Gov. Rick Perry revealed what had been rumored to be the worst-kept secret in Austin.

He’s not going to seek a fourth four-year term as Texas governor.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/08/19355690-perry-wont-seek-re-election-as-tx-governor?lite=

In a widely anticipated news conference in San Antonio, Perry said he’ll keep working hard to ensure Texas continues to grow.

Count me as one Texan who’s glad to see him hang up his spurs.

I hate making this comparison, because it fits only in the context of time served. When Perry leaves the governor’s office in January 2015 he will have served longer as Texas governor than Franklin Roosevelt served as the four-times-elected president of the United States. And yet, it has been noted that many Americans grew to the verge of puberty without knowing of any other man than FDR as their president.

Think of that for a moment. Many young Texans who have entered their teen years haven’t known of anyone other Rick Perry as their governor.

His legacy, such as it is, will live on in the hundreds of appointments he’s made to state boards and commissions who will serve well past the time he is in office. Many observers have noted already that Perry has elevated the power of an office once thought to be relatively weak simply through all those appointments he’s made. They sit on the state’s two highest appellate courts — the Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals — along with many lower-level appellate courts. They regulate the whole range of just about any professional endeavor you can name.

And as one of his final acts, Perry has vowed to ensure that the Legislature approves a restrictive abortion bill that effectively criminalizes abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy.

His plans now? Well, as one would expect, he didn’t say he’s going to run for president in 2016. The smart money says he is giving it serious thought, if only to seek to redeem his national image after the battering he took over his dismal performance during the 2012 Republican primary.

Many of us saw this announcement coming today. I’m on a roll now, so I’ll make this prediction: I believe he’ll run for president in three years, but will not be elected president in 2016. I’ll wait, though, before deciding whether to predict his party even will nominate him. If I had to make that call today, I’d say “no.” I’m not making that call just yet.

I’ll be content to say simply: good riddance.

I’m not exactly holding my breath for Monday’s big announcement from Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

I have put myself on the record already by stating my belief that he’ll forgo a fourth four-year term as governor. He’ll step aside and begin preparing for yet another (likely futile) run for president of the United States.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/07/rick-perry-announcement_n_3558354.html?1373226209&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

But in the event he proves me wrong — which is more than just slightly possible — and run for governor yet again, it would be a huge mistake to count this man out, to underestimate the odd attraction he has for Texas voters.

Rick Perry’s track record for statewide office is quite impressive. He’s been elected twice as agriculture commissioner, once as lieutenant governor and three times as governor. And before he became a Republican in the late 1980s, he was elected three times to the Texas House of Representatives from Haskell County.

I cannot get past the movement that’s already occurred in the Texas governor’s race. Attorney General Greg Abbott has declared his intention to run for the Republican nomination. Does anyone believe Abbott and Perry would run against each other? And does anyone believe that Abbott would be out raising boatloads of cash without knowing that Perry already has decided to bow out of the 2014 governor’s race?

Perry will make his plans known Monday afternoon around 1 in San Antonio. I heard over the weekend he intends to call a press conference at a business in the Alamo City to highlight his accomplishments in promoting job growth in Texas. I’m guessing he won’t give President Obama any credit for helping him along in that regard … but I digress.

Perry would be a formidable candidate for re-election. Indeed, he would be much more formidable in his home state than he would be beyond our borders, as his first run for the GOP presidential nomination demonstrated so graphically.

Then again, he didn’t prepare for that race the way I am believing he’ll prepare for the next one.

Do not, however, get used to the words “President Perry.”

Political alliances have produced among the most fragile bonds possible.

Isn’t that right, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state Sen. Dan Patrick?

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/07/07/in-lt-gov-race-from-rivals-to-allies-to-opponents/

Dewhurst’s performance as presiding officer of the Texas Senate has come under intense fire from within the body’s Republican majority. Thus, one of those senators, Patrick, has decided to challenge Dewhurst’s bid for re-election next year. Not only are these men both Republicans, they both hail from Houston, which suggests that their respective collection of supporters contains many of the same names and organizations.

It wasn’t that long ago, as the Texas Tribune reports, that Dewhurst and Patrick were big-time pals. Patrick supported Dewhurst’s futile bid to become U.S. senator, replacing fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, who retired.

Now it’s Patrick declaring the need for “authentic conservative leadership” in the Texas Senate, which he implies Dewhurst hasn’t provided.

Given the state of Dewhurst’s political standing of late, I am unwilling to write off Patrick’s challenge as some kind of quixotic endeavor. But he’s got a crowded GOP primary field awaiting him. In addition to Dewhurst, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples are running for the Republican nomination to be lieutenant governor.

It really stinks, at this moment, to be David Dewhurst.

In a number of other states, one might think a crowded field in one party primary would divide allegiances to the point of damaging the nominee who emerges in his or her campaign in the fall against the nominee of the other party.

But not in Texas. I’m struck by the utter lack of any serious public discussion among Democrats about who they might nominate for this important government office.

