motherjones:

But hey, it’s to save budget money, so yay tea party values!

goodreasonnews:

The question isn’t whether Texas has created jobs, it clearly has. The question is: How, and at what cost?

Perry said in a recent interview on Fox that it’s a simple formula:

For me a red flag always goes up as soon as someone comes along, approaches a complex international problem and declares the answer ‘simple.’

Few government regulations, severe limitations on the right to sue and low taxation. Again, Perry’s right. Do those things and businesses will come to the state and create jobs.

When conservatives and libertarian whack-jobs say this I always wonder if they’re just trying to create an America where worker’s rights and unions never existed. Don’t they see that if they eliminate unions and worker’s rights people are just going to get fed up with being abused and start them up again. What’s the good they hope to influence?

What he didn’t mention was what, other job creation, happens when you give business everything it wants.

Of course tax breaks for multi-billion dollar corporations incentivize businesses to expand. They also cost the state money that it needs for schools. Given a choice, Rick Perry’s Texas went with tax breaks. Now the state’s laying off as many as 100,000 teachers. That’s not likely to help Texas improve its current high school graduation rank of 36th in the nation.

By the way, go home and ask your parents why they chose to move into the town you live in now. If they weren’t raised there or they didn’t have families there, most likely the answer will be “it was close to work and there are good schools.” Good schools is one of the top reasons people move anywhere and it’s how town’s develop. When populations develop, retailers moves in. It all starts with good schools. Perry’s got it backwards.

If chemical companies didn’t have to comply with both state and federal regulations, they could hire thousands of people. So Perry’s administration not only refuses to regulate them in any meaningful way, but attacks the federal government when it does. Texas now has a thriving chemical industry and the largest levels of airborne carcinogens in the nation.

Corporate responsibility and compliance with law are inconvenient. Making a mistake and getting sued for it is expensive. So Perry, his appointees and allies have enacted tort “reform” so draconian that now, businesses are free to do whatever they want to their employees and consumers literally without consequence. New laws and radical right-wing judges (many of them appointed by Perry) have not “limited” lawsuits, but effectively prevented entire classes of people from seeking justice of any kind.

Remember kids, ‘Tort reform’ is nothing more than a confusing term created by tobacco lobbyists to prevent American citizens from having their day in court against corporate criminals.

Today, even if a jury awards you damages against a corporation, there’s about an 87% chance that the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court (five of whose nine justices were appointed by Perry) will take it away from you, regardless of what the law says.

And that’s how they stack the deck against you: Appeals courts filled with business-always-wins republicans and unreasonable legislation like lawsuit caps.

(Source: robot-heart-politics)