Rick Perry, Mike Toomey, Texas 12-Year-Old Girls... And The $55 Million Bribe

CNN has forced YouTube to disable the embed option on all the Bachmann attacks against Rick Perry during the teabagger debate Tuesday. So above you can watch the segment with a crazy, shouting teabagger. At around the 3-minute mark Bachmann went after Perry's M.O. as the nexus of Texas' Republican Culture of Corruption. Even if Perry's STD problem is most damaging to him in the Republican primary, especially among libertarians and Christian Conservatives, it is a pattern of gross crony capitalism and blatant corruption that could hurt him most among normal general-election voters. Unless someone comes up with photos of Perry in bed with Geoff Conner-- or with any of the young male hookers he's been hiring for two decades-- it's his corruption that is most likely to keep him out of the White House.

No fan of Perry's, after the debate Republican polemicist David Frum posited that Perry is too slow on his feet to be the effective messenger of the right-wing revolution. Despite Bachmann's unexpected outburst Tuesday, Republicans generally don't care that much about their politicians taking bribes. Somehow they admire it and chalk it up to entrepreneurial spirit and the free market. It's part of what makes the GOP a dangerous and nihilistic pathology. But Frum mentioned it in his critique of Perry as well.

We learn things from these debates, and one of them is: how does a candidate respond under pressure? What we’ve seen from Perry in two debates is (1) he gets testy and (2) he makes stupid mistakes.

Perry was supposed to carry the message: “I will save our cherished national institution, Social Security.”

Romney pushed him to substitute the message: “I will save this unconstitutional program I hate.” Good luck with that.

It was not only Romney who outmaneuvered Perry. Michele Bachmann(!) pushed Perry to his funniest blooper of the night: his angry insistence that he cannot be bought for $5,000. That’s one of those denials that opens the way to more embarrassing questions: “How about $10,000?”

As a candidate, Perry’s unnimble mental reflexes are a merely personal handicap. Should Perry reach the presidency, his lack of intellectual resource will have consequences for the nation.

But Frum wasn't about to go to the real question. It isn't about $5,000 or $10,000. Let's try $55 million. That's real money even to the GOP fat cats who run the Tea Party. Perry was able to stump and somewhat effectively fend off the simple-minded Bachmann by claiming all he got for his shocking Gardasil executive order was a measly five grand so it couldn't have been a bribe. Really? Had Bachmann been better prepared, she could have asked him about the $55 million bribe from his old pal Mike Toomey (pictured with Perry on the right), the same character who gave him the $5,000 pop! Palin was better prepared than the dull-witted Bachmann.

On Saturday, not-yet-a-presidential-candidate Sarah Palin previewed an enticing line of attack against Texas Governor Rick Perry: "crony capitalism." Although she didn't mention the latest Republican frontrunner by name, Palin warned Iowa tea partiers that when candidates accept million-dollar donations, you should expect a few strings to be attached. On that front, the numbers seemingly speak for themselves. A full 20 percent of Rick Perry's $100 million fundraising tally as governor has come from Perry appointees, and on everything from toll roads to nuclear waste dumps to private prisons to lawsuit reform, Perry's policies have dovetailed neatly with the interests of his biggest donors.

Yet when NBC's Brian Williams gave Perry's rivals for the GOP nomination a chance to nail the governor at Wednesday night's debate, they all took a pass. The question was about Perry's controversial 2007 decision to mandate the HPV vaccine to inoculate adolescent girls against cervical cancer. Williams wanted to know if Perry made the right call. Reps. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul both seized on the idea that the executive order was a decidedly Big Government move. Mitt Romney noted that, as Perry himself has said, it was a well-intentioned mistake that Perry would handle differently if he had a do-over.

