No, Rick Perry Didn’t Say ‘The Best Way To Prevent Rape Is Oil’

No, Rick Perry Didn’t Say ‘The Best Way To Prevent Rape Is Oil’

In their rush to smear a Trump cabinet member, the media once again not only exposed their zeal to mislead readers but their breathtaking hypocrisy and shameful lack of compassion.

By Julie Kelly

In a compassionate, if slightly clumsy, appeal about the urgent need for power resources in Africa, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said this Thursday at an energy summit sponsored by Axios and NBC News:

I just got back from Africa…I think I heard a lady say that there are people dying. Let me tell you where people are dying…in Africa because of the lack of energy that they have there. And it’s gonna take fossil fuels to push power out to those villages in Africa, where a young girl told me to my face ‘One of the reasons that electricity is so important to me is not only because I won’t have to try to read by the light of a fire, and have those fumes literally killing people, but also from the standpoint of sexual assault.’ When the lights are on, when you have light, it shines the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts. So from the standpoint of how you really affect people’s lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that. I happen to think it’s going to play a positive role.

Perry delivered his remarks in an emotional tone, and it was clear that he was moved by his trip to Africa and hearing this young girl talk about her desire for something we Americans take for granted every single minute. It is also just common sense to suggest the light generated via electricity is desperately needed throughout this dark continent for a number of humanitarian purposes, including keeping vulnerable populations such as young girls safe at night.

But this logic was of course completely lost on the blue-checkmark Twitter crowd. Reporters and liberal activists quickly twisted Perry’s words into this: Perry Says Fossil Fuels Prevent Sexual Assault. Anyone can read his comments over and over and not be able to truthfully make that connection.

Cue Inscrutable Media Rage Over Protecting Women

Women who would never in a gazillion years allow their daughters to walk any dark street or neighborhood, let alone do it themselves, were shrieking about Perry’s comments, which suggests they did not bother to read the full transcript of his remarks. The New Republic reporter Emily Atkin unleashed a nine-part tweetstorm, accusing Perry of using sexual assault victims to promote Trump’s fossil fuel agenda.

She erroneously claimed “Perry said that, in places like Africa, lack of electricity promotes sexual assault.” (He said no such thing). While she acknowledged “electricity helps protect people from bad sh-t happening in the dark,” she said they should get their electricity from renewables, not fossil fuels.

Now, never mind that Atkin lives in Washington DC, a city powered almost exclusively by natural gas. Or that it is economically and logistically impossible to scale up enough renewable energy from solar panels and wind turbines to generate electricity for the 530 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who need it. Or that she is the one who is exploiting a tragic and dire situation in Africa to push her own political agenda.

Atkin wasn’t alone in her disingenuous condemnation. Mother Jones mocked Perry for his “genius solution” to prevent sexual assault, and MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin repeated the storyline. But the topper (so far) goes to The Daily Beast with the headline, “Rick Perry Says the Best Way to Prevent Rape Is Oil, Glorious Oil.”

Writer Erin Gloria Ryan actually makes the case that fossil fuels cause sexual violence: “The mining of fossil fuels is often associated with increased sex crimes and prostitution in the areas where the mining occurs. Writing for Vice in October 2013, Peter Rugh described the way ‘man camps’ that housed fracking workforces also fostered a rise in sex crimes so serious that it got the attention of the Department of Justice. There was also a sharp uptick in cases of sexually transmitted diseases in these areas.” Future Daily Beast headline: “Fracking Causes Gonorrhea.”

Yes, Seriously, They’re Saying Perry Should Resign

The Sierra Club started a petition demanding Perry “resign for [his] twisted remarks,” claiming the secretary made “heinous comments suggesting that expanding fossil fuel development will decrease incidents of sexual assault.”

The environmental group, long opposed to both fossil fuels and nuclear energy, then exploited the situation themselves: “Women, and particularly women of color, are among some of the most severely impacted by the climate crisis, and it is these same communities that are most at risk of sexual assault.” So it’s not heinous to posit that climate change causes sexual assault, but it’s heinous to say electricity can stop it?

Perry’s remarks are not heinous, or novel, or even political. Tim Carney, a columnist with the Washington Examiner, reported that a 2013 United Nations paper reached a similar conclusion about how “’better lighting’ can help prevent sexual violence in India,” and an Oxfam study said “access to modern fuels is expected to help prevent the cuts, falls, bites, and episodes of sexual harassment and assault that women and girls might otherwise sustain while collecting fuelwood.”

In their rush to smear a Trump cabinet member, the media not only once again exposed their zeal to mislead readers but their breathtaking hypocrisy and shameful lack of compassion for what is indeed a very real problem in the developing world. So much for their humanity.

Julie Kelly is a National Review Online contributor and food policy writer from Orland Park, Illinois. She's also been published in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and The Hill.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/11/03/no-rick-perry-didnt-say-best-way-prevent-rape-oil/

What’s Got into Rick Perry?

What’s Got into Rick Perry?

Governor Jobs-Jobs-Jobs takes up civil rights.

By Kevin D. Williamson

The case against Rick Perry is political: In a field that includes George W. Bush’s kid brother, Rick Perry still manages to be the man who will remind voters of what they remember least fondly about the last Republican president, the metaphorical DNA of Texas politics superseding the literal DNA in Jeb Bush’s mitochondria.

The case for Rick Perry? Everything else.

When oil prices collapsed last year, the familiar vultures gleefully awaited the unraveling of the Texas miracle, the remarkable economic performance that empowered Perry to boast (often) that nearly a third of the entire country’s net new jobs were in Texas during his years as governor.

The vultures went hungry.

