JABbering Stooge

Governor Goodhair, like his predecessor before him, seems to enjoy issuing executive orders lately. First there was the executive order fast-tracking approval for the construction of 11 coal-fired power plants from TXU Corp. - one of the country’s biggest polluters, and one of Perry’s biggest contributors (cha-ching!) - along with a half-dozen other similar plants from other eco-unfriendly energy companies - all of which, BTW, would be exempt from Clean Air standards by Bush’s Clear(ly Smoggy) Skies initiative, which “grandfathers in” power plants with older, dirtier designs.

Now there’s the executive order mandating that all girls ages 11-12 receive the vaccine for the four strains of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancer cases (with an opt-out clause for the crazies who think that educating your kids about all aspects of sex only encourages them to run off and join harems and have orgies out the wazoo).

Although this is a good move in theory, the way he went about it raises several red flags:

• The most glaring red flag raised is Perry’s conflict-of-interest with the provider of the vaccine, Merck. Perry’s former chief-of-staff, Mike Toomey, is one of the drug company’s three lobbyists in Texas, and Merck donated $6,000 to Perry’s re-election campaign. All of this smacks suspiciously of the K-Street Project, and we all know how beautifully that worked.

• Secondly, Merck was pursuing an aggressive lobbying campaign, up to and including the potential influence peddling noted in the previous point. This is the same company, mind you, that played a costly PR game with its now-recalled painkiller Vioxx. That Vioxx, and now Gardisil, were waved through the FDA so quickly without so much as a cursory probe of their effectiveness and safety are the result of a Bush administration that believes in the honor system in ensuring good corporate citizenship. So why was Merck pursuing mandatory vaccinations so aggressively, especially given their past indiscretions with the safety of one of their products, and with new questions about the efficacy and safety of their latest product? Turns out that GlaxoSmithKline, one of Merck’s major competitors, is planning on introducing their own HPV vaccine sometime later this year. Wouldn’t do to let a rival get the upper hand on you, doncha know? (Similar tactics, such as ever so slightly changing the chemical makeup of a drug and patenting the change, have been used to keep generic versions of brand-name drugs off the market for decades at a time.)

• Lastly, Perry’s move, even with the opt-out clause, has caused so much uproar with his theofascist base that it’s not funny. Republicans learned in 1992 that it’s not a good idea to piss off your base, no matter how irrational their objections may be. Perry either never learned that lesson, or believes in profit über alles, and doesn’t care who he pisses off in order to enrich himself and his crony capitalist buddies. I’d guess the latter. After all, it was Perry who said of his lackluster 39% of the vote re-election, “When I take my hand off the Bible, I’ll be 100 percent governor. I won’t be 39 percent governor. I’ll have 100 percent of the authority.”

Read it and weep, Texas. This is what you’ve got for at least the next two years.