Texas governor Rick "Goodhair" Perry just wants to be left alone:
That rant of his is quite hilarious. For example, the salt police hasn't found Snakepit Inc. yet, because nobody forced me to salt my oatmeal this morning (I prefer cinnamon in any case).
The day after his resounding re-election in Texas, the Republican governor released a book that reads like a Tea Party manifesto, laying out the conservative case for dismantling much of the federal government and returning power to the states.
...
Mr. Perry's book — "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington" (Little, Brown) — certainly reads like a candidate's platform. Much of it echoes the ideas of conservative talk show hosts like Mr. Beck and many Tea Party activists.
He proposes to rein in federal power on every front, leaving most questions outside of national defense up to the states.
"We are fed up with being overtaxed and overregulated," he writes. "We are tired of being told how much salt we can put on our food, what windows we can buy for our house, what kinds of cars we can drive, what kinds of guns we can own, what kinds of prayers we are allowed to say and where we can say them, what political speech we are allowed to use to elect candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what kind of food we can grow, what doctor we can see, and countless other restrictions on our right to live as we see fit."
But I quite agree with governor Perry that we should be allowed to build houses which collapse right after construction. We should also be allowed to drive whatever we wish, including tanks, using leaded gasoline, and I (at least) should be allowed to go grocery shopping with a dagger between my teeth and a few bombs in my back pocket. It's a free country, after all.
For us cowboys.
---
ETA: I should have written a proper post on this explaining why his arguments are either untrue and/or too simplistic but I'm tired today. But I will note that Perry also wants to get rid of Medicaid, the state program (though with federal subsidies) which covers the health care needs of the poor (or some selected groups among the poor) and also a large chunk of the nursing home costs of the elderly. What he might put in its place remains a mystery. The most likely answer is suffering.