Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Rick Perry's Mixed Economic Record

Conservatives and liberals are both going to be disappointed with Gov. Rick Perry's economic record in Texas, notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia in her latest column at The Daily. Conservatives, because it's not all Perry is making it out to be. Liberals, because it's better than they are prepared to acknowledge it is.

"With President Obama out of ideas for an out-of-work nation, Perry's strong jobs record will appeal to voters," she notes. However, government spending on his watch has actually gone up in Texas; he has condemned Obama's economic stimulus even while using stimulus funds to plug his budget deficit; and he has a crony capitalism problem.

In short, Perry's record is genuinely, decidedly, honestly mixed.

Read the whole thing here.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Only one link this morning? And it's to The Daily?

[Bee Tagger]

And you can't even unsubscribe right now because if you do, it will seem like it's because you hate KMW.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I think what's going on is that the staff is sequestered, coistered away in full damage control mode as they try to stop the hemorrhaging caused by Mangu-Ward's hormones-fueled, wild-eyed, on-air tirade about how she doesn't believe Ron Paul is statist enough for her liking and that she's insisting everyone vote for Romney or else.

Either that or Riggs slept in.

[Citizen Nothing]

And you can't even unsubscribe right now because...
Fuck that! Cancel my subscription!

[Clich? Bandit]

Holy crap! Even I made it here before MLs...Riggs get hit by a bus?

[Pat L]

Wow lots of Perry stuff here at Reason today. I think you're seeing the attacks on Perry because unless the Republicans nominate Bachmann or Paul, the next president will be the winner if the South Carolina primary next year. Obama is very weak and libs are scared shitless of Perry!

[Au H20]

No Morning Link thursdays?

[SugarFree]

They don't want to even have a Morning Links if it's going to be troll-free. They hate us and love the trolls.

[Aqua-Rabbit]

Punch a Hippy.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c.....&seid=auto

[Brett L]

Obama campaign staffer says Krugabe is a political rookie.

"Paul Krugman is a political rookie. At least he is when compared to President Obama. That's why he unleashed a screed as soon as word came about the debt ceiling compromise between President Obama and Congressional leaders - to, you know, avert an economic 9/11. Joining the ideologue spheres' pure, fanatic, indomitable hysteria, Krugman declares the deal a disaster - both political and economic - of course providing no evidence for the latter, which I find curious for this Nobel winning economist. He rides the coattails of the simplistic argument that spending cuts - any spending cuts - are bad for a fragile economy, ignoring wholeheartedly his own revious cheerleading for cutting, say, defense spending."

I'm amazed at how much I agree with this.

[John]

I almost feel bad for Obama. He gave liberals the biggest step towards communist healthcare in 40 years and essentially nationalized the banks via TARP and Dodd Frank. After all of that, these ungrateful bastards want to attack him for making a deal after the worst election defeat since the civil war?

[Brett L]

Being "almost" the New Soviet Man just gets you an ice-ax in the back.

[Pro Libertate]

Interesting that the assassin brought an ice axe with him. Gotta assume he didn't pick one up in Mexico.

[H man]

Point of fact, it was Bush that nationalized the banks with TARP.

[John]

And obama extended TARP and then put it into statute via Dodd Frank.

[G. Gardner]

"The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008."

[John]

And TAPR stopped on 20 January 2009 right? Obama continued TARP. He owns it just as much as Bush does. And also Obama voted for TARP. And Bush isn't running anymore. So Obama is holding the bag.

[G. Gardner]

"And TAPR stopped on 20 January 2009 right? Obama continued TARP. He owns it just as much as Bush does."

by that logic Reagan owns social security...

[John]

In some ways Reagan does. He didn't end it or try to end it. Of course Social Security was almost 50 years old when Reagan took office. So Reagan not ending it is a bit more excuseable than Obama not ending TARP that was three months old.

Also, Reagan wasn't in Congress to vote for the creation of Social Security when it was created like Obama was with TARP.

Look Gardner, stop insulting people's intelligence. Obama supported TARP, voted for it as a Senator, and continued and expanded it as President. He fucking owns it. Take the Obamabot spam elsewhere.

[R C Dean]

Sure. Reagan owned Social Security while he was President.

What is bizarre an pretty unprecedented is Obama's attempt to disown any responsibility for his, err, responsibilities.

[Original O2]

guys - john only parrots the RW rubbish he is agitproped with on wingnutz radio. "SEND YOUR PATRIOTIC DONATION NOW NOW NOW"

[Original 02]

HUHUHUHUHH WOW.

