How The Republican Presidential Candidates Are Responding To The Iran Deal

The Republicans running for president are blasting the Obama administration over the nuclear deal announced with Iran Tuesday.

“President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran will be remembered as one of America’s worst diplomatic failures,” said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “The deal allows Tehran to dismantle U.S. and international sanctions without dismantling its illicit nuclear infrastructure—giving Iran’s nuclear weapons capability an American stamp of approval.”

“This is the most dangerous, irresponsible step I have ever seen in the history of watching the Mideast,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“Shame on the Obama administration for agreeing to a deal that empowers an evil Iranian regime to carry out its threat to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ and bring ‘death to America,’” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said. “John Kerry should have long ago gotten up on his crutches, walked out of the sham talks, and went straight to Jerusalem to stand next to Benjamin Netanyahu and declared that America will stand with Israel and the other sane governments of the Middle East instead of with the terrorist government of Iran.”

“I have said from the beginning of this process that I would not support a deal with Iran that allows the mullahs to retain the ability to develop nuclear weapons, threaten Israel, and continue their regional expansionism and support for terrorism,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said. “Based on what we know thus far, I believe that this deal undermines our national security.”

“The nuclear agreement announced by the Obama Administration today is a dangerous, deeply flawed, and short sighted deal,” said former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. “A comprehensive agreement should require Iran to verifiably abandon – not simply delay – its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.”

“The deal threatens Israel, it threatens the United States, and it turns 70 years of nuclear policy on its head,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said. “I urge Republicans and Democrats in Congress to put aside politics and act in the national interest. Vote to disapprove this deal in numbers that will override the President’s threatened veto.”

“If Secretary Clinton goes along with President Obama’s efforts to appease Iran, it will make our enemies stronger, endanger our ally Israel and trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that will destabilize the region,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

“The Iran deal announced today with fanfare and another heaping dose of false hope is almost certain to prove an historic mistake with potentially deadly consequences,” former neurosurgeon Ben Carson said.

“President Obama’s decision to sign a nuclear deal with Iran is one of the most destructive foreign policy decisions in my lifetime. For decades to come, the world will have to deal with the repercussions of this agreement, which will actually make it easier for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” said former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

President Obama made an early morning statement at the White House, saying: “Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Rick Perry to Hannity: Donald Trump said ALL MEXICANS were rapists and killers

Rick Perry told Hannity last night that Donald Trump painted with a broad brush and basically said ALL MEXICANS were rapists and killers, which is patently false. Hannity challenged him on that mischaracterization but Perry gave a non-answer, refusing to acknowledge that Trump was only referring to ‘some’ illegals.

Watch (the exchange happens near the beginning):

I’ve liked Rick Perry for a long time and believe he did a lot of good things for Texas, things that would be good for the country. But I am now seeing a side of him I do not like. It’s one thing to disagree with his comments in an honest way, but it’s another thing to completely mischaracterize them in order to bolster your own position. That’s something Democrats do all the time. I don’t like it then and I don’t like it now.

Via: The Right Scoop

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Notes from a gathering of conservatives and candidates

BY HUGH HEWITT | JUNE 28, 2015 | 5:45 PM 

This weekend, I attended the Centennial Institute of Colorado Christian University's annual Western Conservative Summit in Denver. The red-eye flight on Saturday night to D.C. gave me plenty of time to sort my impressions before appearing on CNN's "State of the Union" the following day, during which host Jake Tapper went out of his way to over-allocate time to me — perhaps as a sort of welcome to an ambassador from fly-over land. Here's what I reported to him:

1. While there is considerable division within conservatives generally and among Republican activists specifically on whether state legislatures and electorates ought to allow for same-sex marriage, there is near unanimity among all on the center-right that it was judicial imperialism to impose it by the majority vote of nine unelected justices, not one of whom, as Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissent, is an evangelical Protestant or even from other than an Ivy League background. Justice Kennedy would not be denied his "hero status," even if his otherwise long-defended federalism jurisprudence had to be disfigured to accomplish his own song of self.

