There’s A Difference Between Boasting and Bragging

There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of Texas  pride, and I do but make sure that your statements are based, in fact, and can be verified. Otherwise, you will be characterized as being a political hack  like Governor Rick Perry was in the Republican presidential primaries.

I talking to you, Mack Simons, of Wharton, Texas because your recent letter- to- the -letter was loaded with inaccuracies either by intent or ignorance. I say ignorance because I’m assuming you researched the statements in your letter before you submitted it. It starts with the title “ Washington needs budget advice from Texas.” Are you kidding me? We had to address a $27 billion shortfall in the last budget. You may have liked the idea that taxes were not raised but education and health care were cut in our never-ending  race to the bottom in funding those programs.

I know Governor Perry made a big stink about not taking those evil government stimulus funds, but in reality our governor took those funds to help balance 97% of the 2010 shortfall and had billions left over for Texas’s rainy-day fund. You see we had a $6.6 billion shortfall in 2010, but that was paid for with the $6.4 billion Recovery Act funds.I won’t even mention all the military bases and NASA money, but you can read it for yourself here.

You stated that President Obama rewarded the union stooges when the administration continued the auto bailout started by President George W. Bush. As I the remember the story, no other American industry stepped up to help the auto industry, and our country was about to lose another million jobs from the auto companies and the industries connected to it. I also remember that the union workers took concessions  where eye coverage and dental coverage were lost, and their wages went from an average of $29 to $17 an hour. It only took me a couple of minutes to pull up that information from an old Washington Post article (reprinted by the Huffington Post)to refresh my memory but don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself here. It’s funny how free market conservatives have a problem with those making good union wages.

I’m not even going to try to contradict your concept that Governor Perry was a financial genius. In fact, I don’t understand  his ten-year plan of expanding our criminal-justice  system and then laying off the ones in the Texas Department of Criminal-Justice  Inmate Construction Group to make good a pledge of giving teachers a pay raise. I’ll have to look it up but based on the contents of your letter;I bet there’s more than meet –the- eye to your account of the facts. I guess you know that employed public employee's money consumes just as much as those in private industries. I understand the goal in your mind is zero public and union employees.

Recently only 49 Republicans voted for the  $50 billion relief for the victims of Sandy and 179 Republicans voted against it. The so-called fiscal hawks said there was too much pork in the bill and the others wanted off-sets. Hypocrites, disaster funds have always been bipartisan  but Sandy hit areas where the voters usually vote for Democrats ,so now it’s mostly pork, or it needs to be off-set. No;the fiscal cliff was not about pork, Mr. Simons;it was a bill that didn’t allow higher taxes on 99% of Americans but like Sandy relief, it took the Democrats to see to it that it passed. It’s pretty obvious that only one party is governing, and the other party is always protesting.

I agree that we need to get our fiscal house in order but let's bring all the proposals to the table. Let's not be fixated on ways to cut programs to the poor,Planned Parenthood, austerity measures only because I'm pretty sure conservatives don't think it's right that multi- millionaire hedge fund mangers get to pay their carried interest at capital gains rate of 15%. That's a start and we could go from there and most people agree where the three biggest items in our budget are. Concentrating on the little things like waste and handouts is like trying to balance the family budget by giving up coffee and beer but forgetting the mortgage and car payment or finding ways to work overtime.