Saturday, August 29, 2009

What Gov. Rick Perry’s Support For Texas Secession Has Wrought


by David Horsey SEATTLEPI.COM
An organization calling itself the “Texas Nationalist Movement” is gathering supporters at the Texas capitol to:
". . .deliver a petition to Restore America by Demanding our Sovereignty or we will be forced to call a vote for Secession . . . the Texas Nationalist Movement has a petition with 1 Million signatures directly calling for a vote of secession.

We are calling for an orderly process that will allow our federal government to fall back in line with the Constitution. We are reclaiming our states rights and our individual rights.

. . .either we restore America, we will live in a Marxist dictatorship, or we will secede and start over again." (video of event at DMN Trail Blazers)
The organization’s petition echoes the meme that everything from -- Social Security to Medicare to the Federal Reserve Banking system to the federal highway system to a public health insure option to the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- violates the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The petition calls for Texas officials to “immediately move for the restoration of the complete and unadulterated Sovereignty of Texas, explicitly adhering to the 10th Amendment wording of the U.S. Constitution,” or “move immediately for complete Secession from the United States of America.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry so incited an April 2009 anti-tax (and largely anti-Obama) "tea party" with his anti-Washington and states' rights rhetoric attacking Pres. Obama's Economic Recovery Stimulus legislation that the audience began to shout, "Secede!" Later, in response to reporters' questions, Perry said,
"At some point Texans might get so fed up they would want to secede from the union. There's a lot of different scenarios. ...if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that..."

Perry added that when Texas entered the union in 1845 it was with the understanding it could pull out. Perry got that wrong, however; Texas negotiated the power to divide into additional states at some point, but Texas did not reserve the right to secede.
After Gov. Perry made a big fuss in March and Aptil threatening secession in rejecting $555 million in federal stimulus funds to expand unemployment benefits for unemployed Texans, by July Perry was forced to ask the federal government for a $170 million loan to cover unemployment insurance. Perry is expected to request a total of $650 million, around $100 million more than he originally rejected, to fund the state unemployment program.

Perry once again threatened to invoke the “state’s rights” protections in the 10th Amendment and secession in late July in protest to health insurance reform supported by Pres. Obama and a large number of Texans. (see Gov. Perry Threatens 10th Amendment Again To Reject Health Care Reform)
In this video of a press conference supporting Texas State Rep. Brandon Creighton's Concurrent House Resolution (HCR50) of Texas States’ Rights submitted in the 2009 81st session of the Texas legislature, Governor Rick Perry declares Texas' sovereignty from the U.S., saying that,
"...We think it’s time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas. That’s what this press conference -- that’s what these Texans are standing up for. There is a point in time where you stand up and say enough is enough, and I think Americans, and Texans especially have reached that point."
The press conference was attended by members of the Texas Nationalist Movement, a secessionist group led by Daniel Miller. Miller was formerly president of the violent anti-government organization called the Republic of Texas. Media Matters Action Network released a memo outlining Texas Governor Rick Perry's ties to the Texas Nationalist secessionist group, whose former Republic of Texas leaders are responsible for numerous acts of domestic terrorism. "From bomb threats, to kidnapping, to planning attacks using biological weapons, the Texas Nationalist Movement has a long violent history that cannot be ignored," the Media Matters memo concludes.

The Republic of Texas is a group of secessionists that claims annexation of Texas by the United States was illegal and Texas remains an independent nation under occupation. The issue of the Legal status of Texas led the group to set up a provisional shadow government for the sovereign nation of Texas on December 13, 1995.
The movement had been discredited after two of its members, Jack Abbot Grebe Jr. and Johnie Wise, were convicted in 1998 of threatening to assassinate several government officials, including President Bill Clinton, and the group, while still active, had remained largely out of public view.

Activists within the secessionist movement claim over 40,000 active supporters; however, there has been no public support for an independent Texas -- at least until Governor Perry breathed new live into the movement with his recent public statements of support of a sovereign Texas.
Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring over 800 on on April 19, 1995 in the worst act to domestic terrorism in U.S. history, was a member of one such group. (picture right)

This is what the Republican Party of Texas has come to -- expressions of support for Texas secession from the United States of America.

Southern Republicans, Particularly Texas Republicans, It Seems, Have Seceded From Sanity.

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