Posted on 10/03/2011 1:16:29 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
[excerpt of new issue not yet online]
IT WILL BE THE JOBS ISSUE—and Texas’s record in creating them—that will define Rick Perry’s presidential run. Since he became governor in 2001, the U.S. as a whole has had a net loss of private-sector jobs, while Texas—which has only 8 percent of the nation’s population—has had a net gain of 825,000 jobs.
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Board, told me that if you look at the number of jobs created since the recession technically ended in June 2009, Texas has accounted for 48 percent of net new jobs created in the U.S.
Fisher also disparages claims that the jobs are all low-paying jobs at McDonald’s or Walmart, paying the minimum wage, or that they were primarily caused by the oil and natural gas boom. According to Tom Pauken of the Texas Work Force Commission, the annual median wage in Texas in 2010 for all occupations was $31,500 a year, only 7 percent below the national average. That difference is easily explained by the fact that Texas has a younger workforce than most states and a higher percentage of workers in lower-pay agriculture jobs near the border with Mexico. [ CW: Cost of living in Texas is lower than many other states; Texas has no state income tax; Texas is a right to work state.]
As for where the job growth has been, three sectors of the economy have grown faster than the energy sector, which alone added 40,500 net new jobs in 2010. Last year, Texas added 57,900 new jobs in trade, transportation, and utilities; a total of 53,400 jobs in professional and business services; and 44,900 net new jobs in the hospitality industry.
For each of the past seven years, CEOs polled by “Chief Executive” magazine have rated Texas first in the nation for economic development climate and job growth. What is the secret of Texas’s success? Rick Perry isn’t shy about his answer. “It’s all about four points,” he told me. “First, don’t spend all the money. Keep the taxes low and under control. Have regulations that are fair and predictable so business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. And reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don’t paralyze employers who are trying to create real wealth.”
If there is on issue which Perry has made a personal crusade, it is lawsuit reform. Working with the legislature, he has helped pass curbs on frivolous lawsuits, implemented a first-in-the-nation system under which loser pays all court costs in many lawsuits, and reformed medical malpractice law.
Dick Weekley, the co-founder of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, says Perry showed genuine political courage in resisting calls for watered-down reforms that wouldn’t have addressed the core problem. He recalls that in 2002 Perry vetoed a bill strongly supported by doctors that would have required them to prompt payment from health maintenance organizations. In the eyes of the tort reform advocates, the bill was a Trojan Horse compromise negotiated between doctors and trial lawyers. “There was a huge response from physicians [against the veto],” Kim Ross, the former top lobbyist for the Texas Medical Association, said. TMA went so far as to endorse Tony Sanchez, Perry’s millionaire Democratic opponent in the 2002 election. “Perry sent a signal that he wanted real reform and would stand his ground,” Weekley told me. “Soon the medical lobbyists playing footsie with the trial lawyers were gone and the obstacles to real reform started falling.” [end excerpt]
the two things that he definitely has going for him are the economic success of Texas and his unconventional but effective ground game.
It may be enough to offset his liabilities, chief among them his inability to articulate.
And it’d probably never occur to them that Perry wants to do the same thing for ALL states, and bring industry back home.
In their warped minds, Perry must be doing this to get his hair on TV.
Wait’ll they hear about the Galveston Social Security experiment that is an off-the-charts success.
While liberalism and downright marxism has been boiling off all their state’s assets and initiative, Texas has been incubating ideas and policy that has enriched us.
You can lead a horse to water....
Well, I read your crap and supply information with links.
Lucky you.
If I were going to make a bet for a few grand, I would bet the same way. At the moment that would be the 80/20 safe bet. And back in my wild and crazy days I bet on football all the time.
I could be they’re union members or lawyers.
You right, you can’t make them drink.
Today, that is my take on the situation we are in right now. Again, the left and the GOP elite are picking our candidate as they did with McRino.
Those are the same utterly delusional people who think that a Pizza company CEO who has never been elected to any government post, a six year congresswomen from Minnesota, a washed out defeated Senator from Pennsylvania, etc... have better chance of winning the nomination than Perry, three times governor of the largest conservative state in the Union, and the state that created 40% of all the new jobs in the country in the last 2 years.
Good thing he's been Lt. Governor, too. That being said, if you think it was the Lt. Governor in discussions with these out of state companies, convincing them to pack up shop and move to Texas, then you aren't up to speed on what's been going on in Texas over the past 10 years. These companies aren't flocking to Texas b/c of the weather.
Exactly...right.
Probably also bureaucrats. Perry wants EPA and Education cut down a few notches now, and that’s gotta sting for the parasite class.
In fact, you could say Perry has done more than any other Governor to quash the parasite class: tort lawyers, envirowhackos, anti-oil commies, food-stamp opportunists, unionists who fail every time they try to establish their racket, just all the hubristic predators that have ruined our once-competitive sister states.
Cain ran for the US senate in 2004 and lost.
Perry has to stop playing defense and get back on offense. Ignore the media/Romney/Paul machine which has been trying to take him down since he announced. He has to take it to the people with more commercials taking on obama like the one he released before the debate. He needs to rise above the others and take on obama directly. Talk solyndra and fast and furious.
Re: Great Britain will be happy and many other Obama snubbed allies) — as the Perry doctrine is, “We stand with our allies.
Maybe we can get Churchill’s bust back.
Just keep on discounting his abilities if it makes you feel better.
Kay was backed by the Bush machine and Karl Rove.
Medina lost because she was outed as a Truther.
White had millions from trial lawyers and lost.
Kinky is a wild supporter of Perry for President.
Chris Bell had an awful campaign strategy.
Rick Perry beat them out and won. Period.
-------------------------------------- Just to jog your memory.
You pretty much covered the bases.
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