The proof is in the Texas pudding

Last month, after the fire and explosion in West, Texas, and shortly after one of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's business recruiting trips to California, to lure companies to relocate in “business friendly” Texas, a cartoon appeared in the Sacramento Bee, showing the governor making one of his pitches for businesses to come to Texas where there are “Low Taxes” and “Low Regulations” and where “Business is booming in Texas!” The next panel of the cartoon shows the blast at West Fertilizer, exclaiming a large “BOOM!” in red letters and a flag with “Low Regs” visible near the flames.

The next day, Perry said in a letter to the editor of the newspaper that “I won't stand for someone mocking the tragic deaths of my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans,” and demanded an apology from the newspaper and from the cartoonist.

The publisher of the newspaper responded by saying that the cartoonist “made a strong statement about Gov. Rick Perry's disregard for worker safety, and his attempts to market Texas as a place where industries can thrive with few regulations.”

Need we point out, Gov. Perry, that the cartoon was not mocking your fellow Texans or fellow Americans. The only thing being mocked was you and your disastrous record as Texas' governor.

Some highlights of Rick Perry's three terms, and counting, as governor of Texas:

• 50,000 teacher jobs eliminated in the last two years. Texas is now tied with Mississippi for the worst schools in the country and is last in the percentage of the population that has graduated from high school.

• In 2011,Governor Perry refused $830 million in federal aid to education because the funds had a clause that specifically required that the money must be used for eduction. Why did that upset Perry and cause him to refuse the money? Because the previous year he took $3.2 billion in federal stimulus money for Texas schools and used it for non-education purposes, and the added requirement was directed at Perry.

• 25 percent of all Texas children live below the poverty level, yet Perry cut the state budget for child care services by more than $10 billion.

• Texas has the highest birth rate in the country, ranks third in teen pregnancies and ranks first in the nation in repeat teen pregnancies. Gov. Perry uses more federal funds than any other state to teach kids “abstinence-only sex education.”

• Texas now leads the nation in the number of residents without medical insurance, has the lowest access to prenatal care, and some of the most stringent Medicaid requirements, yet Perry has said that “...Social Security and Medicare are unnecessary welfare programs that should be eliminated.”

• The uninsured rate in Texas is now 24 percent, uninsured people whose untreated medical conditions just get worse, and who usually end up in public hospital emergency rooms, where treatment is the most expensive and the cost is paid for by (others). Yet Perry has refused federal expansion of Medicaid.

• During the past two years, family planning funding was cut by more than 65 percent and more than 50 medical clinics have been closed. These were the clinics that provided low-income women with preventative health care, such as screening for breast and cervical cancer. Since 2012, an estimated 140,000 additional low-income women have lost access to health care services. This can be translated into an increase of tens of thousands of unwanted pregnancies and a substantial increase in the number of reported cases of syphilis, including congenital syphilis.

• Texas leads the nation in executions, 235 since Perry became governor, and he vetoed a bill that would have banned executing mentally retarded inmates.

• State debt increased by more than 300 percent, from $13 billion to $42 billion, primarily because tax breaks and other incentives for corporations reached record levels, averaging $19 billion a year.

• Texas has become the nation's biggest polluter, and its air quality standards are below minimum federal requirements. The EPA designated BP's refinery in Texas City as the worst-polluting plant in the country. Of the top 10 mercury-polluting power plants in the U.S., six are in Texas.

The Fairfield, Texas, power plant is the largest source of mercury pollution in the nation. Corporate lawlessness in Texas is epidemic and companies such as BP, ExxonMobil and Gulf Chemical have been operating outside the law for years. They prefer to pay the minimal fines assessed by the state, rather than comply with the law.

• The BP offshore explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico killed eleven workers, closed down the entire gulf coast, killed hundreds of thousands of our coastal animal population, and threatened to destroy the entire ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. BP later pleaded guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter and paid more than $4.6 billion in fines. BP also pleaded guilty to a felony count of lying to Congress, and finally admitted that the disaster was caused by cost cutting decisions and insufficient safety systems. About the BP disaster, Perry said: “From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented.”

• Perry called upon the Boy Scouts of America to continue its ban on homosexuality and said that “gays, just like alcoholics, should just choose abstinence.” He later added that

“Homosexuality is a sin” and “those who are openly gay should not be allowed to serve in the military.” He also defended Texas' anti-sodomy law, that was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I don't know how Governor Perry failed in his recent bid for the Republican nomination for president of the United States. He seems a perfect match for our current Congress, possibly the most aggressively ignorant ever, in their ongoing war against our children, our elderly, our poor and our 12 million unemployed. If Perry had bee elected, then the entire United States, not only Texas, could have become just like Bangladesh.

(Norman Bernstein is a roving correspondent for the Havre Daily News.)