Out of work? Out of luck.

This week, while 77,000 Texans lost their jobs, Governor Rick Perry appeared at Berings Hardware in Houston and announced that he had decided to turn down $550 million in stimulus money for unemployed Texans.

Berings Hardware is a high-priced house and garden store near the Galleria, the sort of place Martha Stewart would frequent if she lived in West U. or River Oaks.

Berings owners say that new unemployment rules would cost them $1000 per month to cover their 170 full and part-time employees.

Excuse me? That works out to $5.80 per worker. I bet most of them would pay the buck-forty-five a week it cost so they’d be covered.

But don’t miss the big picture. Berings, like many companies, likes to staff their store with part-timers exactly because they don’t have to provide them any benefits.

The hell with Rick Perry, and if Kay Bailey thinks she has to go all right-wingey to beat him out of the governors mansion, the hell with her too. I liked the letter to the Chronicle this morning that said that if Perry had any cojones he would have made this announcement at the Houston Food Bank.