What went unsaid by his rivals, though, was the full context: Perry's decision came at the end of a massive lobbying effort by the pharmaceutical giant Merck—an effort helmed in Austin by Perry's former chief of staff and longtime friend, Mike Toomey. (Toomey currently chairs a pro-Perry Super PAC with the stated goal of raising $55 million during the primary race to finance a shadow campaign for Perry.) On the day he signed the executive order, Perry received a $5,000 donation from Merck's political action committee, which came on the heels of a $6,000 donation during his reelection campaign. Even his supporters would agree that the HPV decision was an uncharacteristic one for the conservative governor; questions about Perry's motivations are natural.

Why did his opponents take a pass? It could just be that in 2012, GOP candidates-- Palin excepted-- know better than to bite the big business hand that feeds many of them.

God May Hate Rick Perry, But Right Wing Activists Love Him... Despite That Whole Gardasil "Misstep"

Crony capitalism writ large-- America's worst political whore?

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed the anointed Republican Establishment pick, Mitt Romney sinking beneath the waves. Rick Perry-- despite God's clear signal that this guy is not His favorite-- is now trouncing him 38-23% among Republican primary voters. Karl Rove-- one of the Romney anointers-- claimed on ABC TV this morning that Perry's publicly outspoken anti-Social Security position is "toxic." Establishment types are nervous. Over at the Frum Forum, Frum found someone who finds Perry slightly more palatable than he does to write the story of Perry's impending triumph over Romney and Obama:

Although I think Mitt Romney would be a better president I think Perry actually has his finger on the pulse of the conservative primary voter. This is clear when he threatens to treat Ben Bernanke “pretty ugly." Romney also hasn’t written a campaign book which claims that the weak economy can be blamed on FDR, Woodrow Wilson, & Wickard v. Filburn so he is fundamentally out of touch with the current conservative assessment of what ails America.

As for the general election, I believe that if unemployment stays high and the economy fails to improve, that voters who would normally vote for Obama will be less inclined to do so. I think a weaker economy will energize Republican voters and that they build a large enthusiasm lead over Democrats. Yes, Democrats will claim they are running against a crazy theocrat but that didn’t really work in 2004.

A right-wing Super PAC backing Perry has vowed to spend $55 million in the primary to bury Romney. And big money donors have a good reason to be in love with Perry-- he's easily the most corrupt person running for president... and with a record to prove it. Perry's big donors have benefited mightily from favoritism in Texas. As TPM pointed out yesterday "Texans don't like the government interfering with their business, especially campaign donations, where state laws allow contributors to fork over unlimited cash. No one has benefited more from this arrangement than Rick Perry, who has raised $100 million over the last decade, nearly half of which came from just 204 ultra-wealthy donors." And both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post have crunched the numbers and found a clear pattern of big donors getting special concessions from Perry's administration.

The Washington Post looked at Perry’s top 50 donors, who collectively gave more than $21 million, and found that 34 received some benefit from Perry’s administration or the state, including grants, contracts and appointments. The donor list was compiled by the nonprofit Texans for Public Justice.

Twenty-three donors won Perry’s appointment to state boards, often the boards of regents at the University of Texas or Texas A&M.

Roughly one in three of the top Perry donors had business interests that secured grants, tax subsidies or project approvals under his administration, the Post review found. Five donors gained both an appointment and a state boost to their specific company or interests.

[San Antonio Spurs owner Peter] Holt, who owns the nation’s largest Caterpillar dealership, urged Perry to lure a Caterpillar manufacturing plant to Texas, and a company official told reporters in an interview last year that such a plant would help the dealership get equipment. Perry’s office agreed in 2008 to award an $8.5 million incentive grant for a proposed new Caterpillar factory promising 1,714 jobs.

...Perry’s largest single individual donor, who has given more than $2.5 million, is Bob Perry (no relation to the governor), the founder of a large home-building company.

In 2003, Perry Homes helped persuade the governor and Republican lawmakers to create the Texas Residential Construction Commission. One of the commission’s goals was to limit lawsuits by home buyers complaining of shoddy construction.

Bob Perry donated $100,000 to the governor as the commission was being formed. A top official of the firm, John Krugh, the general counsel, was named to the panel by the governor.

