An Honest Comparison of Obama Recovery to Reagan's Should Include Public Sector Jobs

An Honest Comparison of Obama Recovery to Reagan's Should Include Public Sector Jobs

Fox News distorted economic history to criticize President Obama's record on jobs creation, using what Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has called "a stupid comparison" to President Reagan. But Reagan was aided by an increase in government spending and public sector employment, as well as drastic cuts to interest rates.

The Labor Department* released its monthly jobs report on Friday showing that the U.S. economy added 163,000 jobs in July, compared with 64,000 the previous month. According to the report, unemployment increased by .1 percentage point to 8.3.

In response to those numbers, Fox Business analyst Stuart Varney compared the current recovery with that of Reagan, saying that "it is a very negative comparison for President Obama."However, Krugman has noted that the two recoveries are not comparable, explaining:

If government employment under Mr. Obama had grown at Reagan-era rates, 1.3 million more Americans would be working as schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., than are currently employed in such jobs.

    And once you take the effects of public spending on private employment into account, a rough estimate is that the unemployment rate would be 1.5 percentage points lower than it is, or below 7 percent -- significantly better than the Reagan economy at this stage.

    One implication of this comparison is that conservatives who love to compare Reagan's record with Mr. Obama's should think twice. Aside from the fact that recoveries from financial crises are almost always slower than ordinary recoveries, in reality Reagan was much more Keynesian than Mr. Obama, faced with an obstructionist G.O.P., has ever managed to be.

In the words of the Economic Policy Institute, "the current recovery is the only one [of the last four recessions] that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months." EPI continued:

    If public-sector employment had grown since June 2009 by the average amount it grew in the three previous recoveries (2.8 percent) instead of shrinking by 2.5 percent, there would be 1.2 million more public-sector jobs in the U.S. economy today. In addition, these extra public-sector jobs would have helped preserve about 500,000 private-sector jobs.

 

Chief economist at Moody's Analytics Mark Zandi found that job losses at the state and local government levels have "the most serious weight on the job market." And when the public sector cuts jobs, it significantly affects private sector employment, as economist Joel Naroff noted:

    Behind those government job losses are budget cuts, particularly from states and local governments, many of which have lost revenues as lower incomes and lower property values lead to lower tax income. Those budget cuts mean fewer government contracts, which also leads to pain in the private sector. The winding down of the stimulus package also contributed to these losses, as federal assistance to state governments for things like extra Medicaid funding has disappeared, leaving many states with substantial budget gaps.

    Altogether, the strain on the national economy is considerable. "There's no such thing as a free budget cut." says Naroff. "If the public sector trims [20,000 to 25,000] jobs a month, then the private sector has to create those jobs before the economy can add one job. That's the hole that the public sector puts the economy in at this particular point," he says.

The Obama administration's jobs bill would have given about $35 billion to state and local governments to prevent many of these public sector job losses, but because of a Republican filibuster, the bill has languished. Since then, the public sector has lost 124,000 jobs.

The Reagan recovery is also owed to a large increase in government spending and the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates.

The Congressional Budget Office explained that because the 1980s recession was caused "by monetary restriction aimed at bringing inflation under control," "[l]ower interest rates after mid-1982 permitted the recovery to begin." Today's Federal Reserve does not have this same ability, because the interest rates are already nearly 0.

What's more, President Reagan greatly increased government spending to aid the economic recovery. In contrast, government spending under President Obama is falling at a rate of 1.4 percent, the first decline in real spending since the 1970s, as The Wall Street Journal noted:

It is a little strange or just typical of radical anti-American Republicans to pretend the Bush era doesn't matter, never happened or they just can't see because of the tendency of conservative wackos to never take responsibility for anything.

Mitt Romney's tragic/comedy at the Republican Convention seems to prove that the conservative movement is one of the most morally corrupt in American history. Romney's ability to lie, lie deeply and often is a clue to the gutter to which conservatism has fallen and pans to stay: Mitt Romney's Speech at RNC - all lies all the time. Conservative think lying is a moral virtue, where normal Americans do not.

