If you want a glimpse of the way Rick Perry operates as an executive and a politician, consider the issue of higher education reform in Texas, which no one in Texas knew was an issue until Perry decided to make it one.
In his 30-year public career, Perry—how to put this delicately?—has shown no sign of being tortured by a gnawing intellectual curiosity. “He’s not the sort of person you’ll find reading The Wealth of Nations for the seventh time,” said Brooke Rollins, formerly Perry’s policy director and now president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a free-market research group closely allied with Perry. At Texas A&M he majored in animal science and escaped with a grade point average a bit over 2.0. (Perry’s A&M transcript was leaked last month to the left-wing blog Huffington Post by “a source in Texas,” presumably not his mom. How his GPA compares with Barack Obama’s is unknown, since no one in higher education has thought to leak Obama’s transcript to a right-wing blog.)
Perry expends his considerable intelligence instead on using political power and, what amounts to the same thing, picking fights with his political adversaries. When Rollins came to Perry in 2007 with a radical and comprehensive proposal to overhaul higher education in the state, Rollins says the governor quickly understood the potential of the issue, not only politically but on its merits. The state operates more than 100 colleges, universities, technical schools, and two-year community colleges, organized into six separate systems. As in other states, public higher education in Texas is scattered, expensive, poorly monitored, and top heavy with administrators, even as it subjects students to often large annual tuition increases without a compensatory increase in educational quality.
Perry’s first poke at this sclerotic establishment came early in his first term. He suggested converting the money that the state gives to public colleges and universities into individual grants handed straight to students. Money is power, and Perry’s idea was to place the power in the hands of “consumers,” as he put it, rather than the administrators, to increase competition among schools and thereby lower costs and increase quality. “Young fertile minds [should be] empowered,” he said at the time, “to pursue their dreams regardless of family income, the color of their skin, or the sound of their last name.” (more…)
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (right) listens as Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes a statement during a Republican presidential candidate debate on Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla. (Associated Press)
Herman Cain is becoming a serious contender on the national stage. Winning the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll in Orlando catapults him to the front of the pack. Through feisty debate performances and a compelling personal narrative, the businessman no one in Washington had heard of a short time ago has made himself into a real factor in the Republican primaries. Once thought to be running for a Cabinet seat, Mr. Cain is now talked about as an asset as a running mate on the national ticket, if not as the actual standard-bearer. The reality is elephants can’t decide who they want to lead the herd. In the long run, this indecision helps Mitt Romney the most.
The early months of the Republican contest have been a game of musical chairs. Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, entered as the frontrunner with some in the capital imagining an insurgent uprising by former Speaker Newt Gingrich or Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Then undeclared former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin teased everybody and jumped to the top of the pack before Mr. Romney reclaimed the lead, after which Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll, knocking out fellow North Star stater Tim Pawlenty, who told enough people he had a shot that some believed him. Mrs. Bachmann’s star fell south when Texas Gov. Rick Perry threw his cowboy hat into the ring and lassoed her Tea Party support. Following a couple of poor debate performances, Mr. Perry has watched conservatives migrate over to Mr. Cain, as speculation continues about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Mrs. Palin deciding to run and upsetting the lineup even more. (more…)
Can the inventor of the plan that was Obamacare’s model credibly shun it?
During this past week’s Fox News/Google Republican presidential debate, there were several “gotcha” moments. Most of them were at the expense of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who once again did not appear as the strongest debater and once again lost an opportunity to effectively hang the Romneycare albatross around the former Massachusetts governor’s neck.
From the perspective of a health-care provider and health-policy analyst like myself, this failure is disheartening, not because I think one frontrunner is better than the other, and not because I wanted to see a Romneycare “gotcha,” but because his health-care plan is ruinous for the state of Massachusetts much in the same way that Obamacare is ruinous for the United States. It is disheartening to see this truth buried beneath the success of one debating style over another, especially at a time when the upcoming presidential election will be a referendum not only on our failing economy, but also on the huge Obamacare entitlement that has been loaded onto the back of it.
So why do I believe that the program that then-governor Romney passed in 2006 in Massachusetts is too similar to Obamacare to be simply waved off during a debate? An important corollary: Why don’t I believe candidate Romney when he says that his first act as president will be to ask Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act? (more…)
To highlight the problems facing Social Security, Texas Gov. and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry is pointing to three Texas counties that decades ago opted out of Social Security by creating personal retirement accounts. Now, 30 years on, county workers in those three jurisdictions retire with more money and have better death and disability supplemental benefits. And those three counties—unlike almost all others in the United States—face no long-term unfunded pension liabilities.
Since 1981 and 1982, workers in Galveston, Matagorda and Brazoria Counties have seen their retirement savings grow every year, even during the Great Recession. The so-called Alternate Plan of these three counties doesn’t follow the traditional defined-benefit or defined-contribution model. Employee and employer contributions are actively managed by a financial planner—in this case, First Financial Benefits, Inc., of Houston, which originated the plan in 1980 and has managed it since its adoption. I call it a “banking model.”
