Perry's Dirty Little Secret

The conservative presidential candidate extols Texas as a business oasis

With his entry into the race to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, Governor Rick Perry of Texas — the state that has provided more than one-third of U.S. presidents over the last 48 years — has catapulted Texas into the limelight of critical attention. Especially since the ex-Air Force pilot, who likes to project the image of being an ultraconservative roughneck, holds up his state as a model among the 50 states.

Amid the current economic and financial crises, says Rick Perry, Texas stands as one of very few shining beacons in the nation. Nearly 40 percent of newly created jobs since June 2009 were created in Texas. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies have their headquarters somewhere between Austin and Houston or Dallas and Amarillo, plus Perry’s state enjoys the most business-friendly regulations besides having no state income tax.

Perry, governor of Texas for 11 years, now hopes to secure his lead among the current 9-candidate field of Republicans by claiming Texas has some sort of unique and blessed monopoly.

But Perry’s self-promotion has caused others to take a closer and more critical look at this promised land on the southwest border of the United States. What it reveals can’t be overlooked nor can it be seen clearly. Texas has the most draconian anti-labor union laws anywhere. It has a statewide tendency to pay starvation wages, which many find impossible to live on. These are two of the state’s dirty little secrets. Harold Cook, Democratic Party strategist, says that the Texas budget under Perry’s leadership has been balanced on the backs of children, the sick and the elderly by instituting cuts in funding for education, health and environmental protection.

In fact, over a quarter of the citizens in the gigantic state have no health insurance. The state’s 8 percent unemployment rate is just slightly lower than the national average of 9.1 percent. And despite it’s glittering cities like Houston, San Antonio and Dallas that have profited from Texas oil production, Texas has the highest percentage of workers who earn less than the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, putting it on a level with the state of Mississippi.

In order to close gaps in the state’s budget, Perry is cutting the state’s education budget by $4 billion, which will result in the disappearance of programs designed to mainly benefit the state’s disadvantaged students. As the British correspondent for The Guardian wrote, “Perry has presided over the establishment of an economy whose growing inequality resembles some in the developing world, not a 21st-century America.” One might also say that the picture of a developing country that the United States is providing is an accurate image of the start of the 21st century.