Posted on 09/16/2011 12:46:22 PM PDT by winoneforthegipper
After an appearance in Newton, Iowa today, Rick Perry denied to an unidentified woman that he'd ever supported the 2008 bank bailout known as TARP.
"No Ma'am," he told her.
"I thought I saw a letter where you had written encouraging the support of TARP legislation," he persisted.
"You saw wrong," he replied flatly, as shown in this video, taken by a tracker, of this morning's event.
This isn't the first time the issue has come up, and the questioner might be excused for having read Perry's October 1 letter that way. The letter, co-signed by then-Gov. Joe Manchin in their capacities as heads of the RGA and DGA, came three days after TARP's failure to pass the House rocked the markets.
The AP covered the letter with the headline, "Governors, Business Up Pressure for Bailout Bill." It's very hard to read otherwise.
"We strongly urge Congress to leave partisanship at the door and pass an economic recovery package," they wrote. "It is time for Washington, D.C. to step up, be responsible, an do what's in the best interest of American taxpayers and our economy."
Perry, later that day, released a statement that seemed aimed at countering the impression left by his letter without clarifying what he was calling for: "[G]overnment should not be in the business of using taxpayer dollars to bail out corporate America. Congress needs to take off its partisan gloves and work together to bring both short and long term stability to the credit markets....”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
I also said that at the time, I supported TARP. Why do you think I would oppose Palin for supporting TARP at the time? And why do you think, even if I had disagreed with her about that particular item, that it would keep me from supporting her?
I certainly don’t look for a candidate to be perfect to support them. If I quote Sarah Palin on something, and you disagree with what she said, that doesn’t mean I’m attacking her. But I’ve noticed more than once that I’ve used a Sarah Palin quote I agreed with to support something I was saying, and I’ve been accused of attacking her for it.
However, I find your complaint somewhat telling. Or maybe I should say, should I find your complaint somewhat telling? Are you saying that, as a Palin supporter, I should never expect you to post anything that you think is negative about her?
Good night my dearest Trish.
I can’t stay around too long tonight either.
Have movies!
CORRECT AND NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS THREAD!
Hey. I just mentioned it because I remembered her being attacked for it last year, had information about it in my list of Palin quotes that I keep handy, and decided to use her as an example of how other conservatives have been attacked in the exact same way Perry was being attacked.
I certainly did not do it to attack Palin on TARP. I can’t attack anybody on TARP, because at the time I thought it was a good idea. It turned out the detractors were right that the ‘safeguards’ weren’t, but I still think it wasn’t a bad plan, to LEND money to keep the money supply from freezing, and get it back later when things cleared up. Even with it’s flaws, for a government program it did pretty well, getting back a large portion of the money originally allocated.
I no longer support it, but that’s because in hindsight I see how many bad ways it was used, before I could only see the good things it might do. Buy up assets that were temporarily undervalued, and sell them back when they became appropriately valued again.
I thought what Sarah Palin said about TARP made sense at the time. I’ve never thought her words were a blanket approval of TARP, especially not what it became — she also was writing during it’s enactment. Her statements later reflect what we now know of it.
Nowhere in the letter does it say that. You are lying. Quite literally lying, actually.
You’ve been spamming threads all day for THIS? A video where someone falsely claims Perry wrote a letter supporting TARP, and he says she was wrong, which she was? And you falsely said in those spams that the letter, which is undated, and had no link, was for the recovery act? And I believed you? How stupid of me.
My thought is that TARP ended up being a bit of crony capitalism, and given that seems to Palin’s theme these days, I thought it was a bit hypocritical of her to slam Perry on a $5k donation when she supported a bank bailout that was in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
It wouldn't keep me from voting for either candidate in a general election, but the unintended consequence of this thread is that it showed me a bit of inconsistency in Palin’s belief system on crony capitalism.
Night Trish. I’m leaving too. You take off too onyx! LOL
So you decide which program he graciously asked the speaker of the house to enact....if it’s TARP well then he’s just a liar if it’s the Porkulus well then he’s just not a conservative.
Choice is yours.
Or, it’s asking congress for some sort of vague economic recovery plan. You know, like the letter actually says...
That is the whole point of vetting, to post articles and then discuss them, including pointing out innuendo, mistruths, and disputed facts.
Given your concern for properly vetting candidates, and for having a full discussion, I'm surprised you seems suddenly in opposition to actually discussing articles.
Or maybe you are simply opposed to ME discussing articles, while the rest of you can discuss, interpret, and corect them all you want to.
I'm simply not sure what your problem is at this point. Do you really object to people arguing about what is written in articles?
LOL. Night, dearest DJ!
I just might! We have movies that I want to see!
I won't be here very long, that's fer sure! See you tomorry!
I could just ignore everything you write in response to me, but that would seem rude. But not if you don’t want me to read it.
Both? I wish your post made some sense so I could answer it.
I did. Here is what I found:
"Texas Residential Construction Commission was a Texas state agency that oversaw single family residential house construction. The agency was headquartered at 311 East 14th Street in Austin.
