Rick Perry is Against Government “Overreach”

There I wrote it down without laughing uproariously and didn’t stop typing until I hit the last keystroke. Rick Perry is against government overreach. See? I did it again. Well, this time with one or two chuckles.

Tomorrow marks the last day that Perry can issue any vetoes on any bill passed by the legislature in the last session, and Rick Perry just got out his well-used veto stamp and vetoed the legislation that would make it illegal for someone to drive and send a text message at the same time.

Rick Perry would rather make it still possible for  kids and adults to take their eyes, and their attention, away from the road sending text messages to their friends and relatives than have his state blamed of “government overreach.” I swear. It’s here.

And this line in his veto statement absolutely floored me:

“I support measures that make our roads safer for everyone, but House Bill 242 is a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults.”

So Rick Perry is against the overreach of Big Government.

This is the same guy who, a couple of years ago, wanted to force every 11 year old female in Texas to be immunized against Human Papilloma Virus or HPV. This isn’t a simple injection, it was to be a course of injections over a few weeks. Thankfully, it didn’t happen and Perry’s ex-staffer who works for Merck – maker of the HPV vaccine – didn’t get his bonus from his boss.

This is the same guy who just signed into law the Sonogram Bill, the one that he specifically requested “emergency legislation” for. Forcing a woman to hear her doctor say things to her that she may not want to hear isn’t government overreach but preventing people from texting while driving is.

Texting while driving impairs ones ability to drive safely. By this logic then, government forbidding people from impairing their driving ability by drinking and then driving is also government overreach.

I need a drink.

UPDATE: Late word is that when Rick Perry vetoed the driver texting bill auto insurance companies across the state uncorked the champagne. Seems this bill would have driven down insurance premiums. Now that more of us will be dying or maimed in traffic accidents because of Rick Perry's veto, the insurance premiums can stay high.

In any Republican move that seems insane on its face, follow the money.

Bush Threatens to Veto NCLB Reauthorization

But not for the reasons given.

George “I’ve Got a Veto Stamp” Bush has threatened to veto a bill being voted upon this week. It is the bill to reauthorize and revamp the 2001 “No Child Left Behind Act” – a little gift that the state of Texas, through its ex-governor, has foisted upon a nation.

Why, oh why would Bush want to refuse to reauthorize his own worthless piece of legislation, one would ask? From the Washington Post:

“’I know No Child Left Behind has worked,’ Bush said as he urged Congress to revise the law to increase flexibility for state and local agencies without watering down the annual testing and enforcement provisions that give it teeth. ‘If Congress passes a bill that weakens the accountability system in the No Child Left Behind Act, I will strongly oppose it and veto it.’”

What Bush isn’t telling you is that where the act has worked it hasn’t been due to any help from the feds. NCLB is, as they say, an unfunded mandate. The feds dictate to the states and school districts what they want and how these established benchmarks are to be evaluated through standardized tests. Bush says that by loosening the accountability system it weakens the entire thing. The accountability system mandated by NCLB, but paid for by the states.

Oh, please.

It couldn’t really be, could it, that the new NCLB act provides federal funding, previously promised federal funding, to support the goals of NCLB, but our friends in the Bush Regime simply can’t see wasting that kind of money, to the tune of up to $50 billion, on a bunch of lazy brats. Not when there is a war to fight. Not when there are bills to pay to Halliburton and Bechtel.

Squealing about a lack of accountability is really just smoke and mirrors, you watch. You watch when congress puts back in the accountability issues Bush is whining about, but keeps the federal funding intact.

Then, I think, they’ll be singing a different tune.

But really, really, this isn’t S-CHIP, where there are children’s health issues and lives in the balance. This is NCLB: the single greatest insult on American Education in decades. So, OK, George, do it. Veto NCLB. Veto it again and again. Veto it until all of a sudden we all wake up, it’s 2009, and we all realize that NCLB is NOT the be-all end-all in education.

It is, in fact, the biggest mess ever foisted on children 18 and under.

So . . . OK, George, veto NCLB . . . make my day.

Bush Vetoes Bipartisan Health, Education and Labor Bill

Simply amazing. George Bush does not know how low he can go. Each passing week brings more and more jaw-dropping vetoes from this lame duck president.

It’s just that he, in his own words, doesn’t want to become irrelevant.

It was HR 3043, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008. An appropriations bill that would have allocated $606 billion to an amazing array of good domestic projects. For an abbreviated list, take a look here where they have posted Nancy Pelosi’s statement on Bush’s veto.

