Are The Texas Fires God's Punishment?

[thoughtone]

But we're broke! Oh well, we'll stay part of the union as long as the money keeps flowin'.


Secessionist Governor Perry Demands Disaster Relief For From Obama


Oh the irony. Not so long ago Governor and Presidential hopeful Rick Perry was all ready for Texas to secede from the Union because of the Obama's out of control spending.

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The money quote:

“We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it,” Perry said. “But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”​

He's also suggested that states have the right to "secede" from the Federal Government's Social Security program if they want to do so:

Freshly reelected Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) just isn't ready to give up on the secession talk that made him a topic of conversation last year. Taking a national victory lap after his election to an unprecedented third term this week, Perry is out talking up his new plan to break up the union, kind of: It's time, he says, to let states opt out of Social Security. [...]
His new suggestion is not to split Texas from the other 49 states, but rather to give it the option to secede from the national pension program that has defined retirement in the country for 75 years.

"When you look at social security, it's broke," Perry told the hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning. "My kids, 27 and 24, they know this is a Ponzi scheme."

One way out of this mess, in Perry's mind? Just abandon Social Security altogether and let the states handle it. Texas (of course) has already fixed Social Security's problem, Perry says, so why should it be saddled with paying the Ponzi debts of every other sucker?

"Why is the federal government even in the pension program or the health care delivery program?" Perry asked. "Let the states do it." [...]

Perry is currently on a national tour touting his book Fed Up! which is focused on the many ways the federal government should, in essence, get off the backs of the 50 states. The tools of federal tyranny Perry describes would be at home at any tea party rally: In a nutshell, taxes are too high, the EPA is too nosy and the health care reform law is an existential terror.

It all goes back to the Founding Fathers, Perry says.

"They did not believe that all of us would be alike, and they really didn't like centralized government and mandating down to these states how to act, how to look," he told NPR.
​

Yet, now that out of control wildfires have destroyed 1.5 million acres in Texas, Governor Perry is suddenly willing to let the government bail Texas out by accepting disaster relief from the Federal Government. I guess it's okay for the Feds to be in the Texas wildfire bailout business, even if its constitutionally wrong to offer economic stimulus money, or provide Social Security and Medicare, to Texas citizens:

(Reuters) - Texas Governor Rick Perry has requested a Major Disaster Declaration for the entire state, as brush fires which have burned more than 1.5 million acres continued on Monday.
The fires have been whipped by 60-mile-an-hour wind gusts and fueled by brush dried out by record low humidity.

"Texas is reaching its capacity to respond to these emergencies and is in need of federal assistance," Perry said in a statement on Monday.

"I urge President (Barack) Obama to approve our request quickly so Texans can continue receiving the resources and support they need as wildfires remain an ongoing threat."
​

Funny how these Tea Party hypocrites and demagogues change their tune whenever it suits them. "To hell with the Union" they declare. "We don't need your stinking stimulus money nor your socialized "pensions" and health care."

But then this spring massive wildfires break out, and Texas doesn't have the resources to go it alone like the rugged individualists that Rick Perry claimed they were. Suddenly Governor "Seceding from the Union is always an Option" Perry sings a different tune. Suddenly he crawls begging to president Obama, a man he has personally disparaged numerous times, and now demands federal assistance for a "state problem."

I mean where in the Constitution does it say the Federal Government can interfere in state concerns and provide federal disaster relief? Isn't this just as unconstitutional in your view, Governor Perry, the stimulus money or social security or medicare? Why not let the State if Texas take care of its own disasters without meddlesome federal interference, huh?

Oh, I have no doubt Rick Perry will get his disaster relief for Texas (for why should Texans suffer because they have an idiot demagogue for a Governor?). I also have no doubt Perry will blame President Obama for not acting swiftly enough. I also expect that in the future Perry will continue bashing Obama for his socialist agenda. But how ironic that the Governor who has made a career out of claiming Texas doesn't need the help of the Federal Government and can secede from the United States whenever and to whatever extent it pleases, is now begging President Obama for that very same federal "socialistic" assistance he has always disdained publicly.

I guess everything really is bigger in Texas, especially its Governor's hypocrisy.

