Chad’s Morning Brief: Ted Cruz Will Speak on Opening Night of the Republican Convention, Perry Says Immigration Laws Stay the Same in Texas, & More
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of August 21, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty for these and many more topics from 6-9 am.
1. Cruz Speaks Monday Night (link)
Rising GOP superstar, Ted Cruz will be speaking Monday night at the 2012 Republican National Convention. The spotlight will be huge for Cruz who will speak after 7pm in the 2nd half of the convention.
Cruz is wedged between Artur Davis of Alabama, a former Obama supporter who switched to the GOP, and a musical act.
Cruz will be followed by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; the first lady of Puerto Rico, Luce Vela Fortuno; and then Ann Romney.
As of right now Cruz will be the only major political figure from Texas speaking at the convention. The spotlight will be huge and it be the first time that many in the country find out who Ted Cruz is.
2. Perry Says Nothing Changes (link)
Governor Rick Perry is once again going after the Federal Government and President Obama. This time over immigration and President Obama's Executive Order. According to the Texas Tribune:
Gov. Rick Perry advised state agencies on Monday that despite the Obama administration’s “deferred action” policy allowing illegal immigrants a two-year reprieve from deportation and a renewable work permit, Texas' policies on persons in the country illegally remain unchanged.
Perry's rebuke of the president's plan, which he called a "slap in the face to the rule of law," comes a week after it took effect.
“To avoid any confusion on the impact of the Obama administration's actions, I am writing to ensure that all Texas agencies understand that Secretary Napolitano's guidelines confer absolutely no legal status whatsoever to any alien who qualifies for the federal "deferred action" designation,” Perry wrote Attorney General Greg Abbott in a letter dated Aug. 16 and sent to state agencies Monday. “In fact, the secretary specifically closed her directive by explaining that [t]his memorandum confers no substantive right, immigration status or pathway to citizenship."
Last week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued an executive order denying benefits and driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants who apply for deferred action. In Texas, applicants for new driver’s licenses or state IDs must prove legal residency, and some applicants for renewals are also required to show legal status or citizenship. That won’t change under the new federal policy, Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said.
In his letter, Perry wrote, “These guidelines do not change our obligations under federal and Texas law to determine a person’s eligibility for state and local public benefit. Federal law prohibits conferring such benefits to most unlawfully present aliens, absent a state law to the contrary.”
You can bet this will go to court and I would imagine that Texas would lose. What do you think about what Rick Perry is doing?
3. Romney's Economic Plan (link)
Economist like Mitt Romney's plan to get the country moving in the right direction. In fact, more than 500 economists including 5 Nobel laureates have come out and endorsed the plan put forward by Mitt Romney. According to the Daily Caller:
The pro-Romney group “Economists for Romney” announced Monday that its statement of support for the former Massachusetts governor’s economic plan now has 526 signatories, up from 400 a week ago.
“We enthusiastically endorse Governor Mitt Romney’s economic plan to create jobs and restore economic growth while returning America to its tradition of economic freedom,” Economists for Romney’s statement of support reads, proclaiming Romney’s plan as based on “proven principles” to restrain the federal government and expand opportunities in the private sector.
The 526 economists — including Nobel laureates Gary Becker, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Myron Scholes — point to six facets of Romney’s economic approach that they see as beneficial to future economic success.
- Reduce marginal tax rates on business and wage incomes and broaden the tax base to increase investment, jobs, and living standards.
- End the exploding federal debt by controlling the growth of spending so federal spending does not exceed 20 percent of the economy.
- Restructure regulation to end “too big to fail,” improve credit availability to entrepreneurs and small businesses, and increase regulatory accountability, and ensure that all regulations pass rigorous benefit-cost tests.
- Improve our Social Security and Medicare programs by reducing their growth to sustainable levels, ensuring their viability over the long term, and protecting those in or near retirement.
- Reform our healthcare system to harness market forces and thereby reduce costs and increase quality, empowering patients and doctors, rather than the federal bureaucracy.
- Promote energy policies that increase domestic production, enlarge the use of all western hemisphere resources, encourage the use of new technologies, end wasteful subsidies, and rely more on market forces and less on government planners.
Seven of the signatories are from Harvard University and five from Columbia University — two of President Barack Obama’s alma maters.
Sounds good to me. What do you think?
4. Voters & Charity (link)
This might come as a shock to you, but red states are more charitable with their money.
The eight states with residents who gave the highest share of their income to charity supported Sen. John McCain in 2008, while the seven states with the least generous residents went for President Barack Obama, the Chronicle of Philanthropy found in its new survey of tax data from the IRS for 2008.
The eight states whose residents gave the highest share of their income — Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Idaho, Arkansas and Georgia — all backed McCain in 2008. Utah leads charitable giving, with 10.6 percent of income given.
And the least generous states — Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire — were Obama supporters in the last presidential race. New Hampshire residents gave the least share of their income, the Chronicle stated, with 2.5 percent.
“The reasons for the discrepancies among states, cities, neighborhoods are rooted in part in each area’s political philosophy about the role of government versus charity,” the study’s authors noted.
Interesting.
Other Top Stories:
These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty. Tune in mornings 6-9am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.
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