RELATED: Rick Perry Jumps In

Last year Texas had the second-fastest-growing economy among the states, more than twice as fast as New York and nearly twice as fast as California. Growth will be a little slower this year, but not dramatically slower. Weak oil and a strong dollar are a brake on the state’s export-heavy economy, but there’s more than oil and gas in Texas: manufacturing, technology, and construction are picking up a great deal of the slack. Texas’s unemployment rate stands a full point below the national average; unemployment is 48 percent higher in California and 33 percent higher in New York than in Texas, a fact rendered all the more remarkable by the state’s rapid, immigrant-heavy population growth.

The vultures have been disappointed before: In 2011, a drop in state tax receipts meant that the Texas treasury was tens of billions of dollars short of what state agencies wanted to spend. Perry got the usual advice: You must raise taxes, you must raid the rainy-day fund, and you must understand that cutting spending would ruinously de-stimulate the state’s economy. Perry instead demanded and secured $31 billion in spending cuts. The usual critics produced the usual squeals, but Texas’s economy thrived.

RELATED: Why America’s Most Famous Veterans Lined Up Behind Rick Perry

That is the first line on Rick Perry’s presidential résumé, though the former governor is refreshingly forthright about the fact that there is more to Texas’s success than his own leadership. 

There is also more to Perry than the BLS stats for Texas.

As Captain Perry, he flew C-130s for the 772nd Tactical Airlift Squadron and did rotations in the United Kingdom and Germany. He participated in humanitarian missions in Mali, Mauritania, Chad, and Guatemala. He spent significant time in Turkey, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. His aw-shucks, Paint Creek shtick — which he is, thankfully, losing, having taken off the boots and put on the glasses — often obscures the fact that Rick Perry is, in reality, a cosmopolitan.

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Politicians write terrible books with keyword titles intended to communicate virtue: Unintimidated, A Time for Truth, Hard Choices. Rick Perry wrote Fed Up!, a thoughtful meditation on the Tenth Amendment masquerading as a campaign book. He also wrote a book about the political persecution of the Boy Scouts, the simmering tone of which suggests very strongly that he is not inclined to be bullied by the enforcers of progressive homogeneity. The books — and his record — illustrate a seriously considered view of governing, one based on an interpretation of enumerated federal powers that, if put into practice, would constitute an authentically radical shift in American governance. His hiring ofNational Review contributor Avik Roy — arguably the keenest health-care policy brain on the Republican side — is an indicator that Perry is serious about conservative ideas. The only adviser that Perry might have chosen to guide him on health care with a more impressive record on the issue, Bobby Jindal, is running against him in the primary.

RELATED: How Five Years in the Air Force Shaped Rick Perry

There’s nothing new to any of that. But there was something new for Rick Perry yesterday, with his remarkable speech, by turns contrite and combative, on the subject of the Republican party’s approach to race. Acknowledging that Republicans have lost the trust of black voters, he insists that policies be judged on their results. He notes that black poverty has increased during the Obama administration, and points to the contrast between conditions in Texas and those prevailing in places such as Detroit and Baltimore, Democratic fiefdoms where progressive policies have been implemented to their fullest extent.

His speech is worth quoting at some length.

For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found we didn’t need it to win. But when we gave up trying to win the support of African Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln, as the party of equal opportunity for all. It’s time for us once again to reclaim our heritage as the only party in our country founded on the principle of freedom for African Americans.
. . . There has been and there will continue to be an important and a legitimate role for the federal government in enforcing civil rights. Too often, we Republicans — me included — have emphasized our message on the 10th Amendment but not our message on the 14th, an amendment, it bears reminding, that was one of the great contributions of the Republican Party to American life, second only to the abolition of slavery.

He began his speech with an uncomfortably frank description of the lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco in 1916. After having been accused of raping and murdering his white employer’s wife, Washington was seized, beaten, stabbed, castrated, partly dismembered, and then roasted to death over a bonfire. What was left of him was hanged. “Even today, we Texans struggle to talk about what happened to Jesse Washington. We don’t want to believe that our great state could ever have been the scene of such unimaginable horror.” A Republican party that rediscovers its civil-rights legacy and that learns to talk about poverty probably will continue to struggle with black voters, who migrated to the Democratic party beginning in the 1930s as a response to the New Deal rather than in the 1960s as a response to the Democrats’ abrupt about-face on segregation. Perry is not going to be carried into the White House, or even across the line in Ohio or Florida, by the black vote.

But there are reasons other than the obvious, narrowly self-interested ones for the party of Lincoln to remember itself. The economics are important, but a president — and a political movement — should stand for something more than a relatively low top marginal tax rate. Economic prosperity is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, for social advancement. Rick Perry does not have to prove his chops when it comes to creating policies that encourage growth, investment, and employment. He has, with all due respect to Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, etc., the best record of any American governor on that issue.

Whether he can convince the electorate that his merit does not stop at the bottom line is — it’s that niggling political question, again.

— Kevin D. Williamson is roving correspondent at National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420712/rick-perry-race-speech-republicans

Why America’s Most Famous Veterans Lined Up Behind Rick Perry

Why America’s Most Famous Veterans Lined Up Behind Rick Perry

By Brendan Bordelon 

It was a hot day on a Texas ranch in 2010, and Chris Kyle — the man who would one day become the most famous veteran in America — was about to “make an ass of himself” in his first meeting with Governor Rick Perry.

“There was a minute when a photo was about to be taken that he just did something hysterically funny,” says Taya Kyle, widow of the Navy SEAL now known nationwide as the “American Sniper.” She’s cagey about exactly how her husband ribbed Perry, but can’t stop herself from laughing at the memory.

“It’s one of those things where the governor could’ve rolled with it, or he could’ve been not at all thrilled,” Kyle says. Chris later told her it “could’ve gone either way — it could’ve pissed him off.”

Instead, the governor just laughed at the teasing, and the two quickly became close friends. “He thought, ‘Good! I’m not looking for somebody to kiss my backside. Just be real with me,’” Kyle says Perry later explained to her. “I felt like maybe that’s where [Perry and Chris] really connected. They were just these two guys that were going to keep it real.”

