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You’ve gotta love Newt Gingrich, if only for his entertainment value. He is so full of himself that essence of Newt keeps spilling out of his mouth.
For example, trying to pose as a Washington outsider in his presidential run, this consummate Washington insider has taken to hugging up Texas Gov. Rick Perry. That’s because Perry has puffed up his right-wing bona fides by stridently bashing Washington, “Big Government,” and all things Obama, while boasting that he has created the “Texas economic miracle.” Gingrich, eager to identify with this Lone Star image, subsequently boasted that “I know how to get the whole country to resemble Texas.”
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Wow, there’s an economic threat no American should take lightly! Texas, Newt? Really?
Look behind Perry’s Texas bunkum, and you’ll find smoke and mirrors, political facades, right-wing goofiness, and a rabbit in a hat – but no miracle. Unless you count the second worst state budget deficit in the country as a miracle.
It would take a two-year budget of $99 billion just to meet the current, miserly level of public services. That level, by the way, has bought Texas the bragging rights of being at or near the top in such categories as people with no health care, poverty rates, lowest wages, most regressive tax system, high school dropouts, mental health spending, and income gap between rich and poor.
However, at the insistence of Governor Miracle, the legislature has produced a two-year budget nearly $20 billion short of the state’s already inadequate spending levels. As a result, a hundred thousand teachers are being fired, college access is being shut off for thousands, nursing homes are being closed, and the needy… well, Perry has created a YO-YO program for the poor: Your On Your Own.
If this is Newt’s model, he must really hate his country.
“Terrifying: Newt Gingrich Wants to Make America ‘Like Texas,'” www.alternet.org, May 18, 2011.
“The Disaster of Two Ricks,” www.jimhightower.com, April 8, 2011.