Posted on 08/28/2011 10:01:59 AM PDT by The Bronze Titan
If you’re a Tea Party member, or you have significant sympathies with them, I’d caution you against climbing aboard Rick Perry’s TransTexasCatastrophe. The Media is doing everything possible to paint this guy as a bronc-busting, cattle-roping, Texan, but in truth, there are more than a few things you ought to know about him. He’s no friend to individual rights, except in an election season, and he’s not really the trend-setter he’d have you believe. His record on jobs isn’t actually so swift as he’d have you believe, and he’s got less in common with the average Texan than he does with the Wall Street types with whom he prefers to consort. He’s no friend of Main Street, and he’s certainly no friend to real entrepreneurs, and for all his posturing as one of us, he isn’t, and it’s been quite plain. Those of you from outside Texas can be forgiven for mistaking Perry for a conservative. It’s assumed because he’s a Republican, and he’s from Texas, he must be. Let me now explain a bit of why this isn’t the case.
Friday I heard the increasingly estimable Mark Davis claim that you shouldn’t mind that Perry converted from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party because, as he points out, Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat too. Of course, this is a lie by omission, because what Davis doesn’t mention is that it was a long stretch of years between Reagan’s conversion and his arrival in California electoral politics. This isn’t the case with Rick Perry. He was Al Gore’s Texas Campaign Manager in 1988, and following the loss, immediately reversed course and ran as a Republican. I don’t know about you, but despite Davis’ rather disingenuous interpretation of Reagan’s conversion, painting it as just alike, I’m inclined to believe he left some details out intentionally.
Rick Perry has been a regular guest on Davis’ show on WBAP in the D/FW area for years, and to consider Davis anything like an objective or unbiased voice in this stretches all credulity. Frankly, I hope Limbaugh finds somebody else to be a regular fill in, because Davis is clearly in the tank for Perry, and it runs against Limbaugh’s general premise that he will take no position in a Republican primary, except in general terms on behalf of conservatism.
You may have heard some of Perry’s more recent statements about conditions along the Texas border with Mexico, and you might be inclined to believe Mr. Perry thinks more should be done. He even tried to repair his credibility on the issue by being broadcast on a live feed from a base of operations near the border for an interview on Greta Van Susteren’s show. If you believe that stage-managed bit of theater, I’m inclined to let you know right now that he’s relatively no more conservative in real terms than George Bush, which is to say on the matter of his statist, globalist reflexes, he’s no conservative at all. I’d hate it if anybody else broke the news to you, because I believe bad news is best delivered by a friend. Check out the following video for where Rick Perry really stands on issues of the border:
I realize there’s a tendency to overstate things in the name of supporting one’s position, but it’s really no exaggeration to suggest that Perry isn’t really very close in his thinking to Tea Party Members, not when measured against what he’s been saying since October 2010, but in what he has said all along throughout his career. He’s taken money and support from La Raza, ACORN, and other groups that advocate spending tax-payer dollars for dubious programs and projects.
He’s also a crony-capitalist. If you’re like me, that’s simply something you can’t abide. I love the free market, but Governor Perry’s revolving door between his staff and corporate boardrooms is a well-established phenomenon, and frankly, if you buy into his nonsense, he’s going to wind up exploiting your good intentions too. Companies like Merck and Cintra are more his style, and his staff has reflected this over the years of his gubernatorial reign.
You’ve undoubtedly heard about the Gardasil flap, and likely been willing to dismiss it as a fluke. That would be a serious and potentially tragic mistake. The most ridiculously egregious thing he may have done in his tenure as Governor of Texas was the proposed TransTexas Corridor. You may have heard of it, but may not have any details, so let me expound on that for a moment or two. This was the project that first enlightened me to Perry’s big government answers to all things. The upshot is this: It was to be a vast network of toll roads, but more, it would have included some form of light and heavy rail, pipelines, and all manner of things. On the surface, this might sound attractive, but as with any such project, the devil lies in the details.
