Messing With Texas (How much of Texas' Success can be attributed to Perry?)

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas hasn’t lost an election in 10 tries. Among his vanquished opponents, this streak has inspired not only the usual mix of resentment and respect, but a touch of supernatural awe. “Running against Perry,” one of them told Texas Monthly, “is like running against God.”

Perry’s 2012 rivals can’t afford to entertain such thoughts. If either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama hopes to snap the Texas governor’s winning streak, the election will need to become a referendum on Perry himself, in all his heat-packing, secession-contemplating glory. If it becomes a referendum on his home state instead, Perry’s 11th campaign will probably turn out like all the others.

Perry’s critics don’t like to admit this. After he launched his campaign with an extended brag about Texas job creation, there was a rush to cut Texas down to size — to dismiss the Lone Star economic miracle as a mirage conjured by population growth, petro-dollars and low-paying McJobs.

But the more the Internet’s hive mind worked through the data, the weaker this critique looked. Yes, Texas’s growing population has contributed to the job boom, but the boom has driven population growth as well. The influx of people has been too extraordinary to just be chalked up to, say, snowbirds seeking 105-degree retirements. More likely, thousands of Americans have responded to hard times in their home states by moving to Texas in search of work.

As the policy blogger Matthias Shapiro pointed out in an exhaustive analysis, the jobs they’re finding aren’t unusually low-paying: the state’s median hourly wage is close to the national average, and since the recession started, Texan wages have increased at the sixth-fastest pace in the country. Nor are the jobs confined to the oil and gas industries:

From the NY Times article:

“The question is whether Perry himself deserves any of the credit. Here his critics become much more persuasive. When Perry became governor, taxes were already low, regulations were light, and test scores were on their way up. He didn’t create the zoning rules that keep Texas real estate affordable, or the strict lending requirements that minimized the state’s housing bubble. Over all, the Texas model looks like something he inherited rather than a system he built.”

So the NY Times is saying that credit for the Texas economy belongs to the Governor from whom Perry inherited it....which would be Governor George W. Bush. Delicious, isn't it.

President Downgrade is not responsible for the disastrous US economy because he inherited it from Bush. Perry is not responsible for the good Texas economy because he inherited it from Bush.

Way to be consistent NY Times. And you wonder why people are canceling their subscriptions?

Valid question. Don’t worry, they are already doing it and will continue to do it. How’d you like that ad in the Austin Newspaper asking for anyone who has had sex w/ Perry to contact them?

They are going to get down and dirty. I know Perry’s faults. But contrasting him with the RINO Romney and the ‘girls’, he is the only possibility so far. I actually like Cain for president....but I want someone who will really get the nomination.

Unless Chris Christie were to enter the field, I am for Perry. As a Texan, I did vote for Kinky in that election. But I think Perry is our best bet so far.

The criticism of Perry being chummy w/ the Texas muslims and the softness on the illegal kids getting instate college tuition is enough to dynamite attacks of ‘racism’, etc.

We have to win over the independents big time. I am more worried about beating Obama than which one will be the nominee. And so far I see Perry is the one with the most ammunition to whip the butt of the O.

Here's Perry last year, giving speeches, lending credence to La Raza.
Pimping for amnesty and funded by tens of millions of tax dollars.

Deep in the heart of Texas.

Two peas in a pod.

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La Raza Funding Skyrockets After Obama Hires La Raza VP
Judicial Watch | June 17, 2011
FR Posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 by jazusamo

A Judicial Watch investigation reveals that federal funding for a Mexican La Raza group that for years has raked in millions of taxpayer dollars has skyrocketed since one of its top officials got a job in the Obama White House. The influential and politically-connected National Council of La Raza (NCLR) has long benefitted from Uncle Sam’s largess but the group has made a killing since Obama hired its senior vice president (Cecilia Muñoz) in 2009 to be his director of intergovernmental affairs.

Ignored by the mainstream media, Judicial Watch covered the appointment because the president issued a special “ethics waiver” to bring Muñoz aboard since it violated his own lobbyist ban. At the pro illegal immigration NCLR, Muñoz supervised all legislative and advocacy activities on the state and local levels and she was heavily involved in the congressional immigration battles that took place in the George W. Bush Administration.

She also brought in a steady flow of government cash that’s allowed the Washington D.C.-based group to expand nationwide and promote its leftist, open-borders agenda via a network of community organizations dedicated to serving Latinos.Among them are a variety of local groups that provide social services, housing counseling and farm worker assistance as well as publicly-funded charter schools that promote radical Chicano curriculums. Judicial Watch published a special report on this a few years ago.

This week a JW probe has uncovered details of the alarming increase in federal funding that these NCLR groups have received since Muñoz joined the Obama Administration.

In fact, the government cash more than doubled the year Muñoz joined the White House, from $4.1 million to $11 million. Not surprisingly, a big chunk of the money (60%) came from the Department of Labor, which is headed by a former California congresswoman (Hilda Solis) with close ties to the La Raza movement. Since Obama named her Labor Secretary, Solis has launched a nationwide campaign to protect illegal immigrant workers in the U.S.

Just this week Solis penned declarations with Guatemala and Nicaragua to preserve the rights of their migrants. The NCLR also received additional taxpayer dollars from other federal agencies in 2010, the JW probe found. The Department of Housing and Urban Development doled out $2.5 million for housing counseling, the Department of Education contributed nearly $800,000 and the Centers for Disease Control a quarter of a million. Additionally, NCLR affiliates nationwide raked in tens of millions of government grant and recovery dollars last year thanks to the Muñoz factor. An offshoot called Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) saw its federal funding nearly double to $18.3 million following Muñoz’ appointment.

A social service and legal assistance organization (Ayuda Inc.) that didn’t receive any federal funding between 2005 and 2008 got $600,000 in 2009 and $548,000 in 2010 from the Department of Justice. The group provides immigration law services and guarantees confidentiality to assure illegal aliens that they won’t be reported to authorities.

Cecilia Munoz

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