Governor Rick Perry’s State of the State Address: Still the Flim-Flam Man

During his address, Perry resembled Burt Lancaster in the vintage film, “Elmer Gantry,” a traveling preacher-like con man who told people what they wanted to hear in order to get their hard-earned money.

It was a nice speech about what Texas ought to do, e.g., putting more money into roadways, stop diverting tax dollars to other interests and freezing college tuition for 4 years. It would almost be a perfect proposal if all of us were to forget that the cause of so many taxing issues was the result of Perry’s decade-long reign and how he did or didn’t do many things as governor instead of helping the entire community.

• Perry pushed for deregulation of college tuition and in conning the voters to agree, permitted higher learning entities like UT to boost its tuition at least 5 times within a 2-year time period
• Perry permitted the diversion of funds (like gas taxes for roadways) to be diverted to other interests
• Perry pushed for toll roads that were not needed to make profits for his campaign financing special interests
• Perry continued to authorize the collection and holding of state taxes meant for public education and instead of using the money as intended held onto it to beef-up State coffers and/or to divert some tax dollars to other interests.

Now Perry wants to leave a fantasy legacy before he retires, runs for reelection in 2014 and/or challenges for the Presidency in 2016. Perhaps former President Abraham Lincoln spoke the words so many years ago that underscore the 10-year legacy of Rick Perry:

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)
16th president of US (1809 - 1865)

Perry has been the epitome of special interest power-plays in the State of Texas. Because of his determination the rich have become richer, the poor poorer, while the middle class is evaporating. He is now trying to spread his verbal honey over the problems he helped to create.