Monday, August 15, 2011

Governor Good-Hair's Texas Miracle?

The most cogent comment about Texas Governor Rick Perry's character may well be the statement by a participant in a GOP primary opponent's focus group who - when presented with evidence that the Governor had given the green light to what increasingly looked like a wrongful death by lethal injection - responded: "It takes a lot of balls to execute an innocent man!"

We're not going to run with that.  Titanic sticks to humbler tasks. We'll merely suggest that it takes a lot of balls to claim - as Perry's been doing - a Texas economic miracle on the Governor's watch. The first two chapters in what looks to be an ongoing series of recommended reading on Perry's jobs record - HERE. And HERE.

The economic (& theological) wisdom of Gov. Perry: "We're going through difficult economic times for a purpose - to bring us back to those Biblical principles of, you know, you don't spend all the money." 

"The best way to get people back to work...is through more government spending"

Can't Democrats get out in front of this guy?
Jared Bernstein, the former chief economic advisor to Vice-President Joe Biden, suggests that the best political strategy for President Obama regarding government spending and the jobs crisis is to simply tell the truth:
There’s an article in today’s NYT on the economic debate within the White House.  The print version—not the online one—contains this quote from an admin official:
“It would be political folly to make the argument that government spending equals jobs.”

Taxes on billionaires are a joke

Channeling the ancient comedian's quip in a New York Times op-ed, billionaire Warren Buffet  analyses the fact of super-low taxes  on the mega-rich and says, "Take my  income...  Please!":
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.