Who says politics can’t be good for business?
Not Rick Perry’s political donors, anyways. So much for small government:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has powered his political career on the largesse of donors like Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, who gave the governor $1.12 million in recent years.
And donors like Simmons have found the rewards to be mutual, reaping benefits from Texas during Perry’s tenure.
Perry has received a total of $37 million over the last decade from just 150 individuals and couples, who are likely to form the backbone of his new effort to win the Republican presidential nomination. The tally represented more than a third of the $102 million he had raised as governor through December, according to data compiled by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice.
Nearly half of those mega-donors received hefty business contracts, tax breaks or appointments under Perry, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis.
For example:
Auto magnate B.J. “Red” McCombs, who contributed nearly $400,000 to the governor, is the primary financial backer for a Formula One racetrack to be built near Austin. The state has pledged $25 million a year in subsidies to support the project.
The Houston-based engineering firm of James Dannenbaum, who gave more than $320,000 to Perry, received multiple transportation contracts from the state. In 2007, Perry appointed Dannenbaum to a coveted post on the University of Texas‘ board of regents.
A Mississippi-based poultry company run by Joe Sanderson, who gave $165,000 to Perry, received a $500,000 grant from a state business incentive fund championed by Perry to open a chicken hatchery and processing plant in Waco.
Limited government for thee, but not for me!
You know, I have a confession. A part of me always liked George W. Bush. Not as a politician, not as a maker of wars, but as a person he seemed okay. A poor judge of character, sure, but a guy who wanted to do the right thing and just couldn’t seem to manage it no matter how hard he tried, forever in his father’s shadow.
Rick Perry, on the other hand, has me spooked. For one thing, he’s killed a lot more people than Bush did as governor. And, by all appearances, he’s even more hawkish than his predecessor. And there’s just something about him…I can’t put my finger on it, but something about the man just rubs me the wrong way.
So let’s hope that Larison is right, and Perry and Bachmann cannibalize one another. I don’t like Romney, but I suspect I could live with a Romney presidency. A second, even more extreme Texas governor?
We can do better than sloppy seconds, America.
Update.
This just in:
Via the Dish.
The line between tough talk and creepy violent has to be drawn somewhere.
And the comments about how E.D. is really a tool of the far left should begin right about…Report
Not possible! I just wrote a post about how much I admire Ron Paul…Report
Oh Erik. Sweet, naive Erik…Report
Ooh! Oooh! Can I place bets that the comment will quote Erik to the effect that the line must be drawn between tough talk and creepy violent, then quote Obama about bringing a gun to a knife fight, and then make some point about liberal propaganda?Report
And here I thought the dogpile came from all sides.Report
Oh no, it does! The fact that E.D. is a tool of the far left should not blind us to the fact that he’s a fat cat right wing glibertarian who drinks the tears of poor orphan children. He contains multitudes.Report
Jeb Bush is available for VP!
Perry/Bush 2012!Report
For myself, I’m trying to keep from making a decision one way or another about the guy, since to date he’s been more of a Name Whispered than a real guy, if you know what I mean. And as far as the whole saying you’re a Champion of Small Government and then using government growth as a way to secure power… well that’s just the GOPs thing, I think. It seems unfair to point this out about Perry and ignore it with, like, every other serious candidate or sitting governor.
But still…
I know what you mean about him having this thing that makes you uneasy that you can’t put your finger on. I feel this too.Report
A Mississippi-based poultry company run by Joe Sanderson, who gave $165,000 to Perry, received a $500,000 grant from a state business incentive fund championed by Perry to open a chicken hatchery and processing plant in Waco.
And people call Warren Buffet a smart investor.Report
E.D. may be a ‘tool’ but I’m not so sure it’s for the left.
Compared to Barry and his politics of poverty (PoP), the gubernor of Texas is a ‘man of the people’, a heroic defender of liberty, and better looking than Mitt.Report
Do you think this because Perry describes himself this way? Because all evidence is to the contrary. Saying something does not make it so.Report
Policy positions will kill him in the general election. Although he seems to have a reasonable head on his shoulders regarding immigration.Report
Oh Bob, the things you say.Report
I agree that, finally, in a generic way, Bush always did want to do the right thing. I can’t say I always thought that, but I came to think it. But I think that only to the extent that it is true as an empty conceptual construct; I think there was essentially no moral content to that desire to do right. I think this because I think that because he came during his middle-aged-adolescence period (i.e. the vulnerable years after he gave up drinking) to adopt a morally defective worldview that manifestly led him to make disastrous policy choices when he was given the reigns of greatest power; and he lacked the discipline and moral reasoning skills to lead himself out of that philosophical morass before letting them lead him to guide his country into a deep, deep real-world hole.
So at some level, yes, he deeply wanted to do right, but generically desiring to do right in high(set) political while being unwilling or unable to do the hard work to bring your vision of what is right reasonably into line with what will actually avoid causing untold harm to, first, your constituents, but also the world at large, is not enough in my view to give credit for actually wanting to do right in a meaningful way.
To really in fact want to do right, you have to try hard to do the math right and get an answer that is in the ballpark. On the issues George W. Bush chose to make the center of his presidency, I don’t think he did his work hard enough nor well enough to be given credit for truly wanting to do the right things. He only wanted to do the right thing as a matter of tautology, of a=a. Everyone should want to do the right thing, so he did. The question is what that means.Report
I interpreted it as a mater of integrity. He was very sincerely wrong, therefore you feel bad for him, like you do for a nice guy failing an assignment in class. He tries so hard, he just doesn’t get it.Report
“To really in fact want to do right, you have to try hard to do the math right and get an answer that is in the ballpark.”
This sounds a lot like “I know you mean well but unless you agree with me you’re wrong”.Report
I don’t really get this whole “Texas took Federal money! Perry took campaign donations!” thing.
Do you also tell vegans that they’re hypocrites because their macrophages eat bacteria?Report
I don’t think Erik is complaining about accepting donations. I think it’s the giving huge amounts of public cash to those that did that he has concerns about. This seems a pretty non-partisan thing to not like.Report
I think any attempt at calling that video a ‘threat’ is just ludicrous.Report
Not to mention when E.D. accuses Perry of killing people. I guess hyperbole is considered to be a substitute for intelligent argument.Report
Your line that, ‘there’s just something about him’, brings to mind a Frontline I watched recently covering the Willingham execution. In the clip someone off camera asks Perry about the new report by independent arson investigators saying that the fire was not arson, to which Rick Perry replies, (something along the lines of) ‘He was a bad guy, the kind of guy that beats his wife, and he’s ended up were bad people should be’. This, to me, gets at what I find so troubling about him. He has a simplicity in his worldview, mixed with an unwarranted confidence, that can lead someone to execute a possibly innocent man and go through little or no soul searching.
Couple that with his decision to fire the head of the investigative committee that was tasked with looking at the arson science as used in Texas right before they were to release their report, and it becomes hard not to despise the man.
I also realize that I have no way of knowing whether Perry undergoes any soul searching after agreeing to executions. It’s pure speculation, so do with it what you will.Report
I agree with your assessment of why it’s a good thing that Al Gore didn’t win the 2000 presidential election.Report
I don’t support Perry — I think he’s a Rightist statist — but if the Left doesn’t stick to the issues and continues their politics of personal destruction, it’s going backfire and elevate Perry among those who already hate the media.Report
Quoting a candidate’s public statements and examining his public record doesn’t really count as “the politics of personal destruction”.Report
It does if he’s a Republican.Report