Why a Vote for Rick Perry is Just Like a Vote for Obama

Last week, Rick Perry announced his candidacy for Republican nomination for President. And that basically has the GOP vote divided into two main groups: those for Rick Perry and those for Mitt Romney. We already know how comparable Romney is to Obama (cf. Romneycare), but Perry is being sold as the GOP savior.

But shouldn't Republicans be trying to get away from the policies that have defined the Obama Presidency? Although the policies of both major parties seems to be historically intertwined, the rhetoric from the GOP this year is that, for America to succeed, we have to do the opposite of Barack Obama.

So why are so many Republicans getting behind Rick Perry? It's because the most voters are rationally ignorant about politics and fall for the costumes and empty rhetoric.

But I'm not writing this post to show why voters are rationally ignorant about who/what they are voting for. You can find plenty of sources online to explain that. I'm writing to tell you how a vote for Rick Perry is just like a vote for Obama.

The first thing that people bring up in support of Perry is the fact that the Texas economy has boomed while the rest of the nation has either tanked or stalled. And that is very true, but the real question is if Perry can take credit for it.

To answer that, you have to look a little deeper. You have to look at the policies that have made Texas attractive for business. And when you do, you'll find that Perry didn't really create any new policies, he only maintained the policies that had already made Texas attractive for business.

But I know that some will point to the creation of the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Markets Fund as something that Perry did to spur the Texas economy. But in reality, these are nothing more than slush funds for the Governor to use taxpayer dollars in his own crony-capitalism schemes (that may not be creating jobs) much like Obama's waivers to select companies and unions when it comes to compliance with Obamacare. Or perhaps its the crony-capitalism that "conservatives" shunned with the bank and auto bailouts.

I hear some people saying that those funds aren't slush funds used at the Governor's discretion and are merely funds to help attract businesses that will provide jobs, and every other state gives some sort of tax breaks or other incentives so the funds are necessary to be competitive. But if you look at the history and use of those Texas funds, you'll see that's not the case.

You see, before those funds were created, the Texas legislature had to decide how to craft incentives to lure businesses. Shortly after Perry took office, Boeing showed an interest in moving to Dallas. But because of the inefficiencies of crafting incentives through the legislature, Boeing instead went to Chicago. Perry saw the "problem" with this and encouraged the legislature to create a slush fund for him.

Where did the money go from this new discretionary slush fund? Perry's mega-donors. B.J. McCombs gave $400,000 to Perry's campaign and is getting $25M in Texas taxpayer dollars to build a Formula 1 race track near Austin. Joe Sanderson gave $160,000 to Perry's campaign and received a $500,000 grant to build a chicken farm. David Nance gave $80,000 to Perry's campaign and received a $4.5M grant for Convergen LifeSciences through Perry's override of a regional board's denial. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

What about laws or executive orders crafted to benefit a particular lobbyist or industry? Look no further than Perry's 2007 Executive Order requiring Texas schoolgirls to be vaccinated with Gardasil to supposedly protect them against HPV — a sexually transmitted virus that cannot be contracted by merely attending school. Not only are the long term effects of Gardasil unknown, but it is an expensive vaccine and many people have had adverse (and even fatal) conditions after receiving it (causality isn't determined, though).

But why was this drug, approved by the FDA in June of 2006, rushed to be a mandatory vaccination for Texas girls by Rick Perry on February 2, 2007? Merck's lobbyist and Perry's former Chief of Staff Mike Toomey. Between that connection and the campaign contributions from Merck, it's pretty easy to tell what the real reason behind the executive order was. It should be noted that, after the negative press from Perry's action, Merck suspended its lobbying efforts across the nation to require 11 and 12 year old girls to be vaccinated with Gardasil.

Does that not sound a lot like Obamacare, which was supported by Big Pharma and the health insurance industry — two groups that supporters of Obamacare called "evil"?

What about stimulus funds? Perry has repeatedly called votes for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (which I do not support) as the worst vote in American history. Yet, Perry is responsible for the State of Texas being the Number 2 Recepient of funds from the Act at over $17.1B. About $6.4B of that went to making the 2010 Texas state budget. Now, I can see using already-earmarked stimulus funds for one-time expenses, say public road improvements, but to use as a line-item funding source in a budget is just plain irresponsible. Of course, such a misuse of one-time funds seems to be acceptable among Republicans.

If Rick Perry is what Republicans want for President, then they are no better than Democrats who want Obama for President.