 

[thoughtone]

Does this have to do with Gays?

 

[thoughtone]

$$$$

 

[thoughtone]

All this hasn't stopped Governor Secessionist claim's of climate change denying.


source: Huffington Post


Rick Perry: Climate Scientists 'Manipulated Data' (VIDEO)


WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry took his skepticism about climate change one step further on Wednesday, telling a New Hampshire business crowd that scientists have cooked up the data on global warming for the cash.

In his stump speech, Perry referenced "a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling in to their projects."

"We're seeing weekly, or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what's causing the climate to change," Perry said. "Yes, our climates change. They've been changing ever since the earth was formed."

It isn't the first time Perry has accused climate scientists of fibbing. ThinkProgress' Brad Johnson reported on Monday that in Perry's book, Fed Up!, the governor calls climate science a “contrived phony mess.”

Among his fellow GOP presidential contenders, however, Perry's views are not so extreme.

Herman Cain has called the very premise of climate change "a scam," while former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has referred to it as nothing more than a "trend," accusing the left of "taking advantage" of it by creating "a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the earth is gonna cool and warm."

Back in 2009, meanwhile, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) argued on the House floor that the very concept of global warming is faulty because “carbon dioxide is a natural byproduct of nature!"

Watch:
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Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has also become increasingly skeptical of climate change. In a 2009 interview with Fox News, he said, "the greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on the environment and global warming."

As for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), it's hard to say what he believes. In 2008, he appeared in an ad alongside then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urging the country to address climate change. Since announcing his 2012 candidacy, Gingrich has walked back those views, but that hasn't stopped his fellow climate deniers from hitting him over the flip-flop.

Watch the Gingrich and Pelosi ad here:
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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy earlier this summer, telling a crowd of 200 in Manchester, N.H. that humans are at least somewhat responsible for climate change.

"I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he said at the town hall this June. "It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors."

Green advocates' best hope within the GOP presidential field may lie with former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. Huntsman has been an outright proponent of the need for climate action, going so far as to sign his state up for a regional cap-and-trade program when he was in office. In 2009 he called Republicans' failure to address climate change at the national level "immensely frustrating."

Watch Perry's full remarks as captured by tracking outfit American Bridge 21st Century below:
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[thoughtone]

Perry: I want to make Washington inconsequential in your lives

 

[thoughtone]

Rick Perry's Budget Leaves Texans In Bind Amidst Historic Wildfires

“I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”

August 13, 2011 RedState Gathering in Charleston, S.C. statement from Texas Governor and Conservative/Right Wing Presidential Candidate, Rick Perry
​

source: Huffington Post

Rick Perry's Budget Leaves Texans In Bind Amidst Historic Wildfires

WASHINGTON -- As wildfires engulfed her Bastrop County, Texas, neighborhood on Sunday, Betty Dunkerley was forced to evacuate her home for safer ground. There were few options for shelter, she said. Only a middle school and a Catholic church had been opened up to evacuees, and the middle school were already crowded.

While seeking shelter, Dunkerley saw others who had been displaced -- families with nowhere to go and no support system in place to assist them. Some slept in parking lots, with kids sleeping in sleeping bags in truck beds alongside the family dog.

"A lot of people were trying to camp out," Dunkerley, a former Austin City Council member, told The Huffington Post.

The wildfires threatening Dunkerley and her neighbors are being met by an inadequately funded response team. Back in May, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) signed a budget presented by the state legislature that cut funding for the state agency in charge of combating such blazes.

The Texas Forest Service's funding was sliced from $117.7 million to $83 million. More devastating cuts hit the assistance grants to volunteer fire departments around the state. Those grants were slashed 55 percent from $30 million per year in 2010 and 2011 to $13.5 million per year in 2012 and 2013. Those cuts are effective now.

As of Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle reported that wildfires had consumed more than 33,000 acres in Bastrop County, clearing out 20 neighborhoods and claiming two lives. Fires had also sprung up in several counties outside of Houston, burning at least 7,000 acres. Aerial photos from the Bastrop blaze showed a huge smoke plume had drifted over Austin.

