Rick Perry: The GOP Fight Against Tax Increases Is Just Like The Civil Rights Movement
Texas Governor Rick Perry made a rather odd claim during a campaign stop the other day:
QUESTION: And coming to the Old Town Bistro you’re actually visiting a very important place in Rock Hill and the nation’s civil rights history. This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Friendship Nine sit-in here. Care to comment on that?
PERRY: Listen, America’s gone a long way from the standpoint of civil rights and thank God we have. I mean we’ve gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights. I think we all can be proud of that. And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom. It needs to be about freedom from overtaxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation. And Americans regardless of what their cultural or ethnic background is they need to know that they can come to America and you got a chance to have any dream come true because the economic climate is gonna be improved.
So you take a question about the struggle against Jim Crow and you turn it into a policy argument for low taxes? I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but something about that just doesn’t sound right.
Get used to this with Perry. Your and James’ party will eat it up.
It is absolutely oppression that there is a buy-in to live in the richest, most powerful, most stable country in history. What with all the chains republicans are weighted down with and all the guns pointed at their heads its a wonder they can function at all…
It’s just his version of “let’s get back to the point–taxes are too high and I’m gonna lower YOURS, no matter who you are (poor people need not apply), as the next POTUS.”
Let’s see… on one side, you have large groups of individuals getting together in a genuine grass-roots movement, united by a common cause demanding more freedom. On the other side, you have Democrats and unions.
Nope, don’t see the similarities at all.
J.
Hmmm….
Overtaxation? On who. We’re close to historical lows on rates and revenue?
Overlitigation? So we can’t sue to redress grievances?
Overregulation? So we’ll just put up with dirty water, dirty air, unsafe food, unsafe working conditions, unsafe toys?
Is this the world Perry envisions? If so, it has no semblance to the what we all like to call the US of A.
@Jay Tea:
Don’t be a dope.
On why you’re being a dope, Jay:
The GOP love them some regressive taxes. It’s progressive taxation the GOP hates. They think it’s unfair. It’s ludicrous, but most of ’em believe it.
Anyway, the above is about the expiration of the temporary payroll tax cut. At some point, it needs to expire. The question is whether the stimulative impact of the payroll tax cut is worth extending it, given the state of the economy.
The GOP will try and leverage this into getting the Dems to cave on the expiration of the Bush (Bush/Obama now) income tax cuts.
@EddieInCA:
They’re standard boilerplate conservative talking points, of course.
As I have noticed here and elsewhere, whenever I ask for a specific example of overregulation, I get nothing – or I hear about the evil EPA preventing oil drilling that will provide $2 gas or somesuch silliness. When I ask whether we should repeal the laws that protect our drinking water, our air, etc… most people I talk to back off. I think any reasonable person is willing to believe that any 1 given regulation could be poorly designed and/or implemented. The question is: which ones, how, and how to fix them. Conservatives never seem to have answers for those questions.
When it’s pointed out that tax revenues & rates are relatively low, you get a bunch of sputtering and usually the goalposts shift to the evils of progressive taxation.
When it’s pointed out that Texas tried “tort reform” and the results do not appear to match the claims made about the dire need for said reform, it does not alter their faith.
It’s funny, because the less regulation you have the more ordinary citizens need the courts for redress. This seems to me to be a fundamental point of conflict between Conservative desires (less regulation *and* less litigation).
@Rob in CT:
I was thinking the exact same thing, but didn’t quite know how to phrase it. So thank you.
It’s an odd disconnect. We need less regulations, according to some people. But what, specifically.
I, personally, would love MORE regulations when it comes to multinational US corporations using off-shore tax havens to park cash, rather than putting it to work in this country. I would love MORE regulations for our banking industries so that situations like the S&L Crisis and the more recent banking crisis’ don’t happen.
Why aren’t Canada, Sweden, Norway, or Germany having the banking issues we are? Could it be that regulating the banks is actually a GOOD idea?
Yes. And let’s not forget 1 in 4 people in Texas have no health insurance.
Well, I suppose. Freedom for paying the bills you have already run up and services you will continue to use. In other words, freedom to be a deadbeat.
And why is he encouraging more people to come to this Beacon of Shining Hope? I thought the Baggers were against immigration and here he is telling people that no matter who they are they will find economic conditions improved when they get here? THIS GUY IS A MORON.