Still more infuriating to the people of Texas was that the deal would have mandated that there be no free alternative competing roads, meaning such vital arteries as I-35 and I-45 along with I-10, I-20, and I-30 would have been required to become toll roads as well. This, combined with the projected $0.26-$0.40 per mile they intended to charge made it an unconscionable bit of corporate predation that would have crippled the Texas economy.
These things, together with the expanded use of eminent domain by the state on behalf of a corporate contract made this project much too bitter a pill for Texans to swallow. It actually spawned an independent gubernatorial campaign by former Texas comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn. It generated much ill will between Perry and his conservative voters, so that at present, while they think he’s better than a Democrat, the difference is only slight, and he should bear just as much attentive watching.
Perry hasn’t given up his Trans Texas Corridor plans, but they’ve been scaled back and re-named. Once again, the Governor of Texas has shown his willingness to climb into bed with corporate masters, and more importantly, just as with the Gardasil issue, former staff members seem to be part of a constant recycling through a revolving door between his corporate cronies and his own office.
This is precisely the sort of governance the country does not need, Washington already being thoroughly polluted with such schemes.
Governor Perry’s appeal to conservatives seems to hinge on his Christian values, but the problem is that his proclaimed Christian values are in distinct and thorough opposition to some of his actions as governor. At the same time he seeks to share the stage at TEA Party events, always ready to throw out more red meat for the crowd, but seems much less than sincere in his stance by the time he arrives back at his office. This sort of schizophrenic, unprincipled and insincere conservatism is already thoroughly represented in DC, and while Mr. Perry would certainly feel at home there, the politicos in DC being his kind of people, I’m strongly convinced that while he might do well in such a role, it’s not clear that the country would fare any better.
When you examine his record in its totality, what you find is not that Governor Perry has been such a capable steward of the Texas economy, but that surprisingly, the Texas Legislature has fulfilled that role, bouncing egregious Perry initiatives in a number of cases.
The Trans Texas Corridor project would have crippled commerce in this state, and contrary to the billing, would have achieved little but to make Texas just another link in the NAFTA chain, bypassed by most of the commerce, its people tasked with the duty to pay for a system of toll roads from which they would see little benefit, but would bring substantial costs.
For these reasons, and a lengthy list of similar problems, I cannot recommend the governor of my state, Texas, to the people of America. It’s not so much that he’s presided over an economy of his creation, so much as the fact that the people of Texas have managed to succeed in spite of him. Given his embellished relation to the relatively good performance of the Texas economy in admittedly hard times, and acknowledging that the damage he might have done, had he been unopposed by a conservative legislature, it’s clear that while Rick Perry might be good for corporatist Washington, he’s not the right choice for America.