Dunkerley was lucky. She had a key to her church and was able to set up camp there. Her house was not among the 800 or so turned to ash. It had survived. But, she was told, her neighborhood had not. It looked like a "war zone."

Dunkerley had managed to flee with her three cats, a dress she planned to wear for an upcoming family wedding and little else. She said she doesn't know when she will be allowed back into her home.

"In hindsight, we should have all had a better plan on a personal level and a governmental level," she said. "All over central Texas you can have this repeated," she added. "Everything is a tinderbox."

Texas is currently facing its worst single-year drought on record, with agricultural losses topping $5 billion. Similar drought conditions and water rationing caused deadly fires that raged two years ago. Despite that history, Texas's governor and state lawmakers failed to make any allowances for wildfires this year.

Perry, who is now the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, returned home from the campaign trail to address the fires on Monday, the day after Dunkerley had been evacuated.

"I think our local state senator has been very visible," Dunkerley said. "Our county judge and our mayor in Bastrop have been very visible." She added that once Perry returned to Texas, "some of our state resources were showing up a little faster."

But the consequences of the cuts to firefighting funding remain evident.

"We were outvoted -- what can I say?" said Texas state Sen. Mario Gallegos (D), who voted against the state budget. "Obviously this money is needed for natural disasters like the ones we have right now."

"We do have a rainy day fund, and I would hope that the governor goes into the rainy day fund," he added. "But we have to also be responsible here locally, and cutting the Forest Service budget significantly was not being responsible."

Gallegos, who worked for 22 years in the Houston fire department, noted that outside major cities like Houston and Dallas, volunteer firefighters are the backbone of the Texas firefighting force.

"Out in the suburbs and in the woods, we have to count on our volunteers," he told HuffPost.

Analiese Kornely, executive director of the Perry watchdog group Back to Basics PAC, said that the governor had the money to fund volunteer fire department programs.

"[Budget writers] did actually have the $60 million needed to fund the program at 2010-2011 levels but did not use it," she said in an email. Instead, the volunteers took the 55 percent cut.

In Texas, volunteer firefighting programs receive state money through tax revenues set aside in a dedicated fund.

"We're all paying this money to a dedicated fund," said Jim Dunnam, a former state representative and current fellow at the Texas First Foundation. "And they're not spending the money because they need that money to offset their spending elsewhere." State officials, he said, "are telling people, 'You need to pay taxes for fire prevention,' and then [they] don't spend it. It's crazy."

Instead, the funds are left in a general account. "It is one of the gimmicks they used to balance the budget in Texas," Dunnam said. "[Perry's] good at flying back to Texas for a photo op," he added, "but over his tenure as governor, we've just had chronic neglect of basic things to allow Texas to move forward."

Robert Ryland, a democratic precinct chair in Elgin, a town located 18 miles north of Bastrop, called the decision to cut volunteer firefighter funds "horrible." He noted the area had endured wild fires in recent years, and drought conditions were already a big problem when the cuts came down.

"You're literally playing with fire," Ryland told HuffPost. "When you are talking about essential public services, those things to tend to be a third rail even in Texas. This is the first time in my memory that I've ever seen funding for that kind of thing tossed around or used as an accounting trick to keep their numbers where they wanted them, where Perry wanted them to be."

Bastrop has a small fire department, Ryland said, and the surrounding towns had volunteer forces. "These are truly volunteers, with other jobs and families," he explained. "Just having that available in small communities is a life line for a lot of folks. This is not something you should mess with."

It's not just the funding, but Perry himself who has been MIA during the wildfires, Ryland said. "He basically came down here and told us FEMA would be here on Wednesday," he said, "and then he took off."

Eva DeLuna, a budget analyst with the Center for Public Policy Priorities, told HuffPost the Texas state legislature almost always deals with natural disasters after the fact.

"We tend not to do prevention because we're the lowest-spending state in the country," DeLuna said. "We tend to deal with things once it’s an emergency." She cited creating firebreaks as one preventative measure fire departments could take if they had the resources.

"We know what we should do, but we just don't have the money to deal with it," she said, adding, "well we do -- we just don’t want to collect it in taxes.”