Mitt Romney Fails History and The Integrity Test. Mitt thinks wearing a suit makes him appear less than like the sleazeball liar he is.

Republicans lack the moral depth to tell the difference between lies and falsehoods.

Republican behavior is so perverse, so disconnected from reality, is it possible they are all clones grown from the spores of bacteria,  The Romney campaign’s surreal arguments about the economy

Only a Republican drunk of the mind altering kool-aid of conservatism could get up in front of America, look straight in  the camera and tell the deeply disturbing immoral lies that Paul Ryan (R-WI) The Most Dishonest Convention Speech

Republicans are morally lost, bereft of both rational thought and ethical constraints of any kind. No wonder they're mad at normal patriotic Americans, with egos instead of a conscience, Republicans are enraged that anyone should challenge their carefully constructed fantasy and fake patriotism.

Sometimes Newt Gingrich Believes The U.S. is a Banana Republic and Sometimes He Doesn't

Sometimes Newt Gingrich Believes The U.S. is a Banana Republic and Sometimes He Doesn't

When President Obama earlier this year announced his plan to withdraw the “surge” troops from Afghanistan by the end of next summer, conservatives — seeming to not fully comprehend the idea of chain-of-command — were incredulous that the President did not do exactly what the commanders on the ground advised him to do. But with months to let American laws of civilian control of the military sink in, the idea still doesn’t seem to have caught on. “The commanders on the ground feel that we should bring down our surge troops by December of 2012,” Mitt Romney said in last month’s GOP presidential foreign policy debate criticizing the president’s decision. Romney added, “I stand with the commanders in this regard.”

Newt Gingrich has also attacked Obama for not doing whatever the generals tell him to do. Here’s what the former House speaker said shortly after Obama’s decision was made:

    GINGRICH: I think we are drifting to a very, very dangerous situation. None of the generals recommended the speed of the drawdown the president wants. [...]

    And if you watch what is happening there’s a steady drift from the United States at a time when the president is signaling his desire to get out as fast as he can and potentially faster than the generals think is safe. … You should go to the White House and ask the president why did he overrule all his generals?

Yet there was at least one point in Gingrich’s career in which he understood the chain-of-command, and actively promoted it. In 2006, a number of retired generals called on then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to step down because of poor leadership in the Iraq war. Gingrich defended Rumsfeld in an April, 2006 interview on Fox News, saying, “We have civilian control. … The generals don’t control”:

    WALLACE: Do you agree with any of the criticism from those six retired generals that Secretary Rumsfeld went in with too few troops, went in without a plan, hasn’t been listening to the generals?

    GINGRICH: Look. First of all, Don Rumsfeld listens to generals. He doesn’t obey them. We have civilian control. The president is in charge as commander in chief. The secretary of defense works for the president. The generals advise. The generals don’t control.


So what does Gingrich really believe? Does the president control the military or do the generals control the president? For Newt, it probably depends on which political party the current White House occupant belongs to.

In addition to wondering exactly what Newt believes, patriotic Americans are wondering what if any core values Newt has. He believes in running up big bills at Tiffanys so his third wife can have lots of shiny objects to play with. Newt believes the government should be able to intimidate judges to vote the way pressure groups want them to. Newt believes that America would be better off if it looked like Pottersville in the movie Its a Wonderful Life.

Cartoon Regularly Featured On the right-wing conservative bedbugs at Big Journalism Connected To Nazi-Era Magazine

Rupert Murdoch's Anti-American Fox News Outrageous Claim - "Brainwashed" People Think Fox Isn't "Fair And Balanced And Everybody Else Is"

Rupert Murdoch's Anti-American Fox News Outrageous Claim - "Brainwashed" People Think Fox Isn't "Fair And Balanced And Everybody Else Is"

Yesterday on Imus in the Morning, Imus and his guest, America's Newsroom co-anchor Martha MacCallum, rehashed the usual argument Fox employees trot out when they want to insulate the network's supposed "journalists" (like MacCallum) from accusations of partisanship -- that there exists a firm line between the network's "news" and "opinion" programming.