Its mission was to promote quality construction for Texans by registering industry members and residential construction projects; providing information and educating homeowners and the residential construction industry; acting as a resource for complainants; and offering a neutral, technical review of alleged post-construction defects.
The commission was under a sunset law; if no legislation renewing its existence is passed, it would no longer exist by February 1, 2010. It was scheduled to close on September 1, 2010.
The Texas Residential Construction Commission was closed September 1, 2010 (pursuant to provisions under Sec. 325.017 of the Government Code). All records and property has been transferred to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts."
The commission was "disbanded" because it was sunseted, and it was not extended.
Bob Perry gave to a lot of conservative causes:
527 groups
In the 2004 election cycle, Perry gave $4.45 million to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth (formerly Swift Boat Veterans for Truth), a 527 group; he was the largest single donor.
In that cycle, Perry also donated $3 million to Progress for America Voter Fund. In all, he donated almost $8.1 million to 527 groups in 2003-2004.
In mid-2006, Perry donated $5 million to found a new 527 group, the Economic Freedom Fund. The $5 million makes the group one of the top ten in the 2006 election cycle. He also appears to be the sole donor to Americans for Honesty on Issues. These groups have primarily paid for negative advertisements targeting Democratic Party candidates in the 2006 United States general election.
In 2010, Perry donated $7 million to the 527 group American Crossroads, making it the largest single donation that the organization has received to date. American Crossroads primarily works to elect Republican legislators.
Other
Perry contributed $46,000 to George W. Bush’s 1994 and 1998 campaigns for Texas Governor. He was the largest individual contributor to the Texas Republican Party during the 2002 election cycle (calendar 2001 and 2002) giving $905,000.
Perry gave $165,000 in the 2002 election cycle to Tom DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee (TRMPAC) giving $165,000 in the 2002 election cycle. In October 2002 Perry and his wife contributed $95,000 to DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority political action committee (ARMPAC). They also contributed $10,000 to DeLay's legal defense fund.
In 2006, Perry was the largest political donor in Texas. His donations included nearly $400,000 to the campaign of GOP Governor Rick Perry (no relation).
In March 2007, Perry was listed as a member of Mitt Romney's "Texas Leadership Team", indicating his commitment to contribute to and raise money for Romney's presidential campaign. In December 2007, he donated $200,000 to the Club for Growth for advertisements against Mike Huckabee in the Republican primary. In 2008, he donated another $400,000 to the Club for Growth, which used most of it for its campaign against Mark Udall, the Democratic nominee in the 2008 Colorado election for U.S. Senate.
In September and October 2010, Perry gave $7 million to American Crossroads, making him the top contributor to one of the main groups dedicated to helping Republicans win control of Congress in the November 2010 election. Perry's donation was nearly half of the group's fundraising in the period.
This entire thread was pretty much a waste. The substance was dealt with so quickly that it devolved into a shouting match of which I somehow managed to be a central part, and then it was just a dumping ground for anything people could think of to attack Perry with.
If articles were really being posted so we could discuss what is in them, and determine the truth, then we would work very hard to keep each article’s thread focused on the article.
When people just start throwing in accusations, it becomes clear that they don’t want to discuss things, they just want to attack. No rational discussion can take place when a thread has 5 different things to discuss.
Since this was a new topic (kind of — the video was new, the letter we dealt with a while ago), it had to be discussed. But that was done long ago in this thread.
I became a central part as well and probably exacerbated things by pointing out Sarah Palin's obvious pro-TARP quotes to the fervent Sarah Palin supporter (and anti-Perry as well) who started this thread. If the moderators would do their jobs here, these hit job threads on conservative candidates wouldn't devolve into such a cesspool of accusations, insults, and unproven smears. I suppose I should learn to not get as deep into them, because the reality is I see the same 6 or 7 anti-Perry posters in the same anti-Perry thread, and it's now to the point where they say goodnight to each other. Groupthink is never a good think, regardless of ideology, and I think some FReepers are a lost cause right now, yet they are allowed to dominate FR with their threads.
The two of you thrive on being the central part of a thread. You start the trouble and then pretend you’re above it all. Both of you are very passive-aggressive.
Neither one of you are interested in discussing a thread and determining the truth. What you are interested in is pretending your smarter than everybody.
I’m sure I’m not the first one to tell the two of you, but you’re both full of it.
"No Ma'am," Perry replies when asked whether he signed on to support Obama's $800 Bill TARP giveaway.......even as the letter w/ Perry's signature goes viral.
He gets away with that BS in Texas.....seems cattle country doesn't demand veracity ....or much else.....from its elected officials.
Exhibit A.
You twist it in three ways, even in this short sentence:
The letter was composed before October 1, 2008, and sent on October 1st. It wasn't sent just to Pelosi -- it was sent to all 4 leaders, Pelosi, Reid, Boehner, and McConnell.
