Is Rick Perry's New Ad Subliminal Birther Propaganda? There's so much to work with in what Texas Gov. Rick Perry states explicitly that I hesitate to delve into any possible below-the-radar messages in his new TV spot. But take a look and ask yourself whether the Republican front-runner is flirting with birtherism: We hear Obama's voice and see various near-apocalyptic scenes of urban devastation.
Mournful music plays in the background. There's more, to be sure. Maybe it isn't subliminal birtherism. Update: My erstwhile Slate colleague Dave Weigel identifies the auteur of this TV spot as Lucas Baiano, "the Michael Bay of political video-making" and a former Pawlenty guy. Update: Over at FactCheck.org, Brooks Jackson points out that the ad's claim that the poverty rate is at "an all-time high" is false. Perry invited to attend Florida pastor policy briefing. Gov. Rick Perry may join Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and other conservative figures during a two-day “Pastor Policy Briefing,” in Orlando, Fla., an October event being organized by David Lane, who also directed fundraising for Perry’s August prayer rally, “The Response.”
After it’s done, the Orlando event will live on as part of a two-hour compendium of similar pastor briefings, which will be sold for broadcast in homes and churches as part of a coordinated effort targeting unregistered Christian voters. The Florida briefing mimics a pastor briefing held by the Iowa Renewal Project in Des Moines in March, which featured Huckabee, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and GOP presidential contenders Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, as our sister site the Iowa Independent previously reported.
At least 14 states have held “renewal project” events, attracting nearly 10,000 pastors nationwide, including in Texas. A sophisticated data-mining project sets the group’s effort apart. Austin news, sports, weather, Longhorns, business | Statesman.com. Home > Austin Legal > Archives > 2011 > September > 29 > Entry By Steven Kreytak | Thursday, September 29, 2011, 06:43 PM This story has been updated since originally filed with comments from Gabrielle Nestande’s lawyer Perry Minton. A Travis County grand jury this afternoon indicted a former state legislative employee on a charge of failure to stop and render aid in a May crash that left a pedestrian dead in West Austin’s Tarrytown neighborhood.
The grand jury did not return any additional charges against Gabrielle Nestande, 24, despite a contention by police after Nestande’s May arrest that they believed alcohol had been a factor in the crash that left 30-year-old Courtney Griffin dead. Nestande’s lawyer Perry Minton said he was pleased that no additional charges were brought.
“I have firmly believed from the beginning of this that alcohol was not the cause of this accident,” Minton said. “We continue to grieve for the family.” Permalink | Comments (42) | Post your comment. Email Destruction Halted in Texas Governor's Office — Rick Perry. Gov. Rick Perry’s state office has temporarily stopped deleting emails every seven days — as its official document retention policy allows — thanks to the efforts of a Wisconsin-based political activist who thinks they should be preserved longer. Government transparency advocate John Washburn has devised a computer program to automatically spit out requests, twice a week, for all of the emails generated by the governor’s office.
That has had the impact of halting the routine destruction of the records, because the law says files can’t be destroyed if somebody asks for them under the Texas Public Information Act. Soon after he filed the request, Washburn said the governor's office assured him the "email purging has stopped. " The Milwaukee-based activist made a similar request a few years ago, but he gave up after a few weeks because he couldn’t afford to pay for the documents he was entitled to receive. Frazier said the policy dates back to Perry's predecessor, George W. Rick Perry raising with coal exec Bob Murray - Alexander Burns. Rick Perry will visit West Virginia later this month to raise money with Midwestern coal baron Bob Murray, according to a fundraising invitation obtained by POLITICO.
Murray, a prominent mining executive who heads the Ohio-based Murray Energy Corporation, will host Perry at Wheeling’s White Palace Ballroom on September 29. In a letter to potential donors, Murray asks for contributions of $2,500 per individual and $5,000 per couple. Continue Reading From Murray’s pitch: We are having a reception and dinner for Presidential candidate Governor James Richard “Rick” Perry of Texas, who is likely to be the Republican Nominee to defeat the destructive Barack Obama. Murray’s letter includes a lengthy Perry bio, a description of the “destruction caused by President Barack Obama to date” and this outline of Perry’s “goals as president”: As President of the United States, he will emphasize greater individual freedom and liberty, security and prosperity. Perry's Homegrown Disaster Capitalism - The Texas Observer.
This story certainly doesn’t have the panache of, say, a racist hunting camp name but it probably says a lot more about the governor’s raison d’etre. Perry’s not a racist; he’s a crony capitalist who rarely passes up an opportunity to help his friends. Case in point: The Austin American-Statesman reported yesterday that an engineering firm connected to Perry has botched a portion of the state’s $3.1 billion disaster recovery program meant to help people and communities hammered by hurricanes Ike and Dolly over three years ago. The upshot of the story is that the company, HNTB, has barely made a dent in rebuilding infrastructure in storm-battered areas, instead squandering 92 percent of the first round of money on administrative costs.