In an email to HuffPost, Texas state Sen. Kirk Watson (D) scolded his fellow lawmakers for failing to prepare for the wildfires.

"It would be refreshing to see those in control -- of the Capitol and of the budgeting process -- express as much concern about preventing these tragedies before they take place as they do after land, property and possessions of Texans are lost," he wrote.

"During the session, budget decisions are presented as little more than math problems," Watson continued. "They're presented as raw numbers, and the discussion ends as soon as those numbers balance -- or even just appear to balance, by any means necessary. Events such as these fires show these kinds of debates aren't just about numbers. They're about specific impacts on very real people and their lives."

Perry has berated the Obama administration for not approving quickly enough a request he put in to FEMA for federal funds to assist firefighting efforts in Texas.

"You see hundreds of thousands of acres of Texas burning and you know that there will soon be emergency declarations, and we did that now a couple of weeks ago, but still no response from this administration," he told local news radio station WOAI in an April interview. "There is a point in time where you say, hey, what's going on here," Perry added. "You have to ask why are you taking care of Alabama and other states? I know our letter didn't get lost in the mail."

But after complaining to the feds and conducting a statewide prayer for rain earlier this year, Perry appears to have shifted his focus to the 2012 election.

Recent polls showed Perry surging ahead of Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP 2012 pack, with 29 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents listing him as their first choice for the Republican nomination. His closest competitor, Romney, landed just 17 percent of respondents.

People in Texas, however, are not as convinced by Perry's performance. A survey conducted by Public Policy Polling found Perry trailing Obama 45 percent to 47 percent in Texas, which hasn't voted for a Democratic president since 1976. The June poll showed Perry's approval rating at just 43 percent. Another University of TexasTexas Tribune poll shows him doing considerably worse.

A call to Perry’s office Wednesday was not returned.

 

[thoughtone]

Secessionist Governor Perry Demands Disaster Relief For From Obama

“I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”

August 13, 2011 RedState Gathering in Charleston, S.C. statement from Texas Governor and Conservative/Right Wing Presidential Candidate, Rick Perry
​

 

[actinanass]

Re: Rick Perry's Budget Leaves Texans In Bind Amidst Historic Wildfires

typical...

 

[thoughtone]

Re: Rick Perry's Budget Leaves Texans In Bind Amidst Historic Wildfires

typical...

Thoughtone, if Perry wins, you will have a miserable eight years...

And so will you!

“I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”

 

[ballscout1]

he has a 9 billion dollar rainy day fund and since it isn't raining anytime soon maybe he should use some.

he didn't use it to close his 6 billion budget deficit he cut education funding for that.

so he has options and plus his house isn't burning so he doesn't really give a shit.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Re: Rick Perry's Budget Leaves Texans In Bind Amidst Historic Wildfires

typical...

It is. Cutting a vital service like the Forest Service.

 

[SPECTRE1]

Re: Rick Perry's Budget Leaves Texans In Bind Amidst Historic Wildfires

Perry and Herman idea on Social Security are good. The government has been taking the money from Social Security. The fiscal crisis exposed what has been going on when the thought of Social Security payments not being paid. Social Security has a 2.6 trillion dollar surplus. If a company pulled some stunt like that with the workers pension plan they would be in huge trouble.

You give the government trillions of dollars they will will spend it, create some fancy IOU. Creating investment accounts that go into the stock market or a person can choose treasuries. Everybody gets a minimum amount to invest every year and an additional amount based on income. You can also have a small amount of guaranteed income; a mix of both.

The social security tax should be grouped with federal taxes if the government is going to take the money and spend it; give an IOU back.

Force the government to raise taxes if the need money or stop the lies with retirement age saying people are living longer to reduce the amount of money that needs to be paid back!!! It something Madoff would cook up, tell the investors, I need to raise your retirement age to keep the scheme going, reduce the amount of money that needs to be paid back. Plus social security is discriminatory because life expectancy varies significant between man and women and race.

Social Security plays a big role in unemployment when older workers that want to retire are forced to work longer.

 

[thoughtone]

 

[IT IS WHAT IT IS]

Yeah... Hes pissed @Big Tex for running his mouth about Bernie!