figures, showing that the national economy is steadily grinding to a halt and may soon be back in recession. Poll after poll shows President Barack Obama's approval ratings plunging to fresh lows. Perry, should he win the Republican nomination race he currently leads, could easily be in reach of the White House. His simple clarion call of job creation, mixed with his easy charm, could be a winning combination. "If things continue the way they are now, I think anybody could beat Obama," said Meiners.
In some ways that should not be a surprise. Pop culture experts often tout California as the ground-breaking laboratory of the great American experiment. But in recent years in US politics, it is Texas that has often led the way. After all, for 17 of the past 48 years, a Texan (if you count the Bushes, although both were born on the east coast) has occupied the White House.
In 2012 Perry would only be taking the same path to the Oval Office that George W Bush followed. He would also be doing it against a president stuck in a rut, whose own supporters are deeply disillusioned. While some labour unions already plan boycotts of the Democratic convention next year, a Perry candidacy would be supercharged by the activist zeal of the rightwing Tea Party faction he has wooed so assiduously.
At Dove Springs there is little talk of such high politics. That belongs to a different world than that of the daily grind of making ends meet. There is just a patient queue for food, under a brutal sun that has already sent the mercury soaring above 100F. One of those waiting was Ellen Tucker, 60. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat to keep her cool, but the toll of the wait was clear in the sweat that poured down her face. But she needed the food; just some vegetables and fruit to put in her kitchen.
Recent events had not been kind to Tucker. She works for the local schools system as a sign-language interpreter for the deaf. But a struggle with tendonitis in her hands meant she had to go part-time. Her wages were cut in half. Suddenly the bills mounted, credit-card debts accumulated and she feared she might fail to make payments on her house. Some money from her elderly mother helped out, but it was not really enough. "I worry that we are going to go bankrupt. I barely get by," she said.
She cannot look for another job because she needs the medical insurance her current post brings. A bit of free food would help, though, allowing Tucker to spend her grocery budget on other bills. But she was 175th in the queue and it was already close to 10am. She had a shift to do in a school nearby that started in a few minutes.
With a worried expression she approached an organiser and asked how long it would be for her turn to come. There were still 30 people ahead of her in the line. "People come here to start waiting at 6am," the organiser said.
Tucker nodded, sadly, saying: "I will bear that in mind next time," and walked off to her car empty-handed. She was grim-faced. She could not wait any longer for the food handout. She had to go to work instead.
coming to a White House near you....
So you obviously didn't bother to read the article I just posted above.
But then, slogans and photo's are easier to digest than a reasoned exposition of the facts.
Fixed
So that's a 'No' then.
"With our thoughts we make the world"
“slam-dunk guarantee”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Hmmm, I might have to agree with this...they are everywhere and there are a lot of automobile accidents with deer.
Can we hunt them from helicopters?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/se ... th-penalty
Rick Perry in the spotlight as Texas sets to work on controversial executions
Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate faces appeals for clemency in two highly charged death row cases
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011
Rick Perry, the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate in next year's presidential election, has just hours left to prevent a man being put to death in Texas in a case in which the jury was told the prisoner was a danger to the public – and should therefore be executed – because he was black.
Duane Buck is one of four men scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas, where Perry is governor, over the next eight days – an exceptional rate even in this execution-happy state. At Buck's sentencing hearing, the jury that set his punishment was informed by a psychologist that black people had a higher rate of violent behaviour, a statement used by the prosecution as its key argument against giving him an alternative penalty of life imprisonment.
On Tuesday night, another hotly contested case is scheduled to reach its climax with the execution of Steven Woods, who was sentenced to death for a double murder, even though an alleged accomplice later confessed to having pulled the trigger.
How Perry reacts to the demands for commutation and clemency in these two highly controversial cases will give an indication of how he proposes to deal with the death penalty issue, which has welled up in the presidential race for the first time. Perry, as governor of Texas, has presided over more executions than any other US official in modern times.