RELATED: Complete coverage of the Western Conservative Summit 2015

Same-sex marriage advocates lacked confidence in their ability to persuade, so they went the route of judicial diktat. Even as the issue fades from political debates, the manner of its deciding won't. The Supreme Court and Hillary's potential four appointees will be center stage from now until November 2016.

2. All of the GOP would-be nominees at the gathering — Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Scott Walker — received warm welcomes, but hallway chatter clearly pointed to Fiorina and Walker as "winners," as Fiorina again proved the ability to convert previously uncommitted activists and Walker proved adept at confirming incipient commitments to himself. Dr. Carson gave a rousing speech as well, but the attendees buzzed the most about Carly, and the "we must nominate a winner" chatter tilted heavily to the Wisconsin governor.

3. The Washington Examiner's Byron York quizzed most of the contenders, and I quizzed Walker (my other designated candidate, George Pataki, fell ill and could not make it). York ought to be on his network's debate panels. He knows the questions Republican primary voters want asked and answered, and he moves through them deftly and with courtesy and firmness. York is also as I like to think of myself, relentlessly fair to all of the GOP would-be nominees and a model of integrity in his grilling.

4. I asked Walker, as I did Jeb Bush on my radio show Friday, if he would push Senate Republicans to break the filibuster using the "Reid Rule" employed by Harry Reid to pack courts last year in the event that this is necessary to repeal Obamacare root and branch. Bush said he might go that far if necessary; Walker emphatically confirmed that he would. Thus did these two steal a march on the field. I think this issue of repeal, even at the cost of smashing the legislative filibuster, will be a defining issue for some voters. The four senators seeking votes will have to publicly choose the rules of the Senate or repeal before Iowa caucuses get underway, and with great consequence if they defend extra-Constitutional tradition over repeal of a law most conservatives believe unconstitutional.

Via: Washington Examiner

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If Each GOP Candidate Were a Conservative News Site, Which Would They Be?

If you were a tree, what kind of a tree would you be? I’d be a weeping willow because… sigh. More important question about personifying inanimate objects: If the 15 or so Republican presidential candidates were conservative news websites, which ones would they be?

Let’s attempt to answer that question because it’s Monday and we’re all in for a long 497 days until Election Day 2016.

Note: We’d make a companion piece for the Democrats and liberal news sites, but there are only four options. So here goes: Hillary Clinton is the Huffington Post; Bernie Sanders would be Democracy Now!; Martin O’Malley would be ThinkProgress; and Lincoln Chafee would be… oh man, is there even a site out there that would fit the profile?

And now the Republican field (yes, some haven’t announced yet)…

 

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Donald Trump – Breitbart

Think of the most common words used to describe Donald Trump: “Blowhard,” “obnoxious,” “clownish,” “troll,” “windbag,” “xenophobic.” Sounds exactly like the preponderance of material coming out of Breitbart, right? (It also doesn’t hurt that Trump’s unofficial stenographer is the site’s most prized reporter.)

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Marco Rubio – IJReview

Did you know Senator Rubio is young(ish), likes hip hop, uses hashtags, and does clever non-old-person things? He’s one of the cool kids, you guys. #YOLO.

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Ted Cruz – The Right Scoop

If you are a loyal reader of The Right Scoop, you’d come away thinking literally every word uttered by Sen. Ted Cruz is “FANTASTIC” (all-caps required). No, really… take a look. With that in mind, it seems like the most appropriate fit.

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Lindsey Graham – Washington Free Beacon

Because Sen. Graham loves to troll; because he’s never met a war he didn’t like; and because hedespises Rand Paul. Oh, but he also knows it’s all about taking down Hillary Clinton in the end.

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Mike Huckabee – NewsBusters

If there’s a gay person kissing on your television, a voluptuous woman singing about sex on your radio, or a Hollywood celebrity saying something about Republicans or Christianity, Mike Huckabee is there to sermonize against it.

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Scott Walker – NRO

Slightly wonkier than the rest, slightly more buttoned-up, classically conservative in the William F. Buckley tradition, and definitely opposed to unions.