Is Perry a crook? Like we said last week: absolutely. And not just on a campaign finance level. He's enriched himself personally-- he's now a millionaire-- since working for the state of Texas. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram explained, he made himself rich with shady insider real estate deals, deals that should have landed him in prison long ago:

Back in 1993, there was a piece of ground that computer billionaire Michael Dell needed to connect his new house near Austin to city water mains. Dell neglected to appreciate the land’s importance. But Perry did discern it. He bought the land for less than $120,000-- then sold it to Dell two years later for a $343,000 profit. Uncanny. True, some detractors have wondered whether the sale was entirely on the level:

Texas Democrats have repeatedly questioned the sale over the years, in part because Mike Toomey-- an influential lobbyist who would later become Perry’s chief of staff-- closed the deal for Perry while Perry was out of town. Perry has always maintained he didn’t know that the land would be so valuable to Dell when he purchased the property.

Perry repeated similarly shrewd investments again and again in the years ahead.

Look at this transaction from the 2000s. A Texas real estate developer sells land to a Texas state senator-- the senator who happened to represent the development’s district. The state senator sold the land to Gov. Perry. Gov. Perry then sold then land-- back to the real estate developer’s business partner. Perry scored a profit of $823,000. Tidy. And how remarkable that Perry and his state senator friend could see a value proposition that the two professional real estate developers overlooked.

So it goes through investments in stock, load, and energy properties. Perry just kept seeing things that other people apparently didn’t.

Even more impressive: how Perry managed to find the time. There he was, governor of the second biggest state in the country, creating jobs from morning to night. Yet somehow he also was able to scour the vast landscape of Texas for under-appreciated little parcels of land with the potential to triple or quadruple in value in just a few months.

Can Romney and his Establishment, his Mormon and his corporate backers muster the strength to take Perry on? Or is it too late? Whatever power the White House has in this matter, is working frantically behind the scenes to make sure that Perry is the Republican nominee.

No New Texans!

The GOP Establishment-- call it plutocracy or fascism... it's the elites who run the right-wing show-- smells blood in the water... Obama's. They're positive they can beat him in 2012, sweep Congress and roll back what's ever left of the New Deal and maybe even democracy, which they've always detested, itself. The moron zombie base is worked up and ready to consign its future generations to slavery and Democrats are depressed and deflated by Obama's shocking conservatism. But they know-- like Obama knows-- that his best chance for a second term rests with an over the top Republican nominee. And, as the corndog and fried-butter-on-a-stick eaters at this weekend's Ames straw poll proved, that's exactly what the Republican base wants. They picked, overwhelmingly, the craziest, least electable candidates. Romney, the anointed candidate of the Establishment-- who, regardless of what the base (and Obama) want, will be the GOP nominee-- barely made a blip, with a dismal 7th place finish, even below joke candidates Rick Santorum and Herman "the Hermanator" Cain.

Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his intention to run on the sane day as the Ames straw poll. He was drafted by the Republican Establishment. His job is to knock out Bachmann. The Roves and Aileses and their plutocratic/fascist backers don't care if Perry manages to go all the way or if he just winds up as Romney's VP nominee... they just want Bachmann and her crazy eyes and her closet case psychotic husband out of the race as soon as possible.

Less than a month ago we looked at a laundry list of reasons many on the far right fringes-- i.e., the typical GOP activist-- can't embrace Perry. (Yesterday Think Progress had a more all-encompassing laundry list worth taking a look at.) But this seems to be as big a problem for him as Romneycare and the consistent pattern of flip-flopping are for Mitt:

Perhaps the biggest issue people opposed to the nanny state should be concerned about is Perry's issuance of an executive order back in 2007 that would have forced almost every single girl in the state of Texas to receive the Gardasil vaccine before entering the sixth grade. Perry was in the tank with Merck. There were apparent financial connections between Merck and Perry reported by news outlets, such as a $6,000 campaign contribution and Merck’s hiring of former Perry Chief of Staff Mike Toomey to handle its Texas lobbying work.

The Texas legislature put the kibosh on that idea by crafting a bill that overturned the executive order.

