“A 16-year-old investment by Texas Gov. Rick Perry in a firm that rented pornographic movies is drawing new scrutiny in light of his just-launched presidential campaign…

“In 1995, while serving as Texas’ agriculture commissioner, Perry bought between $5,000 and $10,000 worth of the company’s stock, according to his financial disclosure forms. Perry sold his entire investment the same year, campaign spokesman Mark Miner said…

“‘This company was a regional video store that he owned (stock in) for less than a year,’ Miner said. ‘This is nothing different than a Blockbuster chain.'”

“Perry, the newest GOP presidential candidate, has access to the best possible care and advice. Yet he and his doctor chose a treatment beyond mainstream medicine: He had stem cells taken from fat in his own body, grown in a lab and then injected into his back and his bloodstream during a July 1 operation to fuse part of his spine…

“Perry ‘exercised poor judgment’ to try it, said Dr. George Q. Daley, of Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. ‘As a highly influential person of power, Perry’s actions have the unfortunate potential to push desperate patients into the clinics of quacks,’ who are selling unproven treatments ‘for everything from Alzheimer’s to autism.'”

“With a young and fast-growing population, a large and expanding military presence and an influx of federal stimulus money, the number of government jobs in Texas has grown at more than double the rate of private-sector employment during Perry’s tenure.

“The disparity has grown sharper since the national recession hit. Between December 2007 and last June, private-sector employment in Texas declined by 0.6 percent while public-sector jobs increased by 6.4 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, government employees account for about one-sixth of the workforce in Texas.

“The significant role of government in Texas’s relative prosperity stands in stark contrast to the ‘go-it-alone’ image cultivated by Perry, who credits a lack of government interference for fostering a business-friendly environment in Texas.”

“Over three terms in office, Mr. Perry’s administration has doled out grants, tax breaks, contracts and appointments to hundreds of his most generous supporters and their businesses. And they have helped Mr. Perry raise more money than any politician in Texas history, donations that have periodically raised eyebrows but, thanks to loose campaign finance laws and a business-friendly political culture dominated in recent years by Republicans, have only fueled Mr. Perry’s ascent.

“‘Texas politics does have this amazing pay-to-play culture,’ said Harold Cook, a Democratic political consultant…

“Mr. Perry has been much more aggressive than any past governor in soliciting money from them. According to a study last year by Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog organization, Mr. Perry has raised at least $17 million from more than 900 appointees or their spouses, roughly one dollar out of every five that he has raised as governor.”

“Perry’s previous moderate stances have already caused him problems among Republican voters, particularly those who oppose compromise on illegal immigration.

“But his more recent conservative positions carry a risk as well, imperiling his standing among Latinos, an important voting bloc in national battleground states such as New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. In June, Perry got a chilly response when he spoke at a conference of the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials in San Antonio. Outside the conference, a coalition of Latino and civil rights groups staged a protest against him.

“Like all the 2012 candidates, Perry is already being pressed for details on how he would handle illegal immigration. Since he entered the race a little over a week ago, Perry has offered voters in New Hampshire and Iowa a stock response: that it’s pointless to talk about immigration reform until the border is secure. That position, essentially pushing the difficult issues off to the future, has become a common response among many Republican candidates.

“‘He is avoiding the issue, definitely,’ said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, which played a leading role in defeating the sanctuary city ban.”

“But the larger, deeper point is that Rove designed and built the Texas Republican machine that has now allowed Perry to go national — even after Rove and company tried (and failed) to stop him by running Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) against him for re-election.

“Rove and much of the rest of the GOP Texas establishment was and is embarrassed by Perry: his rootin’-tootin’ style; his naked plays for the votes of the prayerful; his sometimes, almost-violent accusatory language and his preference for sound bites so pronounced he makes George W. Bush seem like Pericles…

“Yet Rove’s public comments only scratched the surface of his deeper concerns, according to his friends and associates. They cited Perry’s reliance on federally supported development deals — undercutting his states-on-their-own theory of American government; what they described as sweetheart deals with former staffers and, as one insider said, ‘Perry’s total shallowness and refusal to dig deep on the issues. All he wants to know is the sound bite. He doesn’t care about anything else.'”

“Perry’s view of federalism is not unique but it is convenient. It serves first of all as a ready bludgeon to beat Washington with. More importantly it disencumbers national politicians​—​or state politicians hoping to become national politicians​—​of the necessity to take a stand on principle on such quivering public controversies as gay marriage, environmental regulation, sodomy laws, the shape of the health care system: These aren’t matters that call for a national discussion; states must decide for themselves. Perry sees a properly federalized America as a kind of buffet table of states offering an exciting variety of cultural options from which a citizen can choose​—​something for every lifestyle and taste…

“Perry’s idea of federalism, boiled down, becomes a kind of crude majoritarianism. What if you favor both medicinal marijuana and the death penalty? What if you’re a guy who takes comfort living in a state where citizens pack hand guns but you still want to marry your boyfriend? You’re out of luck. You’ll have to live in a state where the majority​—​gun-packing homophobes or potheads with a distaste for capital punishment​—​perpetuates itself by disgorging people like you. ‘If you don’t like how they live there, don’t move there’ is a principle with a corollary: ‘If you don’t like how we live here, leave.’ You and your partner might have to secede.

“Perry’s emphasis on federalism is commonly taken to be a species of anti-government libertarianism. It’s not. Perry isn’t anti-government; he is anti-federal government. (Whether he’ll remain anti-federal government when he’s running it can’t be known.) He is after all a man who has spent his entire professional life working for the government as a state legislator and executive. You might even call him a big-government conservative whose reach is constrained only by the Texas border. A better tag would be ‘Conservative Democrat circa 1960’: a politician always happy to accommodate the interests of businessmen and never shy about deploying the resources of his government in causes he likes.”

“Responding to POLITICO’s report that Republicans in Congress were worried about the comments, Perry said, ‘You know, I’m sorry if I offended a congressman, but the fact of the matter is I’m about representing the American people out here. And the American people are really concerned and scared. Small businessmen and women are frightened about the monetary policy or the lack thereof with this administration.’

“As for presidential rival Jon Huntsman, who has blasted the Texan as anti-science for questioning global warming, Perry shrugged him off too.

“‘Jon’s got to make his own decision,’ Perry said in response. ‘I just happen to believe that the earth’s temperature has been moving up and down for milleniums now, and there are enough scientists out there that are skeptical about the reasons for it, and I happen to be one of those that are skeptical. For us to spend billions of dollars on a theory that is not proven and that you have skeptical scientists against, that is not in America’s best interest.'”

Via Think Progress.

Via Mediaite.