Rick Perry enters presidential race with Obama broadside
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, surrounded by his family, waves to the crowd after announcing his run for president, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2011 in Charleston, S.C.
/ APUpdated 4:10 p.m. ET
CHARLESTON, S.C. and AMES, Iowa -- Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his bid for the 2012 Republican nomination in South Carolina on Saturday with a speech grounded in attacks on President Obama for "downgrading" America.
"It's time to get America working again," Perry told 700 conservative activists packed into at Charleston hotel ballroom. "Page one of any economic plan to get American working is to give a pink slip to the current residents in the White House."
In South Carolina, host to the nation's third presidential primary, Perry vowed to apply what has worked in Texas during his ten years as governor to Washington - balancing the budget and cutting government spending.
"America is not broken, Washington, D.C., is broken," Perry said.
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Perry enters the race as a serious contender for the nomination, one with the potential to combine establishment support (and the strong fundraising that comes with it) with the backing of social and fiscal conservatives.
Stylistically reminiscent of his predecessor as Texas governor who won the presidency - George W. Bush - Perry's calling card is Texas' strong record of job creation: 40 percent of the nation's new jobs since June 2009 are in Texas. The state's unemployment rate is about one-point below the national rate of 9.1-percent, and 25 states' are lower.
"One in six work-eligible Americans cannot find a full-time job -- that is not a recovery, that is an economic disaster," Perry said.
While Perry spent some of his speech discussing his own record, he spent most of his time attacking the current White House occupant. He criticized Mr. Obama's "unbridled fixation" on spending and suggested the president's "big spending, big government policies" have "prolonged our national misery, not alleviated it."
"Recovery is a meaningless word if the bank has foreclosed on your home, if you're underwater on your mortgage, or if you are up to the max on your credit card debt," he added. "Mister President, let us tell you something: You cannot win the future buy selling America off to foreign creditors. We cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership."
He called the $14 trillion federal government debt "generational theft" and attacked the president's handling of the debate over raising the nation's debt ceiling, during which time Standard and Poor's lowered the United States' credit rating to AA+ from AAA.
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Perry said, "The fact is for nearly three years, President Obama has been downgrading American jobs, he's been downgrading our standing in the world, he's been downgrading our financial stability, he's been downgrading our confidence, and downgrading the hope for a better future for our children."
Change in America will not come from Washington, Perry said, but from the "wind-swept prairies of middle America, the farms and the factories from across this great land...patriots who will not be consigned to a fate of less freedom in exchange for more government."
Echoing a cry of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, Perry said it is an "injustice" that nearly half of all Americans do not pay any income taxes "and the liberals out there are saying that we need to pay more."
"As Americans, we realize, there is no taxpayer money that wasn't first earned by the sweat and toil of one of our citizens," he said.
In his announcement speech, Perry vowed to repeal Mr. Obama's health care reform, simplify the tax code and business regulations, and curb government spending.
He also labeled Mr. Obama's foreign policy an "incoherent muddle" and suggested the his polices were based on "failed Western European social values."
Perry accused Obama of "thumbing his nose at traditional allies like Israel," where Perry said Mr. Obama "seeks to dictate new borders."
Perry made no mention of the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, the military action in Libya, Arab Spring, al Qaeda, or terrorism, but displayed some rhetorical swagger.
"Look, it's pretty simple -- we're going to stand with those that stand with us, and we will vigorously defend our interests, and those who threaten our interests, harm our citizens, we will simply not be scolding you, we will defeat you," Perry said.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said after the speech that Perry's "economic record is no miracle - it's a tall tale," a reference to the so-called "Texas miracle." As Democrats are quick to note, many of the jobs created in Texas under Perry pay minimum wage.
"Governor Perry allowed special interests to write their own rules, hired corporate lobbyists to oversee corporations, and cut funding for programs that would create opportunity for middle class families," said LaBolt. "In a Republican field that has already pledged allegiance to the Tea Party and failed to present any plan that will benefit the middle class or create the jobs America needs to win the future, Governor Perry offers more of the same."
Perry made the announcement as many of his rivals were in Ames, Iowa, competing in the Republican party's quadrennial straw poll. The timing of his campaign launch was seen as an attempt to deflate any momentum to come out of the contest for Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty or the other contenders competing in Iowa.