The plan included 4400 linear miles of a toll road network, running parallel in many cases to existing Highways and Interstates already in existence. The corridor’s right of way was to be a full 1/4 mile wide. Simple math tells you that even ignoring junctions and interchanges, this would have consumed 1100 square miles of Texas’ territory. You might argue that while it’s a lot of land, Texas is a big state. That’s all well and good if the state already owns the land, but since it doesn’t, it was going to acquire it by use of eminent domain. Again, you might argue that building roads is one function for which eminent domain ought to apply, but once you look at the rules to be applied to this project, you might well conclude otherwise. Rather than basing their offers to property owners on free market value, they instead intended to limit it to “fair market value” as determined by a panel of cronies they would gin up for the chore.
This project actually proposed bisecting county and farm roads, and even property, dead-ending what are fairly important thoroughfares for the communities they serve. More, it would have bisected school districts and even towns along its path. Again, you might think that impossible until you understand that this was to be a closed system with few exits or on-ramps, only permitting access at major Highway and Interstate junctions. This threatened to destroy many rural communities, and they rose up against it. Once the details became clear to the public, it was quickly sent back for re-work, and eventually dumped.
Here were the things they didn’t advertise, but you need to know. It was supposed to be operate by a concessionaire, Cintra, for a period of 50 years. It was going to employ tolls of roughly $0.26 per mile. A geographical understanding of the scale of Texas immediately prompts the question: “Who on Earth would voluntarily pay to enter a closed-system roadway at that cost over the huge distances in Texas, when a free parallel alternative is just a few miles away in the form of an Interstate, or Highway?” Good question, and the answer is: Almost nobody. So how did they intend to make this work? In 2004,TxDOT applied to the USDOT for a waiver so that they could charge a toll on the existing I-35. The first leg of the proposed TTC system was called TTC-35, the leg that would run from Laredo to an undetermined point on the Oklahoma border. In other words, it was a corridor to nowhere, but in order to get you to use it, they were going to toll the free Interstate and let it fall into disrepair.
Opponents at the time argued that the existing I-35 corridor could be widened, and this was met with a dismissive rejection by Perry’s Transportation Commission. They said it couldn’t be done in a cost-efficient way. Your confusion at this statement matches that of the average Texan who realizes that this couldn’t possibly be true. How hard is it to add a few lanes here and there? Yes, you’ll have some eminent domain issues, but nothing on the scale of what the TTC proposed.
They also promised it would promote economic development, but what they kept concealed for a while, until they no longer could do so under the law, was that because it was a closed system, Cintra, the corporation from Spain that would build and operate it, would also have exclusive rights to all concessions along its length. More, due to the limitations on exits and on-ramps, it could never be shown how this colossal highway system would provide any sort of economic boon to anybody, because you wouldn’t be able to access most smaller towns from along its length. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the fact that one of Perry’s top staffers was a former Cintra VP, and the fact that one of his own staffers had gone on to work for Cintra had absolutely nothing to do with Perry’s TTC plans. Right?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve fallen prey to the hype about Perry, you may be forgiven, particularly if you’re not from Texas. You’re not aware, as so many here, that Perry isn’t the fellow he’s now being portrayed to be. He’s not a friend to the Tea Party, despite his seeming 2010 conversion, because much like his conversion in 1989, this conversion also seems to be one of convenience. I will assure you, this is most definitely the case.
Perry likes to put on an act about his conservative credentials, and his sympathies with the Tea Party, but if the truth is told, he’s no more one of us than the man in the Moon. You might want to let your fellow conservatives and Tea Party patriots know it too: We’re being hustled again.
Keep on keeping on. You are fine in my book. Keeping your vanities on your personal page is a good idea. I wish I had thought of it.
We disagree on Perry but as long as we are dealing with facts that will all work itself out.
You may find it hard to believe but there are Harvard grads even in Texas. In my life I have worked for three companies that were headquartered in the Boston area, one owned and funded by a Harvard grads, all trust fund babies, and another owned and run by MIT professors. This was in the early days of computers and artificial intelligence dealing with what is called emerging technologies.
I was always amazed at how nice, intelligent people could be so wrong on politics. It seemed to be in the water. I think they just wanted to be nice people supporting compassionate things. How people so smart in technology could not see the obvious implications and results of their policies was always a mystery to me.