Subsequently, very serious safety issues with the vaccine came to light. The biggest problem with regard to the Gardasil issue was that Perry appeared to be condoning premarital sex, or at least assuming that middle school girls were going to be engaging in sexual activity, which is the only way that the cervical cancer that the vaccine prevents can be contracted. Many parents and conservatives were justifiably outraged.

When one takes into account these facts about Rick Perry, the only conclusion that can be reached is that Perry is for the expansion of government and its intrusion into our lives.

The new Texas Monthly is running a major feature on how Perry keeps winning-- 10 elections in a row, some against formidable opponents. He may come off like a pathetic lightweight unfit to run a rural post office but he's managed to beat Jim Hightower, John Sharp, Tony Sanchez, Chris Bell, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Bill White-- all of whom are interviewed in the Monthly story.

Saturday's Wall Street Journal opinion page, though, exposed a weakness in the Perry armor that could be deadly-- in fact, a weakness that could be as disturbing for many on the right as it will certainly be for normal Americans. The scandal has been kept in the public eye partially because of carping by teabaggers who see Perry as a phony baloney hack politician and a willing servant for the Establishment they sometimes vestigially sense is their enemy.

Gov. Rick Perry's presidential pitch goes something like this: During one of the worst recessions in American history, he's kept his state "open for business." In the last two years, Texas created over a quarter of a million jobs, meaning that the state's 8% unemployment rate is substantially lower than the rest of the nation's. The governor credits this exceptional growth to things like low taxes and tort reform.

It's a strong message. But one of the governor's signature economic development initiatives-- the Texas Emerging Technology Fund-- has lately raised serious questions among some conservatives.

The Emerging Technology Fund was created at Mr. Perry's behest in 2005 to act as a kind of public-sector venture capital firm, largely to provide funding for tech start-ups in Texas. Since then, the fund has committed nearly $200 million of taxpayer money to fund 133 companies. Mr. Perry told a group of CEOs in May that the fund's "strategic investments are what's helping us keep groundbreaking innovations in the state." The governor, together with the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the Texas House, enjoys ultimate decision-making power over the fund's investments.

Among the companies that the Emerging Technology Fund has invested in is Convergen LifeSciences, Inc. It received a $4.5 million grant last year-- the second largest grant in the history of the fund. The founder and executive chairman of Convergen is David G. Nance.

In 2009, when Mr. Nance submitted his application for a $4.5 million Emerging Technology Fund grant for Convergen, he and his partners had invested only $1,000 of their own money into their new company, according to documentation prepared by the governor's office in February 2010. But over the years, Mr. Nance managed to invest a lot more than $1,000 in Mr. Perry. Texas Ethics Commission records show that Mr. Nance donated $75,000 to Mr. Perry's campaigns between 2001 and 2006.

The regional panel that reviewed Convergen's application turned down the company's $4.5 million request when it presented its proposal on Oct. 7, 2009. But Mr. Nance appealed that decision directly to a statewide advisory committee (of which Mr. Nance was once a member) appointed by Mr. Perry. Just eight days later, on Oct. 15, a subcommittee unanimously recommended approval by the full statewide committee. On Oct. 29, the full advisory committee unanimously recommended the approval of Convergen's application. When asked why the advisory committee felt comfortable recommending Convergen's grant, Lucy Nashed, a spokesperson for Mr. Perry, said that the committee "thoroughly vetted the company."

Starting in 2008, Mr. Perry also appropriated approximately $2 million in federal taxpayer money through the auspices of the Wagner-Peyser Act-- a federal works program founded during the New Deal and overseen in Texas by Mr. Perry's office-- to a nonprofit launched by Mr. Nance called Innovate Texas. The nonprofit was meant to help entrepreneurs by linking them to investors. It began receiving funding on Dec. 31, 2008, soon after Mr. Nance's previous company, Introgen Therapeutics, declared bankruptcy on Dec. 3. According to state records, Mr. Nance paid himself $250,000 for the two years he ran Innovate Texas. Innovate Texas, whose listed phone number is not a working number, could not be reached for comment. (Two phone calls left for Mr. Nance at Convergen's offices went unreturned.)