God I love to jerk off on a comment thread in the morning.

[OO]

spoof fail

[Lackwit Bingo]

...essentially nationalized the banks via TARP and Dodd Frank.

To "nationalize" something is to take assets wholly under government's permanent control - often without paying for the assets taken.

To "invest" in something is to put money towards a venture with the expectation of gain (ie that your money will be repaid with extra in time). I notice that well over 2/3's of TARP funds been repaid, thus the government no longer owns those companies. This is by definition "investment" not "nationalization."

Also, Dodd-Frank does not extend government ownership of those private assets, it just regulates the rights of private owners.

[Lackwit Bingo]

Obama continued TARP... He didn't end it or try to end it.

The vast majority of TARP money had been dispersed by the time Obama took office. How would you propose that he "end" it? Demand that the loan money be repaid immediately, thus forcing foreclosure of bank assets and killing a measure that had staved off total collapse? Or just releasing the government's interest in the money, giving it to the corporations for free?

[John]

They do love the trolls. Witness their unending love of Venneman.

[?]

Episiarch|8.18.11 @ 11:10AM
Remember, this is Troll Free Thursday. Pass it on.

[Citizen Nothing]

Maybe Raimondo has taken the staff hostage.

[Citizen Nothing]

He demands a pack of cigs, The Jacket (which apparently had its own safe room) and admission that Israeli intelligence operating in the U.S. had advance knowledge of 9/11.
But don't forget the cigs.

[Brett L]

He'll never get The Jacket. The squirrels will chew him apart first.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Compared with the rest of the country, Texas has been a job-creating machine.

It was only a matter of time before automation stole the human jobmaker's job.

[Original O2]

~half of tx created [JOBZ] are govt sector [JOBZ]. oh wait, govt doesnt create [JOBZ].

[Lord Humungus]

At this point, I'll take mixed instead of WTF?

[Mister DNA]

Fuck it.

Adam vs. The Mangu-Ward.

lol @ butthurt Paulbots.

[Apogee]

Heh. - I'm pretty sure the "Casual Encounters" section of my local Craigslist has a larger circulation than Reason.

That's true for a lot of publications.

[Mister DNA]

Shit, I'll bet the Casual Encounters section of the Afghanistan Craigslist has a larger circulation than the Casual Encounters section of my local Craigslist. (SFW)

[Lost_In_Translation]

I'm sorry, do you mean Casualty Counters?

[James Ard]

That crony capitalism article in the wsj the other day is going to be Perry's biggest obstacle to winning the nomination. I'm sure they all do it, but he was doing it Texas sized.

[Lord Humungus]

Let the good times roll!
http://www.reuters.com/article.....BR20110818

"Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 408,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday, above economists' expectations for a rise to 400,000.

Another report from the Labor Department showed the Consumer Price Index increased 0.5 percent in July, the largest gain since March, after falling 0.2 percent in June. That was above economists' expectations for a 0.2 percent gain."

[Pro Libertate]

Happy Day of the Commenters, everyone! I hope someday that Congress officially refuses to recognize this important holiday.

[Brett L]

Ah. No wonder there are no morning links. Punishment for the commenter revolt.

[Pro Libertate]

Hey, that's not a bad theory. Wonder if they'll mention it?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Hit & Run commenters utilized these new powers only for good, invoking them solely to emphasize an already erudite point.

Revisionist history is the worst. That was a dark day as, in the mad orgy of chaos, innocent bystanders such as myself were repeatedly assaulted with violently ostentatious imagery. The font raping still haunts me to this day, and my attorney is looking into whether the acts of more than a few here are civilly actionable. Your right to post your flamboyant tagging stops at my eyeballs, sir.

Mention it? [Spit] The taggers' headers should be set on pikes on the home page as a warning to all.

[Pro Libertate]

Oh, please. Can you imagine what we'd have today if they'd allowed us to retain our natural rights? For starters, Hit & Run would likely be the biggest porn site in the United States. Lots of money in porn.

[Fist of Etiquette]

You can't put your Asian tranny porn next to your Harry Potter slash fiction next to your Brazilian fart porn, which is what we would have here. Some things are incompatible. Consumers must be tailored to. Creating an aggregate porn clearinghouse is a tricky business and not for the brutish, ham-fisted lot we have here. A Reason After Dark free-for-all would go down in flames.

[Pro Libertate]

Don't be absurd. Through a cooperative, bottoms-up, crypto-anarchist syndicate, formed spontaneously by Hit & Run commenters, we would achieve an orderly porn regime.

