(Community Matters) The Unraveling of the Texas Economic Miracle
from AAS postings:
• And now for Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. Perry has had some very strong poll numbers this week, but to the degree that he had a honeymoon period immediately after his announcement, it’s starting to end. The national media is finding some new anxieties about a Perry candidacy within the Republican Party, as well as picking up on stuff that has long been reported here in Texas.
Politico: “Cut the cowboy talk. That’s the message congressional Republicans facing the prospect of sharing a ballot next year with Rick Perry have for the newest GOP presidential candidate. In a series of interviews, uncommitted Republican members praised the Texas governor’s economic record but called his suggestion that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is guilty of treason a serious misstep and said that kind of inflammatory talk could scare off swing voters. House Republicans from heavily suburban districts were particularly uneasy about the Bernanke remark and Perry’s refusal to say whether President Obama is a patriot. … ‘This is a very critical period for Perry,’ said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman and longtime political strategist. ‘He’s got to prove he won’t self-destruct. There is only one race like the presidency and that’s the presidency. He’s been playing Triple-A ball until now.’ None of the Republicans interviewed said they would rule out backing Perry and each offered praise for the Texan, only saying he needs to find the right tone for a national campaign.”
• Wall Street Journal: “Texas Gov. Rick Perry used to be pretty frank when it came to the country’s Social Security system. In his fiery anti-Washington book, ‘Fed Up!’, published last fall when he had no plans to run for president, Mr. Perry called the program, which turned 76 on Monday, “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal.” He suggested the program’s creation violated the Constitution. The program was put in place, ‘at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government,’ he wrote, comparing the program to a ‘bad disease’ that has continued to spread. Instead of ‘a retirement system that is no longer set up like an illegal Ponzi scheme,’ he wrote, he would prefer a system that ‘will allow individuals to own and control their own retirement.’ But since jumping into the 2012 GOP nomination race on Saturday, Mr. Perry has tempered his Social Security views. His communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had “never heard” the governor suggest the program was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but “Fed Up!” is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program.
• Associated Press: “He calls it innovative. Others call it a big risk. In any case, the stem cell procedure that Texas Gov. Rick Perry had last month was an unusual experiment to fix a common malady: a bad back. Perry, the newest GOP presidential candidate, has access to the best possible care and advice. Yet he and his doctor chose a treatment beyond mainstream medicine: He had stem cells taken from fat in his own body, grown in a lab and then injected into his back and his bloodstream during a July 1 operation to fuse part of his spine. The treatment carries potential risks ranging from blood clots to infection to cancer and may even run afoul of federal rules, doctors say. At least one patient died of a clot hours after an infusion of fat-derived stem cells outside the United States. It’s not clear how much of this Perry might have known. … Perry ‘exercised poor judgment’ to try it, said Dr. George Q. Daley, of Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. ‘As a highly influential person of power, Perry’s actions have the unfortunate potential to push desperate patients into the clinics of quacks,’ who are selling unproven treatments ‘for everything from Alzheimer’s to autism.’”
• Bloomberg: “U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Texas’s school system “has really struggled” under Governor Rick Perry, a Republican candidate for president, and the state’s substandard schools do a disservice to children. ‘Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college,’ Duncan said on Bloomberg Television’s ‘Political Capital With Al Hunt’ airing tonight and tomorrow. ‘I feel very, very badly for the children there.’ …’You have seen massive increases in class size,’ Duncan said of the Texas public school system during Perry’s terms as governor since December 2000. ‘You’ve seen cutbacks in funding. It doesn’t serve the children well. It doesn’t serve the state well. It doesn’t serve the state’s economy well. And ultimately it hurts the country.’ … Mark Miner, a spokesman for the Perry campaign, responded to Duncan’s comments in an e-mail. ‘The president’s secretary of education may want to do a little more homework before commenting on education in Texas,’ he said. ‘Under Governor Perry, Texas has been a national leader in adopting college and career-ready curriculum standards that will ensure Texas students graduate prepared to succeed in college and the workplace.’”
• Bloomberg: “Governor Rick Perry made his pitch to Republican voters this week touting the Texas economic miracle and his ability to create jobs even during the longest recession since the Great Depression. Yet Perry, 61, may be choosing an opportune time to trade Austin for Washington. Projected Medicaid deficits as well as shortchanged schools threaten to hollow out the miracle, even as population gains pressure the government to spend more.”
• USA Today: “President Obama has headlined 127 fundraising events for himself and others, significantly outpacing the fundraising activity of the previous five presidents during their first terms, new research obtained by USA TODAY shows.”
• Washington Post: “Newly-minted presidential candidate Rick Perry got a taste Thursday of the rough-and-tumble nature of presidential politics, with protesters dogging him on the campaign trail, demanding to know whether he thinks Social Security is unconstitutional and begging him to follow through on threats of Texas seceding.”
• Texas Tribune: “If Rick Perry felt like the center of the universe in his first 18 years, he couldn’t have been faulted for it. He was reared in a tiny town so flat and barren he could see the blue-brown horizon from any direction, where life revolved around children — their school, their scouting, their sports. And he reveled in it.”
• Houston Chronicle: “With the population of Texas expected to double by the year 2050, Gov. Rick Perry is fond of saying that people have been “voting with their feet” for the state’s conservative governing principles. The additional population, however, has severely strained the state’s infrastructure. As Texas endures its most severe one-year drought in its history, state leaders have identified $53 billion in state investment needed to expand water capacity by 2060 but have not resolved how to pay for it. Unless Texas increases its water resources, experts say 83 percent of Texans will not have an adequate supply of water in times of drought. ‘If we don’t fund the water plan and get it going, 2050 is going to be chaotic,’ said Rep. Alan Ritter, R-Nederland. ‘As our population continues to grow, you’ve got to do the infrastructure. If you want people to leave Texas, then don’t have water.’”
• From the Statesman’s Mike Ward: “State parole officials said Thursday that 176 parolees have had their classification as sex offenders lifted since May as officials reversed a longstanding policy that subjected the convicts to extra monitoring even though they had not been convicted of sex crimes. An additional 300 parolees’ cases are being reviewed, according to Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.”
• Dallas Morning News: “A majority of Texas high school graduates who took the ACT this year lacked the skills to pass introductory college courses in math, reading and science, according to a report on the college entrance exam released Wednesday. In English, 60 percent of students showed they had the skills to pass the course, although that figure — like the numbers for reading and science — trailed the national averages in those subjects. Only in math did Texas students (48 percent) beat the national average (45 percent).”
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