Worse, it’s unclear how the company, which has numerous ties to Perry, got the contract in the first place. If corporations are people — like the Supreme Court seems to think — then HNTB and Perry are BFFs. Our Handy Guide to the Best Coverage on Gov. Rick Perry and His Record. Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks to visitors at the Iowa State Fair, Aug. 15, 2011, in Des Moines. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Rick Perry has made plenty [2] of headlines [3] since he announced his presidential bid. But with the deluge of day-to-day coverage, it’s hard to get a sense of his actual record. We’ve selected some of the best reading on Perry to help you get oriented. The basics (updated Sept. 2, 2011): If you want to go beyond the bio on Perry's [4] campaign page [4], Texas Monthly reporter Paul Burka’s guide for Yankee journalists [5] is a good place to start. Perry articulates some of his more controversial views in his 2010 book, “Fed Up!
At a rally in 2009, Perry told reporters that Texas might secede if it got [14] too fed up [14] with Washington. The Texas Observer also details Perry’s ties to the New Apostolic Reformation movement [15], a strain of Christian belief in which politics and faith are intertwined. Perry is also skeptical of evolution. Meet The Money Behind Rick Perry. Despite 41 DNA Exonerations In Texas In Last 9 Years, Perry Says He Never Loses Sleep Over Executing The Innocent. By Marie Diamond on September 8, 2011 at 12:20 pm "Despite 41 DNA Exonerations In Texas In Last 9 Years, Perry Says He Never Loses Sleep Over Executing The Innocent" Perry has overseen 235 executions as governor.
At last night’s GOP presidential debate in California, front runner Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) defended his record of overseeing 235 executions in Texas, the most of any modern governor by far and nearly half of those conducted in the state since the death penalty went into effect in 1976. Perry insisted that he’s never lost sleep at night worrying that any one of them might have been innocent. Watch it: That’s despite the fact that during Perry’s tenure as governor, DNA evidence has exonerated at least 41 people convicted in Texas, Scott Horton writes in Harper’s. Those exonerations include Cornelius Dupree, who had already spent 30 years in prison for rape, robbery, and abduction when DNA evidence proved unequivocally that he was not the man who had committed those crime.
Rick Perry Suffers Lasting Damage On Vaccination Mandate During His Second GOP 2012 Debate. WASHINGTON -- The frontrunner status is starting to smart. If Rick Perry felt like a piñata during his first debate last week, the second debate on Monday night might have left the Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate feeling like the bashed-in fax machine in the movie "Office Space. " Perry responded ably to criticisms of his record on Social Security, which had beset him over the last week. But as he dealt with the controversy over calling the program a "Ponzi scheme," three more issues opened up, damaging him in the eyes of conservatives.
Most significantly, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) went hard after Perry for his 2007 attempt to mandate vaccinations of sixth-grade girls against the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted disease and a lead cause of cervical cancer. That led to a low point for Perry, when he defended himself this way: "The company was Merck, and it was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them. Former Sen. Texas Tea Party to Attack Rick Perry on Immigration.
Rick Perry's Opposition To Pesticide Regulations Helped Launch His Political Star. Jason Cherkis contributed reporting to this story. WASHINGTON -- More than two decades ago, there was a bitter fight within Texas' agricultural community, one that pitted low-wage farm workers and their advocates against large growers and chemical companies. The dispute was over how much field workers should know about the often-dangerous pesticides they were handling.
And there are those in Texas who believe Gov. Rick Perry wouldn't now be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination had he not taken up the cause of the growers and sprayers in this fight. "This became how Perry rises in politics," claims Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a public interest law group. "Perry is the weathervane, pure and simple. He saw where the money was and where the politics were drifting. " In the 1980’s, agricultural workers in Texas didn’t enjoy many of the workplace protections that were taken for granted in other industries. Democrat to Republican 1 of 17. Quickie: Rick Perry’s $800,000 little secret. Quickie: Rick Perry's $800,000 little secret · Thursday, September 15th, 2011 at 5:51 pm Today's Quickie: Taegan links to Politico, and Politico shares a secret with us: Perry's team reached a confidential settlement last week in which his campaign admits that it violated disclosure laws by hiding the details of more than $800K it spent on amenities at the governors mansion, including flowers, food and drink -- even cable television bills that included hundreds of dollars worth of charges for movies and events.