For now, the focus has turned on two former allies who I’m guessing will become intense foes. When the dust settles after next spring’s party primary, it’ll be interesting to see if Dewhurst and Patrick – along with Patterson and Staples – can become allies once again.

The U.S. State Department now concedes that Secretary of State John Kerry was aboard his yacht in Nantucket Sound while chaos was erupting this past week in Egypt.

My question is this: So what?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57592465/john-kerry-on-his-boat-during-egypt-upheaval-state-dept-concedes/

The coverage of this revelation reminds me a bit of when then-President George H.W. Bush was tooling off the Maine coast in his speedboat while our troops went to war in the Persian Gulf in 1990 and early 1991. Then, as now, I asked: So what?

Presidents and secretaries of state have their ears open, along with heavily secured channels of communication. As Kerry was sailing the sound, his staff was keeping him informed fully of happenings in Tahrir Square in Cairo and eventually when the Egyptian military took control of the government, toppling President Mohamed Morsy from power.

There no doubt will be pot shots taken at Kerry, just as there were shots taken at Bush two decades ago. It was an unfair criticism of the president then and it would be equally unfair to gig the secretary of state.

Twenty-first-century communications are marvelous things.

Ted Cruz seems to be sounding and acting like someone who wants to run for president of the United States in 2016.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas will keynote the tea party convention soon. The freshman Republican lawmaker has the tea party wing of his party all a-twitter these days.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/309425-ted-cruz-to-keynote-tea-party-rally-in-florida

But I’ll be waiting — patiently at that — for the questions that ought to come about whether he’s constitutionally qualified to hold the office he might be seeking.

Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. As I’ve re-read the Constitution, he’s still qualified to seek the presidency and hold the office if he happens to get elected a little more than three years from now. The document stipulates that he must be a U.S. citizen at birth, which Cruz was — even though he was born in the Great White North. But he got here as a child, which I guess suits his fans just fine.

But wait. I recall many of those very Ted Cruz fans saying something quite different about the current president of the United States. Up until his re-election this past November, Barack Obama’s foes — aw, heck, let’s call ’em “enemies” — refused to buy into the president’s assertion that he was born in August 1961 in Hawaii. His mother also was American; his father was Kenyan. So, what was the fuss all about, if the Constitution stipulates that to serve as president a person must be a “natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution”? Barack Obama is even more qualified to serve as president than Cruz, given that he was actually born in one of the 50 United States.

Well, I’ll be waiting for the lefties out there to yammer as loudly about Ted Cruz’s constitutional qualifications as the righties did about Obama’s.

I’m betting they’ll be silent … as the right-wingers should have been all along.

Texas has become a leader in — are you ready for this? — green energy.

Those are the findings of a new book, “The Great Texas Wind Rush,” that details how Texas has become a pre-eminent producer of wind energy.

http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2013/07/05/how-texas-won-the-race-to-harness-the-wind/#more-29422

As a resident of arguably the windiest place on Planet Earth, I welcome this revelation by reporters Kate Galbraith and Asher Price, authors of the book.

The wind energy boom has yet to develop fully in the Texas Panhandle. But will testify to what I’ve witnessed over recent years across our vast landscape: the emergence of many hundreds of wind turbines whirling in the incessant wind that sweeps the region almost non-stop.

I realize that wind energy remains a bit expensive to produce, compared to fossil fuels. But once the technology is developed, perfected and made more efficient, there perhaps can be no greater boon to the nation’s energy policy that wind.

It’s plentiful, definitely renewable and clean.

As reported by State Impact, a reporting project of National Public Radio:

“Those early years of ‘windcatting,’ as the two describe it in their book, were full of trial and error. Lighting strikes, blade malfunctions, faulty designs. Osbourne ‘actually hired a couple of musicians, being an Armadillo type, to go up and fix them,’ Galbraith says. ‘It’s fascinating how intertwined the music scene in Texas is with wind.’ But in part thanks to their early efforts, wind eventually took hold in Texas.

“Another factor that played into Texas becoming a wind leader were the state’s vast expanses of private property, with landowners willing to lease it out, as they had become accustomed to during earlier years of oil and gas drilling. ‘People that lived in these far-flung areas, they were often independent types, tinkerers, they new how to work machinery,’ Galbraith says. ‘And they were used to the idea of people coming, knocking on their door, and asking to create some energy. Usually, it was, ‘Let’s drill here,’ but in this new case it was wind power.’”

Texans often are proud of being “No. 1.” I am delighted at the prospect of Texas one day topping the list of states that are mining green-energy sources – such as wind – that will help save the planet.

Former President George W. Bush reportedly is going to weigh in next week on immigration reform.

You go, W.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/309359-george-w-bush-expected-to-discuss-benefits-of-immigration-reform-during-keynote-speech

The former president is taking part in a panel discussion at his newly opened presidential library and museum in Dallas. The Dallas Morning News reports that it isn’t clear how specific he’ll get but that he’s going to speak at least in general terms about the need to reform the nation’s immigration system.