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Rick Santorum – TheBlaze

TheBlaze founder Glenn Beck once described former Sen. Rick Santorum as “the next George Washington,” and while it’s not a perfect fit, both the site and the candidate have an obvious appeal to “Real American” religious conservatives who homeschool their children and are terrified of the coming apocalypse.

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Bobby Jindal – The Daily Signal

Because he got in the race way too late and no one really cares.

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Jeb Bush – The Weekly Standard

Because anything with the name “Bush” or “Cheney” would get the thumbs up from Bill Kristol & Co.

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George Pataki – Power Line

Think of it this way: Years ago, Power Line had its time in the conservative spotlight when it broke the scandal that ended Dan Rather‘s CBS News career. Now, though? No one cares.

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Ben Carson – WorldNetDaily

Because the theory that prison sex proves homosexuality is definitively and always a “choice” is something you’d expect to see next to an article questioning President Obama’s birth certificate or a column suggesting the Sandy Hook school massacre might’ve been staged.

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Carly Fiorina – The Daily Caller

Because, yes, the Daily Caller is a staunchly conservative website that projects a tough-guy attitude, but occasionally it just wants to be a beautiful, strong woman.

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Chris Christie – Wall Street Journal

Well-moneyed, at one time considered the mainstream, and decidedly east coast when it comes to politics. Also because Jeb Bush was already taken.

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Rand Paul – The Federalist

Just like Sen. Paul, conservative website The Federalist has “a viewpoint that rejects the assumptions of the media establishment” and will sometimes surprise you by seeking to engage ideological opponents.

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Rick Perry – RedState

The former Texas governor is as red state as they come. Sure, any of the southern state Republicans could embody the sensibilities of Erick Erickson‘s RedState blog, but the devoutly Christian Gov. Perry has had a long, close relationship with the site. This doesn’t hurt either.

Via: Mediaite

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Rick Perry Lays Out His Foreign Policy Vision

WASHINGTON, D.C. — If Rick Perry becomes commander in chief, don’t expect his foreign policy to focus much on democracy promotion like the last Texas governor-turned-president.

What do you think?

“I think this whole conversation about, you know, ‘Are we going to go over and bring Jeffersonian Democracy into this country?’ is not the right conversation to be having,” Perry, who officially entered the 2016 presidential race earlier this month, told The Daily Caller Saturday in an extensive foreign policy interview from his suite at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, where he just gave a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to the Majority” conference.

What do you think?

“We need to be asking, ‘What is in the best interest of the United States?'” he continued. “And sometimes that may not be demonstrated in an individual that is delivering ‘Jeffersonian Democracy’ to that particular country.”

What do you think?

Contra what much of the media predicted back in 2013, the 2016 Republican foreign policy debate is not focused on a fight between hawks and non-interventionists, but rather a battle between varying degrees of hawkishness. A key element of that debate is what role should America play in promoting democracy abroad.

While taking the fight to America’s enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, George W. Bush also sought to implant liberal democracies in those countries. So far, the success of those projects has not been resounding. Some 2016 Republican contenders, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, see this more as a failure of implementation. Others, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, view the attempt as quixotic to begin with and not a good use of the U.S. military.

What do you think?

Perry is framing his foreign policy doctrine more around the latter view. While he says the “U.S. has a real role to play in maintaining world peace,” the former Texas governor says he doesn’t believe the U.S. should be using its military might to help spread democracy abroad. Indeed, Perry says that if Iraq and Afghanistan stabilized into non-threatening dictatorships, he could view that as a success of America’s missions in those countries.

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“I think if you’ve got a region of the world that is supportive of America, where we’re not having to expend our treasure, either monetarily or in the blood of our soldiers, is a good thing,” he explained when presented with the scenario

Via: Daily Caller

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[VIDEO] Chris Wallace to Rick Perry: Aren’t Uninsured Texans Your ‘Responsibility’?

