...and this guy wants to be president?
 

They're just teachers, already milking the system with their big fat pensions anyhow. Big deal.

shades of george w bush and tom hicks, and the ut endowment.

R. Steven Hicks and his brother Tom both founded major radio companies that merged in '99 into AMFM, Inc. After Clear Channel Communications devoured AMFM later that year, Tom Hicks became its vice chair. Tom Hicks made Bush a millionaire 15 times over when he bought the Texas Rangers in '99. Just as local taxpayers enhanced the value of Bush's Rangers by paying $135 million for their stadium, Hicks and Ross Perot, Jr. got Dallas taxpayers to spend $125 million on a stadium for their Dallas Stars and Mavericks in '98. Tom Hicks heads the corporate raider firm Hicks Muse Tate & Furst (Bush's No. 4 career patron). Hicks Muse long wanted to tap the $13-billion University of Texas (UT) endowment for its takeover deals. As Bush assumed office in '95, Hicks was confirmed as a University of Texas Regent and hired lobbyists to push a bill creating the UT Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO). With Hicks as its first chair, UTIMCO began doling out contracts to private investment firms to manage portions of the endowment. A scandal blew up when the media discovered that UTIMCO awarded many of these lucrative contracts to firms tied to Hicks and Bush - including one that former President Bush reportedly owns a piece of. The UTIMCO board doling out these contracts included Clear Channel Chair L. Lowry Mays and the Pioneers Tom Loeffler, A.W. Riter, and A. R. Sanchez. Ed Bass and Pioneer Charles Wyly owned two firms that landed some of these contracts.

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz/WHPF10.html

oddly - or maybe not so oddly? - all these so called "free marketeers" seem to always want some of that "goverment cheese"/ government "sugar tit".

Kip has a woodie for Perry. I can tell.

Kip has a woodie for Perry because Kip has lived long enough in Texas to know how politics here work, and it ain't pretty nor honest.

Dude that was in 2003: no big deal. ;)

As a Texas resident for Perry's entire tenure, I gotta agree with Kip.

Perry says what he needs to say to get elected. And I hope that's not true in 2012.

I'm not a fan of President Obama, but compared to Perry he'd be the lesser of two evils. It's a shame that's the choice we may end up with, again.

How the hell would that even work? A life insurance policy by any sane company is a winning bet for the company, not for the insured -- i.e. UBS would have to pay in more than the average payouts. Unless UBS found a company with poor actuarial skills, of course.

Wow, that's a novel approach.

Now to Obama: Promised to withdraw from wars but expanded into Libya; promised to close Gitmo but didn't; promised to meet with world leaders without preconditions and hasn't; promised to work across the aisle but didn't until the Repos got a majority in the House; promised to change the tone in Washington but hasn't changed himself much less others; promised taht the unemployment wouldn't rise above 8.5% if he got his spending bills passed and it has.

Yeah, Perry's different.

Katy Curic for President!!!!

FFS!

Nah, they're both politicians.

Q: How do you know a politician is lying?
A: Because his yap-hole is flappin'.

A bit simplistic, with suspect linkage, but I'll concede Obama said those things then didn't deliver.

But I can't tell if there's irony, sarcasm or resignation in your last statement.

Do you mean Perry will 'not' be the type of politician that plays to a base to get elected and gratuitously panders to the popular mood at the present time? If so, then yeah, I agree with you and Perry is 'different' and would never do those things.

I am amused that the people who are incensed that Perry is a serial prevaricator haven't seemed to notice that particular pattern is the norm, as personified by our current president, not the exception.

Politics

Poli - Multisided
Tics - Blood suckers

One thing about Perry that I did not know until yesterday was his problem with admitting mistakes. A cotton farmer in Texas told me about it.

It seems that when Perry was Ag Commish during the 90's he decided it would be a good thing to wipe out the Boll Weevils in south Texas. He ordered the state to pay for spraying a poison on the crops that the Farmers were opposed to since it killed every bug there was but one.

With no natural predators this bug went nuts and ate up $200,000,000 worth of cotton.

The Farmers had to take some kind of legal action to make the spraying stop since Perry insisted it was a wonderful thing.

To this day he blames in on weather conditions, and he continues to ignore the fact that cotton in Mexico, which is grown just a few miles away, suffered none of the losses from this insect that Texas growers did.

Perry may be able to raise a lot of cash, but according to this guy none of it will be from cotton farmers.