It’s a sentiment repeated over and over by the high-profile former warriors backing his presidential run — with Perry, what you see is what you get. From Taya Kyle to “Lone Survivor” Marcus Luttrell to Medal of Honor winner Michael Thornton, America’s best-known veterans and their families are taking to the campaign trail to rally support for the former Texas governor in 2016. Though these famous surrogates express admiration for his conservative, small-government policies, what attracts them to Perry is his character, humility, and compassion for suffering soldiers. And in a GOP primary where foreign policy is sure to loom large, their support may prove a potent weapon.

RELATED: How Five Years in the Air Force Shaped Rick Perry

When Perry launched his campaign at an oversize aircraft hanger in Dallas, Texas, earlier this month, Marcus and Morgan Luttrell, brothers who both served in the Navy SEALs, stood right behind him. Marcus — whose book, Lone Survivor, turned him into a household name — struggled with the pressures of normal life after returning from a grueling tour of duty in Afghanistan. Well before he was famous, the Perry family brought him into the governor’s mansion in Austin, Texas, where by all accounts they treated him like their own son. “Governor Perry taught me how to be a good man,” Luttrell told the Washington Post.

To Perry’s left was Taya Kyle, who says the governor and his wife helped her pick up the pieces after her husband’s death at the hands of a mentally ill veteran he was trying to help. “Mrs. [Anita] Perry is somebody I have called in tears,” she says, and Perry himself will often text her, “How you doin’, girl?” Kyle says the governor once invited her family to stay at the governor’s mansion, where he hung out with her kids and played with the family’s dog while she and Mrs. Perry went on a shopping jaunt to Walgreens.

Next to Kyle stood Michael Thornton, a Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor winner who helped found SEAL Team Six. A friend of Perry’s for more than 20 years, Thornton says the former governor has “always been out there for the veterans” — pushing through policies like free parking at airports and expansive tax benefits for ex-soldiers living in Texas. He recalls a time he invited Perry to Fort Bliss, an Army base in El Paso. “He said, ‘All you officers get away, I just want to talk to the enlisted guys,’” Thornton says. “He was always thinking about how he could better the lives of these young men and women.”

RELATED: Why One of the GOP’s Sharpest Policy Minds Chose to Work for Rick Perry

On Kyle’s other side was Dan Moran, a decorated former Marine Corps captain who suffered third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body during a 2006 battle in Iraq, and now runs both a successful consulting firm and the veteran’s charity Hope for the Warriors. “I’m just blessed that when I was wounded, he was there for my family,” says Moran of Perry. He calls Perry a friend, a “big brother,” and a mentor. “There’s a lot of great people, as you look at the current Republican presidential slate, but to me there’s only one true public servant, and that’s Governor Perry,” he says. “Its just part of his makeup, part of his DNA.”

That’s an opinion the Perry team is quick to echo. Jeff Miller, Perry’s campaign manager, says no one moment precipitated the governor’s tight bond with the men and women who served. He portrays it as a legacy of his father’s service as a tail gunner in World War II, strengthened by Perry’s own tour of duty as an Air Force pilot. “Governor Perry is close with the veteran community because he is one of them,” Miller says.

Perry’s route to the White House is perhaps even more fraught now than it was in 2012. His poor showing in last cycle’s presidential debates weighs heavily on his current prospects, and the latest polls show him running slightly behind Donald Trump.

But this time he has some Hollywood heroes behind his campaign — Kyle and Luttrell respectively featured in the blockbuster films American Sniperand Lone Survivor. And Pete Scobell, a former Navy SEAL and another ardent Perry supporter, led the raid against the Somali pirates who hijacked an American ship, an operation later immortalized in the movie Captain Phillips.

‘Governor Perry is close with the veteran community because he is one of them.’

Miller says the fact that some of the governor’s friends became household names is a testament to how many veterans’ lives he’s touched, and insists that Perry was never looking for publicity. “None of the veterans he is close with were famous when he befriended them,” he says. Marcus Luttrell’s book was in the process of being released when the Perrys took him in, and the governor’s friendship with Chris Kyle started two years before his own book was published.

Perry has more going for him than simple star power, though. As one of just two in the GOP field with military experience, his ability to attract veteran voters shouldn’t be underestimated. “Chris used to say, ‘How can you be a commander-in-chief and have never served?’” Kyle says. “That, to him, was just odd.”

“I think any man or woman who’s running for the Office of the President of the United States should’ve served in the military,” says Thornton. “They’ve got to understand what they’re putting these young men and women into when they go to war.”

And unlike Senator Lindsey Graham (R., SC), a fellow Air Force veteran, Perry has experience as a chief executive — something his military supporters say is key given the decisions he will have to make at home and abroad. “Being an executive leader is a lot different than giving a speech on the Senate floor,” says Moran. “We’ve tried having a good orator and speaker without executive experience as president, and that hasn’t worked out too well for us.”

Thornton, who now lives in Texas but grew up in South Carolina, says Graham has been in Washington too long. “Up there, working across [party] lines, sometimes you lose sight of what you’re supposed to be fighting for,” he says.

“I always have to laugh when people get into office that have really had no experience,” says Kyle. “Why is it so much about what somebody says, instead of just what they’ve actually done?”

Perry’s veteran backers say he’s different from the competition in another way, describing a sense of humility and authenticity that’s rare for a national politician. “He’s always been down to earth,” says Thornton, who likes to rib Perry for eating “steak and lobster” in the Air Force while he was “living in a grass hut” in Vietnam. “Down to earth, good ol’ Texas boy, is all he is.”

“I guess maybe it’s hard for some people to relate to, because I think some people would come with such reverence for somebody’s position, or whatever, that they wouldn’t be so casual,” says Kyle. “But Chris was making jokes with [Perry] from Day One.”

“When I look at politics today, and I think about what bothers me most, it truly comes down to smoke-and-mirrors crap and people saying things and not believing them,” she continues. “I really yearn for genuine. I yearn for someone who really means it. Who is less about themselves.”