It is just that Texans and Harvardites are the only two groups who take their innate superiority over all others for granted under ANY circumstances.
I've even known humble people from other Ivies and from Cal Tech.
Cheers!
True, tis a curse we must bear, but we are usually kind to our inferiors. That is why I am talking to you. :-)
However, I am sure that you know that your reasoning is a hasty generalization. Your opinion of the Harvardites and Texans YOU HAVE KNOWN or known of may be true or those opinions may be shaped by your predisposition to that view. I suspect the latter. Have you ever thought that perhaps your opinion of them influences their reaction to you?
1) I didn't bother to apply to Harvard since they didn't have anyone doing what I was interested in for grad school.
Since I was offered (and turned down) grad fellowships (not TA positions) at two other Ivies, I'm not concerned. (Good thing I didn't go there, too, given what happened to Larry Summers.)
2) So if y'all are both Ha-vahd and Te-hey-ax-an, how do you handle having a simultaneous inferiority complex and superiority complex? Do alternate sneering at yourself and beating the crap out of yourself? :-)
It'd be really interesting to hear your accent.
However, I am sure that you know that your reasoning is a hasty generalization. Your opinion of the Harvardites and Texans YOU HAVE KNOWN or known of may be true or those opinions may be shaped by your predisposition to that view. I suspect the latter. Have you ever thought that perhaps your opinion of them influences their reaction to you?
No, because the ones I have known acted like that to me before I knew where they were from; and I have observed the same ones acting like that to other people.
I have some juicy examples but I cannot tell them because it would embarrass the people involved (too easy to figure out real-life identities if they were told).
Secondly, I have observed others (e.g. conservative party reptile P.J. O'Rourke, or Miami Herald columnist Dave Barrry) recounting their interactions with these people and describing much the same behaviour. True, it is a generalization, but generalizations only work in humour if they are based in fact. That's why many of the attacks on Sarah Palin fall flat.
Full Disclosure: the synapses just clicked on your FR handle. Are you by any chance a Limbaugh fan?
Cheers!
Just to ensure that you respect me even more, I am a Texas Limbaugh fan. :-)
I like O’Rourke and Barry. Have they been slamming us poor Texans?
Hope you're not in Austin, for your own sake. Not only "Keep Austin Weird" but IIRC that's in the same area as Travis County, where Tom DeLay was indicted/convicted by a Dem prosecutor.
Cheers!
No, seriously, the official theme, as far as I can tell, is" "We're Texans, and By God We're From Texas!" This place is infested with Texans, who simply cannot get over how Texan they are. Many of them are wearing cowboy hats, though I suspect they're mainly business people who have never personally interacted with a cow that was not in the form of prime rib. Source
To be fair to Dubya, though, he *did* relax by performing hard manual labor, clearing brush in Crawford, rather than golfing on Martha's Vineyard. And he trashed the editors of Mountain Bike magazine, doing 2 hour rides at 800 calories an hour (including 20 mph on the pavement on a fat tire bike!). As I wrote in a vanity mocking a liberal's complaints about Sarah Palin, contrasting her to Dubya :
When the Bush/Cheney Cowboy Show was in town, all their 'worst' tendencies could be expressed and not only was it not frowned upon, hell, it was national policy. Hunting as a pastime, and in earnest?!! Good God, didn't they know that John Kerry's (who by the way served himself in Viet Nam, and still hasn't released his SF180) line "Can I get me a huntin' license here?" was for the rubes? And George Bush, instead of going to Martha's Vineyard like a sensible person (or at least Kennebunkport like his father -- they're both Yale men and OUGHT to know better) -- instead, he went to rural TEXAS, where there are no decent restaurants, no theatre companies, no gay bars. And he cleared BRUSH, performing hard manual labor, like a mere PEASANT. Like Sarah Palin field-dressing a moose! And how cruel to shoot a moose for food. How much more humane to get your free-range, organically processed meats (if you must indulge in carnivorism) off the shelf at Whole Foods with your Arugula, the way Gaia intended.
