Dear Sir,
Millions of Americans who have watched the Republican presidential candidates debate on TV have seen how inept Texas Governor Rick Perry is. That should be enough to impugn the judgment of Karen Cage, head of the Lakeside Tea Party, who boasts in the November 12-18 issue of the Reporter that she has voted for Perry ten times, but there’s much more.
While oil millionaires are doing very well in Texas, it has the highest percentage of any state of children living below the poverty line and the largest number not covered by health insurance. Perry’s state also has the highest percentage of population over 25 that lacks high school diplomas, and the students of only ten states have lower average SAT scores – though Texas students may do better on Bible study, Perry having stated on national TV that, notwithstanding the U.S. Constitution and the verdicts of Federal courts, creationism is taught in Texas public schools. Texas releases more toxic substances into the water than any other state, and Tea Partiers want EPA restrictions on both water and air pollution to be relaxed. The increased jobs in Texas that Perry brags about are mostly unskilled and minimum wage, of which there might be more if the Tea Partiers could succeed in eliminating regulations on business such as minimum wage laws, the ability of unions to bargain for wages and benefits, and worker safety and health requirements. Perry’s major achievement is having presided over more executions than any other governor, wildly applauded by Tea Partiers despite evidence that some of them have been of people innocent of the crimes for which they were condemned. When the State Forensic Sciences Commission began to investigate one notorious such case, Perry quashed it by replacing the Commission’s chairman. Cage says that she “worked long and hard” for Perry, and Texas is what Cage and the Tea Partiers want the rest of the U.S. to be like.
Kenneth G. Crosby,
San Antonio Tlayacapan