As with Social Security, employees contribute 6.2% of their income, with the county matching the contribution (or, as in Galveston, providing a slightly larger share). Once the county makes its contribution, its financial obligation is done—that’s why there are no long-term unfunded liabilities.
Associated PressPresidential candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney spar Thursday night.
The contributions are pooled, like bank deposits, and top-rated financial institutions bid on the money. Those institutions guarantee an interest rate that won’t go below a base level and goes higher when the market does well. Over the last decade, the accounts have earned between 3.75% and 5.75% every year, with the average around 5%. The 1990s often saw even higher interest rates, of 6.5%-7%. When the market goes up, employees make more—and when the market goes down, employees still make something.
1. He supports the 10th Amendment and that he supports States rights to deal with illegal immigration in a way that is in the best interest of their particular state (and, as such supports Maryland Republican’s efforts regarding the Ballot Initiative <– from Lawrence).
2. Texas is very different than most States in that 40% of the population is Latino.
3. The Texas “In state tuition” bill was supported 180-4 by the Texas Legislature.
4. The Texas bill requires that the illegal immigrants be residents of Texas for at least 3 years.
5. The illegal immigrants otherwise eligible for instate tuition must still compete to get into a Texas college.
Editorial: Memo To GOP: The Foe Is Obama, Not Perry
Posted 09/23/2011 06:47 PM ET
Politics: Despite the “gotcha” sniping at Thursday’s debate, Republicans need to keep their eyes on the prize. The target for 2012 is not Santorum, Cain, Bachmann, Romney or Perry. It’s the current White House occupant.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry must have felt a bit like Gen. Custer at Little Big Horn at the Orlando debate, a made-for-TV contrivance in which those who have a real chance to be president must take pokes and jabs from those who don’t.
We appreciate this may be a necessary evil in which front-runners without stamina — the Ed Muskies and Rudy Giulianis, for example — are weeded out.
Still, we must understand that while the goal is the nomination, the prize is the White House. Lost in the brouhaha over tuition for illegal aliens and mandated vaccines is the fact we simply can’t afford four more years of President Obama.
Perry has given awkward responses. How can he debate the president, the whispers ask. Sound-bite debates in which you thrust and parry (no pun intended) with eight other candidates, as well as the pundits, are one thing. Comparing your job-creating pro-growth record in a booming state to the record of the arguably worst president in American history is something else.
Those former and nongovernors without a 1,200-mile border with Mexico may criticize, and perhaps justifiably, Perry’s embrace of a college tuition break for illegal aliens. We’ve opposed it too in the past.
Perry makes the point that this is a matter for a border state and that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if Obama had secured the border and put the thousands of boots on the ground that governor has requested. (more…)
The historic friendship between the United States and Israel stretches from the founding of the Jewish state in 1948 to the present day. Our nations have developed vital economic and security relationships in an alliance based on shared democratic principles, deep cultural ties, and common strategic interests. Historian T.R. Fehrenbach once observed that my home state of Texas and Israel share the experience of “civilized men and women thrown into new and harsh conditions, beset by enemies.”
Surrounded by unfriendly neighbors and terror organizations that aim to destroy her, the Jewish state has never had an easy life. Today, the challenges are mounting. Israel faces growing hostility from Turkey. Its three-decades-old peace with Egypt hangs by a thread. Iran pursues nuclear weapons its leaders vow to use to annihilate Israel. Terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians from Hezbollah and Hamas continue. And now, the Palestinian leadership is intent on destroying the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the conflict with Israel in favor of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations.
The Palestinian plan to win that one-sided endorsement from the U.N. this month in New York threatens Israel and insults the United States. The U.S. and the U.N. have long supported the idea that Israel and its neighbors should make peace through direct negotiations. The Palestinian leadership has dealt directly with Israel since 1993 but has refused to do so since March 2010. They seem to prefer theatrics in New York to the hard work of negotiation and compromise that peace will require. (more…)
BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER – Washington Post Writers Group
WASHINGTON The Great Social Security Debate, Proposition 1: Of course it’s a Ponzi scheme.
In a Ponzi scheme, the people who invest early get their money out with dividends. But these dividends don’t come from any profitable or productive activity – they consist entirely of money paid in by later participants.
This cannot go on forever because at some point there just aren’t enough new investors to support the earlier entrants. Word gets around that there are no profits, just money transferred from new to old. The merry-go-round stops, the scheme collapses and the investors lose everything.
Now, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program. A current beneficiary isn’t receiving the money she paid in years ago. That money is gone. It went to her parents’ Social Security check. The money in her check is coming from her son’s FICA tax today – i.e., her “investment” was paid out years ago to earlier entrants in the system and her current benefits are coming from the “investment” of the new entrants into the system. Pay-as-you-go is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. (more…)
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (right) listens as Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes a statement during a Republican presidential candidate debate on Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla. (Associated Press)
