If you've ever been in downtown Dallas on a Good Friday, you've probably seen people walking silently, some carrying signs bearing Bible verses, others carrying accompanying signs highlighting statistics on the plight of the poor, the sick and the hungry in Dallas and the state of Texas.
That's Dallas Area Christian Progressive Alliance, a group of theologians and laity, calling upon politicians claiming to be Christians to actually enact policies that improve the plight of "the least amongst us."
Today, DACPA has issued an open letter to Rick Perry, calling upon him to repent, a word which means "go a new way."
Happy Veterans Day. For those veterans who think Texas Republicans are here to help you, think again.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, and Speaker Joe Straus have joined with Republicans at state agencies to call for massive cuts to state agencies. Rick Perry, in particular, has made it a point to rail against government jobs. That counts, as well, for those few people who help our veterans navigate the bureaucracy of veterans benefits. From the Austin American-Statesman, "State agencies offer up 9,800 jobs to close budget shortfall"
The Texas Veterans Commission would lose 21 jobs , including three employees who help the families of wounded veterans find jobs. Thirteen of the eliminated positions — nine of which are now occupied — would be claims counselors who help veterans apply for medical and pension benefits with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
A veteran's chances of maximizing his or her federal benefits go up considerably when aided by the counselors, who can navigate the VA's labyrinthine bureaucracy and speak its distinct language, said Victor Polanco , a veterans counselor at the VA clinic on Montopolis Drive. "It can be cumbersome," he said.
Eliminating all 13 claims counselor positions would have the effect of reducing federal benefits to Texas veterans and their families by $88 million over the two years, and the state would lose $3 million in sales tax as a result, the agency estimates.
Perry compared election day to big athletic events: “Tomorrow is the final day of the World Series; it’s the Super Bowl,” which prompted his spokesman later to emphatically clarify that the governor was not predicting the Rangers would lose Monday night, but fervently rooting for the series to be extended.
Accidentally releasing his book early and then trying to cover it up -- to no avail, I have a copy right here -- all while explaining why he thinks Social Security is a failure. The mistaked caused the campaign by surprise and sent them into "damage control": First, from the Associated Press, "Rick Perry's new book focuses on states' rights"
The excerpts, which appeared on the publisher's website, were no longer available for viewing Monday evening. The book's publisher, Little, Brown and Co., did not immediately respond to a message left by The Associated Press.
Although Perry has made similar comments on the campaign trail, the release caught his campaign staff by surprise. They were going to release excerpts after Tuesday's election.
White pounced on Perry's thoughts on issues such as the Voting Rights Act and said the governor referred to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. A pro-White crowd in Corpus Christi booed.
Perry repeatedly declined to address the excerpts during a Monday campaign visit to a San Antonio restaurant, specifically questions about whether he equated Social Security to an illegal scam.
"You don't know what's in there," he said. The book is going to come out at the appropriate time."
White, apparently seeking to paint Perry as an extremist who is not focused on Texas, chided the governor during a stop in Corpus Christi on Monday after the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Perry's book calls Social Security a failure and compares it to a Ponzi scheme.
White called Perry's views on Social Security "alarming."
"He is trying to audition to be sort of a celebrity in the far right wing," White said.
An excerpt of Perry's book on his publisher's website was quickly taken down, but the report of his comments on Social Security put his campaign in damage-control mode.
(If Governor Perry really wants to run on the national stage, he's also going to have to think about how to answer for a lot of things, including all of this. - promoted by Phillip Martin)
Rick Perry is a corrupt career politician who will say and do anything to get elected. He is, without question, in it for himself. The ten-part series below focuses on some of the worst examples of his cover-ups and corruption.
If you have more to add, please leave them in the comments below. You can also see the full list of these articles here: Rick Perry's Cover-Up and Corruption:
There has not been a bigger or more important cover-up this election cycle, and perhaps for decades in Texas, than Rick Perry's refusal to come to grips and be honest about the $25 billion budget shortfall facing the state of Texas. Our state's budget crisis is going to devastate the future of our economy for years, if not longer, unless Texans do something about it immediately.
Texas faces a budget crisis of truly daunting proportions, with lawmakers likely to cut sacrosanct programs such as education for the first time in memory and to lay off hundreds if not thousands of state workers and public university employees.
Texas' GOPleaders, their eyes on the Nov. 2 election, have played down the problem's size, even as the hole in the next two-year cycle has grown in recent weeks to as much as $24 billion to $25 billion. That's about 25 percent of current spending.
The gap is now proportionately larger than the deficit California recently closed with cuts and fee increases, its fourth dose of budget misery since September 2008.