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420101/rick-perry-famous-veteran-support-2016

Is Texas ‘Crazy’ or Is It the Real America?

Is Texas ‘Crazy’ or Is It the Real America?

Its undeniable economic success will be an issue in 2016.

By John Fund 

Last week, everywhere I went in Washington it seemed as if the country’s cultural and ideological divisions came down to a debate over the state of Texas and whether or not it was “a crazy state” or the “place that is still most like America.”

Congressman Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, started the rumble during a House committee meeting by saying that Texas’s refusal to join Obamacare’s exchanges made it “a crazy state.” He then refused to apologize to Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican who challenged him.

Those became fighting words. Former governor Rick Perry, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, responded during a speech at the American Principles Project: “He is right! We are crazy!” he enthused. “We’re crazy about jobs, we’re crazy about opportunity, we’re crazy about liberty, we’re crazy about the Constitution!” Charles Murray, the libertarian American Enterprise Institute scholar who hails from Iowa, weighed in by saying, “I’ve always thought of Texas as the place that is still most like America,” pointing to the self-reliant, can-do spirit the state still represents. Florida governor Rick Scott also joined in, noting that he has often cited Texas as a tax-cutting role model; then he joked about out-dueling Perry as a jobs generator.

While the recent 50 percent drop in oil prices has taken some of the bluster out of Texas’s bragging, the state’s stats are still beyond impressive. Last month, it created 45,700 new jobs. Most of them were in parts of the diversified economy that aren’t related to energy. Texas continues to see solid job growth in trade and professional services as well as in the hospitality industry.

Indeed, between 2007 and 2014 — the period covering the recession and the slow recovery that followed — Texas created 1.4 million net new jobs. During the same period, the rest of the nation wound up losing 400,000 jobs. The falling nationwide unemployment rate is largely the function of people’s exiting the work force entirely.

Small wonder that in December, Canada’s Fraser Institute ranked Texas first of all the states in its level of economic freedom, as measured by the size of government, taxation, regulation, and the rule of law. Texas Public Policy Foundation Director of Policy Chuck DeVore says the study’s findings show that “Texas’s having America’s highest level of economic freedom is a strong confirmation that prosperity and freedom go hand-in-hand.”

Devore notes that critics of Texas often cite the fact that the jobs Texas creates often are entry-level — about 6 percent of the state’s hourly wage earners earned minimum wage in 2013. But that figure has been consistently dropping and obscures the fact that Texas is much more affordable than many states for those on the bottom of the income ladder.

“California has the third-highest cost of living, while Texas has the second-lowest,” says DeVore, a former California GOP state legislator who relocated to the Lone Star State. “A low-wage worker sees his money go a third further in Texas.”

One could even say that the high-tax, high-cost model of California and other states is a form of class warfare against their poorest residents.

Those at the top of the corporate ladder clearly recognize Texas’s strengths. For each of the past ten years, CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine have rated Texas first in the nation for economic-development climate and job growth. What is the secret of Texas’s success? Rick Perry isn’t shy about sharing his thoughts. “It’s all about four points,” he told me. “First, don’t spend all the money. Second, keep the taxes low and under control. Then have regulations that are fair and predictable so business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. Finally, reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don’t paralyze employers who are trying to create real wealth.”

Richard Fisher, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Board, told me that Texas has really benefited from the reform of its once-corrupt legal system. Texas has put curbs on frivolous lawsuits, implemented the first-in-the-nation system under which the loser pays all court costs in many lawsuits, reformed medical-malpractice law, and elected judges who are much more respectful of the rule of law.

Richard Weekley — the co-founder of Texans for Lawsuit Reform– credits former governor Perry for resisting calls for watered-down reforms that wouldn’t have addressed the core problem. “Perry sent a signal that he wanted real reform and would stand his ground,” Weekley told me. “Soon the medical lobbyists playing footsie with the trial lawyers were gone, and the obstacles to real reform started falling.”

That said, Perry has shown less success in areas where he hasn’t focused his attention or priorities. Far from reducing subsidies to business, he has embraced them as a form of development aid to entice firms to move to Texas or expand if they are already in the state. He’s had mixed results with the subsidies. Greg Abbott, who succeeded him as governor, has reined in Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund after reports that some of its deal-closing money to relocating firms went to entities that hadn’t applied for the funding or that were not required to directly create jobs.

You don’t have to spend much time in Texas to conclude that its residents think its story should be known nationally and that the country would benefit from having Texans at the top of the federal government. Three of the last nine presidents — Johnson, the elder Bush, and George W. Bush — have come from Texas, and it’s no surprise that the 2016 GOP primary field will have two Texas entrants, Perry and U.S. senator Ted Cruz.

Expect to hear a lot of bragging about Texas over the next few months, along with a lot of trash-talking from liberals that the “Texas miracle” is a mirage. “Well, it’s true you can’t explain miracles,” Perry told me last week in Washington. “But that’s not what we have in Texas. We have economic recovery, and the lessons from ours should be picked up by every other state.” Indeed, the fact that states such as Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland all defied their blue-state habits and elected Republican governors last fall shows that voters are concerned about how far they’re falling behind states like Texas.

— John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been amended since its initial publication.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413499/texas-crazy-or-it-real-america-john-fund

Is Texas ‘Crazy’ or Is It the Real America?

Is Texas ‘Crazy’ or Is It the Real America?

Its undeniable economic success will be an issue in 2016.

By John Fund

Last week, everywhere I went in Washington it seemed as if the country’s cultural and ideological divisions came down to a debate over the state of Texas and whether or not it was “a crazy state” or the “place that is still most like America.”

Congressman Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, started the rumble during a House committee meeting by saying that Texas’s refusal to join Obamacare’s exchanges made it “a crazy state.” He then refused to apologize to Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican who challenged him.

