It appears that 19centuryman’s sworn enemy/popular choice for Republican candidate for president Rick Perry is running ads in Iowa.
Scratch that - Perry is still, of course, undecided. It’s a totally-not-at-all fake organization called Jobs for Iowa, whose website consists of nothing but the above video and one infinitely more absurd one.
What’s struck me as strange is how Perry’s leading with a giant heaping of easily disproven bullshit. He’s the (somehow) popular governor of the second most populous state in the nation, so you’d think he’d be able to fill thirty seconds of airtime without just out-and-out lying. It starts off well, as it’s impossible to argue with the fact that Texas has added more jobs in the last two years than the rest of the country. You’d think he’d follow that up with something about how he has zero regard for international law, because hating on the UN is always sexy.
Instead, we get:
And no deficit.
See, here’s the problem: despite whatever the Houston Chronicle wrote on June 27th, Texas actually has a colossal, crippling budget deficit that is wreaking havoc on state programs (you can read up on this here and here). All talk over the last several years about how the brilliant Texas state government had managed to stay in the black sans income tax was simply smoke and mirrors. They used federal stimulus money to plug the holes (while loudly decrying the disbursement of those funds), benefitted from only having to submit a budget every other year (or we would have found out over a year ago) and employed a little creative accounting. Also, most legislators signed an anti-tax pledge, so now the deficit can only be fixed via spending cuts - education, Medicare, etc. The final result: tens of thousands of state employees lose their jobs and more and more Texans head out of state for college, never to return (like yours truly. 19centuryman has always been ahead of the curve).
So, yeah - as of the end of June, Texas technically has no budget deficit because they gutted the majority of their public services due to lack of income.
A decade of balanced budgets.
Congratulations. Every state constitution demands a balanced budget. Since states don’t issue their own currency, bonds or securities, they cannot go into debt. This is like taking credit for roads. A DECADE OF PAVEMENT AND ASPHALT.
To sum up, here’s what we know: Rick Perry creates jobs. That is, if you are under the impression that the chief executive of a certain geographical area has any real effect on private sector job creation. He makes budget deficits disappear by eviscerating the public sector. Finally, Rick Perry does not flagrantly defy clearly defined rules and regulations set down in his state’s constitution (once again, he only defies international law and convention).
I’d say I can’t wait until Perry gets in an actual debate with someone, but I have the feeling certain elements of the Republican party will choose to get up in arms about that time Perry tried to make HPV vaccines kinda-sorta-almost mandatory for all Texas schoolgirls, because we all know that the only thing standing between our nation’s teenagers and a no-holds-barred pansexual orgy is the terrifying specter of the human papillomavirus. Seriously.
