12:19pm: Wraps up at 12:19pm, a full 48 minutes after he started. Individual first name drops include: Senfronia, Boogie, Jerry, Hope, John, Chuy, John and Phil. More coverage tonight at five and six. Thanks for joining us.

12:18pm: "And reap that harvest we shall...and we shall reap it together." A reference to and twist on scripture by Perry's speechwriters.

12:14pm: Wants DPS funding to go back into general revenue, to help pay for infrastructure.

12:11pm: Read the full text of the speech here.

12:10pm: Calls for a "disaster contingency relief fund" to help pay local governments dealing with storms, transporting evacuees, etc.

12:07pm: Takes hard line against illegal immigration. Calls for end to "notion of sanctuary cities". Comes out strong for voter ID. Comes out strong for checking the immigration status of people in Texas before providing any state services.

12:03pm:Moving to Operation Border Star, the state efforts to protect the border. Wants renewed funding for border effort, in spite of recent El Paso Times piece showing millions have been spent on the border camera program whose objectives are not being met.

11:59am: Takes it to the EPA, but backs efforts to lower emissions in the cities that are already too polluted, according to federal standards. "They got a one size fits all approach, which could significantly harm our energy industry," Perry says. "I support giving Texans in the non attainment areas a $5000 credit to purchase a plug-in electric vehicle."

11:55am: Perry now calls for "significantly" increasing the funding for community colleges, but in June 2007, he vetoed $154 million for community college health benefits, forcing the colleges to raise students tuitions.

11:54am: Another big applause for veterans.

11:51: Big applause, HUGE applause. Supports freezing college tuition for four years... basically the tuition you're charged as an entering freshman will stay that way for four years.

11:50am. State Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, will be pleased. Perry just came out for electronic textbooks for public schools in Texas. Hochberg has been talking about electronic textbooks since before there was electricity, it seems.

11:48am: "Let's improve education at every level," he says. Applause line number 2.

11:45am: Perry pushes for reinvesting in the Emerging Technology, Film Incentive and Enterprise Funds. He also wants to "take a look" at the business tax. "We know enough to improve it," he said. "I would support raising the small business exemption to one million dollars."

11:44am: Perry gets his first applause line when he says something about opportunity. (Sorry folks, I'm not on the floor so I don't have the script of the speech to follow along with.)

11:42am: We learn the identity of the man in the workshirt up on the state. He is MIke Coolidge, a generator technician with Caterpillar. (Caterpillar just moved one of its main assembly facilities to Seguin, TX.)

11:40am: Perry's touting the strength of the Texas economy, using examples like the Texas Enterprise fund, Film Incentive fund, a net of 1.2 million new jobs since 2003. "Our efforts clearly strengthened our economy," Perry says. "Even in these tough times, more jobs are headed out way."

11:38am: Direct namedrop number two, I THINK. As he talks about the economy, Perry says something like, "This is the worse we've ever seen, Boogie." (Boogie is the nickname of state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston. I'm told he doesn't liked to be called Boogie.)

11:35am: Direct namedrop number one. Perry has the same speech tendency as South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, to call out the names of people he sees in the crowd as he goes along, by randomly adding their name into the middle of a sentence. For example, "We don't always agree, Senfronia..." To be fair, Sanford's tangents are much longer than Perry's.

11:34am: "The state of our state is strong," Governor Perry says.

1 Comments

Will Franklin said:

Good job. Enjoyed the commentary. Didn't know that about Sanford.

January 27, 2009 10:48 PM

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