Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
As Rick Perry dukes it out with his fellow Republicans this fall, I’m thinking that it is probably about time to come up with a catchy campaign mantra. W’s was the oddly vague and unrealized “Compassionate Conservatism.” For Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid” will forever define his presidency. Following that train of thought, it’s actually all about economics for Perry too, but not necessarily the economic well-being of your average Texan.
Just to scratch the surface, Perry has collected over $17 million in the last decade in campaign donation checks from all the folks (or their spouses) he directly appointed to state agencies, boards and commissions. In that same time frame he swapped university regent appointments for $6 million in campaign donations from that set of well-heeled guys.
The paper trail is so thick it almost warrants runway lights leading directly to his mansion. Not, by the way, the white columned antebellum we foot the bill for in downtown Austin. You can follow the yellow brick road to the tony west Travis County rental on which Perry has dropped an additional $600,000 in taxpayer funds thus far, basking by the pool reading his subscription to Food and Wine magazine, compliments of me and you.
And speaking of food and wine, I was just thinking about Sweet Anita the other day and how she had been strangely quiet for the past decade. Then voilà, there she was front and center in the Austin American Statesman last week. Seems that for just $5,000 a month, Mrs. Perry runs a non-profit organization funded in large part by – wait for it – Perry campaign donors. Slick Rick somehow figured out how to slip his wife onto the financier dole. God, there’s so much laundering going on I can almost taste the suds.
To date, his governorship has cornered the market on funneling piles of cash directly into his campaign coffers and then flushing it straight out the back door to his political donors’ business bank accounts in the form of lucrative deals, tax breaks and appointments. Once you wrap your mind around that concept, his reasoning is pretty simple to navigate.
With a wink and a nod he has acquiesced to anyone willing to cut him a fat check, regardless of how it nails Texas. What’s so obscene, past the wanton disregard of basic ethics, is the in-your-face manner in which he does his political whoring and the fact that he’s so flamboyant about it.
And suddenly this mantra issue seems like a no-brainer. I figure, given his previous yell leader credentials, he could easily emulate Tom Cruise in “Jerry Maguire”, pump his fist in the air and bellow, “Show me the money!” It will come as no surprise to his fat-cat donors. They already knew they “had him at hello.”