Those became fighting words. Former governor Rick Perry, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, responded during a speech at the American Principles Project: “He is right! We are crazy!” he enthused. “We’re crazy about jobs, we’re crazy about opportunity, we’re crazy about liberty, we’re crazy about the Constitution!” Charles Murray, the libertarian American Enterprise Institute scholar who hails from Iowa, weighed in by saying, “I’ve always thought of Texas as the place that is still most like America,” pointing to the self-reliant, can-do spirit the state still represents. Florida governor Rick Scott also joined in, noting that he has often cited Texas as a tax-cutting role model; then he joked about out-dueling Perry as a jobs generator.

While the recent 50 percent drop in oil prices has taken some of the bluster out of Texas’s bragging, the state’s stats are still beyond impressive. Last month, it created 45,700 new jobs. Most of them were in parts of the diversified economy that aren’t related to energy. Texas continues to see solid job growth in trade and professional services as well as in the hospitality industry.

Indeed, between 2007 and 2014 — the period covering the recession and the slow recovery that followed — Texas created 1.4 million net new jobs. During the same period, the rest of the nation wound up losing 400,000 jobs. The falling nationwide unemployment rate is largely the function of people’s exiting the work force entirely.

Small wonder that in December, Canada’s Fraser Institute ranked Texas first of all the states in its level of economic freedom, as measured by the size of government, taxation, regulation, and the rule of law. Texas Public Policy Foundation Director of Policy Chuck DeVore says the study’s findings show that “Texas’s having America’s highest level of economic freedom is a strong confirmation that prosperity and freedom go hand-in-hand.”

Devore notes that critics of Texas often cite the fact that the jobs Texas creates often are entry-level — about 6 percent of the state’s hourly wage earners earned minimum wage in 2013. But that figure has been consistently dropping and obscures the fact that Texas is much more affordable than many states for those on the bottom of the income ladder.

“California has the third-highest cost of living, while Texas has the second-lowest,” says DeVore, a former California GOP state legislator who relocated to the Lone Star State. “A low-wage worker sees his money go a third further in Texas.”

One could even say that the high-tax, high-cost model of California and other states is a form of class warfare against their poorest residents.

Those at the top of the corporate ladder clearly recognize Texas’s strengths. For each of the past ten years, CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine haverated Texas first in the nation for economic-development climate and job growth. What is the secret of Texas’s success? Rick Perry isn’t shy about sharing his thoughts. “It’s all about four points,” he told me. “First, don’t spend all the money. Second, keep the taxes low and under control. Then have regulations that are fair and predictable so business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. Finally, reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don’t paralyze employers who are trying to create real wealth.”

Richard Fisher, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Board, told me that Texas has really benefited from the reform of its once-corrupt legal system. Texas has put curbs on frivolous lawsuits, implemented the first-in-the-nation system under which the loser pays all court costs in many lawsuits, reformed medical-malpractice law, and elected judges who are much more respectful of the rule of law.

Richard Weekley — the co-founder of Texans for Lawsuit Reform– credits former governor Perry for resisting calls for watered-down reforms that wouldn’t have addressed the core problem. “Perry sent a signal that he wanted real reform and would stand his ground,” Weekley told me. “Soon the medical lobbyists playing footsie with the trial lawyers were gone, and the obstacles to real reform started falling.”

That said, Perry has shown less success in areas where he hasn’t focused his attention or priorities. Far from reducing subsidies to business, he has embraced them as a form of development aid to entice firms to move to Texas or expand if they are already in the state. He’s had mixed results with the subsidies. Greg Abbott, who succeeded him as governor, has reined in Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund after reports that some of its deal-closing money to relocating firms went to entities that hadn’t applied for the funding or that were not required to directly create jobs.

You don’t have to spend much time in Texas to conclude that its residents think its story should be known nationally and that the country would benefit from having Texans at the top of the federal government. Three of the last nine presidents — Johnson, the elder Bush, and George W. Bush — have come from Texas, and it’s no surprise that the 2016 GOP primary field will have two Texas entrants, Perry and U.S. senator Ted Cruz.

Expect to hear a lot of bragging about Texas over the next few months, along with a lot of trash-talking from liberals that the “Texas miracle” is a mirage. “Well, it’s true you can’t explain miracles,” Perry told me last week in Washington. “But that’s not what we have in Texas. We have economic recovery, and the lessons from ours should be picked up by every other state.” Indeed, the fact that states such as Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland all defied their blue-state habits and elected Republican governors last fall shows that voters are concerned about how far they’re falling behind states like Texas.

— John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413499/texas-crazy-or-it-real-america-john-fund

Captain Rick Perry

Captain Rick Perry

Time for a military man in the White House?

By Larry Kudlow 

‘More than any election since 1980,” ace pollster Kellyanne Conway tells me, “2016 will be a national-security contest.” And she says former governor Rick Perry may have the best chance to convince voters that he can be commander-in-chief.

Let’s think on that. With the world in turmoil, who do you really want sitting across the negotiating table from Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs, or the Chinese? How about a military man to command the war to destroy radical-Islamic jihadism?

Very few people know that between 1972 and 1977, Perry served in the U.S. Air Force, flying C-130 tactical aircraft in Europe and the Middle East. He is the only current GOP candidate to have worn the military uniform. And he rarely talks about it.

Perry’s childhood goal was to learn to fly. He went into the Air Force after graduating from Texas A&M. And he ended his five years of service with the rank of captain. As Perry would say on other subjects, “That matters.”

The Perry story usually revolves around the Texas economic-growth miracle. But the military service? The captain’s rank? The piloting of strategic-airlift planes? That’s hardly known. And in his 14 years as governor of the Lone Star state, plenty of national-security issues (and border-security issues) came across his desk.

So imagine this: A president who actually served in the regular military. A president who understands the military, listens to the military, and has good relations with the military — the opposite of the Obama experience.

