Mocking Rick for his minor endorsements...

Kay's campaign manager Terry Sullivan has a twitter page... @OnBackground... and he mocked Rick's endorsement from the Interior Design Association, which allegedly has 9,000 members in Texas. Here is what he said...

Citing Perry's style and panache the Tx Assoc For Interior Design dealt #KBH a devastating blow by endorsing#rickperry today.11:39 AM Oct 14th from web

Mock as you may but Rick backed something I think is more important than people may realize. The Interior Designers don't usually make a lot of endorsements, but they appreciated that Rick ended the practice of forcing people to get a government issued license to call themselves an Interior Designer...

The Institute for Justice explains why this was an important thing for Rick to eliminate (link). Excerpt follows...

Until yesterday, you could practice interior design in Texas, but you could not legally tell anyone that’s what you did for a living unless you had a government-issued license.

Yesterday, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed a bill into law that eliminates the state’s restriction that only those with government-issued licenses could call themselves “interior designers” or use the words “interior design” to describe what they do. The new law lifts that free speech restriction and now allows people to voluntarily register with the state and refer to themselves as “registered” interior designers if they feel the need for a government-given label to establish their credibility.

Why is this new law important?

Before the change in the law, a small cartel of politically powerful interior designers was using the power of government to limit their competition. Now, with the removal of government-imposed limits on the free speech of interior designers across the state, capable designers who don’t want or need the government to help them succeed can get back to what they do best: interior design work that pleases their clients.

The Institute for Justice (IJ), a national public interest law firm that defends free speech and the rights of entrepreneurs, filed suit challenging the law on behalf of four independent interior designers in May 2007. Governor Perry’s signature came shortly after a ruling on April 24, 2009, from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals finding that the Institute and its clients were likely to prevail on the merits of their free speech claim and were therefore entitled to a preliminary injunction suspending further enforcement of the law pending the final outcome of the case.

As documented in an IJ study, “Designing Cartels,” the Texas interior design law was enacted at the behest of a small faction of interior designers whose goal is to legislate potential competitors out of business. That faction, led by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), has worked for decades to create a cartel in the industry so that only ASID members may perform interior design work. That effort is documented in a series of studies that includes “Designing Cartels,” “Designed to Mislead” and “Designed to Exclude.”

A remarkable facet of the case was the State Board of Architectural Examiners’ decision to try to defend the obviously unconstitutional law in court, with no apparent concern for the cost of that decision or its impact on the free speech rights of independent designers like the four plaintiffs. Clark Neily, a University of Texas Law School graduate and senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, said, “The Board’s behavior in this case shows government at its very worst. No reasonable person would believe that the government can prevent people from speaking truthfully about services they lawfully perform, and yet that is precisely what the Board argued in this case.”

“This is one of the most irresponsible, unaccountable state agencies we have ever encountered,” Neily continued. “The Texas Board of Architectural Examiners spent two years and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars trying to justify a scheme that said people who lawfully perform interior design work should not be allowed to call themselvesinterior designers. Although we commend the Legislature for finally putting a stop to the Board’s campaign of censorship, it is important to recognize that the Legislature created this problem by passing the unconstitutional law in the first place. Hopefully, this case will serve as a reminder that when industry groups, like ASID, urge legislators to enact occupational licensing laws, they are there to promote their own special interests, not the public’s.”

I think some of these individual endorsements are pretty funny sounding. The Pest Control Association, for example... but the aggregate of them all is a big deal. Each group has its own dedicated members with thousands of people who feel really connected to the group. Rick also has some big guns too... the Realtors for example are huge.

Not all of them are going to fall in line behind Rick, but then again a lot of Farm Bureau members aren't going to fall in line behind Kay either. Rick's peeps have got to be more careful that they don't appear to be attacking the Farm Bureau members as a whole... just the Waco based leadership.

Some people in the media might want to look into some of these endorsements... the Interior Designers of Texas were happy that Rick cut government red tape. Great... but what about all the other dozens of associations. Did they endorse merely because Rick is the incumbent, or did they like something specific he did to help them out? I think that would be news worthy information.

I have no idea why, but Rick got an endorsement from the pharmacists. Is that because he supports laws to let pharmacists choose not to distribute the morning after pill if it goes against their own ethics or religion? How does Kay feel about that? Is that a difference between the two candidates? Or are they exactly the same on that issue? Do the Democrats feel that pharmacists should be forced by the government to do things they feel go against their code of morals?

It seems like a lot of journalism is not happening right now. No wonder there are so many uninformed voters out there...