Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
I’ve gone from amusement to alarm watching Rick Perry’s waltz toward Washington. His slap-happy bravado and implausible coyote-plugging antics once were merely eye-rolling fodder. Ranger Rick was a caricature, leading Texas to hell in a hand basket and ironically dubbing it prosperity. Blatantly taking copious amounts of donor money and then placing his cronies on boards of directors and in chancellorships across the Lone Star. Rogue land deals, fuzzy math, proselytizing like the pope on public property, Governor Perry rode roughshod over Texas as if he were bullet-proof.
His recent peek-a-boo game with the press has been stomach-burningly laughable--- “Governor, are you planning to run in 2012?” “Well ya know, boys, I run every day.” wink wink. “Ask me again tomorrow.” And then last weekend he poked his head out of the closet once again and unofficially reconfirmed his ambitions for the Oval Office. Just re-dipping his toe in the waters on Fox News as he assailed the federal government on education, health care and the environment. Hot button issues, they’re called. Well, yah. Touch one of these in Texas and it will burn a blister on your finger. But you couldn’t tell it from the swooning, pandering Glenn Beck.
It’s hard to believe that none of these pundits have checked (or are willing to publicly discuss) the stats in this man’s state. Just given his basic three talking points Sunday morning with Beck, here’s a surface glance at the numbers:
Education: Texas ranks 43rd out of 50 states in high school graduation rates. That means 1 out of 3 Texas students fail to graduate from our public schools.
Health care: Texas takes first place in the number of residents without health insurance. That’s 1 in 4 Texans, compared to 1 in 6 Americans according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Environment: We took the gold here as well, for total toxic pollutants released to land, air and water with Houston spewing the record-setting 18 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each and every year.
These basic stats were culled in a 5-minute rudimentary internet search of non-political sites, barely scratching the tip of these issues that Perry bizarrely touts as feathers in his cap. It’s curious that he left off our sky-rocketing teen pregnancy rates and the extraordinary number of death chamber executions he’s signed off on, given his marked propensity toward skewing numbers in his favor. I’m baffled. What is the allure? What entices these seemingly intelligent people to turn away from the facts and follow this pied piper as he snakes toward the black waters?
And this consternation is what led me on the short walk from amusement to alarm. It was only nine months ago that I witnessed this same trance-like phenomenon. I watched as gubernatorial candidate Bill White (and the Democratic Party, in general) failed to raise the warranted cacophony in regard to Perry’s budget deficit numbers (which we all knew were staggeringly low and then watched as they magically doubled the day after he was elected), his horrific environmental record (under Perry’ watch, Texas throws off more pollutants than entire countries around the globe) and his total disregard of Texas’ working class, ensuring that the wealthiest (campaign finance check writers) are sheltered from taxes as the middle class descends into poverty.
Even as Perry arrogantly ducked the press and repeatedly refused to debate his contemporaries on critical state policy issues during the last election, we somehow let his blatantly disastrous track record slide. And now, this coy non-candidate is asserting that he will run on a presidential platform which includes religious zealotry and the denial of global warming, and somehow, he is not getting laughed off the face of the planet. On these two issues alone, his abhorrent lack of grounding in science is terrifying.
I can’t explain it. Against all rational thought, this one-time Democrat turned career Republican politician promotes hate-spewing religious intolerance and the denial of human rights and somehow he draws massive crowds that chant and gush. Ironically, Rick Perry has become his hair, slick black teflon.