During the discussion, Imus praised MacCallum and her co-host Bill Hemmer, saying that there is "no editorializing at all" on their show. While attacking the partisanship of other networks, MacCallum said, "a lot of people are sort of brainwashed into believing that line of thinking that we're not fair and balanced, and everybody else is."

MacCallum explained that "during the daytime, we try to shoot as straight we possibly can. Everybody is a human being -- there's going to be times when your feelings about something enter a discussion."

MacCallum's claim echoed comments made by Bill Hemmer last year, when he told TVNewser that the opinions of Fox's right-wing primetime hosts don't carry over into America's Newsroom because "our broadcast, with Martha MacCallum and me, we shoot it down the middle."

Setting aside the larger problems with Fox's supposedly unimpeachable "news hours" -- complicated by things like having a Washington managing editor that orders network journalists to routinely cast doubt on climate science -- America's Newsroom often resembles Fox's "opinion" shows. While MacCallum suggests her and Hemmer's "feelings about something" only occasionally enter the discussion, they both have a record of echoing GOP talking points, and MacCallum has even flatly endorsed conservative policies.

For a characteristic example, after the release of President Obama's jobs plan in September, MacCallum kicked off Fox's "news" attacks on the plan, echoing the immediate GOP spin. During an interview with Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ), MacCallum trotted out the familiar, misleading talking point that the first stimulus plan "didn't work" and asked "why should everyone be convinced that this time it will work."

 MacCallum's "feelings about something" are often far more overt.

Last November, when covering Social Security reform, MacCallum stated that "we need to raise the age at which you can get" Social Security and also suggested Obama should come out and say, "let's consider investment accounts for younger people." More recently, she's been defending Rick Perry's assertion that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme."

MacCallum has told viewers that, like the old "Just Say No" to drugs pins, "we should have...Just Say No to more spending" pins. She has also compared America to a "drunk who finally hits bottom" in regards to budget deficits.

In July, MacCallum lamented America's pesky social safety net, without which we'd be in a "much better, stronger fiscal position" to "handle those things like the two wars."

Before MacCallum joined America's Newsroom, she was host of The Live Desk. During an interview in March 2009 with Rep. Michele Bachmann, Bachmann said that Obama's proposals constitute a "lurch toward socialism," to which MacCallum responded, "I think you're absolutely right about that."

What's more, "straight" news reporter MacCallum has frequently filled in on Fox's opinion shows. She guest-hosted for On the Record with Greta Van Susteren earlier this week, and has co-hosted Fox & Friends. It's hard to assert an inviolate division between "news" and "opinion" when you cross it with such ease.

Of course, cohost Bill Hemmer is not much better, and the problems with America's Newsroom as a straight news show predate MacCallum's move to the program.

Back in 2009, when Fox News was devoting much of their programming -- of both the "news" and "opinion" varieties -- to promoting the fledgling tea party movement, America's Newsroom was no exception.

Here's Bill Hemmer interviewing a tea party leader on April 7, 2009. Hemmer (and on-screen text) plugged the tea parties that were planned for April 15, and directed viewers to the America's Newsroom website, where "you can log on and see if there's an event in your area coming any time soon." ( reprinted here for educational purposes)

 Fox has proved itself to be nothing more than a propagnda outlet for rabid extremism, right-wing spin, conservative lies, gossip mongering, hateful insinuations, Anti-Americanism, rabid nationalism, an outlet for the weird theories and beliefs of screwballs and cranks. Someone might be brainwashed, but it is not those Americans who still care about the truth.