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Americans for Rick Perry, which was working on behalf of the governor in advance of his announcement, was working to get Iowans to write Perry's name in on the straw poll ballot. In one tent at the straw poll, a standing-room crowd, many dressed in Perry T-shirts, watched the speech, applauding throughout. One man said he got a call a few days ago from the "Perry campaign" asking if they could buy his ticket to the straw poll. He took them up on the offer and said he would write Perry in on the straw poll ballot.
Perry traveled to New Hampshire later Saturday and goes to Iowa on Sunday for a three-day swing through the crucial first-in-the-nation voting state.
In South Carolina, Perry referred to himself as the governor "largest red state in America" and greeted the crowd of with a Texas-twanged "howdy."
His announcement speech ran little more than 20 minutes and began with tales of his childhood in rural Paint Creek, Texas, a place too small to have its own zip code.
Perry was the son of two tenant farmers who grew cotton and wheat in a home "centered on hard work and on faith and on thrift. He said, "Those values that have stayed with me my whole life."
Perry met his future wife, Anita, at a piano recital when he was eight years old, and they went on their first date when he was 16. They got married 16 years later.
"Nobody says I am not persistent," Perry quipped. The couple has two children.
Perry, a graduate of Texas A & M University, is a U.S. Air Force veteran who, he said, "flew C-130's all over the globe."
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The extent to which Perry helped this in Texas is the the same as that of the Sun rising and setting every day.
The financial problems faced by whomever is in the White House in 2013, cannot be solved by that persons blind enthusiasm,or a return to liberal marketism (call it Reganomics), nor Keynesian economics. We are in a situation where the cash rich banks and corporations are still dependent on a structure that is a WORLDWIDE house of cards. The only economist that "knows" the solution will be announcingthat fact 12 months after the situation is there no longer. The Fed has very few arrows left in the quiver (Interest rates @ 0% indefinitely) and most Govts world wide wildly in debt (chains on Keynes). This stifles most monetary and fiscal policies that may be tenable without revolution and riotous changes, throughout the world.
I don't quite understand your point.
Seriously, the best thing that Obama and Congress can do (and there is bipartisan support for it) is open up free trade in SA (specifically Brazil). The bills are in the works and would have far more current opportunity (opening up markets) and future relief in oil. There is be sorely needed demand bubble within a year.
How's that for a silver lining?
HELPING IT OVER A CLIFF LEDGE!
Mexico - A nation gone crazy with drugs, guns, pollution, rain, traffic; an economic crisis that's been going on for twenty-five years. A nation known for having the most diverse collection of jokes about death; for setting the record for most political protests in one year; for having the undisputedly most corrupt police force on the planet.
You're going to die, the guy tells the man on his knees, and he repeats the phrase, showing off the gun barrel. The kneeling man, who's bleeding a bit from the bridge of his nose, doesn't respond; he reflects that, yes, he's going to die. Hours later, when he tells his story to a pack of sleepy journalists, he thinks that, yes, he died, he died a little.
Mexico is talked about more in jest than in earnest; how local law enforcement agents made martyrs of torturers in Argentina, how they bribed corrupt Thai cops, how they taught Colombian narco-traffickers to snort coke. But the rumors are miles behind reality!
Reviewing Mexican history, General Arturo Durazo Moreno, was in charge of chasing down a gang of killers associated with South American drug dealers who were found massacred in a blackwater collector in the Mexico City's sewage system. The police suggested that it could have been a settling of scores between Central American gangs. A couple of years later the scandal resurfaced, and this time General Durazo was indicted. He was accused, among other things, of having given the order to kill rival Colombian dealers. The assassin, in that magical alchemy that is Mexican insanity, turned out to be his own prosecutor. His second-in-command, the chief of the state police, Francisco Sahagun Baca, was the head of the antidrug force, though he himself was one of the most notorious drug traffickers in the country.