But Bush said that it was too much money and that this congress, supposed to be fiscally conservative, was “spending money like a teenager with a new credit card”. He said it was full of pork barrel projects. Maybe, but not likely. And not at all like Bush’s favorite pork barrel project, no way nearly as costly as the War in Iraq that has made Bush’s cronies as rich as Croesus in war profiteering.

A completely disingenuous political move. Bush complained that this bill, to fund so many worthy domestic projects, put him $22 billion over his budget, got his veto stamp out, used it, then used a pen to sign a $471 billion Defense Dept. appropriations bill. This is the bill that buys the pencils, paper clips, and toilet seats for the Pentagon. The veto also comes on the heels of a recent report that looks into the hidden costs of conducting two wars in the Middle East. Bush’s 0.8 trillion dollar war is more like one and a half trillion dollars once you factor in things like higher cost of oil, lost productivity and interest payments on money borrowed to finance the wars.

Hundreds of billions for defense, but not a penny for a cure for cancer, not a dime for Project Head Start.

It’s S-CHIP all over again I’m afraid. In Congress, they are again about a baker’s dozen votes below an override, only 53 Republicans voted for the bill. In the Senate, there was a huge margin, 73-19. And in the Senate, again Texas’s senators cancelled out each others’ vote with Hutchison voting yea, and Rubber Stamp Cornyn voting Nay with his 18 Republican friends.

On Rick Perry's Support of Idling Buses

Remember a couple of days back when I was scratching my head about Rick Perry’s veto of Scott Hochberg’s HB 3457? The bus idling bill? Well, in today’s Austin American-Statesman there is an entire article devoted to this veto, so I looked to it for some answers.

Guess what? There still aren’t any. No one knows why Perry vetoed this bill. All anyone can conclude is what Jim Marston, head of the Texas office of Environmental Defense says: “Either (Perry) doesn't understand what (the proposal) does or somebody who didn't have the decency to stand up and testify misled him”.

We also learn that there was one message left on Perry’s voice mail that asked him to veto the bill. One. Who was it? No one knows.

Maybe, or maybe no one is saying.

It really is a one-off deal. There was no prior communication or discussion from Perry’s office about any problems he was having with the bill. None. The veto just came in out of the blue.

I just don’t get it. No one is going to make any money if he vetoes this bill; it was a win-win bill, or as Scott Hochberg says “Here's a chance to both save the taxpayers' money and improve health. Usually those things are in conflict. Here you get to do both.”

It’s an enigma and it gets worse. Fellow Republican Governor of Vermont, Jim Douglas, just signed one of these bills into law last month.

No, no one can come up with a reasonable answer or explanation of his veto, so maybe we have to come up with an unreasonable one. Like maybe it got stuck in the wrong pile and . . . oops . . . he stamped his veto and signed it. Too embarrassed to ask for another copy, he had his staff cobble up a veto statement that sounded pretty much like “I vetoed it because it was a bad, bad, bill.”

That’s all I can come up with.

Sad, huh?

Get Ready to Protest Bush’s Veto of HR 1591 in Sugar Land, Texas.

Now that both the House and Senate have passed HR 1591, the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007, we have to get ready for Bush’s veto of it.

Here is what our president said of the resolution:

“I’m gonna veto it”.

I know that I keep going back to Mike Gravel rant of a couple of nights ago but what he said was too true: “George Bush communicated over a year ago that he would not get out of Iraq until he left office. Do we not believe him?”

The veto will happen and Sugar Land, Texas, is mad as a box of frogs. Yes the people in Tom DeLay’s old stomping grounds, are determined to let the president know about it.

Here is the message I received from a couple of places today. Get ready to go down to the Sugar Land Town Center Courtyard – right next to the Town Hall sometime in the next few days.

“Dear Texans who have had enough of our President's misguided (to say The very least!)use of our military,I am planning a Post Presidential Veto "Protest Rally" at the SugarLand Town Hall (Town Center Court Yard) the day after the official veto. We can guess, but we cannot know exactly when that will be. It will also be necessary to time this event, so that we do not overlap with prior scheduled events. I can only say, at this time, to please be open for Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. I will let you know our schedule as soon as I know when the veto is official.”

“Here's a large, black-and-white sign that you can print at home. http://pol.moveon.org/vetorally/veto_tiled_bw.pdf Please feel free to print your own signs, however, we will be on TV,so don't embarrass yourself with printed words that "can't be said on the radio." (If you don't know what I mean here, email me.)”

Nancy Hentschel

There was a phone number there but I don’t have permission to post it at this time so instead, when I get word as to when the event will take place I will post the time on the blog.

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