Tag: Rick Perry

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TX Gov. Rick Perry proposes a “flat tax”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday that he wants to scrap America’s current tax laws and impose a flat tax.

He called the plan “an economic growth package that will create jobs, create growth and create investor confidence in America again.”

“It starts with scrapping the three million words of the current tax code, and starting over with something much simpler: a flat tax,” Perry said.

A flat tax applies the same tax rate to income at every level. The current tax code is progressive, taxing higher incomes at higher rates and lower incomes at lower rates.

Many conservatives argue a flat tax would be simpler and fairer because everyone would be taxed at the same rate.

Liberals and many moderates say a flat tax would make the tax system more regressive, giving big tax breaks to the wealthy while making low- and middle-income families pay more.

In his book, “Fed Up!” Perry suggests the flat tax as a possible policy prescription:

“One option would be to totally scrap the current tax code in favor of a flat tax, and thereby make taxation much simpler, easier to follow and harder to manipulate,” Perry writes in his book. “Another option would be to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution (which authorizes the taxation of income) altogether, and then pursue an alternative model of taxation such as a national sales tax or the Fair Tax.”
(via the AP)

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Herman Cain wins Florida straw poll

From the StarTribune: Business entrepreneur Herman Cain shocked the political world by winning the Florida GOP’s influential presidential straw poll Saturday, while Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann finished dead last in the field of eight candidates.

Cain, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO who appears to have caught fire in recent weeks, topped the GOP field with 37.1 percent of the 2,657 votes cast.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the current leader in most polls, finished second with 15.4 percent of the delegates’ votes in Florida, edging out former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who won 14 percent.

Michele Bachmann’s poor showing in Florida – receiving only 40 ballots, or 1.51 percent of the vote, seemed to further diminish the fast-waning luster of her campaign.

Unlike the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, nearly all candidates running were included on the Florida ballot, and delegates representing counties throughout the state paid their own way to the event. The last three Florida GOP straw poll winners have become their party’s nominee.

Among the rest of the field, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a perennial favorite among grass-roots GOP activists, came in fifth behind former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, each receiving a little more than 10 percent of the vote.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich finished sixth at 8.4 percent, and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman finished seventh with 2.2 percent.

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DOJ: Rick Perry’s TX Redistricting Plan Purposefully Discriminated Against Minorities

From TalkingPointsMemo: The Justice Department said late Friday that based on their preliminary investigation, a congressional redistricting map signed into law by Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry appears to have been “adopted, at least in part, for the purpose of diminishing the ability of citizens of the United States, on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group, to elect their preferred candidates of choice to Congress.”

DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is specifically contesting the changes made to Texas Districts 23 and 27, which they say would not provide Hispanic citizens with the ability to elect candidates of their choice.

Read more here.

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Chris Matthews: Gov. Rick Perry and “appeasement”

I completely agree with Chris Matthews on this point.

Quoting Chris Matthews: “At this very moment of national challenge, with the president doing what every friend of Israel — left, right and center — understands he needed to do, this person from Texas, this foreign policy ingenue, spotted his chance and he showed up in New York to make his diplomatic debut.”

“Mr. Perry, you did our president a disservice, our country a dishonor today. You showed that you do not understand the role of the American presidency in our national life. When a president acts to defend the United States, in this case on principle as well as national interest, we should all stand behind him.”

“If you don`t get that, you don`t get us — much less the job of representing us on the world stage which the president did so well and so courageously today.”

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Texas hits 24 year high in unemployment rate

As Gov. Rick Perry touts job creation and limited government on the campaign trail, the Texas’ unemployment rate hit a 1987 record in July and the Austin-area took the brunt of the state’s job losses in the public sector.

The Texas Workforce Commission said the jobless rate increased from 8.4 percent in July to 8.5 in August.

Having the state hit a 24-year high for unemployment rate could be coming at just the wrong time for Perry. Perry has long called Texas a national jobs-creation leader in a country besieged by unemployment. He traveled the country this week on a bus with “get America working again” painted on the side.