The House had just rejected the original TARP September 29th. But the letter never mentions TARP. It says to pass "an economic recovery package." Since TARP was on the table and rejected at that time, if they meant to support TARP, they would have said they were urging reconsideration of the rejected bill. They didn't -- they didn't even reference the bill that had just been rejected. It is clear they were NOT writing to support the bill as currently written.
I realize some people believe no action should have been taken. I think that is a minority view, even among people who dislike what ended up passing. Certainly Bush supported TARP. So did McCain/Palin. I supported the concept of TARP -- that we buy up undervalued assets to keep liquidity in the markets, and sell them back when the crisis was over. That part of TARP actually worked -- we got liquidity, our economy didn't collapse, and we got almost all of that part of TARP back.
Now, Bush later used TARP to bail out the automakers. I didn't support that, and since TARP was used, that makes TARP a bad thing, and the critics who claimed it gave too much power to government were apparently correct.
Rick Perry wrote a letter opposing using TARP funds to bail out the banks. In fact, by December of 2008, he was on record as opposing any bailouts coming from TARP (remember, TARP as originally sold wasn't bailouts, it was a temporary fund to stabilize valuations that were irrationally low). He explicitly argued against STATE bailouts, for those in this thread who said he was LOOKING for STATE bailouts:
Governors Against State Bailouts:
Governors Against State BailoutsOh, what the h*ll. I just find it astonishing, reading that letter written two months after TARP passed, that ANY thinking person could be arguing today that Rick Perry supported TARP, supported bailouts, and is only saying he didn't now because he's running for President.
Hard to believe, but not everyone in politics wants a free lunch
Dec. 2, 2008
By Rick Perry and Mark SanfordAs governors and citizens, we've grown increasingly concerned over the past weeks as Washington has thrown bailout after bailout at the national economy with little to show for it.
In the process, the federal government is not only burying future generations under mountains of debt. It is also taking our country in a very dangerous direction -- toward a "bailout mentality" where we look to government rather than ourselves for solutions. We're asking other governors from both sides of the political aisle to join with us in opposing further federal bailout intervention for three reasons.
First, we're crossing the Rubicon with regard to debt.
One fact that's been continually glossed over in the bailout debate is that Washington doesn't have money in hand for any of these proposals. Every penny would be borrowed. Estimates for what the government is willing to spend on bailouts and stimulus efforts for this year reach as much as $7.7 trillion according to Bloomberg.com -- a full half of the United States' yearly economic output.
With all the zeroes in the numbers, it's no wonder Washington politicians have lost track.
That trillion-dollar figure is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to checks written by the federal government that it can't cash. Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker puts our nation's total debt and unpaid promises, like Social Security, at roughly $52 trillion -- an invisible mortgage of $450,000 on every American household. Borrowing money to "solve" a problem created by too much debt seems odd. And as fiscally conservative Republicans, we take no pleasure in pointing out that many in our own party have been just as complicit in running up the tab as those on the political left.
Second, the bailout mentality threatens Americans' sense of personal responsibility.
In a free-market system, competition and one's own personal stake motivate people to do their best. In this process, the winners create wealth, jobs and new investment, while others go back to the drawing board better prepared to try again.
To an unprecedented degree, government is currently picking winners and losers in the private marketplace, and throwing good money after bad. A prudent investor takes money from low-yield investments and puts them in those that yield better returns. Recent government intervention is doing the opposite -- taking capital generated from productive activities and throwing it at enterprises that in many cases need to reorganize their business model.
Take for example the proposed Big Three auto-maker bailout. We think it's very telling that each of the three CEO's flew on their own private jets to Washington to ask for a taxpayer handout. No amount of taxpayer largess could fix a business culture so fundamentally flawed.
Our Founding Fathers were clear and deliberate in setting up a system whereby the federal government would only step in for that which states cannot do themselves. An expansionist federal government of the last century has moved us light-years away from that model, but it doesn't mean that Congress can't learn from states that are coming up with solutions that work.
In Texas and South Carolina, we've focused on improving "soil conditions" for businesses by cutting taxes, reforming our legal system and our workers' compensation system. We'd humbly suggest that Congress take a page from those playbooks by focusing on targeted tax relief paid for by cutting spending, not by borrowing.
In the rush to do "something" to help, federal leaders would be wise to take a line from the Hippocratic Oath, and pledge to do no (more) harm to our country's finances. We can weather this storm if we commit to fiscal prudence and hold true to the values of individual freedom and responsibility that made our nation great.
Mr. Perry, a Republican, is the governor of Texas. Mr. Sanford, a Republican, is the governor of South Carolina.
I think I'll post that in it's own thread, because it certainly puts most of this argument to bed -- at least as regards Perry lying about opposing TARP today. I suppose some will still argue he changed his mind in the two months between TARP passage and when he wrote this letter, but the letter clearly dismantles most of the argument anyway.
Points though to the first person to make a joke about the "other governor". Because that would certainly add to this debate.
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