During Chris Wallace‘s interview with 2016 GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry on Fox New Sunday, the show host took a minute to ask the former governor of Texas about his state’s monumentally high uninsured rate. During Perry’s time as governor, Texas boasted what Wallace calls the “highest uninsured rate in the country” as “more than one in five Texans didn’t have health coverage.”

Wallace then put to Perry the question, “Is that looking out for the little guy?” Perry’s response was pure, full-blooded Texan:

If how you keep score is how many people you force to buy insurance, well then I would say that’s how you keep score…

Let me explain what we do in Texas, and this is a state by state decision. We make access to health care the real issue. We passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation. We have 35,000 more licensed physicians to practice medicine in 2013 than we did a decade before that.

Wallace swings back to whether or not Perry feels any “responsibility” for the state’s uninsured masses, but his guest “sticks to his guns” with his “That’s not how we keep score!” line.

Via: Mediaite

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[AUDIO] Rick Perry: Obama Lacks ‘Executive Experience’

Earlier this week, during his press conference at the G7 Summit in Germany, President Barack Obama said in response to a question about the fight against ISIS, “We don’t yet have a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis.”

The president’s conservative’s critics were quick to jump all over the statement as proof that the administration doesn’t know what it’s doing in the Middle East, a narrative that carried into an interview Dana Loesch conducted with former Texas governor and current Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry this week.

Perry said he was “stunned” that Obama would make those comments publicly and that he believed they provided some level of insight into the president’s mentality on ISIS. The candidate suggested that if Obama hadn’t expressed a “lack of engagement to stop ISIS” in Syria, then the U.S. could have somehow eliminated both the terrorist network and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, despite the fact that they were fighting each other and knocking one side down would have only bolstered the other.

“It’s this lack of really being able to connect the dots, I think it’s a lack of executive experience that this president has, as well as a philosophical void when it comes to understanding what it takes to keep America safe,” Perry added.

While this “executive experience” argument may have been a reasonable line of attack against Obama in 2008, now that he has been president for more than six years, it rings a bit hollow.

Listen to the full interview below (ISIS comments start at approx. 15:40):

Via: Mediaite

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[VIDEO] Perry announces presidential run

The 2016 election will be one in which “voters will look past what you say to what you’ve done,” Rick Perry says in a new video on his website. The former four-term governor of Texas will put that to the test, as he announced on his website overnight that he will run for the Republican presidential nomination — again. Later today, Perry will make a public announcement in Addison, Texas:

Rick Perry, the former Texas governor whose 2012 campaign for the White House turned into a political disaster that humbled and weakened the most powerful Republican in the state, announced Thursday that he will run for president again in 2016.

Mr. Perry is the latest candidate to officially enter a crowded field of Republican presidential contenders, declared and undeclared, several of whom have Texas ties and have overshadowed him in recent months, including Senator Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, the brother of former President George W. Bush, Mr. Perry’s predecessor in the governor’s mansion.

Mr. Perry made the announcement on his website and planned a speech later in the day at a small municipal airport here in Addison, a northern suburb of downtown Dallas.

In promoting his political plans, Mr. Perry has cited his 14-year tenure as governor of the nation’s second-most-populous state and a vibrant Texas economy he has called “the envy of the nation.” As he has often pointed out, Texas added 1.8 million private-sector jobs on his watch, from January 2001 to October 2014, although his critics — and some economists — say he is taking too much credit for macro-economic forces, including an oil boom, beyond his control during that time.

Well, Perry had to be doing something right. It wasn’t just a coincidence that a third of all new jobs after the recession came in Texas, and the oil boom was not just a Texas phenomenon. The “macro-economic forces” over the years since the Great Recession have actually been a lot less than phenomenal, so the growth in Texas is remarkable on any level, and Perry was the man at the top during the entire time.

The biography video uploaded last night to the channel tells the campaign story Perry wants: a military veteran, a successful governor, and a man who connects with both the grassroots and the establishment to bring unity to the GOP. The flip side of this story is that all this was true in 2012, and the nomination could have been Perry’s for the taking except for the implosion during the primary. The campaign isn’t running away from that debacle, and they’ve wisely chosen Anita Perry as their point person for confronting it head-on:

“Rick is absolutely the guy that you want to have a beer with, but he’s so much more than that. He’s prepared now,” Anita said. “I want people to really give him a second look.”