The immigration reform movement got a needed and welcomed (in my view) boost when the United States Senate approved — in a sweeping bipartisan vote — a package that includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million or so illegal immigrants; it also beefs up border security and spends money to finish a wall along our nation’s southern border.

Now it sits — some think it languishes — in the House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner says it is going nowhere without a majority of support among Republicans in that chamber. Thus, a minority of the full House is holding the reform package hostage.

It is patently unreasonable to think immigration cops that round up the millions of illegal residents and toss them out. President Bush has understood that going back to when he served as Texas governor. His successor, Rick Perry, is right on immigration reform as well. And what should one expect from governors of a large border state? There exist here realities that other governors and other elected officials elsewhere simply don’t get … such as the fact that even though there are illegal immigrants among us, many of them have carved out productive lives.

Immigration reform legislation seeks to show a bit of compassion to those who desire citizenship in the United States.

I’ll await former President Bush’s remarks in Dallas next week. I just hope they don’t fall on deaf Republican ears.

Today’s jobs report brought plenty of good news: The economy added 195,000 jobs in June; unemployment held steady at 7.6 percent, which means that more people are encouraged enough to re-enter the job-hunting market.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/business/economy-adds-195000-jobs-as-unemployment-rate-remains-at-7-6.html?hp&_r=0

On top of that, the federal budget deficit has been cut roughly in half, to around $600 billion for the current fiscal year. That’s still too high, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it was a year ago, let alone when President Obama took office in January 2009 while facing the worst worldwide financial meltdown since the Great Depression.

I keep waiting for Obama’s foes to give him some credit, at least a little, for helping end the free fall. I put my ear to the ground and I hear … nothing. Not a sound.

Instead, I hear the same old gripes — sprinkled with some outright lies — about Barack Obama’s motives, his intentions and even his loyalty.

Many folks I know in this part of the world — this heavily Republican stronghold — just cannot bring themselves to offer a good word about his economic policy. They say the stimulus did no good, even though federal stimulus money helped states such as Texas balance their budgets; they gripe about that stimulus money, all the while watching silently as cities and counties throughout our region accepted it.

I’ll concede that the job growth has been tepid. I keep wondering, though, what would have happened had the Obama administration failed to take action when it did. No one, not even the president’s harshest critics, seem able to answer that key question. Would the private sector have righted itself? Would jobs begin developing out of thin air? Would the deficit have been reduced as dramatically as it has done in the past year and a half?

Where I stand, I’ll take slow-and-steady growth as a sign of an economy that’s rebuilding itself from its foundation.

Well, that was an unpleasant surprise this morning.

I went to my neighborhood grocery store at the corner of South 45th Avenue and Bell Street in Amarillo to (1) buy some food for our household and (2) dump some newspapers and other paper into the recycling Dumpsters I thought were lined up along the Bell Street side of the parking lot.

I got there and they were gone. Gone! All of them!

I inquired inside the store and was told that the city solid waste department pulled the Dumpsters out. Apparently not everyone in Amarillo thought of the Dumpsters as being used specifically for material to be recycled. They were throwing regular old trash into them.

The city got fed up with having to sort the throwaway trash from the recyclables, the store management staffer said, so it yanked the bins.

Count me as a dedicated recycler. I seek to recycle anything I can whenever I am able and wherever the community sets aside bins to take the material intended for recycling. This was a terrible blow to my desire to protect the planet from waste material that can be reused.

At this moment — I’m still recovering from the shock of the disappearing Dumpsters — I am unsure what I’m going to do. I’ll likely call one of my many acquaintances at City Hall to inquire as to whether the city has eliminated its recycling program altogether. I hope that is not the case.

As for the nimrods who have ruined who’ve abused the recycling program and ruined the sense of “giving back” that recycling gives to the rest of us — you know who you are — you should be ashamed of yourselves.

My wife and I went to Canyon this morning to watch a parade and to sample some so-called “food” sold at one of the many booths scattered around the Courthouse Square.

We had a good time looking at the arts and crafts. The weather was gorgeous. It was a great day to watch a parade.

Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off that exquisite courthouse structure in the middle of the square.

After so much hassle, heartache and occasional hysteria over many years from historic preservationists, the courthouse exterior is all dolled up. The money came from a Texas Historical Commission grant, with the county kicking in a little bit to cover the rest of the cost.

As pretty as the outside of the 1909-vintage building is, the inside is, well, a dilapidated mess.

I’m still waiting for someone or some agency or some business to step up and take over the place. With all the effort that went into preserving the courthouse building exterior, I remain baffled as to why it remains vacant.

Randall County’s government has vacated the place. It occupies the finance building across the street; it’s where the commissioners court meets, the county judge has his office, as does the human resources department. Its justice center is about a mile and a half away, at the old Wal-Mart site across the street from West Texas A&M University.

Who will move in? That’s still anyone’s guess, last I heard.

Still, the courthouse made for an elegant backdrop today for the Canyon Chamber of Commerce’s Independence Day celebration. I just wish there was a way to finish the job and put someone on the inside of a very old, but gorgeous once again, structure.