The front page of USA Today (9/19/11) tells us that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is taking “the heat,” but not to worry–he says he can handle it.
That’s especially true with reporters like Susan Page on his side:
He’s not worried, he said, because only one issue really matters to Americans in this election. It’s the one he plans to ride first against his Republican rivals and then against President Obama.
Jobs.
“I’ll be asked about a hundred different issues a thousand different ways,” he said in the interview Friday, one of only a few he has done since announcing his candidacy last month. “But it is about who has the record, who has the vision to get Americans working again.” That’s what “Republicans, independents and even, I think, a number of Democrats — are looking for.”
As he told those at a county GOP dinner in Jefferson, a coffeehouse crowd in Newton and workers at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Atlantic, he can cite job-creation statistics in Texas that are the envy of the nation’s other 49 governors. The Lone Star State has accounted for 40 percent of the jobs created in the United States since June 2009.
We’ve been through this before (and we’ll go through it many, many more times).
It’s likely that a competent governor–and certainly a competent reporter–would be more concerned about the unemployment rate in a given state, which takes into account not only how many people have jobs but how many people need jobs. On that score, Texas is right in the middle of the pack. So there are plenty of governors who actually wouldn’t envy Texas.
Page goes on:
Now Perry is pouncing on [Mitt] Romney with the brio of a rodeo cowboy lassoing a bull.
To every audience, he ridicules Romney’s record on jobs when he was governor (Massachusetts ranked 47th nationwide)….
The unemployment rate in Massachusetts is more than a point lower than it is in Texas. Something Page could have found out even without a lasso.
A state’s Job creation has to do with its size. Its unemployment rate is expressed as a percentage easily compared to unemployment of other states. That the Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today could not know this, or worse, know it and not acknowledge it is inexcusable. Go back to the oboe, Susan, you are way over your head.
Besides the factual incompetence, how about the literary stupidity of a reporter / editor deploying a one-word paragraph?
“Jobs.”
On that particular topic, both Page and her USA Today overseers need to get new ones.
at this point, the facts of the texas “miracle” are well known…except, apparently, to beltway hacks like page who only talk among themselves….of course it’s possible that she knows better and is just lying by omission to sell a narrative….
Im a Small business Owner in TX. I like Rick Perry but his coment about taking the butden off the Small business man is wrong . Hr createf the TX prófit TAx! This is nothing more than a State income TAx on Small business. I Pay more tax to TX than to the IRS. It hurts us severly.
Both parties stress patriotism and jobs. How is it that they then oppose a National Hiring Day? We want jobs, we love America, but we can’t hire even one person FOR America?
Political bickering only insures no one gets work. We have to all work together and we can’t palm this off on congress anymore. We have to put the needs of the people out of work over political gotchas.â┚¬Ã‚Â
National Hiring Day – This is a day that corporations are encouraged to hire new employees. Corporations are called on to put patriotism first and help their country in
hard times. Those corporations that cannot hire, are asked to stop firing for that month.
Okay, so TX accts for 40% of the jobs created in the recession. Where does it stand with how many jobs have been lost? And I’ve read more than once that the overwhelming majority of these jobs are minimum wage. So where does he stand with creating jobs for the magical, mystical middle-class?
Everyone’s got a hardon for this guy ’cause he’s tall, good looking and talks tough. But it’s easy to talk tough when the people you’re pushing around are the poor and oppressed. Typical Republican. Why don’t they all REALLY act tough and start taking on the Wall Street sharks and right-wing zealots bent on destroying everything that is great about America with their unbridled greed and fanatacism?
Oh! That’s right! Don’t bite the teat that suckles you!
Woodward and B
i would rather say that the facts of the Texas miracle are seen in a certain way by the left.This is black and white.Texas has created a huge amount of all the jobs created in this country as of late.Before we attack those jobs and how they came to be we only need ask one question.Would texas and this country be better off….WITHOUT THOSE JOBS?Would the people who hold those jobs….. be better offWITHOUT THEM?If your answer is no, than shaaaadup.May all the states benefit from such a sickness.Look to obamas home turf, to see how well his ideas have helped the people prosper.
The truth is ,is that Perry has governed over a time of expanding jobs in Texas.How much he created is a different question. Romni i would say, has physically created more jobs for whatever that is worth.As for Obama……great line in the debate the other night.One candidate said “more shovel ready jobs were created by the two dogs next door ,than by Obama and all the money spent.”And that is the crux of this problem ,and the reason Obama will get slaughtered in the coming elections.He has spent trillions without creating anything but debt.Carp and snipe all you want against Texas.I will take their bottom line any day ,and twice on tuesday ,Over Bams handiwork.