Rick kicked off his first presidential bid in 2011 with six weeks of preparation, and he vaulted to the top of the polls. Things quickly unraveled.

He hadn’t fully recovered from an elective back surgery, was in pain and didn’t get much sleep. As a result, he couldn’t campaign as aggressively as he wanted to. He made errors like the infamous “oops” moment on the debate stage when he forgot one of the government agencies he wanted to eliminate.

“He will tell you he was arrogant at that time,” Anita said. A former nurse, both she and her husband underestimated how severely his back surgery would impact him. “I had a health care background. I should’ve realized he wasn’t ready and prepared health-wise, but I didn’t,” she said.

Via: Hot Air

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The Presidential Skill Set

What you want in a leader won’t show up on the résumé.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry is gearing up for another presidential run and recently fired a shot across the bow of some of his competitors. In an interview with The Weekly Standard, Perry said that while he had “great respect” for senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, they were not ready to be president:

I’ve had more than one individual say, “You know what, if you want to be the president of the United States, you ought to go back to your home state and be the governor and get that executive experience before you go lead this country.”

Perry’s record as governor of the Lone Star State is impressive. During his tenure, Texas was an economic dynamo while the rest of the country lagged behind. Republican voters will no doubt give him a careful look this time around.

Regardless, his suggestion is wrong. There is no correlation between presidential greatness and professional background.

Presidents are almost always governors, senators, or generals. We have seen good and bad versions of each. Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter were both governors; the former had an intuitive feel for the demands of the office, while the latter was out of his depth from day one. Similarly, Lyndon Johnson was a former senator who was incredibly effective at getting Congress to do what he wanted, while John F. Kennedy’s domestic program mostly stalled. George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower demonstrated a keen understanding of the political process, while Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor were capricious and imperial. Ulysses S. Grant was arguably the single geatest military commander this country has ever known, yet he was an inartful president.

Moreover, the country has had several polymath presidents who turned out to be disappointments. John Adams, James Monroe, Herbert Hoover, and George H. W. Bush had done a bit of everything by the time they became president. And yet none is in the top tier. Few men have been as qualified for the job as Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign because of Watergate. On the other hand, nobody has ever been elected president with as slender a résumé as Abraham Lincoln’s; nevertheless, he is widely regarded as America’s finest leader.

Political scientists have tried to explain such incongruity, but few explanations are satisfying. In the 1970s, James David Barber offered a psychological account of presidential greatness, but his approach was too reductionist and has been abandoned. More recently, Stephen Skowronek has argued that a president’s position in the broader political cycle is crucial. Yet like most analyses built on the concept of “political realignments,” this analysis falls prey to the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Presidential greatness is such a mystery because, while it depends on some predictable factors like the size of a congressional majority, a necessary ingredient is prudence. This ineffable quality enables a leader to make the best determination in light of the practical constraints he faces. Edmund Burke wrote:

Nothing universal can be ration­ally affirmed on any moral, or any political subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rules of prudence. Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the stand­ard of them all. ­Metaphysics cannot live without ­definition; but prudence is cautious how she defines. 

Prudence is the essential virtue of presidential greatness. It is the bridge that connects the unlimited expectations we have of the president to the slender formal powers we have granted him. 

Via: The Weekly Standard

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[VIDEO] Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry delivers powerful and soulful speech at Freedom Summit

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry delivered a powerful and soulful speech on Saturday at the South Carolina Freedom Summit, where he emphasized the critical need for experienced Republican leadership to turn America around from the slump it has fallen into over the past few years, specifically with regard to foreign policy.

“A recovery of epic proportion needs to be on the table for us,” Perry said, emulating a commander-in-chief. “And when we elect a Republican president in 2016, America will do better.”

