Cross posted from Penigma.blogspot.com
I disagree with Perry and Ben Stein on cultural issues. I'd expect better of Stein than to share the views of an extremist Right Wing Religious Nut like Perry. But Stein quite correctly takes Perry to task for his appalling ignorance of basic economics, an ignorance Perry shares with some of the other presidential wannabees - notably Bachmann. Perry doesn't know enough about economics to be the governor of Texas and do a good job, much less the entire country. The man is long on talk, and a dimwitted swaggering dummy on substance. He's taken the thriving economic opportunities of Texas, and trashed the state, turning it into a pit of pollution and rampant poverty, with the exception of a few wealthy individuals and corporations that pay off people like Perry, for the legalized looting of resources.
When corporations pollute, in effect because they leave the expense of resolving the pollution damage to others, especially tax payers, it effectively transfers the polluters costs of doing business, their liability, to us, instead of fairly pricing their costs of doing business into their product or services costs. That means that they take more profits, leaving us with the dirty end of the stick. Those profits increasingly go directly into the pockets of executives, and not into the pockets of the middle and lower level employees of the companies, and increasingly not even to stockholders, the nominal owners.
Further, it is pretty much invariably less costly to prevent pollution than to try to clean it up. Just one of the ways in which Perry's way of doing business in Texas redistributes wealth away from the middle and lower economic strata into the pockets of the few.
To excerpt again from my comments and expand on them from an earlier post, Texas has among the worst stats of the 50 states for poverty, for ignorance, for suppressed voter participation, and for pollution.
Is this what we want? Does anyone in their right mind believe that this is the way to economic growth and competitiveness? Texas is:
49th in teacher pay
1st in the percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma
41st in high school graduation rate
46th in SAT scores
1st in percentage of uninsured children
1st in percentage of population uninsured
1st in percentage of non-elderly uninsured
49th in mental health funding
50th in homeowners' insurance affordability
3rd in percentage of people living below the poverty level
49th in average Women Infant and Children benefit payments
1st in teenage birth rate/ unintended pregnancies, and repeat teen unintended pregnancies
50th in average credit scores for loan applicants
50th in percentage of voting age population that votes
1st in annual number of executions
1st in minimum wage jobs
1st in air pollution emissions
1st in volume of volatile organic compounds released into the air
1st in amount of toxic chemicals released into water
1st in amount of recognized cancer-causing carcinogens released into air
1st in amount of carbon dioxide emissions
This is Texas. This is what you get with the politics of Rick Perry. This is what you get with far right Republican politics. This is what happens when single issue voters go gaga for gun happy characters who are all bullets and no brains, all fire power, no brain power.
All hail the ignorant, gun toting tea party.