And imagine having a president who looks forward to the daily intelligence briefing, completely unlike Obama. What a change.

Perry spoke last week at a small dinner in New York City. Few there knew Perry had worn the Air Force uniform, much less that he held the rank of captain. But as he addressed the 50 or so at the dinner, it showed. It showed in his ramrod-straight posture. It showed when he described his tough foreign-policy views and opposition to Obama’s national-security policies. And it was unmistakable when he so easily discussed the constant need for “a show of force.”

Haven’t heard that phrase from anyone lately. My wife, whose father was a career Air Force officer, describes “a show of force” as something to intimidate the enemy. She says it means: We’re here, we’re stronger, and we could really hurt you. You might recall that during the Cold War, hundreds of C-130s flew over Europe as a show of force against Soviet aggression.

At the recent CPAC conference, Perry devoted nearly two-thirds of his speech to national-security issues. He described a simple truth about current U.S. foreign policy: “Our allies doubt us and our adversaries are all too willing to test us.” He sees ISIS and the whole radical-Islamic-jihadist movement as the worst threat to freedom since communism.

In his New York talk, he expressed concern that our military is hollowing out. He’s actually running an ad on the Internet about the need to strengthen American national security. No other candidate is doing this.

Perry also strongly supports Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From what we know of the Obama Iran deal, it looks like a very bad deal indeed. And Perry draws attention to how Team Obama has backpedalled on a number of Iran-deal issues, with the result that Iran could be allowed to build nuclear weapons while boosting its economy. 

Perry says: No, Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. He says: No, the U.S. should not normalize relations with Iran until Iran ceases to support terrorist groups that ultimately will target the U.S. and its allies.

Finally, Perry has adopted the Reagan model whereby America must be economically strong in order to be internationally secure.

Unlike his military credentials, his role in the Texas economic miracle is well known. While Perry was governor, low taxes, deregulation, and tort reform led to the creation of nearly one-third of the new private-sector jobs in America. He’s a Tenth Amendment man. He loves it when states compete against each other to create a climate of risk-taking and growth. And he wants to bring the Texas economic model to Washington.

Now, it’s way too early to endorse anyone for the GOP nomination. That’s not my intent here. But it’s important to bring out the facts about all the Republican presidential candidates. And most of you might only know half the story about Rick Perry. He’s an economic miracle worker, but he’s also a military man with national-security credibility.

And in typical military fashion, he’s an optimist. Perry has faith. And he believes America’s best days are in front of us.

Sounds like a show of force.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415039/captain-rick-perry-larry-kudlow

Is Texas ‘Crazy’ or Is It the Real America?

Is Texas ‘Crazy’ or Is It the Real America?

Its undeniable economic success will be an issue in 2016.

By John Fund

Last week, everywhere I went in Washington it seemed as if the country’s cultural and ideological divisions came down to a debate over the state of Texas and whether or not it was “a crazy state” or the “place that is still most like America.”

Congressman Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, started the rumble during a House committee meeting by saying that Texas’s refusal to join Obamacare’s exchanges made it “a crazy state.” He then refused to apologize to Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican who challenged him.

Those became fighting words. Former governor Rick Perry, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, responded during a speech at the American Principles Project: “He is right! We are crazy!” he enthused. “We’re crazy about jobs, we’re crazy about opportunity, we’re crazy about liberty, we’re crazy about the Constitution!” Charles Murray, the libertarian American Enterprise Institute scholar who hails from Iowa, weighed in by saying, “I’ve always thought of Texas as the place that is still most like America,” pointing to the self-reliant, can-do spirit the state still represents. Florida governor Rick Scott also joined in, noting that he has often cited Texas as a tax-cutting role model; then he joked about out-dueling Perry as a jobs generator.

While the recent 50 percent drop in oil prices has taken some of the bluster out of Texas’s bragging, the state’s stats are still beyond impressive. Last month, it created 45,700 new jobs. Most of them were in parts of the diversified economy that aren’t related to energy. Texas continues to see solid job growth in trade and professional services as well as in the hospitality industry.

Indeed, between 2007 and 2014 — the period covering the recession and the slow recovery that followed — Texas created 1.4 million net new jobs. During the same period, the rest of the nation wound up losing 400,000 jobs. The falling nationwide unemployment rate is largely the function of people’s exiting the work force entirely.

Small wonder that in December, Canada’s Fraser Institute ranked Texas first of all the states in its level of economic freedom, as measured by the size of government, taxation, regulation, and the rule of law. Texas Public Policy Foundation Director of Policy Chuck DeVore says the study’s findings show that “Texas’s having America’s highest level of economic freedom is a strong confirmation that prosperity and freedom go hand-in-hand.”

Devore notes that critics of Texas often cite the fact that the jobs Texas creates often are entry-level — about 6 percent of the state’s hourly wage earners earned minimum wage in 2013. But that figure has been consistently dropping and obscures the fact that Texas is much more affordable than many states for those on the bottom of the income ladder.

“California has the third-highest cost of living, while Texas has the second-lowest,” says DeVore, a former California GOP state legislator who relocated to the Lone Star State. “A low-wage worker sees his money go a third further in Texas.”

One could even say that the high-tax, high-cost model of California and other states is a form of class warfare against their poorest residents.

Those at the top of the corporate ladder clearly recognize Texas’s strengths. For each of the past ten years, CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine have rated Texas first in the nation for economic-development climate and job growth. What is the secret of Texas’s success? Rick Perry isn’t shy about sharing his thoughts. “It’s all about four points,” he told me. “First, don’t spend all the money. Second, keep the taxes low and under control. Then have regulations that are fair and predictable so business owners know what to expect from one quarter to the next. Finally, reform the legal system so that frivolous lawsuits don’t paralyze employers who are trying to create real wealth.”