P.J. O'Rourke has a Master's Degree from Johns Hopkins, so he picks on Harvard more.
He's too long to excerpt much, but he had a whole chapter from Holidays in Hell on visiting Harvard's 350th birthday bash. He manages to work Reagan into it:
The next morning was the great Foundation Day convocation, which President Reagan wasn't addressing. You may remember the press flap. Harvard wanted the President to give a 350th birthday speech as Franklin Roosevelt had done at the 300th and Grover Cleveland at the 250th. But Harvard didn't want to give the President an honorary degree. I guess they felt Reagan was a nice man, and, no doubt, important in his way, but not quite Harvard material. Once again, they're right. Reagan would have dozed off during "Gym Transit" even faster than I. So the President, God bless him, told Harvard to go piss up a rope. And Harvard had to go shopping for somebody else. I'm sure they were looking for a person who embodied democratic spirit, intellectual excellence and the American ethos, which is why they picked Prince Charles.
Cheers!
I went to Miss State to play baseball in the 1950s.
Have been in Texas for 45 years - Dallas, Houston, Dallas and now, yes, the Austin area. I am in Cedar Park, just to the NW of Austin. I love Texas and especially this area.
Austin is its own liberal enclave but even then there are very few of them, but they are concentrated at the University of Texas and in the media. There they have influence beyond their numbers.
Cheers!
It's true that Perry's poll numbers are not a guarantee of winning the nomination. But Palin's poll numbers have been bad for a long time, not just this very moment. She is a good woman, and the media and its accomplices have been unfair, but the public is not always wise.
Don't put me on a pro-Perry ping list, though, unless you want someone who has serious concerns about Perry's immigration record. We need to ask tough questions about all of the candidates.
That does not sound like p-marlowe to me. When did he say you can't point to Perry's record? I didn't repeat the worst part of your post. I don't think Palin herself would approve of dishonest, abrasive posts like yours.
Some pro-Perry posters are not much better, though.
I agree. What we are doing is shooting our own troops. The Palin people hate the Perry people and the Perry People hate the Palin people. We need to focus on the enemy; statists and democrats. The MSM will do the work of smearing Perry and Palin and everyone else they see as a threat. We need to stand behind them.
And they need to focus on the Statists and Obama as well. Candidates who use MSM talking points to demean the other candidates are undermining their own interests and they will not be immune from the same tactics.
You got that right, and I think you mean that applies to FR posters as well. One poster claimed that Palin never supported the TARP. I found videos on youtube in which she did support it, but I didn't post them, because of the vile anti-Palin comments that were under the videos. And anyway, Palin was McCain's VP then, and just learning her way around.
When I saw that charge that you didn't want anyone to look into Perry's record, that didn't sound right to me, but I did look at your recent posts and found no such thing!
Too often these FR Palin-Perry debates (a "debate" can be a subset of a thread) consist of tired old talking points posted back and forth, including tired old trolling techniques, and both factions have members who do this.
She also came out in favor of granting limited amnesty to illegal aliens. But that one hasn't stopped the Palin people from denigrating Perry for holding the same position.
On the issues there is little difference between Palin and Perry. The only difference right now is that Perry is running and Palin isn't.
No. That’s class warfare tactics and I don’t buy into those.
It’s not a conservative position, imo.
We have the income we do because we worked for it. We sacrificed and continue to do so. And, we are tired of paying for those who refuse to support themselves. We made our choices, good and bad. We don’t rely on the Government (other taxpayers) to foot our bills.
I may be in the minority here and that’s ok. I don’t feel bad that I was raised the way I was and have the work ethic I do or that we are raising our kids the same way.
My family would survive any income. It’s the way I was raised and hope the way we are raising our kids.
Funny how I don’t give a damn what you think, huh? I know I’m not a big govt lib just because I can see Guiliani’s strong points. In the R field we had back in 2008, he was far better than McCain, Huckabee and Romney. IMO.
Cool rebuttal. RME.
You’re probably right.
If you think that it’s conservative to allow the financial and political industries to lawlessly loot the wealth and savings of the middle class... you’ve got a surprise coming, and its coming a lot faster than you think.
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