Rick Perry, the blow-dried blowhard recently re-elected as the Republican governor of Texas, was back at it last week, trying to puff up his national political prestige by dumping all over California.
This loudmouth clodhopper loves to boast about his economic development “hunting trips,” which he falsely claims have led a stream of companies to flee the Golden State for the Lone Star State. In that vein, he told a Washington gathering that “California businesses are going to keep relocating out of that state,” according to a Richard Dunham dispatch:
In a speech to the Texas State Society in Washington, he cited California’s tax burden, its fiscal mess and its failure to adopt tough tort reform as reasons why its businesses are leaving. Unlike California, he said, Texas offers businesses headquartered there “a stable platform.”
Talk about big hat, no cattle.
The anti-evolution theorist Perry, who harbors delusional dreams of living in the White House, likes to travel the country bragging on what he calls the “Texas Miracle.” In this political fantasy, the low-tax, low-service government of America’s reddest state fuels a mighty engine of recession-proof economic growth, in sharp contrast to the policies of the bluest in the nation.
But as the Calbuzzers in our Southwest Region and Turquoise Jewelry String Tie Bureau like to say: “Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.”
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Beyond Tom Meyer’s splendid sum-up cartoon today, recent takedowns of Texas by prominent economic columnists, from the estimable Michael Hiltzik to the hysterical Paul Krugman have shown that, by a wide variety of measures, Perry’s miraculous narrative is a fabrication.
Because Texas has a two-year budget – and because it was propped up by billions in federal spending from the stimulus bill that Perry never tired of hypocritically trashing — he dissembled throughout his re-election campaign, bloviating about how his right-wing fiscal policies had put his state into surplus, while California wallowed in red ink (loyal readers will also recall that Meg Whitman, who like Perry has but a passing acquaintance with the truth, often pointed to Texas as a model of how she would govern if she beat Jerry Brown. But we digress).
But when the bill came due, shortly after Perry’s inauguration, it turned out Texas faced a $25+ billion, two-year deficit (representing about the same percentage of its total budget as California’s), along with high unemployment, plus education and health care services among the lowest in the country. As Hiltzik puts it:
The bottom line is that fashioning fiscal policies strictly along low-tax lines doesn’t protect you from budget deficits or business slumps or make your residents necessarily happy or healthy…
While Texas Gov. Rick Perry sucked up to the tea party, declaring himself opposed to “government bailouts” and prattling about seceding from the union, he papered over his state’s budget gap with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act funds, including increased federal handouts for education and Medicaid. So when you, the California taxpayer, hear talk of the Texas Miracle, you should take pride in having helped pay for it.
As for those businesses that Perry has allegedly stolen for his state from California, well, as we say around the Calbuzz campfire, “You can put your boots in the oven but that don’t make ‘em biscuits.” The redoubtable Evan Halper reports:
Even Perry’s claims of companies that have decamped from California to lay down roots in Texas appear to be overblown. When the Austin American-Statesman looked into the Texas governor’s boast that there were 153 such companies in 2010, reporters found the claim included California firms that stayed put but maybe opened a Texas branch. The newspaper concluded that Perry’s figure was grossly inflated.
Perry’s staff said the governor was too busy to be interviewed in Austin last week. Media reports later revealed that he was on a five-day trip through California, which involved trying to coax companies east. His spokesman refused to name the companies.
We just bet he did.
Now when it comes to Texas, this ain’t our first rodeo. In fact, a mere 19 years ago (see photo evidence) your Calbuzzards conducted our own extensive, on-the-ground Actual Reporting about the state (key finding: no coincidence it’s where air conditioning was invented).
So our well-considered bottom line on Perry and all his budget bushwah is this: Just because a chicken has wings don’t mean it can fly. And that ole boy thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow. Anyways, he’s as fulla’ wind as a corn eatin’ horse.
Besides, we still live in California, and he’s still stuck in Texas.