The latest unemployment numbers could weaken that message. The rate hasn’t been this high since the mid-1980s oil bust. And even though Texas has received numerous accolades for creating more jobs in recent years than any other state, 26 states had a lower unemployment rate in July.

The Texas rate is still lower than the country’s, which was 9.1 percent in August. But that gap is closing.

“If Gov. Perry takes the credit, he should take the blame,” said state Rep. Jessica Farrar of Houston, who leads the House Democratic Caucus.

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Rick Perry believes in building Afghanistan’s infrastructure

At last night’s GOP presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said we need to stay in Afghanistan in order to “continue to help them build the infrastructure that they need, whether it’s schools for young women like yourself, or otherwise.” Watch it:

   

But does Perry feel the same need to build American infrastructure?

President Obama’s jobs package contains much-needed infrastructure investments — including school improvements — yet Perry dismissed it as wasteful spending “guided by his mistaken belief that we can spend our way to prosperity.”

“Like the president’s earlier $800 billion stimulus program, this proposal offers little hope for millions of Americans who have lost jobs,” Perry said, ignoring the need for the infrastructure improvements.
(via ThinkProgress)

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Rick Perry loses no sleep over executions

At last night’s Republican Debate, one of the biggest responses from the audience came when it was announced that Rick Perry had executed more death row inmates than any other modern day governor. Rick Perry said he never struggles with the idea that any of the executed might have been innocent.

That’s despite the fact that during Perry’s tenure as governor, DNA evidence has exonerated at least 41 people convicted in Texas, Scott Horton writes in Harper’s. According to the Innocence Project, “more people have been freed through DNA testing in Texas than in any other state in the country, and these exonerations have revealed deep flaws in the state’s criminal justice system.” Some 85 percent of wrongful convictions in Texas, or 35 of the 41 cases, are due to mistaken eyewitness identifications.

Those exonerations include Cornelius Dupree, who had already spent 30 years in prison for rape, robbery, and abduction when DNA evidence proved unequivocally that he was not the man who had committed those crime. Tim Cole, the brother of Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis (D), was posthumously pardoned a decade after he died in prison when DNA evidence proved his innocence.

Leading the country in wrongful convictions probably should give Perry a moment’s pause about the reliability of a criminal justice process he described last night as “thoughtful.” Perry has allowed the execution of juveniles, the mentally disabled, and people who have had such inadequate counsel that their court-appointed lawyers literally slept through their trials.

And he may well have already executed an innocent man. The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for the arson deaths of his three daughters and maintained his innocence until his dying day, will likely continue to haunt Perry throughout the campaign. Several scientists and forensics experts have questioned the evidence that led to Willingham’s conviction, but Perry “squashed” an official probe into his execution.

Read more at ThinkProgress.org

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Rick Perry – 3rd Grade Humor (perhaps NSFW)

This Photoshopped picture of Rick Perry at the Iowa state fair is apparently making the rounds of internet blogs and websites with the following caption:

“Campaigning outside Pittsburgh today, GOP frontrunner Rick Perry attended a picnic at St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Oil City where he enjoyed a foot long corndog while touring the fabulous reproduction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.”

Very 3rd grade humor of me.  I know.

(Tee-hee….)

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Gov. Rick Perry cuts funding for firefighters – now requests federal aid for wildfires

From RawStory.com: Under Gov. Rick Perry this year, Texas slashed state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires like the ones that have recently destroyed more than 700 homes.

Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain were slated to have their funding cut 75% – from $30 million to $7 million.

The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid.

For that reason, aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could be more important than ever to the state where wildfires have recently been raging.

At a press conference Monday, Perry promised to seek federal disaster relief and said that FEMA would be in the state by Wednesday.

While the Texas governor has been highly critical of FEMA in the past, NOW he’s decided Texas needs the federal government.