Scott Olsen, marine wounded by Oakland police at OWS protest, is in ‘critical condition’

Scott Olsen, marine wounded by Oakland police at OWS protest, is in ‘critical condition’

In a video published early Thursday morning, ex-Marine Scott Olsen, the 24-year-old who suffered a fractured skull in Oakland on Tuesday night and is currently in “critical condition,” is seen standing peacefully in front of a police barricade next to a uniformed sailor just moments before officers deployed chemical agents to disperse the crowd.

While the video does not show what hit Olsen, it suggests that he was shot in the head by a tear gas canister at near point-blank range.  Olsen did not appear to be provoking officers, who’d repeatedly announced their intent to disperse what they’d declared an “unlawful assembly.” Others speculated that he was hit by a beanbag round fired from a shotgun.

Either way, the aftermath of the blow he sustained was severe. Photos of the scene are grisly and not for the squeamish.

He’s now sedated and suffering from brain swelling. Doctors say Olsen is in “critical condition” and could die of his injury.

The incident has sparked a wave of outrage among 99 Percent protesters, and even among other Marines, and on Wednesday night Current TV news host Keith Olbermann called for Oakland’s mayor to fire the police chief or resign. Vigils in solidarity with Oakland were held in numerous cities last night, with another wave planned in even more cities for later tonight.

Protesters were marching in response to a police action early Tuesday morning to clear out a camp demonstrators had been occupying for weeks, in solidarity with the protest that’s occupied a park near Wall Street for more than a month. Police claimed that some people threw paint and bottles at them, so they spent most of the night trying to disperse them at multiple spots around downtown. More than 100 people were arrested in the melee.

An update on Olsen’s condition is expected later this morning.

Video at the link. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan should fire the city’s acting police chief after officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse “Occupy Oakland” protesters. This is America not Egypt or Libya.

Anti-American Conservative Provocateur James O'Keefe is Lying About Medicaid Again

Anti-American Conservative Provocateur James O'Keefe is Lying About Medicaid Again

James O'Keefe is once again making completely false claims about undercover videos of Medicaid employees, saying that he has uncovered evidence of Medicaid fraud. But yet again, he has simply demonstrated that his tactics are fundamentally dishonest.

The latest video shows two women, identified as Medicaid workers in Maine, counseling a man who calls himself "Ted Ceanneidigh" (get it?), who claims to be an Irish fisherman, and who says he imports pharmaceuticals on a boat called The Bob Marley. O'Keefe claims that a Medicaid worker "coaches [Ted] by saying, 'If you can't prove income, you don't have income,'" which O'Keefe claims is evidence of Medicaid fraud and "government workers willing to aid people with criminal backgrounds."

In fact, the woman O'Keefe has accused of helping hide income and assets simply advised an applicant that he doesn't have to declare income if he doesn't earn any income, and she recruited a more senior colleague to answer more complex questions about income eligibility. That counselor, who identifies herself as Diane, aggressively questioned "Ted" about his sources of income and told him that he will be required to report that he has access to an account that is in his parents' name.

It's an astonishing display of hubris that O'Keefe is promoting this video as proof of Medicaid fraud.

On the video, O'Keefe's undercover reporter claimed that he works for his parents' fishing business on what he described as a "barter system." The so-called fisherman said his work includes importing pharmaceuticals. "Ted" told a woman identified as a Medicaid worker that he has access to the bank account for the family business, where he deposits the money he earns. But according to "Ted," he makes no income:

    [11:42] It's all cash and precious metals, and so none of this is declared, and once it gets into [his parents'] accounts, what they do with it -- what they file -- is on them and their business. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't have an income. They just help me out. I do have my name -- my name is on their account. So I can pull money from their account, but other than that.

At this point, the Medicaid worker encouraged "Ted" to look into private insurance, but if that is not an option, he could look into Medicaid. She made clear to "Ted" that the only thing she can do -- given the fact that he is not eligible for Medicaid based on age or disability -- would be to put him on a waiting list. "Ted" asked again about income:

    [19:29] MEDICAID WORKER: If you have income, we need proof of income.