There now, see what a breath of fresh air he is? Transparent as mud. That was today's Quickie. Rick Perry's Texas Miracle—for Corporations. Pete Marovich/Zuma Over the past several years Gov. Rick Perry has crisscrossed his home state, bragging about the Texas Enterprise Fund, his economic program that has given millions of taxpayer dollars to corporations such as Caterpillar Inc., Texas Instruments, and Home Depot. The TEF program is supposed to draw businesses to the state and create jobs. It has been a centerpiece of the so-called Texas economic miracle Perry now touts on the presidential campaign trail.
But there is a problem behind his happy Texas tale: The program appears not to have worked nearly as well as Perry claims. The governor has repeatedly overstated how many jobs it has created, according to several Texas-based advocacy and research groups. Moreover, Perry's office has stonewalled attempts to get clearer information about the program's lackluster results. In January 2010, Perry's office claimed that TEF had created 54,600 jobs since it began in 2003. The Permanent Candidate: What’s Driving Rick Perry? The Tea Party movement had not yet fully impinged on the nation’s consciousness when Rick Perry stepped to the podium outside Austin City Hall on April 15, 2009, to speak at a tax-day protest. Wearing a big “DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS” pin, a black baseball cap with a hunting ranch logo, and the collar of his coat turned up, Perry swayed as he spoke, as if trembling with fervor.
The crowd of 1,000 roared as Perry invoked states’ rights and the Tenth Amendment’s protections against federal overreach. Following the speech, Perry spoke to reporters—and uttered a few sentences that would make national headlines for days and weeks to come. “We’ve got a great union,” he said. “There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But, if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.” Perry’s comments established him as the standard-bearer of anti-Washington sentiment months before the country as a whole began a rightward shift. Perry vs. Rove: How Their Feud Got Started - Alex Roarty - Politics. A history of personal enmity and tough politics could complicate the 2012 presidential race for Republicans It's an intriguing and personal subplot in the Republican presidential contest: the feud between current front-runner Rick Perry and strategic mastermind Karl Rove.
As the Texas governor has surged to the top of the GOP field, the tension between him and the man who helped bring him into the Republican Party more than 20 years ago has spilled into public view. The Perry-Rove square-off isn't merely a soap-opera distraction. The way Perry and his team handle it could have real implications for his candidacy as he seeks to cement his status as the favorite to win the party's nomination. Rove defines the GOP political establishment for many conservative activists, and he drew their ire last year when he offered unbridled criticism of Delaware Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell.
Other candidates might ignore the criticism, but not Perry. But Perry's victory was a narrow one. Florida Republicans Express Concern, Anger About Rick Perry's 2012 Candidacy. ORLANDO - Ken Johnson came here to see Texas Gov. Rick Perry speak to Republican activists Saturday morning for one reason. "It's a free breakfast," said Johnson, a 63-year old general contractor, as he ate scrambled eggs and sausage paid for by Perry's presidential campaign. Johnson, who is on the Hillsborough Republican Party Executive Committee, said with conviction that he will never support Perry for one reason. "I like a lot of what Rick Perry's positions are on many issues. "I'm mad at Rick Perry right now for his refusal to see the light," he said. April Schiff, a political consultant from Tampa who is also on the Hillsborough County Republican executive committee, was more analytical than Johnson, but was just as adamant that Perry's stanch refusal in a debate Thursday night to back down from his positions on illegal immigration had "lost [him] a lot of support.
" Perry was, in her mind, no longer the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination. Statistically, You Have a Better Chance of Being Executed by Rick Perry Than Dying in an Airplane Crash. Texas healthcare system withering under Gov. Rick Perry. Rick Perry travel bankrolled by activist rabbi Irwin Katsof - Kenneth P. Vogel. Rick Perry's Former Staffers Made Millions As Lobbyists.
Texas unemployment rate hits highest level since before Perry endorsed Gore. Two Months After Governor Prayed For Rain, All Of Oklahoma In Severe Drought. Views of Perry Turn More Negative Since First Debate. Foreign policy from Texas - Ben Smith. Social Security hurting Perry? Bc.com Video Player. Perry’s ‘Ponzi Scheme’ Kept 14 Million Seniors Out Of Poverty Last Year. Perry Courts Radical Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Continues Rightward Move On Immigration. Five Facts You Should Know About the Wealthiest One Percent of Americans. Perry Brags About Texas’ Tax System That Charges The Poor Four Times As Much As The Rich. Texas billed $294,000 for Perrys’ security on trips | Rick Perry 2012 Campaign for President– News and updates. Rick Perry Skips Press Conference on Texas Wildfires Without Notice. Perry Used Taxpayer Money To Subsidize Family Vacations, Presidential Campaign Events.