Chupacabra Report

Today the Chronicle Austin Bureau reports that Gov. Rick Perry has suspended collection of the unemployment insurance levy, saying that high employment in Texas last year makes collection of this “tax” unnecessary. Hallelujah, not content with rescinding the business cycle and resetting the age of the earth to 5,000 years, Perry must see full employment as Texas’ inalienable future. I suppose that he can next solve our transportation troubles by repealing the law of gravity, or altering the space/time continuum.

This isn’t as obtuse as it seems. The wealthy troglodytes that installed and maintain Governor 38% in office simply don’t believe in unemployment insurance, and would do away with it altogether if they only could, like they would Social Security and the rest of The New Deal. They will be happy when the current recession pushes the system into insolvency.

Is there something familiar about all this? Does HUD Scandal ring a bell? How about S&L Scandal? Maybe Enron Scandal? Or maybe the latest, the Sub-Prime Lending Scandal.

In all these cases, there were smart guys who claimed to have re-invented the wheel, when it was more a case of office holders and regulators having re-discovered “the world’s oldest profession.”

For all their professed disdain for “welfare,” Perry and the Plutocratic Party are big believers in Corporate Welfare, as evidenced by the $20 Million Perry slushed from his Texas Enterprise Fund to Countrywide Financial, the biggest, slimiest subprime outfit out there, in a “job creation” scheme that, as written, would have paid the company $13 million for doing merely nothing.

Granted, at the time, Countrywide was seen as a miracle stock that had grown 240% in
five years time.Did this success come as a result of some breakthrough in the science of economics? Ask the FBI, Senate Committees, and numerous State Attorneys General that are now investigating Countrywide for fraudulent lending practices, stock manipulation, and civil rights violations.