The paradox - heaven's door in Lucifer's hands. Evil is everywhere. Each year, hundreds of police officers are fired, attempts are made to democratize Mexico City ... but the cancer keeps metastasizing. Authority within the city depends on the police, no matter how corrupt they are. When the Division for the Investigation and Prevention of Delinquency was disbanded some twenty years ago, a spate of robberies inundated the Valley of Mexico. There were sixty-one assaults with a deadly weapon in a six-month period this is routine and even MILD compared to todays activites. The ex-cops turned a section of the city into their own turf. But it was just a small transition. As a matter of course, when they were still active officers, they had extorted, abused, robbed, and raped.
Every now and then they went after some thief who operated outside of their jurisdiction. As ex-cops, they continued doing the same thing, even pushing the envelope a bit.
If you're lucky, you can stay away from it, you can keep your distance ... until, suddenly, without a clear explanation of how, you fall into the web and become trapped.
If you are unlucky you very foolishly elect someone who wants to build a SUPERHIGHWAY between this evil madness and TEXAS like Rick Perry! Rick wants to bring this horror to your doorstep. Let us all PRAY hard that this man never gets a chance to build his dream highway which will be everyone else's NIGHTMARE!
We don't need more minimum wage jobs in America. We need living wage jobs. Additionally, superstition should be left to middle age historians. Anyway, it does not work as you can attest; you prayed for rain without success. Finally, women do not need you to be telling them what they can or can not do with their bodies. If they are of age they can make their own decisions; if not, they can speak with parents and/or other respected authority figures of their choosing - not yours.
Texas standings against all 50 states on a variety of issues (1st means highest ranking, 50th means lowest ranking).
• State Aid Per Pupil in Average Daily Attendance - 47th
• Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) Scores - 45th
• % of Population 25 and Older with High School Diploma - 50th
• High School Graduation Rate - 43rd
• Per Capita State Spending on State Arts Agencies - 43rd
• Birth Rate - 2nd
• Percent of Uninsured Children - 1st
• Percent of Children Living in Poverty - 4th
• Percent of Population Uninsured - 1st
• Percent of Non-Elderly Uninsured - 1st
• Percent of Low Income Population Covered by Medicaid - 49th
• Percent of Population with Employer-Based Health Insurance - 48th
• Total Health Expenditures as % of the Gross State Product - 43rd
• Per Capita State Spending on Mental Health - 50th
• Per Capita State Spending on Medicaid - 49th
• Health Care Expenditures per Capita - 44th
• Physicians per Capita - 42nd
• Registered Nurses per Capita - 44th
• Average Monthly Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) Benefits per Person - 47th
• Percent of Population Who Visit the Dentist - 46th
• Overall Birth Rate - 2nd
• Teenage Birth Rate - 7th
• Births to Unmarried Mothers - 17th
• Percent of Women with Pre-Term Birth - 9th
• Percent of Non-Elderly Women with Health Insurance - 50th
• Rate of Women Aged 40+ Who Receive Mammograms - 40th
• Cervical Cancer Rate - 11th
• Percent of Women with High Blood Pressure - 16th
• Percent of Pregnant Women Receiving Prenatal Care in First Trimester - 50th
• Women's Voter Registration - 45th
• Women's Voter Turnout - 49th
• Percent of Women Living in Poverty - 6th
• Mortgage Debt as Percent of Home Value - 47th
• Foreclosure Rates - 10th
• Median Net Worth of Households - 47th
• Average Credit Score - 49th
• Retirement Plan Participation - 47th
• Amount of Carbon Dioxide Emissions - 1st
• Amount of Volatile Organic Compounds Released into Air - 1st
• Amount of Toxic Chemicals Released into Water - 1st
• Amount of Recognized Cancer-Causing Carcinogens Released into Air - 1st
• Amount of Hazardous Waste Generated - 1st
• Amount of Toxic Chemicals Released into Air - 5th
• Amount of Recognized Cancer-Causing Carcinogens Released into Water - 7th
• Number of Hazardous Waste Sites on National Priority List - 7th
• Consumption of Energy per Capita - 5th
• Workers' Compensation Coverage - 50th
• Income Inequality Between the Rich and the Poor - 9th
• Income Inequality Between the Rich and the Middle Class - 5th
• Homeowner's Insurance Affordability - 46th
• Number of Executions - 1st