    TED: Proof?

    MEDICAID WORKER: Yeah, like pay stubs or --

    TED: But I don't get any.

    MEDICAID WORKER: If you don't have --

    TED: I don't --

    MEDICAID WORKER: If you don't --

    TED: See, that's the thing I'm concerned about, because it's all a cash business and --

    MEDICAID WORKER: If you don't have proof of income, then you have no income.

At no point in the video did "Ted" fill out an application for or receive any Medicaid benefits. In fact, he declined to do so, claiming not to have ID. When the Medicaid worker offered "Ted" an application to fill out and submit, he asked her to once again go over the eligibility requirements. At this point, the Medicaid worker recruited another woman, identified later as "the senior person" whom she thinks is more qualified to answer "Ted's" questions about what income he would have to declare.

Recall at this point that no evidence of Medicaid fraud or willingness to aid in Medicaid fraud has been demonstrated. Recall as well as the entire point of the exercise has been to illustrate government workers helping criminals hide income and assets to perpetrate Medicaid fraud.

Keep that in mind as a Medicaid worker named Diane makes very clear to "Ted" that income he earns and assets he claims to have access to must be declared [starting around the 28 minute mark]:

    And then we have to have verification if you have any type of income.

Diane asked "Ted" whether he is self-employed. Diane asked "Ted" who gives him money. Diane told "Ted" that she would need a letter from his parents verifying exactly how much money they provide him with, and: "They need to sign it, and they need to put a phone number where we can call them to verify that they did actually write the statement."

Again: this is supposed to be an expose in government workers helping a criminal hide assets from the government in a giant Medicaid fraud racket.

Like his Anti-American cohorts - conservative pundits on Fox and Am radio - O'Keefe is lucky the standards for libel and slander are so impossibly high in the US legal system. If they were not O'Keffe would be up to his ears paying off the legal claims of people and organizations he has lied and bamboozled. O'Keefe has become the face of the Anti-American conservative movement. he possesses all of the perverse values conservatives have become known for.

Why it’s safe to ignore Republican criticism of Obama’s policy in Iraq.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers Say The Darndest Things

How Christian Fundamentalists Disempower Themselves and Help Empower the Top 1% to Exploit the 99%

How Christian Fundamentalism Helped Empower the Top 1% to Exploit the 99%

As the Occupy Wall street movement spreads across the country and the world, we must bring attention to the enablers of the top 1 percent exploiting the 99. Fundamentalist religion made this exploitation possible.

Evangelical fundamentalism helped empower the top 1 percent. Note I didn't say religion per se, but religious fundamentalism.

Why? Because without the fundamentalists and their "values" issues, many in the lower 99 percent could not have been convinced to vote against their (our) economic self-interest; in other words, vote for Republicans who only serve billionaires.

Wall Street is a great target for long-overdue protest, but so are the centers of religious power that are the gatekeepers of Republican Party "values" voters that make the continuing economic exploitation possible.

Fundamentalist religion -- evangelical and Roman Catholic alike -- has delegitimized the US government and thus undercut its ability to tax, spend and regulate.

The fundamentalists have replaced economic and political justice with a bogus (and hate-driven) "morality" litmus tests of spurious red herring "issues" from abortion to school prayer and gay rights. The result has been that the masses of lower middle-class and poor Americans who should be voting for Democrats and thus their own economic interests, have been persuaded to vote against their own class and self interest.

This trick of political sleight of hand has been achieved by this process:    

    Declare the US government agents of evil because "the government" has allowed legal abortion, gay rights, etc.
    Declare that therefore "government is the problem," not the solution.
    The government is the source of all evwww.amazon.com/Sex-Mom-God-Strange-Politics/dp/0306819287/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0il, thus anyone the government wants to regulate is being picked on by satanic forces. The US government is always the bad guy.
    Good, God-fearing folks will always vote for less government and less regulation because "the government" is evil.
    So unregulated corporations, banks and Wall Street are always right and represent "freedom" while government is always wrong and represents "tyranny."