ThromboVision, Inc., a medical imaging company, was also the recipient of an award from the Emerging Technology Fund: It received $1.5 million in 2007. Charles Tate, a major Perry contributor, served as the chairman of a state committee that reviewed ThromboVision's application for state funding, and Mr. Tate voted to give ThromboVision the public money. One month after ThromboVision received notification that it would receive a $1.5 million state grant in April 2007, Mr. Tate invested his own money in ThromboVision, according to the Dallas Morning News. The Texas paper later found that by 2010 Mr. Tate owned a total of 200,000 preferred shares in ThromboVision.

According to a Texas state auditor's report, ThromboVision failed to submit required annual reports to the fund from 2008 through 2010, when the company went bankrupt. The report noted the tech fund's managers were "unaware of ThromboVision, Inc.'s bankruptcy until after the bankruptcy had been reported in a newspaper." ThromboVision's bankruptcy filing revealed not only that Mr. Tate had been a preferred shareholder in ThromboVision, but so had prominent Perry supporter Charles Miller, who owned 250,000 preferred shares in the company and has donated $125,000 to the governor's campaigns. Three phone calls and an email seeking Mr. Tate's side of the story went unreturned.

All told, the Dallas Morning News has found that some $16 million from the tech fund has gone to firms in which major Perry contributors were either investors or officers, and $27 million from the fund has gone to companies founded or advised by six advisory board members. The tangle of interests surrounding the fund has raised eyebrows throughout the state, especially among conservatives who think the fund is a misplaced use of taxpayer dollars to start with.

"It is fundamentally immoral and arrogant," says state representative David Simpson, a tea party-backed freshman from Longview, two hours east of Dallas. The fund "opened the door to the appearance of impropriety, if not actual impropriety."

...Michael Quinn Sullivan, the president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, sees in the Emerging Technology Fund a classic example of the perils of government pork. "The problem with these kinds of funds is that even when they're used with the best of intentions, it looks bad," says Mr. Sullivan. "You're taking from the average taxpayer and giving to someone who has a connection with government officials."

I got an e-mail this weekend from Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett. He knows Perry well-- and knows what a disaster he's been for ordinary working families in their state. He was sounding the alarm. Here's Doggett's interview Friday on MSNBC:

Maybe Rick Perry did the right thing last Saturday when he asked for America to join him in prayer. Considering the disaster that has been his governorship in Texas, we need every prayer we can get as we try to sort this mess out.

...There is no more extreme, no more disagreeable candidate than Rick Perry.  Want to know just how right-wing Rick Perry is? As Governor of Texas, he even implied that secession was a possibility. That’s right, the Rick Perry, who wants to be President of the United States of America is the same Rick Perry who provided comfort to those Texans, who have supported disuniting from America and seceding.

    •    This is the same Rick Perry whose answer to Texas being the state with the highest percentage of folks without health insurance is to do even less here, while questioning the very existence of Medicare.  

    •    This is the same Rick Perry who has undermined our future economic competitiveness by slashing budgets for primary and secondary education and undermining our institutions of higher learning. 

    •    This is the same Rick Perry that dangerously disregards the importance of protecting the water we drink and the air we breath. Texas now leads the nation in clean-water permit violations in the nation, hazardous waste spills and toxic emissions.

Doggett is hardly the only Democrat sounding the alarm. Paul Begala, who's known him nearly 3 decades-- back when Perry was a freshman Democratic state legislator (nicknamed "Crotch")-- did a good job at the Daily Beast this weekend. "Perry stood out," Begala remembers, "for his modest intellectual gifts... But lack of brains has never been a hindrance in politics." What Begala claims Perry has-- aside from nice hair-- is the willingness to say or do whatever it takes to win, no matter what the ancillary harm. That's the classic definition of a sociopath.

That's truer than ever in relation to today's Tea Party–dominated Republican Party. You’ve gotta be willing to do anything, say anything, accept anything, propose anything, endorse anything, pledge anything. There is nothing too batshit for these people.

