Perry’s Power Politics

Gov. Rick Perry has released a jobs plan. Or is it an energy plan? Or it is an EPA-reform plan? Or is it a trade-deficit plan? The plan is a bit of each, and it is a very good one.

Governor Perry, under whom Texas enjoyed the strongest job-creation record of any large U.S. state, proposes to open up oil and gas production in areas in which American producers are either shut out or heavily restricted: the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida coast, and Alaska, among others. Perry’s plan also entails the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and the liberalization of regulations hindering production in throughout the United States.

Governor Perry estimates that U.S. oil and gas production could be expanded by some 9.3 million barrels of oil per day and 22.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas, creating more than 1 million new energy-industry jobs.

The Perry plan would be well worth pursuing if it did not create a single new job. That is because jobs are a means, not an end; the goal of public policy should be to make the nation wealthier and its economy more productive, not to micromanage the economy.

It may be true that the whole country can’t have a Texas-style energy economy, but Louisiana can, and so can Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, Colorado and a few other western states, Alaska, and more.

The question is not how much oil is in the ground, but whether Americans will be allowed to develop our resources. And it is in that regard that Governor Perry’s plan speaks to what is actually holding back the American economy and what Washington can realistically do about it.

Actually in Perry’s case it not Drill Drill Drill, it is Lie, Lie, Lie.

Who got in the race last after it was clear Romney was not going to get any appreciable support from social conservatives?

Who did the GOP Establishment push into the race after it seem Tea Party heroine Bachmann was going to upset Romney’s ride to the nomination?

Who does the GOP Establishment see as their back up card if Romney fails?

Who has long standing intimate ties with the Liberal wing of the GOP Establishment?

The answer is Rick Perry.

Bill Kristol to a NY Time Reporter telling him how the GOP Establishment plans to deal with “the Tea party mutiny”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2792217/posts?page=3

Kristol told me just after Perry entered the race, a development that essentially ended [the more radical Michele] Bachmann’s brief ascent. Establishment Republicans may prefer Romney to Perry, but their assumption is that either man can be counted on to steer the party back toward the broad center next fall, effectively disarming the Tea Party mutiny.

Wonder who Perry will be VP with?

Odd how that question never gets asked of Perry.

Could it be because everyone knows Perry is the GOP Establishment mole in the race to split the Tea Party/Conservative vote and hand the nomination to Romney?

Could it be because they know the ticket the GOP Machine is setting up is “Romney/Perry 2012? Think about it. Romney has the money, Perry has the idolatrous worship from the social Conservatives.

Could that be why the Perry camp is knowingly lying about Cain’s solidly Conservative record on both social and fiscal issues? Because they know full well Perry’s record can not stand close scrutiny?

What does anyone really know about Perry other then the nice words and platitudes he puts in his speeches? Looks like Perry is just Bush 3.0 another tough talking social conservative who will go to DC and be yet another good little GOP crony capitalist water boy.

Guess YOU’RE a fan of Cain’s 999 empowerment programs?

The people in our country who want to open up a line of new revenue and abilities to our federal government had better wake up and stop acting like liberal spending progressives!

Meet your new federal sales tax dollars at work through empowerment zones.

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http://www.mitchellmoss.com/articles/power.html

During the 1980s, liberals latched onto the enterprise zone concept. They discovered that it offered a way to channel money into impoverished urban communities, subverting the rationale for the enterprise zone by expanding, rather than reducing, government involvement.

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In response to the Los Angeles riots of 1992, there was a burst of public support for federal assistance to cities, and during the summer of 1992 proposals for enterprise zone legislation surfaced in Congress once again, among Republicans and Democrats alike. But it was not until both the White House and the Congress were in Democratic hands that the concept of the enterprise zone - albeit modified and renamed by the new Democratic administration as an empowerment zone - was brought to life as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993.

(snip)

Congressman Charles Rangel of Harlem, then the third-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, was largely responsible for inserting the empowerment zone proposal into the 1993 act, which combined tax hikes for the rich with tax credits for the working poor. Before that. President Clinton had given up on any large-scale public investment program, after failing to pass an economic stimulus package that would have channeled federal money into communities acre’s the country. But Rangel pushed hard to authorize tax credits and funds for empowerment zones in the budget reconciliation act, which was subject to a single up-or-down congressional vote. Once the money was authorized, it took the joint efforts of New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley and Congressman Rangel actually to appropriate funds for the empowerment zone program in the appropriation bill for the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education for fiscal year 1995.

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Although Congress assigned responsibility for formulating the guidelines and administering the empowerment zone program to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it appropriated the funds for the zones under Title XX of the Social Security Act, which provides block grants to the states for social services.

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Thanks largely to Rangel, the empowerment zone has emerged as the only initiative by the Clinton administration with an explicitly urban focus

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Although the empowerment zone program provided incentives for private investment, it also gave the Clinton administration a new framework for social service spending, not just on job training or welfare-to-work programs but also, under Title XX of the Social Security Act, on emergency and transitional homeless shelters or drug-and alcohol-abuse programs in big cities.

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After a national competition that attracted hundreds of applicants. New York was awarded an empowerment zone by President Clinton in December 1994, an outcome that many felt was preordained given Congressman Rangel’s strategic role in pushing the empowerment zone into law. The other cities to be awarded zones were Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Although Cleveland and Los Angeles did not get empowerment zones, HUD - in a rare display of bureaucratic creativity - invented a consolation prize for those cities, the “supplemental empowerment zone,” consisting of block grants without the tax credits.

(snip)

The Harlem portion of the plan is a remarkable mix of programs to serve local needs for day care, education, social services, and health care, combined with a few large-scale physical development projects, like a new CUNY community college at the Washburn Wire Factory, that will not create private-sector jobs or attract private investment. For example, the proposal envisions a computerized drug referral system, security improvements in public housing, child-care program upgrades, “family preservation, development, and intergenerational programs,” a community health center, and a cadre of community empowerment zone organizers to assist residents in gaining access to empowerment zone - and other government - programs. The proposal also envisions a “Medicaid Entitlement Zone” that seeks to make every resident of the zone eligible for Medicaid. The proposal earmarks 23 percent of the federal empowerment zone funds for children and youth programs, 12 percent for health and substance-abuse programs, 6 percent for other social services, and 17 percent for local administration of the program - 58 percent of the total.

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Almost no one in the press or in public office has been willing to question the logic of New York’s empowerment zone plan. It went unchallenged when Vice President Al Core and other Democratic politicians gathered with empowerment zone leaders from around the country at a Columbia University conference in March. The conference resembled a pep rally for Rangel and the empowerment zone. Little wonder: many of those in attendance were from nonprofit organizations that stand to benefit handsomely from the infusion of federal funds.

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However, unless the empowerment zone is treated as more than just old-fashioned political pork, it is not likely to do more than bring a burst of federal dollars into two low-income communities and perpetuate their dependence on a shrinking public sector. For New York’s empowerment zone to serve economic development objectives, investments are needed to reduce - not reinforce - the area’s reliance on public programs

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