AUSTIN -- Gov. Rick Perry has accepted nearly $5 million in political campaign donations from people he appointed to state boards and commissions, including some in plum jobs that set policy for state universities, parks and roads, records show. Nearly half the appointee donations came from people serving as higher education regents, including more than $840,000 from those at the University of Texas System, according to a Houston Chronicle review of campaign-finance records.... "The reason people should care is that it would be nice to think that government functioned as a meritocracy," said Andrew Wheat of the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, which has tracked appointee donations in the past.
OK, so I get that money and politics go together like peanut butter and jelly...or like strippers and professional athletes. As long as money and power continue to be valued by humanity, the stench of corruption will always be with us. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that we have to condone it simply because "everyone's doing it." And would it be too much to expect at least some degree of subtlety in an elected official's corruption? When you create a system in which positions of political power are viewed as rewards for those who back the right horse, how can the public have any faith in where your priorities truly lie?
It's not as if Texas Governor Rick Perry has established himself as a no-nonsense man of principled leadership. Frankly, I'm not sure he could lead a Happy Meal into a paper sack. Still, Governor Goodhair apparently HAS done a helluva job of rewarding those who have opened their wallets to fund his campaign war chest. No, this isn't exactly something new in the political world. Money is called the mother's milk of politics for a reason, after all...and few have benefited more by sucking at this teat than Governor Goodhair. Fewer still have been less transparent in their willingness to reward their financial benefactors with their own political bailiwick.
Having said this, of course, Perry's transparent corruption registers barely a ripple of protest in Texas, where corruption isn't merely the norm- it's the expectation. Hell, if you ain't cheatin', you ain't trying, knowhutimean?? This sort of thing is an art form in Texas. The rest of the country may know this as "patronage", or just plain "corruption"; in Texas, it's merely "rewarding your friends." One person's corruption is merely a Texas politician's way of repaying the kindnesses of those with the foresight to support him financially.
Rick Perry continues to at as if God and Texas is on his side...and somewhere the late Molly Ivins is snickering in her beer....