Watch your back, Mitt.

Right-Wing Closet Case Rick Perry Says He's Being "Called" To Run For President-- But Not All Republicans Are Singing Hosannas

And speaking of callings, Perry went on the record to say, perhaps a tad condescendingly, that "our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me. That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business." Staying out of other people's business is so old fashioned and passé for today's Republican Party. They don't roll that way no more-- especially not when it comes to bedrooms and the Bronze Age morals they learn from their millionaire shamen.

I'm not ruling out he could be the Fred Thompson of the 2012 cycle, but there's a lot of right-wing money ready to deploy-- we're told-- for someone as malleable and shallow as George W. Bush. Even if few normal Americans do, that big right-wing money remembers the good old days fondly. While some Republicans suspect that he doesn't stand for anything, the money men urging him to run, don't care see that as a definite positive, the cherry on the cake. Now they just have to sell it to the morons Murdoch's media empire has molded. Right-wing talk show host David Zublick poked around a little for Digital Journal and he's nervous that so "many conservatives and Tea Party activists see [Perry] as a very attractive and viable candidate, one who would liven up a field that seems devoid of exciting prospects."

But before Republicans start salivating too heavily, it is important to examine Perry closely. His conservative bonafides leave much to be desired.

Let's examine his record.

Prior to 1989, Rick Perry was a Democrat, who supported Al Gore for president. Perry was Gore's campaign manager in the state of Texas that year.

As Governor of Texas, Perry would have us believe he is a small government guy. But the facts say other wise.

Total spending in Texas the year he became governor in 2000 was approximately $49 billion. Last year it was approximately $90 billion. That is hardly reducing the size of government over a 10 year period.

The total debt of the state of Texas has more than doubled since he became governor. The debt to GDP ratio in Texas is 22.9% and the debt per citizen is $10,645. That's worse than California.

Perry claims he is for keeping taxes low. Not true. He has raised taxes repeatedly during his tenure as governor. Texans have higher taxes and fees than they had before he was elected.

While everyone lauded Perry's leadership by pointing to the low unemployment rate in the Lone Star State, it should be noted that 23 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas. And Texas has the highest percentage of workers making minimum wage out of all 50 states. In 2007, 221,000 residents of Texas were making minimum wage or less. By 2010, that number had risen to 550,000.

The education system in Texas is abysmal. Barbara Bush, in an op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle, wrote:

• We rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma.

• We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.

• We rank 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.

What does that say about the stewardship of Rick Perry with regard to education?

Rick Perry also claims to have a tough stance on illegal immigration. But the facts indicate otherwise.

He signed the DREAM Act in 2001, giving in-state tuition to undocumented students. Perry said at the time, "We must say to every child learning in a Texas classroom, ‘We don’t care where you come from, but where you are going, and we are going to do everything we can to help you get there". This measure is similar to the one the Democrats are pushing at the federal level, one which conservatives vehemently oppose.

Perhaps the biggest issue people opposed to the nanny state should be concerned about is Perry's issuance of an executive order back in 2007 that would have forced almost every single girl in the state of Texas to receive the Gardasil vaccine before entering the sixth grade. Perry was in the tank with Merck. There were apparent financial connections between Merck and Perry reported by news outlets, such as a $6,000 campaign contribution and Merck’s hiring of former Perry Chief of Staff Mike Toomey to handle its Texas lobbying work.

The Texas legislature put the kibosh on that idea by crafting a bill that overturned the executive order.

Subsequently, very serious safety issues with the vaccine came to light. The biggest problem with regard to the Gardasil issue was that Perry appeared to be condoning premarital sex, or at least assuming that middle school girls were going to be engaging in sexual activity, which is the only way that the cervical cancer that the vaccine prevents can be contracted. Many parents and conservatives were justifiably outraged.

When one takes into account these facts about Rick Perry, the only conclusion that can be reached is that Perry is for the expansion of government and its intrusion into our lives.

On Perry's possible run for the White House? No thanks. I think I'll pass.