Good hair, bad governance.

[redneckgaijin]

Rick Perry believes Social Security is evil, that banks should be totally unregulated, and that the world is getting colder. (Or at least that's what's in his book.)

But, some of you say, all that's acceptable because Texas has the most job growth, the best living standard for low price, and the lowest unemployment in the nation?

Well, not so, according to Paul Krugman, who points out the following facts:

It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.

Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.

In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.

. . .

Many of the people moving to Texas — retirees in search of warm winters, middle-class Mexicans in search of a safer life — bring purchasing power that leads to greater local employment. At the same time, the rapid growth in the Texas work force keeps wages low — almost 10 percent of Texan workers earn the minimum wage or less, well above the national average — and these low wages give corporations an incentive to move production to the Lone Star State.

So Texas tends, in good years and bad, to have higher job growth than the rest of America. But it needs lots of new jobs just to keep up with its rising population — and as those unemployment comparisons show, recent employment growth has fallen well short of what’s needed.

If this picture doesn’t look very much like the glowing portrait Texas boosters like to paint, there’s a reason: the glowing portrait is false.

So: Texas now spends less per capita on education than any other state; Texas has the highest national dropout rate in the nation; Texas has the highest child poverty rate in the nation; Texas has the highest percentage of minimum-wage workers in the nation; Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people in the nation; and, despite all these things, Texas has a higher unemployment rate than New York or Massachusetts. (Texas's unemployment rate ranks 26th in the nation- dead center.)

Yeah, so much for the "Texas Miracle."

Don't make the mistake of electing another Texas governor President, y'all.