Posted on 10/15/2011 3:01:21 AM PDT by trumandogz
Gov. Rick Perry's record of creating jobs with taxpayer money is coming under greater scrutiny because of his presidential campaign.
Perry is trying to deflect criticism of inflated job numbers and cronyism from the right and the left, from The Wall Street Journal to The New Republic and, of course, from his presidential rivals.
This is hardly news in Texas, where the Legislature this year ordered greater oversight of Perry's management of economic development funds in the wake of a critical audit and outside evaluations of his jobs record. But past criticisms are amplified by presidential politics, particularly when some conservative voters are questioning the wisdom of spending taxpayer dollars to choose winners and losers in the business and technology arena.
Perry's use of tax dollars for job creation is even being compared with the Obama administration's $535 million loan guarantee to the failed solar company Solyndra.
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
We have another executive running for president who counts future jobs that have yet to be created.
Sounds very familiar.
I liked the part where the $50 million was given to an institute with 10 employees and a company who fired 70 employees, but Perry credited them with 12,000 jobs.
If Zero does manage to get reelected, maybe Perry can be his czar of crony capitalism in the second term.
I am in Texas and have found myself jobless twice in the last three years.
On average, it has taken me 9 months each time to find new employment. That’s 9 months of spending each day hunting the want ads/job boards/employment agencies/registering with staffing agencies, etc and sending out hundreds of resumes and applying for hundreds of jobs.
It’s funny. The advisory from the Unemployment Insurance Agency advises those seeking employment to “consider taking a job that pays 10% less than their previous employer.” HA! If only. I started off looking for anything that would pay 75% of what I used to make and wound up getting hired for 66% of what I used to make........after almost a year of looking.
My point here is that while the employment market in Texas may be among the best in the U.S...........that’s not saying a whole lot when it overall is very, very bad.
“Perry’s use of tax dollars for job creation is even being compared with the Obama administration’s $535 million loan guarantee to the failed solar company Solyndra.”
That’s the line that got me.
Yes, liberals like to trash conservatives by pretending different things are the same. It should get all of us.
More opinion cited as fact based on faulty data analysis. Even the people who wrote the flawed study, when trying to defend it, admitted that they overstated that case, arguing that the actual number is 54%, not 81%.
Of course, we all know that government doesn’t create jobs, businesses do. And the governor doesn’t control WHO the businesses hire.
You must be one of those who thinks the governor should have trashed his state economy so businesses didn’t create jobs, because all those Texas jobs just encouraged immigrants to move to Texas.
The information used by this article comes from “Texans for Public Justice”. Look them up, and report back as to what type of organization they are, who they are pushing, and what bias they might have in “raising questions”.
The enterprise fund was started with a one-time infusion of money from the rainy-day fund — a fund which is set aside for difficult times, and which needs therefore to be invested while it is sitting, much like you would invest your savings in various things.
The Texas government took a small part of this savings, and put it into a program that loans money to businesses that make concrete promises to establish or expand business in Texas. They pay the money back to the fund, which then loans it to others.
By all measures, this program has been a success. It has not needed a dime of taxpayer money since it was started, and has created thousands of jobs. The loans are evaluated by a 3-person team — The Governor, the Lt. Governor, and the the leader of the state legislature. This means both the executive and legislative branch has a say, and it is controlled by elected officials who are directly accountable to the voters.
Also unlike Obama’s plans, the jobs are written into the contracts, there are penalties if they are not made. It is true that because of the severe economic downturn of the Obama economic disaster, Texas has re-structured some of the contracts so the companies can still create jobs and not go under because of the program. It would be stupid to force companies into bankruptcy when you can keep them afloat and still get benefits.
With any investment, there are winners and losers. The fund has not been perfect, it has backed more winners than losers. And the legislature has modified the program in order to add more oversight, to counter claims (not borne out by investigation) of political favoritism.
There are many good sources of facts about this program, that don’t involve left-wing anti-capitalist organizations.
This article, and the conservatives dancing happily around it, is exactly what Sowell and others talk about when they wonder why, in order to support a “preferred candidate”, conservatives are willing to trash publicly the biggest shining example of how conservative principles can work to save our economy. By trashing Texas, these conservatives cut the legs out from the conservative arguments.
Sarah Palin understood this, when she called Texas the great example, and Perry the true conservative leader, showing the country the way forward. So in a way, these conservatives are calling Sarah Palin a liar as well. (I’m sure someone will now say that she was just confused or ignorant, as if that is better).
I see you fell the reporter’s deliberately misleading wording of that part of the article. IF you go back and read it again, you’ll see that the $50 million grant had TWO parts. The article doesnt’ tell you what part went to the institute, and what went to the company you cite.