Richard Fisher, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Board, told me that Texas has really benefited from the reform of its once-corrupt legal system. Texas has put curbs on frivolous lawsuits, implemented the first-in-the-nation system under which the loser pays all court costs in many lawsuits, reformed medical-malpractice law, and elected judges who are much more respectful of the rule of law.

Richard Weekley — the co-founder of Texans for Lawsuit Reform– credits former governor Perry for resisting calls for watered-down reforms that wouldn’t have addressed the core problem. “Perry sent a signal that he wanted real reform and would stand his ground,” Weekley told me. “Soon the medical lobbyists playing footsie with the trial lawyers were gone, and the obstacles to real reform started falling.”

That said, Perry has shown less success in areas where he hasn’t focused his attention or priorities. Far from reducing subsidies to business, he has embraced them as a form of development aid to entice firms to move to Texas or expand if they are already in the state. He’s had mixed results with the subsidies. Greg Abbott, who succeeded him as governor, has reined in Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund after reports that some of its deal-closing money to relocating firms went to entities that hadn’t applied for the funding or that were not required to directly create jobs.

You don’t have to spend much time in Texas to conclude that its residents think its story should be known nationally and that the country would benefit from having Texans at the top of the federal government. Three of the last nine presidents — Johnson, the elder Bush, and George W. Bush — have come from Texas, and it’s no surprise that the 2016 GOP primary field will have two Texas entrants, Perry and U.S. senator Ted Cruz.

Expect to hear a lot of bragging about Texas over the next few months, along with a lot of trash-talking from liberals that the “Texas miracle” is a mirage. “Well, it’s true you can’t explain miracles,” Perry told me last week in Washington. “But that’s not what we have in Texas. We have economic recovery, and the lessons from ours should be picked up by every other state.” Indeed, the fact that states such as Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland all defied their blue-state habits and elected Republican governors last fall shows that voters are concerned about how far they’re falling behind states like Texas.

— John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been amended since its initial publication.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398170/texas-crazy-or-it-real-america-john-fund

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398170/texas-crazy-or-it-real-america-john-fund

Rick Perry Rides Again

Rick Perry Rides Again

And it looks like he’s ready.

By Eliana Johnson

Austin, Texas — In the fall of 2002, when Jeb Bush was running for reelection as governor of Florida, his older brother made several visits to the Sunshine State to campaign on his behalf. It was a dozen years ago, but a former aide to George W. Bush recalls the scene easily. Air Force One sat on the tarmac in Tampa. On board, the governor was sitting with presidential aides around a table in the plane’s conference room.

When the president walked in, his staffers stood. Jeb Bush stayed seated. “Little brother, most people stand up when I walk into a room,” Bush said, according to the aide. The room erupted in laughter. Jeb smiled awkwardly. “I can understand why you’re a little upset, baby brother,” the president continued, “because I just looked across the tarmac and my plane is a lot bigger than yours. And size matters, baby brother.”

Being George W. Bush’s baby brother can’t have been easy. As Rick Perry surely knows, being his lieutenant governor probably wasn’t a joyride, either. Now both Jeb Bush and Rick Perry have their sights set on the presidency. These dual runs would not only divide Texas’s donors and operatives, they would also once again pit Perry against the Bush clan.

Today Governor Perry delivers his farewell address to the Texas legislature. It’s a crucial transition point for him: When his term comes to an end next week, it will mark the first time in three decades that he has not held elected office. It will also be the first time that, as a free man, he can turn his attention full-time to a White House bid.

Perry likes to say that America loves second chances, and he is doing everything to ensure that his encore on the national stage bears little resemblance to his debut, which was marked by missteps and a lack of careful planning from beginning to end. He wasn’t prepared to talk about national issues; his team missed a deadline to qualify for the Virginia primary; and he was hopped up on medication from recent back surgery.

Where there was once chaos, now there is order. In Austin on Wednesday, in the nondescript offices serving as his nascent campaign headquarters, Perry was all focus, sequestered in a conference room, headphones in place, to practice his farewell speech. 

All but two aides from his 2012 campaign are gone. In place is a new set of advisers, led by Jeff Miller, who moved from California to Texas in December 2012. For the past 23 months — yes, 23 months — Perry has been schooling himself on domestic and foreign policy. He has flown more than 100 of the country’s leading conservative scholars in international affairs, health care, energy, and economics to Austin. Several of them have come multiple times. And he has gotten tutorials from former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. “I went to them,” Perry says.

Thursday’s speech will offer a preview of the Perry presidential platform. The gun-slinging wild guy who once raised the specter of secession now sounds more like a sober and experienced old hand, though the tea-party sensibilities that excite the party’s base are still there. He is the longest-serving governor in Texas history and has one of the strongest records in the country. Greg Abbott, the state’s newly elected Republican governor, will be handed “as dynamic an economy as any state in the nation,” Perry tells me.

Not lost on the audience, on Thursday or in the future, will be the fact that Texas’s economic success has occurred as the American economy remained sluggish for much of the Obama era. “I have been guided by a simple philosophy: that job creation, not higher taxation, is the best form of revenue generation,” Perry will say, according to a copy of his remarks obtained by National Review Online. Perry refused to raise taxes even in the face of revenue shortfalls. He cut spending instead.

The results: Over a thousand people a day have been moving to Texas, where the unemployment rate is under 5 percent. His economic reforms were “controversial among those who wrote opinion columns and hired swarms of lobbyists,” Perry will say. “But it wasn’t controversial for the trucker or the waitress, the farmer or the nurse, the quiet majority that feels over-billed and taxed to death.”

Perry’s new focus hasn’t forced him to shed any personality, though. You can’t miss the contrast between him and the party’s recent nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Perry has the gift of gab. He also possesses two qualities rare among politicians: He is candid and self-deprecating. It’s hard to imagine Mitt Romney making fun of himself for being wealthy and out of touch, or Rand Paul cracking jokes about his crazy father. But Rick Perry makes jokes about being stupid. He likes to say the race for the White House “is not an IQ test.” And he tells me about his elementary school in Paint Creek, Texas, a tiny town where his parents were cotton farmers. “There were 110 kids in the whole school, kindergarten through twelfth grade,” he says. He pauses and looks at me. “I graduated top ten in my class. Top ten.” He pauses again. “Albeit there were only 13 students.”