In recent months, Perry has been wildly erratic about the amount of the budget shortfall, at times saying it is nothing to worry about and only $10 billion large, and other times suggesting it is a major financial crisis that could be $21 billion large. When Bill White and Texas lawmakers requested the Comptroller to provide updated revenue estimates, Perry insisted on covering-up the budget projections and called the simple request for taxpayer transparency “bizarre.”
Perry has been quick to blame Washington and the national economic environment for the state’s budget shortfall. The Austin American-Statesman, however, has pointed out repeatedly that such a claim is highly disingenuous, in a column, "Budget mess got going with 2006 property tax cuts":
The economic downturn isn't helping the shortfall, but it's not driving it, either. The driving factor is a decision by Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature in 2006 to reduce property taxes by $14 billion every two years and raise only about $9 billion to replace that money. In other words, the Legislature committed $5 billion every two years to holding down property taxes instead of spending that money on education, public safety or other priorities. Then the state's new business tax brought in drastically less than projected, and that $5 billion gap turned into a nearly $9 billion gap.
Rick Perry has done his best to cover-up Texas’ dropout crisis, pushing false dropout numbers to hide the fact that at least 3 in 10 Texas high school students do not graduate from high school or get a GED in four years.Perry has spent months arguing about statistics instead of focusing on the true consequences of Texas’ dropout crisis, whatever the size.
Dropouts earn thousands of dollars less than high school graduates each year, and hundreds of thousands of dollars less over a lifetime.
Dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, pay less in taxes and be incarcerated -- all factors that hurt the Texas economy to the tune of $5 billion to $9 billion annually.
As the Houston Chronicle reported in their story, "Poverty, dropout rates bode grim future for state", the dropout crisis will have serious long-term damage to our state’s economy if Rick Perry continues to cover-up the problem:
If nothing changes, average Texas household incomes will be about $6,500 lower in 30 years than they were in 2000, according to Murdock's projections. That number is not adjusted for inflation, so it would be worse than it appears.
In the face of years of research showing the rate upwards of 30 percent, and as high as 50 percent in some large urban districts, Perry's camp insisted it was only about 10 percent.
"The percent of students who enter high school and eventually earn a diploma or equivalent, or who remain in pursuit of a diploma or equivalent, is 90 percent," Perry spokesman Mark Miner told the Chronicle's Gary Scharrer.
The number prompted laughter from a few, including Republican state Rep. Rob Eissler, chair of the House public education committee.
"Yeah. That's not what I base my stuff on," said The Woodlands lawmaker, who believes the figure is about 30 percent. "You've got to categorize that as a bit campaign rhetoric. If our dropout rate were just 10 percent, I'd be feeling a lot better."
Days before an expert was to give testimony, Rick Perry rearranged the board at the Texas Forensic Science Commission to appoint one of his top lieutenants, John Bradley, as the new Chair. Bradley immediately canceled a hearing on the death of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man who could possibly have been executed without having committed the crime he was accused of.
The Houston Chronicle describes the actions of the cover-up in the Rick Casey column, "The revolt of the scientists":
This was the first meeting of the commission under Bradley, who was appointed last September. His first official act was to cancel a meeting three days later at which the commission was scheduled to receive a report from a nationally renowned arson expert hired by the commission in its first high-profile case.
The meeting had drawn national attention because the expert found that the arson investigation that helped lead to the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for the murder of his children was badly flawed. It was especially controversial because Perry had rejected a request to delay Willingham's execution based on similar expert analysis.
Bradley unilaterally wrote the agenda for Friday's meeting to focus on new policies and procedures, omitting the Willingham report. He also unilaterally chose Harlingen (which is as close to Mexico City as to Fort Worth, where three of the nine uncompensated and busy commission members live), making wrong my snide prediction that he would hold the meeting in Presidio to discourage reporters.
Rick Perry has covered-up and refused to answer ethics complaints involving more than $1 million in potentially illegal expenditures. Perry was named as one of the worst governors in the nation for his history of ethical problems by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
One complaint zeroed in on the $816,000 in campaign dollars, reported in lump sums, for what Perry calls "mansion expenses." For months, Perry reported a flat monthly expense ranging from $3,000 or $6,500 as "mansion expenses" without any supporting detail -- a violation of campaign disclosure laws. The expenses were for Perry’s $10,000-a-month taxpayer funded rental mansion. Additionally, Perry failed to disclose $204,400 in debt on his College Station home from 2007-2009.
TPJ alleges that Perry violated campaign disclosure laws by not itemizing how it spent more than $800,000 for such items as food, beverages and flowers. Instead of itemizing the spending, the campaign routinely reports lump sums as much as $63,000 as simply "Mansion Fund." Since 2001, the campaign reported 145 “Mansion Fund” expenditures totaling more than $816,000, according to TPJ.
