Melody isn't a member here, she gave me permission to cross-post this here - I wanted to be sure as many people as possible see this piece of brilliance by a Texas woman:
Hey, Gramm: Texan to Texan, Kiss My Whining Ass!
by Melody Townsel
Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 07:26:21 PM CDT
Back today from the gas station and the grocery store, Phil, returning to my home here in Dallas to find yet another fistful of bills in my mailbox.
As I crack open a beer and settle down to a brisk session of online billpay this evening, I want to take a few minutes first, Phil, to kvetch. To bitch. To moan. And to tell you, as I listen vaguely to MSNBC on the TV across the room cataloguing a long laundry list of the factors -- ranging from the gutting of the Fourth Amendment to $4.11 gasoline to Disney having to fight gun-toting employees to the doubling of insurance premiums over the last three years -- of all the reasons so many of us "whiners" believe America is in decline.
Just a few brief minutes before I get back to work to kvetch. To bitch. To moan. To tell you a little bit about the way life is these days for this Texas single mom. And, then, to tell you to go fuck yourself.
According to a business brief on Jan. 17, "Bank of America mum on job plan," our governor and Legislature loaned/gave California-based Countrywide Financial $20 million of taxpayer money to "create" 7,500 new jobs (about $2,700 per job) in Texas by 2010. The default provision of this loan/gift from the Governor's Texas Enterprise Fund calls for a repayment to the state of $854 for each job not "created" by a specific date.
Doing the math, it appears that Countrywide - or Bank of America - nets $13 million in hard-earned taxpayer dollars even if it fails to "create" a single job. [emphasis added]
Assuming the Associated Press figures are correct, it would seem that Gov. Rick Perry and his merry band - the stewards of our money - have given a new definition of "subprime."
Many Texas political observers (like the Center for Public Policy Priorities or Texans for Public Justice, for example) have long seen the Enterprise Fund as a corporate welfare fund, giving money away to companies that don't need it with little or no oversight of how the funds are spent. Given the shockwaves the subprime mortgage crisis is sending through worldwide financial markets, it doesn't seem right that apparently Countrywide is getting money for doing nothing.
One other thing: a number of House Democrats had amendments to last session's appropriations bill to de-fund or at the least rein in the Texas Enterprise Fund, and Tom Craddick slaughtered every one in one fell swoop.