Perry does something else one rarely sees from members of the political class: He admits mistakes. At a June speech in San Francisco, of all places, he was asked whether he thought homosexuality could be treated with therapy. After saying he didn’t know, he continued, “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that — and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.” After the predictable media firestorm ensued, he told a group of reporters, “I stepped in it.”

There’s a George W. Bush–like quality to Perry’s comfort with himself, and yet relations between the two camps have been icy for years. Members of the Bush camp were a crucial part of then–senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s primary bid against Perry in 2010. She was the milquetoast moderate alternative to the fire-breathing Perry. Karl Rove advised her campaign, and former president George H. W. Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney, and a handful of George W. Bush–administration officials endorsed her bid.

Perry hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to endear himself to his former boss. In 2008, as budget hawks revolted over the Bush administration’s bank bailouts and profligate spending, Perry kicked Bush while he was down. In Iowa, on the stump for Rudy Giuliani, Perry let slip that Bush had “never, ever been a fiscal conservative.” He opposed Bush’s signature education reform, No Child Left Behind, because “the federal government has no business telling the states how to educate our children.”

But the division is as much cultural as it is ideological. George W. Bush is New Haven–born. He has Ivy League degrees and he vacations in Kennebunkport. Former Mexican president Vicente Fox called him a “windshield cowboy” — that is, a cowboy more comfortable behind the wheel of a Jeep than on top of a horse. Nobody would ever say that about Rick Perry, the son of tenant farmers who returned to work for his parents after college at Texas A&M. If the Bushes think Perry is a vulgar, primitive boob, he thinks they’re entitled Eastern elitists.

Perry flattened the Bushes in his 2010 primary. Whether he can do so on the national stage is another question. His farewell speech hints at his aspirations and his deep-seated belief that individuals have the right to rise.

“In Texas, it’s not where you come from that matters, it’s where you’re going,” Perry will say. Rick Perry knows where he wants to go. This time, he has a more deliberate plan to get there.

— Eliana Johnson is Washington editor of National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396449/rick-perry-rides-again-eliana-johnson

Rick Perry’s Indictment: The Price of Integrity

Rick Perry’s Indictment: The Price of Integrity

By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute

As the Manhattan Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth wrote at Real Clear Markets not long ago (http://bit.ly/1oQyWBT), the indictment of Rick Perry looks straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.” It is America’s current misfortune to have a major party in the hands of a faction that embraces the most toxic kind of political practices.

But since he is in the news, what of Mr. Perry? Furtchgott-Roth goes on to detail Texas’ stellar economic performance during his governorship. Was he just standing there or did he actually do something that gives him claim on credit for all that prosperity in the midst of national stagnation?

Here is my own Rick Perry story, which, to me at least, answers the question.

Early in 2012 I appeared on a panel at a Heritage Foundation conference in Dallas. My session was in the afternoon. In the morning, I was walking through the lobby of the hosting hotel and stopped to chat with a Washington-based reporter I knew. After a few minutes, up came an energetic, spirited, very attractive woman. She was a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat Ted Cruz ultimately won and my friend’s next interview. At their invitation, I sat in on their talk.

As it turned out, she wanted to discuss state more than national politics. Just that morning the legislature had voted down a move to abolish the Texas Railroad Commission and replace it with a state agency. You may know that, for historical reasons, the commission has tremendous power over the oil and gas industry in Texas. At one time that power made it a global force, influence unique among agencies of American states, indeed of state, provincial and regional governments throughout the world.

The commission’s design (three independently elected commissioners) is a model of good governing practice. There is a literature in economics about governance of regulatory bodies. The Railroad Commission is set up in just the way you would want to prevent corruption and abuse. The commissioners act as a check on one another. If something is amiss, two unite to stop the third, or if the two are the issue, the third blows the whistle with the legislature. That’s the theory, and, I gather, that ‘s how the Texas Railroad Commission has performed over the years.

So this commissioner and candidate was jubilant that the effort to change things had been defeated. She told us how the victory had come about. It was a close run thing right up to the last week. Then Governor Perry had stepped in. Quietly he made a phone call here and gave an indication there. With a series of almost imperceptible nudges, the close run thing had become a done deal.

From very good seats, I have watched several governors of several states and both parties in such moments. Perry’s performance was just how first class chief executives work with their legislatures. On most issues, there is no fanfare, no grandstanding, but at critical moments a quiet shifting of weight settles the outcome in favor of the broad public interest, which is exactly the interest a governor is elected to represent.

If a state – or the nation – has such an executive at the top, its government will know a minimum of corruption or abuse of power. Bad laws will be defeated. Incompetent officials will be dismissed. The law will be enforced in an evenhanded manner. Leaving that meeting, I thought, Rick Perry is a first-class chief executive. I felt certain that he had played a significant role in Texas’ triumph during his tenure.

Setting aside the Alinsky factor, the indictment of Governor Perry looks like a sleazy prosecutor revenging a crony. From what I learned that morning in Dallas, Perry is just the kind of governor who would have such political low-lifes as enemies. It is in perfect keeping with his character that he would take steps to force out an official – any official — who was pulled over for driving drunk and responded by kicking at and threatening the arresting officer. Such an official does not belong in public office, particularly an office charged with policing the integrity of other officials.

For all the unseemliness of the prosecutor’s vendetta, this incident highlights how a good governor gets the people’s work done, day in, day out, making public bodies serve the general good. My guess is that the indictment will end up putting a plus the column of Governor Perry’s national reputation. Mr. Perry will deserve that plus.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/rick-perrys-indictment-price-integrity-clark-s-judge/#more-24478