The “Institute” is an organization at Texas A&M. It’s job was create a pool of college graduates in the Biotech field, because that would attract biotechnology companies to the state. The institute has 10 employees. But since the institute was created, and more biotech students started graduating, thousands of new biotech jobs HAVE in fact been brought into the state. So the program worked.
Job training with seed money to create a pool of trained workers to attract business investment and to make America competitive — I can see why conservatives hate that idea and want to trash it.
The other part of the money went to a company that was in biotech. That was one of the losers. They apparently haven’t done a good job. But they weren’t slated to create “thousands of jobs”, nor were they counted in the “thousands of jobs”. The reporter simply combined those two things together so they could mislead people like you, who wanted an excuse to attack Perry to blunt the great program he has proposed to get goverment out of the way so business can get America working again.
Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, said that is not how the grant system is supposed to work.
Conservatives love to accept the word of elected democrats when they are telling us what a program is supposed to do. Apparently. In certain cases. Where it attacks the "right" candidate.
If the legislature doesn't like the program they legislated, they can change it. They did tweak it to provide more legislative oversight when companies re-work the contracts. If the legislature agrees with this elected democrat trying to trash a good conservative program, they could change that part of the legislation as well.
Perry has not favored his alma mater at the expense of the University of Texas.
I'm sure that saddens some "conservatives" here who would like more stuff to attack Rick Perry about.
It's a shame really. We now have three economic plans on the table from our presidential hopefuls. One is a a 150-point plan that nobody understands (Mitt Romney).
Of the other two, one is a fundamental restructuring of the tax code which will never pass, which adds a new national sales tax, will create uncertainty in the markets while businesses and individuals have to re-work their investment and growth strategies for the new tax structure, and figure out how to play the "used sales" and "empowerment district" loopholes to their advantage. And as I said, is highly unlikely to ever pass.
The other is a solid conservative plan to get government out of the way so business can boom, of which many parts can be implemented from day one, and others are broadly popular and can pass easily with a republican house and senate.
So I think conservatives should make sure the 2nd plan never sees the light of day, so we can hold onto the pipe dream fantasy of a 9-9-9 plan whose author admits is just some suboptimal compromise plan which should really be replaced by the FairTax.
The thing that frustrates me is that Cain was talking about tapping our energy resources months ago; as 999 is getting all the attention, it’s like people think that this is all there is to the man’s plan.
Perry has been in this race for two months. He knew he was getting in for months before that. The topic of the last debate was the economy.
And it took all this time to come up with ONE part of Cain’s plan.
Energy development is important, but Perry is naive if he thinks that he won’t have to battle opposition. (Yes, Cain’s going to have a hell of a fight over everything that he want’s to do, too.) Liberals and greenie weenies will tie Perry’s plans up in the courts for as long as possible.
No matter who we elect, we the people will have to stay the course and support them to get anything done.
Perry puts all of his economic hopes in one basket. Cain has a multi-level plan of attack.
Energy deregulation and developing our natural resources is a huge part of that.
IT IS NOT THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT TO INVEST IN PRIVATE BUSINESSES!
Why is that people who are otherwise conservative suddenly fall all over themselves to defend liberal policies when Rick Perry does them?
Why do you think a state government has no business setting up their laws to entice businesses into their state?
And why do you think government, in their rainy-day investment fund, is forbidden to invest in companies that do business in the state?
We all agree that the federal government shouldn’t be investing in private business. But I think we have no agreement at all with your so-called “conservative” concept of state government action.
We have a solid conservative governor in Virginia who regularly announces how we have brought new business into our state through our various methods of support, be it tax breaks or other means. My county government actually purchased land cheap, developed it out with high-tech electronics support, and made it into a high-tech office park, attracting busineses and a college, increasing our tax base.
That so-called “study” of which you provide “opinion” is hopelessly flawed, and mixes different types of numbers in absurd ways, and makes absurd assumptions, like that no immigrant lost a job or left the state in the 4 years, or that no immigrant lost and took a different job during that time.
Even the study aurhors agree they mixed a gross number in one case while using a net number in another, and that if they used the “net jobs taken” number instead, under their absurd assumptions 54% of the jobs went to illegals.
There is no way for Texas state government to stop illegals from getting jobs. Immigration is a federal task, not a state task, and courts have ruled that way so it is difficult, if not impossible, for a state to find ways to keep illegals from working in businesses, unless the feds grant them that power. IT’s not like the jobs created were designed for illegal immigrants.
I oppose giving in-state tuition to illegals in virginia, but it is like 20th on the list of things I care about when it comes to a President, especially when Perry has consistantly OPPOSED doing a federal version of the plan. There’s no danger there.
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