Like most evangelical/Roman Catholic fundamentalist movements in history, from the Bay State colonies to the Spanish Inquisition, the American Religious Right of today advocates the fusion of state power and religion through the reestablishment of the "Christian America" idea of "American Exceptionalism" (i.e., a nation "chosen" by God), the form of government adopted by the Puritans' successors during the age of early American colonialism.

Thus the division between "real Americans" and the rest of us is the "saved" and "lost" paradigm of theological correctness applied to politics. Thus President Obama isn't a real American, or even a born American, he's "Other," a Muslim, an outsider, and above all not "one of us."

In other words you're not just wrong, but evil if you disagree with the Elect over abortion, or for that matter peace in the Middle East because you're "not supporting Israel."

"Bring America back to the Bible" is really no more subtle than the claim of the Iranian Mullahs to rule in "God's name" so that Iran too can come back to God. And if you can get Americans to worry about the Bible and not fairness and justice, then you have handed a perpetual victory to Goldman Sachs and company.

How Did We Get Here?

The unstated agreement went like this: Republicans will pander to the Religious Right on the social issues -- abortion, gay rights, prayer in schools, creationism in textbooks, and not so subtly the endorsement of religious schools to help white evangelicals and Roman Catholics avoid integration -- as long as the Religious Right turned a blind eye to the fact that the Republican Party would sell the soul of the country to corporate America, a country-within-a-country where 1 percent of the population have more wealth than the 99 percent.

Deference to religion masquerading as politics must end, now.

Religion masquerading as politics is not true religion or politics-- it is a theocracy-in-waiting. This charade of power grabs in God's name needs to be exposed, and destroyed.

Democracy will not survive the continuing dirty combination of theocracy and oligarchy. That's where we're headed: bankers running the world backed by preachers who don't care about God but care about power.

The timely destruction of the economic elites and their religious facilitators begins by calling fundamentalist/evangelical/Roman Catholic "religion" what it is: a political grab for power based on literal madness of the sort that makes many terrified of modernity, truth, science and facts and leads them to deny evolution and global warming while believing that Jesus will come back any day now.

There are obviously lots of decent hard working Americans who call themselves Christians. Most of them live physically and spiritually in the 21st century. They don't let their faith get in the way of behaving like rational adults. The fair and decent free market vision they have is largely ignored. They are this generation's silent majority. While the loony right-wing Christianists get first priority on their backwards agenda.

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

After Confusing Himself, Plutocrat Herman Cain Decides That Rape Victims Should Be Forced To Carry Pregnancies To Term

Record number of deportations still not enough for anti-immigration zealots
The Obama administration kicked out 400,000 people this year, satisfying no one and winning no support for reform

Why Does Gov Rick Perry Hate America and Capitalism

Why Does Gov Rick Perry Hate America and Capitalism

On Sunday afternoon—just 24 hours after Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced his presidential candidacy—an email arrived in my inbox titled, “14 Reasons Why Rick Perry Would Be a Really, Really Bad President.” The article contained in the email took such a harsh tone toward Perry, I assumed, for a brief moment, that a liberal interest group was quickly jumping on the newest entrant in the Republican presidential field. In turns out, however, that the piece was the product of a right-wing website called The American Dream. The author of the article argued that Perry, the supposed savior of conservatives nationwide, is actually a RINO—a Republican in Name Only.

For Texans, this line of argument is nothing new. Indeed, for anyone who’s closely followed Perry’s tenure in Texas—as I have, covering the governor for The Texas Observer since 2003—it’s no secret that some of the state’s conservatives and libertarians dispute his conservative credentials. It’s true that Perry has trafficked heavily in anti-Washington rhetoric, especially in the run-up to his candidacy to become president. But the closer you look at Perry’s record in Texas, the harder it is to discern any coherent ideology at all. When GOP primary voters in other parts of the country examine his signature legislative accomplishments and policy stances, some won’t like what they find.

