LORD GOVERNOR PERRY
THE ELEPHANT IS SOMEBODY’S ROOM
Frank Rich in describing O’Donnell the candidate for Biden’s old Senate seat in Delaware gave the best description of the Republican Party I have come across in some time:
She gives populist cover to the billionaires and corporate interests that have been steadily annexing the Tea Party movement and busily plotting to cash in their chips if the G.O.P. prevails.
I was reading about Texas Governor Perry today and his particular brand of graft really struck me.
The Dallas Morning News came out with a story this weekend that Texas Gov. Rick Perry used the state’s Emerging Technology Fund to funnel some $16 million to firms that were backed by major donors to his campaign.
Created in 2005, Perry pushed for the fund, which is meant to encourage the development of new technology and attract researchers to the state. The grants — which have totaled $173 million since the fund’s creation — are overseen by the governor’s office and must be approved by the governor himself.
The lieutenant governor and speaker of the state house must also sign off, the News reports, but they wait for governor’s go-ahead before doing so.
On Perry’s own blog site you will be linked to gems like this:
Gov. Rick Perry today announced the state is investing $2.9 million through the Texas Emerging Technology Fund (TETF) in three Houston area companies for the development and commercialization of their innovative biomedical technologies.
Ricky is so proud of this fund.
If you recall, back in March of last year we learned that:
From the center of a Houston hardware store, Gov. Rick Perry ignited a debate about Texas job cuts, business taxes and President Barack Obama’s so-called economic stimulus program Thursday by rejecting the federal government’s offer of $555 million in aid to the unemployed.
And this from today:
“If you care about America, if you care about taking this country back, you find you a tea party. Get involved,” Perry shouted to thousands who gathered in Tyler in East Texas to see him with conservative talk show host Glenn Beck in April.
But as Perry campaigns for a third full term, he may have to look for a tea party himself. While members of the movement say Perry is preferable to Democrat Bill White, many are focusing their energy on down-ballot races, not the top-of-the-ticket contest.
After all, Perry’s record after 10 years as governor shows that he wields government power comfortably. And after 25 years in public life, he’s hardly an outsider.
He advocated seizing land from private owners to make way for the now-defunct Trans-Texas Corridor toll road and he ordered school age girls in Texas to be vaccinated against the HPV virus — an order that the Legislature overrode. He accepted stimulus money from Washington to balance the state budget. State agencies under his control seized more than 400 children from a polygamist compound in West Texas where men were suspected of marrying underage girls; eventually, many were returned to their parents. He endorsed moderate Rudolph Giuliani for president in early 2008, then John McCain. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D9IKVTQ80.html
Except for saving underage girls from a fate worse than death (no snark intended), I have no love for Governor Perry. If you recall he is the idiot who feels that pursuant to some treaties between the Republic of Texas and the USA in the 1840’s, secession is more than just a possibility in his mind.
And did you notice on his site that he likes to kind of call his state a republic?
I was intrigued by this now-defunct trans Texas Corridor, however.
So The Gov said to Texicans,
Give me fund
Texas said “Gov
You must be putting us on”
Perry said “No”
Texas said “What”
“You can do what you want to do
But we all gotta run”
So Texas said where do you want this bribin’ done
Perry said
“Right on Highway 61”
I followed up the link provided by TPM and found this in the Dallas News:
Significant Perry donors are affiliated. Among them:
•$2.75 million to Terrabon Inc., a Houston company. Its backers have included Phil Adams, a college friend of Perry’s who has given his campaign at least $314,000.
•$1.75 million to Gradalis Inc., a Carrollton firm. Among its investors has been Dr. James R. Leininger, who has contributed more than $264,000 to Perry’s campaigns.
•$1.5 million to ThromboVision Inc., a Houston company. One of its investors was Charles W. Tate, who has donated more than $424,000 to Perry.
•$4.5 million to Convergen Lifesciences Inc. of Austin. The company was founded by David G. Nance, a former Perry appointee who has given the governor $80,000.
•$2 million to Seno Medical Instruments Inc. of San Antonio. Its investors have included Southwest Business Corp. and its subsidiaries, whose chairman, Charles Amato, gave Perry more than $32,000.
•$975,000 to Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. of Houston. At the time of the award, one investor was William A. McMinn, who has contributed $152,000 to Perry.
The tea parties are idiots for following repubs. All Perry will ever do, all he has ever done, is funnel monies to the corporations who support him and deny their own economic interests.
EIPILOGUE
Corporate America finished the second quarter with “near-historic” profits, largely by cutting costs, laying off employees and streamlining operations, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Profits for companies in the S&P 500 soared 38 percent from the same period last year, hitting $189 billion, the WSJ says, the sixth-highest quarterly total ever. S&P analysts expect the trend to have continued in the third quarter.
Since 2008, corporate profits increased 10 percent — but revenue was down 6 percent, the WSJ says. To achieve the impressive quarterly results, companies have had, as the WSJ puts it, to “streamline” their operations. This means firing workers, outsourcing labor and shuttering unprofitable (or less profitable) divisions.
The robust state of corporate profits presents a paradox: companies won’t spend their money until the economy improves, but the economy won’t improve until they spend their money. An increase in hiring, for example, would help drive a recovery. The New York Times reports this “chicken-and-egg” phenomenon, noting that near-zero interest rates have encouraged companies to borrow money and simply hoard it because, as the NYT puts it, “they can.” Combined, companies have $1.6 trillion in cash, the paper notes. In the first quarter of this year, their cash reserves represented the highest percentage of assets since 1964.
“They are still holding on to more cash in the same way that Noah built the ark,” Gluskin Sheff chief economist David Rosenberg told the NYT.
Once Upon A TPM 