Karl Denninger has this post responding to Michelle Malkin’s article about Rick “Merck” Perry’s controversial scheme of his state government’s forcing teenage girls to take the Gardasil HPV vaccine. I have written about that and other Perry-related items here.
And Karen De Coster wrote about Gardasil’s dangerous effects, including some deaths, as well:
The organization Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FDA, and in a 2007 analysis it discovered, at that time, there were 3,461 complaints that were filed about adverse reactions to the vaccine. Side effects have been blood clots, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, seizure-like activity, and fainting. It is also being linked to miscarriages, degenerative muscle conditions, and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Oh, and death. Some young girls are developing juvenile ALS after getting the vaccines, and some die.
There are other things I’ve seen about Perry, quite a few items of which I’ve seen in comments sections of blogs, and from Robert Wenzel’s blog. In this post, Wenzel writes:
Brad Plumer at WaPo explains how the job market stayed strong in Texas, and why that is about to change:
Thanks to relatively high property taxes and loose restrictions on building, Texas had a much less severe housing bubble than did other states. When many parts of the country were plummeting into recession in 2008, Texas was still growing.
It was only in 2009 that bleak conditions nationwide finally caught up with the Lone Star State, and sales-tax revenue started dropping. Fortunately for Texas, however, Congress had just passed a big stimulus bill, and Perry used $6.4 billion in federal money to smooth over the state’s growing deficit. Hence Texas hasn’t been forced to enact the same sharp budget cuts over the past three years that most other states have made.
Trouble is, that’s all about to change. Texas could only fend off its deficit woes for so long, and this year, faced with a $27 billion shortfall, Perry and the legislature opted for steep cuts to Medicaid and education over the next two-year budget cycle. Given that roughly half of all new Texas jobs in the last two years have come in the health care, education and government sectors, it’s a real question as to whether a newly austere Texas will keep creating jobs at its current pace.
Got that? Fifty percent of jobs have been either direct government jobs or jobs created by Federal funding. Perry is a massive statist.
Also in that post, commenter Allen Lewis noted:
Also, Rick Perry introduced the first income tax in the history of the state of Texas. It’s called the business margins tax:
http://www.lonestarlandlaw.com/Texas-Margin.html
Also, Rick Perry loves to raise revenue by implementing “user fees” which he claims are not taxes.
http://www.texaspolicy.com/pdf/2011-05-PB28-BillAnalysis-SB1811-CFP.pdf
(That reminded me of a column that Carla Howell wrote about Willard Romney: Mitt Romney: Champion of Big Government.)
And also from that post by Wenzel, Anonymous added:
Here’s the 2010 Republican primary debate. Y’all can watch Debra Medina kick ass against statists Rick Perry and Kay Bailey. It’s a good debate. Debra pulls out our dirty laundry for all to see. Shame she was plowed under by the evil Glenn Beck.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/291322-1
(More about the connection between Beck and Perry and their sinking of libertarian-leaning Republican Establishment-challenging Debra Medina here and here.)
In this post by Robert Wenzel, one of his readers emailed him about meeting Perry and with more info on Perry. In that linked video, note how Perry points or jabs his finger in the guy’s chest. Can you imagine Mitt Romney doing that? (Hmmm. Wait, I can imagine Romney doing that. Never mind, as Emily Litella would say.) The reader wrote:
What I asked Governor Perry was “Considering state debt has nearly tripled and spending has increased by two thirds since you were governor, and also that ACORN considered your help their ‘proudest moment,’ what were the differences between him and the current liberal president?” As you can see, he immediately tried to excuse away the numbers.
I found the debt numbers at Politifact from Bill White, who quotes the Texas Bond Review Board. I asked Perry about the raw numbers, which show that in 2000 Texas state debt was $13.7B, and by 2009 that number had grown to over $34B (Mitchell Schnurman found more recent numbers for 2010: $37B.). Bill White at Politifact adjusted for inflation and found the debt merely doubled under Perry.
Perry’s record on spending can be found at Texas Budget Source. In 2000 when Perry took over, Texas spending was $49.7B and the latest numbers the site has available show that spending was $82.1B, a 67% increase. Adjusting for inflation and population growth, the growth in the size of the Texas government during his time as governor is a paltry 36%.
Finally, I found that Perry had good friends in ACORN, a community organization that Republicans love to hate. In 2006, Perry signed into law a bill which benefited low-income homeowners. ACORN called this their “proudest moment.” When Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson opposed funding ACORN in 2007, he attacked her.
On that post, commenter Scarlett wrote:
Perry like a pus boil on a neck, he will be popped with consistent factual questioning. This guy is a strict socialist, red/blue, blue/red. What else is new, MSM loves the BS from the appointed donkey.
And on this post, Robert Wenzel writes,
Perry has received a total of $37 million over the last decade from just 150 individuals and couples, who are likely to form the backbone of his new effort to win the Republican presidential nomination. The tally represented more than a third of the $102 million he had raised as governor through December, according to data compiled by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, LaTi reports.
Nearly half of those mega-donors received hefty business contracts, tax breaks or appointments under Perry.
Auto magnate B.J. “Red” McCombs, who contributed nearly $400,000 to the governor, is the primary financial backer for a Formula One racetrack to be built near Austin. The state has pledged $25 million a year in subsidies to support the project.
The Houston-based engineering firm of James Dannenbaum, who gave more than $320,000 to Perry, received multiple transportation contracts from the state. In 2007, Perry appointed Dannenbaum to a coveted post on the University of Texas’ board of regents.
A Mississippi-based poultry company run by Joe Sanderson, who gave $165,000 to Perry, received a $500,000 grant from a state business incentive fund championed by Perry to open a chicken hatchery and processing plant in Waco.
LaTi has more, here.
And TPM has this chart and explanation of the growth in jobs in Texas really being government jobs, not private sector jobs, as mentioned above.
And then there’s Rick Perry’s dream for a Trans-Texas Corridor. Apparently, he wants to join the rest of the world’s evil land thieves, and call it “eminent domain.”
And, when Joe Lieberman says that Perry has made “very good first impressions,” then I KNOW I don’t like Rick Perry!
With all this info on Rick Perry, who needs to hear about Perry’s possible, alleged gay/stripper/affair with his male secretary of state/ fiasco? I know I don’t.
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