The first Perry proposal to rile some Texas right-wing activists was the Trans-Texas Corridor—an ambitious plan to cover the state in a series of toll roads. Perry first pitched the idea during his 2002 campaign for governor. The plan would have used government’s eminent domain authority to seize rural farmland not just for multi-lane tolled highways, but also for rail and utility lines. Perry’s office and the Texas Department of Transportation gained legislative approval for the plan in 2003. The state handed the contract for the road planning and building to a Spanish-based company named Cintra.

The backlash from rural Republicans was intense. It was a text-book example of a policy that classic small-government conservatives would hate: Seizing farmland with eminent domain, then handing public money to a foreign company that would built roads Texans would have pay tolls to drive on. Anti-Trans Texas Corridor buttons soon became one of the most popular items among delegates at Republican State Party Conventions in 2004, 2006 and 2008.

Perry’s plan for a comprehensive network of toll-roads would eventually die slowly over the next four legislative sessions, meeting resistance from conservative Republicans. Toll roads are still being built in Texas, but the corridor plan is remembered as a colossal failure for the governor.

Perry caused conservative revulsion again in 2007 when he proposed that all young girls in Texas receive the HPV vaccine. The drug company Merck had just put the drug on the market, and the governor’s office made a heart-wrenching case for why all Texans should have access to it. His office brought to the Legislature a young woman with terminal cervical cancer, caused by HPV, to meet with the press and argue for mandatory vaccinations.

Some Texas Democrats agreed with Perry’s position. But the governor’s critics also pointed out that Perry’s former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, was serving as a lobbyist for Merck, which stood to make millions from the vaccine requirement. In the end, conservative Republicans in the Legislature bucked at the thought of requiring young girls to receive an STD vaccine, and Perry's effort died in the Legislature.

Then there’s the one major proposal that Perry did, in fact, pass into law—the state’s business tax. This tax increase on business was crafted in 2006 as part of a school-finance reform. The idea was to cut local property taxes and replace the lost revenue with a new business margins tax. This 2006 tax “swap” was the one instance during Perry’s decade as governor when he proposed a wide-ranging plan and successfully pushed it through the Legislature mostly unchanged. It will likely be remembered as his signature legislative accomplishment.

The problem is, it’s been a disaster. Small businesses hate it because they’re forced to pay regardless of whether they’re turning a profit: it seemed to be the very definition of a “job-killing” tax. Some conservatives simply hate it on principle. A few even argued that Perry’s business tax is unconstitutional—amounting to a tax on income, which is forbidden by the Texas Constitution.

But worst of all, the tax doesn’t even generate enough revenue. The tax “swap” has cost the state $5 billion a year for five years running. The Texas budget now faces an ongoing structural deficit because of the underperforming business tax. And with a tax increase on small business and a structural budget deficit to boot, it’s clear that Perry hasn’t taken conservative economists like Milton Friedman as his inspiration.

Another example of his conservative heresy is the Texas Enterprise Fund, which Perry seem to be especially proud of. The purpose of the Fund is to dole out public money to lure companies to Texas. It has created tens of thousands of jobs in the state, but critics have not incorrectly, labeled it “corporate welfare,” a slush fund for well-connected businesses. The Observer investigated the fund in 2010 and found that several companies with political ties to Perry had received state grants.

All of this probably makes little difference to the anti-American conservatives who see Perry as a wing-nut god of sorts. he speaks their special coded language, he uses all the buzz words to inflate his and their fake patriotism to make it look real. He is dumb as a rock, just the way conservatives like their leaders. Modern conservatism holds knowledge and enlightened thought in contempt and so does Perry. So Perry can climb trees and yell like a baboon with rabies and the fake patriot conservatives will smile and pull that lever knowing that one of their own will lead the country into the dysfunctional utopia they dream of.