[R C Dean]

See, Pro Lib, you're already trying to tilt the playing field, with your "bottoms up" porn regime.

[Pro Libertate]

Not at all. Let the market decide.

[John]

I think they do recognize it. And they are punishing the proles by withholding their morning links.

[Clich? Bandit]

ohh i do wish I could make it blink.

[Pro Libertate]

The blink tag alone would give us a much better class of troll than we have now. We don't even have UL tag capabilities!

[John]

http://www.theblaze.com/storie.....loungerie/

Toddler lingerie. We are the most fucked up society in history. The same society that will put a 14 year old girl on a list with sex perverts for the rest of her life for sending a topless picture to her boyfriend, will allow this.

[heller]

Who cares? If you don't like it, don't buy it.

[John]

So it is okay for the cops to throw the sexting 14 year old in jail but this should stand? If we want to sexualize children, I don't like it, but hey I am not king. What pisses me off is the cognitive dissonance of people who claim to want to hang child molesters but then dress their 8 year olds like whores. That is fucked up.

[NoVAHockey]

something about slut-shaming or slut-walks, or dressing like a slut doesn't mean you are one or want the attention. i admit ignorance on how this helps the feminist cause or even what that cause is.

[sloopyinca]

I really like the range of opinions they offer in the poll. You can choose from "hated it" to "who cares," to "hated it" to "other."

Personally, and as the father of a 13 y/o daughter, the ads oversexualize the kids, but the stuff looks like regular underwear and bras to me.

[Mister DNA]

I love the comments. Basically, "Yeah, the market will take care of this, but the state still needs to come in and do something about it."

[John]

I don't think the state should do something. But I think society is totally fucked up in its view of sex and children.

[Mister DNA]

Agreed, 100% The photos in the article made me sick, but not sick enough to want government to solve this problem.

[Citizen Nothing]

What is this "society" of which you speak?
The fucked-up will be with us, always.

[heller]

a/a

NEVER FORGET!

[Pro Libertate]

I know that I won't. What a glorious day for the proletariat.

[MNG]

Rick Perry's made-up 'facts' about climate change

these remarks, made in New Hampshire on Wednesday, seem to take his skepticism to a new level, with significant and specific allegations:

1. A substantial number of scientists have manipulated data so they will have dollars rolling into their projects.

2. Almost weekly or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.

Perry is wrong to suggest that that skepticism has gained strength among scientists.

To the contrary, various surveys of climate researchers suggest growing acceptance, with as many as 98 percent believing in the concept of man-made climate change. A 2010 study by the National Academy of Sciences, which surveyed 1,372 climate researchers, is an example of this consensus...There have been similar studies by, among others, the United States Global Change Research Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Despite our repeated requests, neither spokesman provided any evidence to back up Perry's claim that "a substantial number of scientists ? have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects" ? perhaps because that particular scandal appears to be a figment of Perry's imagination.

Perry appears to be referring to hundreds of e-mails that were stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain and then disseminated on the Internet in 2009. One e-mail made references to adding a "trick" in the data, leading climate change skeptics to claim the data was manipulated.

But, although Perry claimed the scientists "were found to be manipulating this data," five investigations have since been conducted into the allegations ? and each one exonerated the half-dozen or so scientists involved.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/....._blog.html

[John]

I think most of the people on this blog and a small majority of the country agree with one and two. Climategate happened. No one who doesn't have a vested interest believes this shit anymore.

Perry is a crony capitalist bible thumper. But he didn't get elected to Governor of Texas without knowing which way the wind blows. The AGW game is up.

[MNG]

No one who has a vested interest believes this shit anymore.

FTFY

Strangely, its only ideological opponents (this is a libertarian discussion board dude) of the (supposed) policy implications of AGW that seem to deny it, or seem to continue to make the assertion that ClimateGate has proved much of anything.

As the article points to, surveys of scientists in the field and numerous scientific patterns have concluded just the opposite. I guess people should trust the opinions of untrained ideologues over them?

[MNG]

commissions not patterns

[sloopyinca]

Take a stroll on over to Watts Up With That, Minge. Your "consensus" is a fallacy perpetuated by the media to save face against the overwhelming wave of evidence that points to tampering, manipulation of data, suppression of criticism and outright fraud by those who support AGW.

[John]

Look MNG. Because of climategate and the various times they have been caught lying, fewer and fewer people trust the authorities. So, running around bashing Perry by appealing to those very same authorities is both pointless and comical.

