You really have to like Rick Perry. As the unelected Texas governor who took over for George W. Bush when he ascended to the US Presidency in 2001, and then as the re-elected governor who drew 29% of the popular vote, we have a lot to credit Rick Perry for.
Like for instance how Rick Perry nearly single-handedly got thousands of acres of prime Texas agricultural land confiscated through eminent domain so that a foreign-owned corporation could build and then toll on a ribbon of concrete he wanted them to build.
It was only caneclled when a bunch of short-sighted landowners and the public at large objected, and a general popular uprising was threatened that Perry had to abandon this far-reaching vision.
Like for instance how Rick Perry signed an executive order to require that thousands of eleven-year old Texas female schoolchildren to receive a course of vaccinations for a strain of the Human Papilloma Virus or they wouldn’t be allowed to attend 6th grade.
After all, Merck, the maker of the vaccine stood to make a financial killing as a result of this executive order, and Rick Perry’s former chief-of-staff was then a paid lobbyist for Merck.
It was only brought to a screeching halt when the errant state legislature, fueled by outrage from parents from Beaumont to El Paso passed a bill nullifying Perry’s long-term vision quest for the health of all Texas children.
Like for instance how Rick Perry has helped keep Texas property values up, up, up by buying some lakefront property from a friend of his BFF for what seems to be $150,000 below market value, and then turned around a few years later to sell it to another friend of his BFF for what seems to be $350,000 above its appraised value.
Like for instance how Rick Perry appointed an earnest anti-science young-Earth creationist dentist to be chairman of the State Board of Education, which oversaw the revamping of the state’s K-12 science curriculum.
Only to have the State Senate vote not to confirm him in that office, but not until after some rather ill-deserved negative press tarnished the image of Texas from coast to coast, and some say, worldwide.
Like for instance how Rick Perry’s oversight on security in and around the Governor’s Mansion led to an unfortunate torching of same, resulting in his having to rough it in a rented Austin mansion and estate to the tune of $10,000 per month, plus plus.
Like how Rick Perry failed to commute the sentence of a self-described innocent father who lost his children in a fire, a fire that was laid at the feet of said father because of some really poor police forensics and laboratory work, and then acted to cover up that omission by appointing a foil to the Texas Forensic Science Commission which was in the process of reviewing that self-same botched forensics job.
Like how Rick Perry took $3 billion in federal economic stimulus money meant to ensure the continued employment of Texas’ teaching community, and used it instead to balance Texas’ budget.
Only to see the subsequent lay offs and reduction in force of thousands of Texas teachers over the ensuing months. Heck, they probably deserved it. Isn't Texas' drop-out rate the second highest in the US?
Like how Rick Perry turned down $555 million in federal funds meant to extend the unemployment benefits of thousands of Texas’ unemployed, only to replace it with a borrow and spend program likely to cost the state up to 4 times as much as what the feds offered.
Like how Rick Perry obtained national attention – and some say derision – when he failed to grasp the lesson heaped on The South when they lost “The War of Northern Aggression” ending for all time the notion that a state can secede from the Union whenever it takes a notion to.
Who can ever say that Texas deserved exactly what it got when it continually re-elected Rick Perry into one state office and then another for over two decades? Taking all of that into account, and all of Rick Perry’s accomplishments listed above, who can say that if Rick Perry is again returned to Austin Texas, at long last, will again get exactly what it deserves?
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