Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Rick Perry for president?!

Obviously I haven't posted here in a long time. Due to a combination of a job loss, relocation (at least part-time) and lack of anything new to say on the subject of what I consider to be the decline of our country, I have been silent for a long time.

I still don't see much of a recovery happening, and in fact the technical indicators I have seen on the fine blogs and news sites I follow lead me to believe we are still slowly circling the drain. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I am proud to say that I am a staunch Ron Paul supporter. Having said that, I wish that as a lifelong Texan I could support Rick Perry because he is sort of more or less almost a conservative.

Perry loves to tout the job growth in Texas. There has been growth here and that really is good. However, these are just not the kind of jobs that you can support a family with. How would I know? Well I don't pretend to know what the jobs are or what they pay. I can however look up statistics on the 'net and guess what- Texas has nearly 4 million people on food stamps or the more politically correct sounding SNAP program. With a population of over 25 million this works out to approximately 16% of the Texas population receiving food assistance. Higher by a few percent than the national average. In fact, just taking into account total numbers, Texas appears to have more "participants" than any other state- at least as of August 1, 2011. If you follow this link http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48000.html to compare Texas to other states in terms of median income etc. you will see that things really aren't that great here in the Lone Star State. Rick Perry's fault? No. I won't blame him for problems here but he really should not take credit for all the "job growth" when it is obvious that whatever these jobs are, they pay poorly enough that millions can still qualify for food stamps.

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