"..........."If you're running against Rick Perry," [John] Sharp said in his June interview with the Tribune, "you better bring your lunch."
By the time the two Aggies took each other on in the close 1998 race for lieutenant governor, Perry’s high profile, combined with shifting political tides, made him formidable. Less than two years after winning that contest, Perry was headed for the governorship. And six years after that, the two reconciled after striking up a conversation in an Austin gun store. Perry and the Legislature were struggling to pull together a school finance package. He turned to Sharp, putting him in charge of a blue-ribbon task force of business leaders and others.
That panel devised a controversial package that lowered local school property taxes and replaced them with a new business margins tax. The governor got anti-tax activist Grover Norquist to bless the idea, while Sharp convinced the business community. In special session in spring 2006, the two got the Legislature to bless it. The tax remains controversial — many blame it for the recurring $5 billion annual hole in the state budget — but the changes forestalled lawsuits over school finance, and the two old friends turned rivals turned friends have remained close ever since.................Source
In the meantime Perry is working within and without the system to reform education. Check it out.
And Talking heads discuss: Gov. Perry takes on college education
That's the best retort you have on Perry's signature on a Texas business income tax?
I'm curious Cincinatus' Wife, what do you do for a living? Does your company, if you have one, pay this income tax? Or is your only job coming here to pimp Perry?