The smartest thing that smartass Michael e could do is follow his own advice and “shaaaadup”. With every post he reflects ignorance. Here’s the low down on the low life Rick Perry:
Perry supporters get favors, plum jobs
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has given hundreds of his most generous supporters and their businesses grants, tax breaks, contracts and appointments, a New York Times investigation shows. In turn, the supporters helped Perry, who is running for president, raise more money than any politician in Texas history. The national news story apparently didn’t faze Perry; a few days later, he appointed two big donors to state jobs, prompting Public Citizen’s Craig Holman to comment, â┚¬Ã…“It’s pay-to-play politics at its worst.â┚¬Ã‚Â
While we’re talking about Perry â┚¬Ã‚¦
Texas Gov. Rick Perry raised a record $22 million for the Republican Governors Association (RGA) this year, $4 million of that from Texans. The trouble is, Texas law prohibits state elected officials from accepting campaign contributions during the legislative session. Perry wasn’t collecting for himself, but he did hit up some of the same people who contributed to his personal campaign. And the RGA, in turn, has supported his campaigns. This raises the question of whether Perry was exploiting a loophole by soliciting money from Texans with stakes in the legislative business â┚¬“ exactly the thing the law was meant to stop.
08/19/2011 by Peter Hart
On NBC Nightly News (8/16/11)
ANDREA MITCHELL: Perry’s Texas swagger is his calling card, bred of a hardscrabble boyhood on the family farm and Aggie roots at Texas A&M. Perry’s chief claim to challenging President Obama is the Texas jobs record. Perry says his state produced 40 percent of all the jobs created across America in the last two years, with an unemployment rate at 8.2 percent, well below the national average, partly because of the oil and gas boom, partly because of growing trade with Mexico and federal defense spending in Texas.
Since Perry’s campaign is based almost entirely on his state’s jobs miracle, it’s not too much to ask that journalists get this straight.
An 8.2 percent unemployment rate is not “well below the national average.” The national rate is a little over 9 percent. So yes, Texas is doing better than the country as a whole– but not by much. Compare Texas to other states, though, and things don’t look so great: The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 26 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas.
1. woodword burnstein Says:
August 20th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
actually in terms of job creation compared to population increases, texas is dead lastâ┚¬Ã‚¦Ãƒ¢Ã¢”š¬Ã‚¦
http://www.truth-out.org/texas-ranks-dead-last-total-job-creation-accounting-labor-force-growth/1313595007
the state with the most new jobs compared to population growth with the lowest unemployment is north dakotaâ┚¬Ã‚¦.no one’s planning on drafting their republican govenor for president.
plus back in june bloomberg reported: “The Massachusetts labor market deteriorated less than in Texas from 2008 to 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Massachusetts was the fourth most-friendly state for employment in the period. Texas was sixth.”
2. woodword burnstein Says:
August 20th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas, scoffed at the whole “Texas Miracle” narrative, â┚¬Ã…“the notion that our state government is a model is almost enough to beckon the spirit of Molly Ivins back from the shades.â┚¬Ã‚ Galbraith said â┚¬Ã…“Texas has been a low-tax, low-service state since the time of the Republic,â┚¬Ã‚ and noted that it’s â┚¬Ã…“therefore impossible that this fact suddenly accounts for its better job performance over the past few years.â┚¬Ã‚ (Texas’ record of job creation under Perry is the same as it was under former governor Ann Richards, a Democrat.)
â┚¬Ã…“Texas is an energy state benefiting from high oil prices and the incipient boom in natural gas,â┚¬Ã‚ explained Galbraith. â┚¬Ã…“That’s an accident of nature.â┚¬Ã‚ He added that the state â┚¬Ã…“went through the S&L crisis, had major criminal prosecutions and more restrictive housing finance regulations this time around; hence it was not an epicenter of the subprime housing disaster. That’s called a learning experience.â┚¬Ã‚ Tighter regulation? That’s anathema to today’s GOP.
American Independent’s Patrick Brendel noted, “From 2007 to 2010, the number of minimum wage workers in Texas rose from 221,000 to 550,000, an increase of nearly 150 percent.â┚¬Ã‚Â
CNN adds that while Rick Perry was railing against the Democratic stimulus package, the state â┚¬Ã…“was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years,â┚¬Ã‚ and â┚¬Ã…“it plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money.â┚¬Ã‚ The stimulus package created or saved 205,000 jobs in Texas, second only to California.
http://www.alternet.org/story/151325/
Michael e, If you were any stupider, you’d be a box of rocks.
Robert
I have been monitoring people reactions to conservative(mine) input on these blogs.Your side is running about 90% in a certain unflattering behavior pattern.My feeling has been that liberals now live in the realm of the” uneducated thug “.Where all discussions begin, and end ,in personal attacks.Welcome home lad.
Something just struck me about this story……RODEO COWBOY?What is with that?Now I know he is from Texas ,but really is it correct to paint every Texan with a phrase that the left especially uses as a negative.”Barrack Obama …Black thug inner city job creator”sounds bad to my ears,and i doubt would ever appear on a Fair story.
The headline is an allusion to Susan Page’s statement, “Now Perry is pouncing on Romney with the brio of a rodeo cowboy lassoing a bull.”
The fact that someone would think that Texan is to “rodeo cowboy” as African-American is to “black thug” is pretty telling, I guess.