Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has been making some noise about potentially entering the 2012 Republican presidential race, and if he chooses to throw his hat into the ring, it’s quite clear that he will point to Texas’ economy as one of his credentials. “In Texas, you don’t have to use your imagination, saying, ‘What’ll happen if we apply this or that conservative principle?’” Perry said earlier this week. “You just need to look around, because they’ve been in play across our state for years, generating real results like unmatched job creation, more exports than any other state and a balanced budget.”

That Perry has a stellar record on job creation is simply not true. As the Austin American-Statesman noted, “while the national unemployment rate is 9.1 percent and the Texas unemployment rate is 8 percent, some 23 states, including New York, have lower unemployment rates.” In addition, “jobs grew at about the same rate during Democrat Ann Richards’ four years as governor” as they have under Perry.

Between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than they did in Texas, and “Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.” But as it turns out, Texas is leading the nation in one employment metric — the number and percentage of minimum wage jobs:

Additionally, Texas has by far the largest number of employees working at or below the federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour in 2010) compared to any state, according to a BLS report. In 2010, about 550,000 Texans were working at or below minimum wage, or about 9.5 percent of all workers paid by the hour in the state. Texas tied with Mississippi for the greatest percentage of minimum wage workers…From 2007 to 2010, the number of minimum wage workers in Texas rose from 221,000 to 550,000, an increase of nearly 150 percent.

The Texas Independent added, “the median hourly earnings for all Texas workers was $11.20 per hour in 2010, compared to the national median of $12.50 per hour.”

In addition to these facts that Perry would surely prefer stay under the radar, he relied more on the 2009 Recovery Act than any other governor and faced a $27 billion budget deficit for the 2012-2013 budget, after assuring everyone for months that Texas had its fiscal house in order.

Earlier this week, Gawker posted a video that Target shows to its employees in order to discourage them from trying to unionize. A pair of actors warn new Target employees that unionizing will mean less flexible hours and fewer promotions. “We believe that working together, without union representation, is the best way to grow and flourish,” says Jim Rowader, Target’s director of labor relations, who makes a guest appearance in the video.

Salon’s Justin Elliott found that while the video is nothing but a 13-minute assault on the very idea of organized labor, it was made “with union actors and under the jurisdiction of one of the biggest unions in the entertainment business”:

A pair of smiling spokespeople dressed like Target employees — “Maria” and “Doug” — warn workers that, despite what they may have heard, a union is a “business,” one that is greedy for dues and will not be able to deliver on promises of higher wages. As it turns out, the video was filmed under the jurisdiction of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), according to actor (and union member) Ric Reitz, who plays Target spokesman “Doug” in the film.

“If someone hires me to play a rapist, does it make me a rapist? You take the job, and you’re an actor,” Reitz said. “Am I pro-union? Absolutely.”

On Friday, Target employees in New York state will vote in a union election, deciding whether or not to join the United Food & Commercial Workers International. Target has all but threatened to close the store if the workforce unionizes.

Since the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, Republicans have been threatening to use the appropriations process to undermine the new reforms, particularly the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. True to their word, the GOP’s 2012 financial services appropriations bill would deal the CFPB a couple of crucial blows if it were ever to become law:

The bill would bring the CFPB’s budget under the purview of appropriators starting in 2013. Currently, its funding falls outside the reach of lawmakers, as it receives transfers from the Federal Reserve to fund its operations…The bill would limit the mandatory funds provided to the CFPB to $200 million — less than half of what it can receive currently. The move serves to effectively cap its spending before bringing it under the appropriations process. Under Dodd-Frank, CFPB funding levels are set as a percentage of 2009 Federal Reserve spending. In fiscal 2012, the CFPB expected to receive a maximum of roughly $550 million.

“This bill exemplifies the commitment of the Republican majority to reduce spending, dig our nation out of record deficits, and rein in unnecessary agency regulation and interference that obstructs economic growth,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY). But the practical upshot would be giving the financial industry free rein to continue promulgating predatory financial products.

The CFPB, like other banking regulators such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, was given an independent source of funding so that Congress couldn’t protect the banking industry by threatening to cut off the Bureau’s funds. Cutting the Bureau’s funding by more than half would, of course, limit its ability to police the financial services industry.

But it isn’t only the CFPB that is under assault in this particular piece of GOP legislation. The Consumer Product Safety Commission would also see its funding cut by $3.5 million under the Republican plan, and would be prevented fro setting up a new consumer safety database that it has been working on.

The GOP has already prevented the CFPB from doing its job by indicating that they will block any nominee to lead the Bureau — even if the nominee were a Republican — which means that the Bureau will not be able to exercise its full power when it becomes officially operational on July 21. When it comes to the CFPB, it seems that the entire GOP is taking House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus’ instruction to “serve the banks” quite literally.

In disastrous moves for the state’s education system and Planned Parenthood, the North Carolina Senate voted late yesterday afternoon to override Governor Bev Perdue’s (D-NC) veto of the state budget, effectively clearing the way for the budget’s passage into law. The House of Representatives passed the bill by a two-thirds majority at a special midnight vote on June 15 with the help of five Democratic representatives.

On June 12, Perdue made headlines for being the first governor in state history to utilize the power of veto against the General Assembly’s $19.7 million, two-year budget. Her opposition to the bill derives from the significant cuts to education funding. “Now for the first time, North Carolina has a legislature that’s turning its back on our schools, our children, our long-standing investments in education and our future economic prospects,” Perdue said.

Instead of continuing the temporary, three-quarters-of-a-cent sales tax that Perdue has used to pay teachers’ salaries and support school programs since the state budget deficit emerged, Republicans refused to extend the tax and cut $800 million out of education funding.

Under the soon-to-be-passed Republican budget, the education system as a whole would lose 13,000 jobs, nearly 70 percent of those from public schools. Other cuts include $13.3 million from dropout prevention programs, $92.2 million from textbooks, $42 million from instructional supplies and even more funding from teacher training, student testing and support programs.

Although the cuts will be administered by each school district individual, a funding gap usually leads to larger class sizes, fewer teachers and less support for struggling students. Already, only one-third of eighth graders nationwide are reading at or above grade level. Only one-fourth of high school graduates are prepared for college, and one-third of all college students will end up in remedial classes. Those remedial classes are costing the U.S. education system around $5.6 billion every year, according to a recent report from the Alliance for Excellent Education.

For University of North Carolina system, however, the money for many of those remediation measures will no longer exist under the proposed budget plan. Republicans plan to cut 14.6 percent of the state’s funding for its public universities—an amount totaling $407 million. $35 million in cuts will be from the system’s need-based financial aid program, which currently affords underprivileged students the chance to attend a higher education institution.

But the public education system isn’t the only entity to suffer significant funding cuts under the Republicans’ proposal; Planned Parenthood of North Carolina will stop receiving all government funding starting this July 1 because of its association with abortion. Read more