Perry was questioned about his enthusiasm for the death penalty at a televised Republican debate last week. When the TV moderator put it to him that his state had executed 234 prisoners since he became governor in 2000, the Republican studio audience cheered.
Perry said he had never lost any sleep worrying that some of those individuals might have been innocent. "I've never struggled with that at all," he said.
When asked how he felt about the audience applauding so many deaths, he replied: "I think Americans understand justice."
Lawyers for both Buck and Woods are engaged in frenzied last-minute lobbying to Perry and to the courts to try to put off the executions. If their efforts fail, Woods's execution on Tuesday night will be followed by Buck's on Wednesday night.
Responsibility for the execution going ahead, despite the controversy over the racially-tinged testimony, is now falling squarely on the shoulders of Perry. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has cleared away one of the last impediments to the ultimate penalty going ahead by refusing to recommend that Buck should be granted clemency.
That leaves Perry, who has power to issue a 30-day reprieve but who has very rarely done so.
Buck, 48, shot and killed Debra Gardner, his former girlfriend, and a friend of hers, Kenneth Butler, in a drunken explosion of jealousy in July 1995. His guilt is not in dispute, but the testimony presented to the jury at his sentencing is.
At the hearing, a psychologist, Dr Walter Quijano, was called by the defence and testified that he did not believe Buck would be a future danger as the murders had been a one-off crime of passion. But under cross-examination, the prosecution pressed him about Buck's ethnicity as an African-American.
"You have determined that the … race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons. Is that correct?" the prosecution asked.
"Yes," replied Quijano.
The prosecution later exhorted the jury to make their decision on the basis of Quijano's testimony. The jury found that Buck did pose a future danger of violence, and put him on death row.
In 2000, the then attorney general in Texas, John Cornyn, admitted that the racial testimony of Quijano had wrongfully been allowed to prejudice sentencing in seven separate cases. Six of those cases were reheard as a result, but, in a legal oversight, Buck's never was.
Buck's lawyer, Katherine Black, is petitioning Perry to commute his execution to allow resentencing. "This case violates the US constitution and undermines our moral values. A person has a right to be sentenced based not on the colour of their skin," the petition reads.
Further pressure has been brought to bear on Perry by a senior Texas lawyer who acted as prosecutor in Buck's original trial. Linda Geffin has written to Perry calling on him to delay the execution. "It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system," she wrote.
Steven Woods, 31, who will die barring a last-minute stay of execution, was one of two men accused of murdering Ronald Whitehead and Bethena Brosz in a drugs turf war in May 2001.
Woods was brought to trial in August the following year. The prosecution alleged that he had planned and carried out the shootings, and he was convicted and sentenced to death.
Three months later, his alleged accomplice, Marcus Rhodes, who had cut a deal with prosecutors, was given a life sentence, despite having confessed that he had personally carried out the shootings. Rhodes was given life imprisonment, while Woods remained on death row.
Amnesty International has issued an urgent action alert, accusing Texas of treating Woods unfairly in a case "where one defendant receives a death sentence and another who pled guilty to personally shooting the two victims receives a life sentence".
Mary O'Grady, a specialist in death row based in Austin, said that under the so-called "law of parties" in Texas, death penalties can be inflicted even on those who did not pull the trigger. Being present at a murder, knowing that an accomplice intended to kill, is sufficient.
"A lot of people with no blood on their own hands get executed in Texas," O'Grady said.
The prospects of Perry granting clemency for Woods are not great. The governor has only once in 11 years shown clemency to a death row inmate unless forced to do so by the courts.
"When it comes to death row, Perry is completely unfeeling and unemotional," said Ray Hill, who runs the Execution Watch website and radio show in Texas.
"It never strikes him that he should value the lives of those who are accused, even wrongfully."
Next week two further executions are scheduled, of Cleve Foster on Tuesday and Lawrence Brewer on Wednesday.