| This may be the grossest thing I have ever seen...
According to Jason Embry, Rick Perry will meet with uber-conservative Grover Norquist today.
Gov. Rick Perry plans to be in the Dallas area on Tuesday to meet with national anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, whose no-new-taxes pledge has been signed by many Texas legislators and Perry himself. The two are likely to appear together in front of the media at some point. Norquist is coming to Texas to raise money for his group, Americans for Tax Reform.
This comes n the heels of Rick Perry's refusal to meet with Texans affected by the massive $31 billion budget shortfall-- ADAPT.
Last week, disabled Texans attempted to meet with Governor Perry in his office. When the staff refused their request to meet and took semi-violent actions, a sit in occurred.
A person involved said on background:
A few members of ADAPT showed up to meet with the Governor's staff. When ADAPT opened the door the Governor's staff rushed the door slamming one ADAPT member's hands in the door for several minutes. The Governor's office finally shut and locked the door, and turned all the lights out in the office.
40 ADAPT OF TEXAS members have now occupied the 2nd floor offices of the Governor chanting and demanding that RP support using all of the Rainy Day fund and make no cuts to home and community services.
Mark Miner had a truly incentive quote about the protests in the San Antonio Express News.
He said people with disabilities who protested outside the GOP governor's offices Tuesday blocked employees and visitors to gubernatorial offices: "Their actions ... are not the way to get a meeting with the governor."
Bold statement saying ADAPT members and onlookers said the protest started because of the way Perry's office responded.
The Express News continued saying:
Instead, their actions got stanchions and ropes set up to protect the area surrounding Perry's offices from the public, along with a Department of Public Safety officer standing guard. They also got some attention for the issue - and a court date.
Eleven people - nine using wheelchairs - each were issued a summons and charged with criminal trespass, a Class B misdemeanor, for staying at the Capitol past its 10 p.m. closing time, said DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange.
The protesters with disabilities want lawmakers to protect the home and community services that allow them to live outside of nursing homes. They want them to use all of the rainy-day fund, which is expected to have $9.4 billion that could be spent with a supermajority vote of lawmakers.
Bob Kafka, a statewide organizer with the disabilities rights group ADAPT of Texas, said such cuts don't make sense economically or for people's lives.
"One of the chants we used while outside the governor's office was: 'I'd rather go to jail than die in a nursing home,'" Kafka said. People with disabilities weren't the only ones protesting.
Miner, a man who needs to be in the public spotlight attacking Texans, echoed very similar positions to theDallas Morning News.
Last week, Perry refused to meet with people will have to feel the full brunt of the Republican Parties inability to manage our state budget and forceful resistance to collect outstanding fees or fix broken revenue models. Today, he will meet with the man who believes we should shrink government responsibility to be so small it can be "drowned in a bathtub".
We continue to see Perry and the Republican Parties misplaced priorities.
For more fun, read some Grover Norquist quotes here. |
