Why You Shouldn't Vote for Rick Perry: Part One

He is a Creep.

conventional wisdom says if you want to make a buck, don't go into politics. so it is curious how rick perry, republican candidate for president, went from being a farmer who made $45,000 a year to a governor worth 7 digits.

he didn't inherit any money. the salary of the governor of texas is set at $150,000 a year and it seems unlikely that he saved every penny he made during the last ten years. in fact the source of perry's new found wealth has been the subject of several journalistic inquiries. perry made most of his money buying and selling land, however, according to several journalists, the details of those transactions seem suspicious on closer inspection.

here is how a typical perry real estate transaction went down. a lobbyist in state house would buy a piece of land he/she knew someone else had commercial interests in. they would then sell that land to perry at cost. perry would then reap the benefits of the sale of the "in demand" land.

maybe perry didn't know what the lobbysist knew about the land....but the fact that it happened several times has to kind of make you wonder. add this to perry's record of giving sweetheart deals* to people who made large financial contributions to his political action committees and it seems to me we have on our hands a guy who stinks of corruption.

and i for one am of the opinion that the last thing we need is some croney capitalist in charge.

*reportedly perry issued an executive order mandating that all girls in the state of texas receive the hpv vaccine**. at the time the only vaccine available was made by merek drug company which coincidentally had donated generously to the perry election campaigns.

**just for the record, i don't have a problem with the vaccine.