Perry, 65, has yet to announce whether he will run for president in 2016. Growing up in Paint Creek, Texas, Perry said his family didn’t have a lot of money. In fact, he described how his mom would sew clothing for him up until he enrolled in college and mentioned that they didn’t even have indoor plumbing for many years.

Via: Breitbart

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TX Routs CA in Education Test Scores

Every time I write or speak on a radio show favorably about Texas compared with California, I get harsh online comments, emails and phone calls. The usual theme isn’t just that California is a nicer place to live. It’s that Texas is a hellhole compared with just about anywhere — a place that hates unions, poor people, nonwhites and more, and has a culture that celebrates ignorance.

This is supposedly reflected in the priorities of Gov. Rick Perry. A phone message I got expressed disbelief that I praised Texas public schools and called them broadly better than California’s. A male voice said something along the lines of … “Have you seen how little they pay for K-12? It’s obscene.”

That is not a good argument. In fact, it’s another argument for Texas.

It’s time to bring in Chuck DeVore, Orange County assembly member turned Austin think tanker. DeVore suggests the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a good baseline to compare states. It measures fourth- and eighth-graders in math, reading and science and breaks down the results by the performance of white, Latino and African-American students.

So guess what happened in an analysis of the NAEP results for the eight biggest states? According to what Chuck wrote last year for the San Francisco Chronicle, it’s a rout.

“Looking at the most recent NAEP testing data for fourth and eighth graders in math, reading and science as well as looking at race and ethnicity and considering the eight biggest states, there are 24 categories to measure (e.g., eighth-grade science results for African American students, etc.). The 2009 results showed Texas as having the strongest scores in 11 of 24 categories while California was last in 15 of 24 categories. Further, Texas showed no areas of weakness compared to the national average.”

Via: California Political Review

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Obama direct threats call for governor gonads

It’s time for both Democrat and Republican U.S. governors to call Barack Obama’s bluff.

Unanswered Barack braggadocio that is the trademark of his presidency is reaching all time highs.

On Monday,  it was revealed that the Obama regime plans on gutting the U.S. military to pre-World War II levels.  On Tuesday, it became clear that the National Guard is next on his hit list.

Imagine an anti-American president who ducks adult gatherings, speaking mostly to school children and university students—and even then travels with his own private cheering section—warning Democrat and Republican governors not to push back against his intentions to gut the National Guard or they would hear from him—and getting away with it!

“I don’t mind telling you I was a bit troubled today by the tone of the president…For the president of the United States to look Democrat and Republican governors in the eye and to say ‘I do not trust you to make decisions in your state about issues of education, about transportation infrastructure…’-that is really troubling,” said Texas governor Rick Perry.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Opinion: What Maryland does better than Texas

Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, is governor of Maryland.

With gridlock and partisanship having all but paralyzed Washington, governors are at the forefront of our country’s policy divide. On the No. 1 issue facing our nation — how to ensure that Americans are winners, not losers, in the 21st-century economy — two divergent approaches frame the debate. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is highlighting this debate with his trip to Maryland on Wednesday.

The contrast is clear: Should we slash taxes on the wealthiest Americans — crippling our ability to invest in schools, job training, infrastructure and health care — because we believe that even lower taxes for our wealthiest will magically lead to jobs and robust economic growth? Or should we make tough choices together that provide the resources to invest in schools, bolster growing industries and create quality middle-class jobs?

Perry and like-minded Republican governors subscribe to the slash-and-burn economic philosophy — a belief that “less” will somehow become “more.” In Texas, he has implemented this vision with gusto, cutting taxes and slashing funding for critical middle-class priorities such as public schools, higher education, health care and infrastructure. The results? Texas ranks 49th in high school graduation, 10th in the rate of poverty and 50th in the percent of residents with even basic health insurance.

And while Perry likes to promote the job creation in Texas during his time in office, he leaves out a critical point: The jobs “miracle” he touts is driven by low-paying, non-sustainable jobs. This year, Texas — tied with Mississippi — leads the nation for the percentage of hourly paid workers earning equal to or less than the minimum wage. More than one in 10 workers nationwide earning at or below the minimum wage works in Texas.

Via: Washington Post

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