"Rick Perry doesn't believe us anymore". Well no shit, neither does anyone else.

[Citizen Nothing]

If anyone in the AGW crowd would consider a revenue-neutral carbon tax, then I'd accept that perhaps they were not just playing political games themselves.

[Brett L]

Eco-fads. How feel good policies replace science in environmental debates. Please to be reading.

[R C Dean]

five sham investigations staffed by cronies and riddled with conflicts of interest have since been conducted into the allegations ? and ,mirabile dictu, each one exonerated the half-dozen or so scientists involved.

[kinnath]

The climate-gate reviews have a lot in common with death-by-cop reviews.

[T]

I only have one question, since I haven't bothered to follow up on the delcious climagate WHARGARBL from both sides. Last I checked, the climate data available anymore is the 'corrected' data which had been subject to manipulation (for whatever reason). The actual raw, unmanipulated data no longer exists. Is this still the case?

If it is, it's pretty strong point in Perry's favor. When you destroy (either accidentally or on purpose) the raw data and only have the manipulated data left, sorry, I don't trust you. If I can't replicate the results you're claiming from the raw data, you fail at science.

[R C Dean]

The actual raw, unmanipulated data no longer exists.

Yeah, they say they ran out of storage space for the raw data, so they dumped it.

I mean, given the way cost of digital storage has been skyrocketing for decades now, can you blame them?

[kinnath]

In the bad old days, we had to back up hard drives to tape (reels). The tape back up systems were notorious for losing data -- a single bad spot on the tape could wipe out a whole volume. And the older the tape, the more likely the tape would have a bad spot.

So we had to back up frequently and maintain multiple back ups to ensure that we could recover from a disk failure.

So if the jack-asses at the climate research center had said "hey we're academics, we didn't do a good job of maintaining decade-old tapes", then I could have understood the loss of data. This would have shown they were merely incompetent.

But there is evidence they destroyed data to void FOIA requests. I can't understand why these people aren't explaing their behavior to a jury.

[R C Dean]

However, government spending on his watch has actually gone up in Texas;

He's been governor for, what, over ten years now? Is that absolute spending, spending per capita (the state has really added population, you know), spending per GDP (the state economy has really grown, you know).

Does it take into account the massive property tax deal that was done several years ago, under which property taxes were held down in exchange for more state funding of schools?

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there was spending growth however you look at it. But I expect better than oppo sound bites from Reason writers.

God knows I am no Perry fan, but it strikes me as perhaps unfair to whack him for taking federal dollars, just as it is unfair to whack any libertarian who participates in a federal program.

If Perry had turned that money down, Texans would still have been taxed to fund the federal program, and the money would have gone elsewhere. So what would have been the point?

[kwais]

Hey so if this is what passes for Morning Links, there is this:

http://en.news.maktoob.com/200.....rticle.htm

Coordinated attack in Southern Israel, and mortars originating from Egypt.

[sloopyinca]

But, but, but...JOOOOOOOZ!!!

[Original O2]

be one hellva mortar to have the range. like one of those civil war RR mortars. more likely it was fired fm sinai by aQ with whom the eqyptians are fighting.

[T]

The Sinai is part of Egypt, dumbass. I'm pretty sure I can hit Israel with a freaking 60mm from there, since the two are contiguous.

[OO]

are you saying gaza is eqyptian?

[T]

Have you ever looked at a map of the Middle East in your life? STFU until you even know what you're talking about.

[R C Dean]

Fuck it. Israel should just recognize Gaza as a fully sovereign state, and, consonant with the laws of war, declare that any attack originating from its territory is an act of war by that state, and will be responded to accordingly.

Which is to say, with a military assault ending in the unconditional surrender of the Palestinians.

[kwais]

A military assault ending with the unconditional surrender of the Palestinians.

- And then what?

You get Hamas to surrender, ok that would probably take a day at the most.

And then what? Install the government of you choice, give them democracy. Been done, and been done.

And then what?

[R C Dean]

And then what?

Then you go home.

If the Palis are adults who are capable of learning a lesson, acting like civilized people, and having a state of their own, then you shouldn't have any more trouble with them. I wouldn't condescend to them by installing a government, "giving" them democracy, and all that.

They can do what they want. As they sow, so shall they reap, that's all I'm saying.

If you have to go in a second time, well, maybe do something different that time.

[kwais]

The way I see it the Israelis have two choices
1 Genocide
2 Treat them like human being with equal rights and all that stuff, take away the reason for the terrorism.

[Just Me]

http://www.dallasfed.org/news/.....110817.cfm

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