Rick Perry’s Natural Gas Cronyism

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In Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s world, politics, and business seem to mix like natural gas and drilling rigs—literally.

Documents released in Texas this week show the 2012 GOP president candidate’s blind trust, which has managed his investments since he first ran for statewide office in the mid-1990s, owns a stake in MKS Natural Gas Company, a firm founded by Perry friends that controls about $3.4 million in gas rights in the heart of the shale field that has fueled Texas’s recent natural-gas boom.

The investment last year earned Perry less than $25,000 in income. The relationship, however, landed the company’s founder and his wife two premier jobs in state government during Perry’s tenure—just another example of a culture that Perry’s critics have derided as “crony capitalism.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/22/rick-perry-s-crony-capitalism-governor-gave-texas-jobs-to-gas-company-friends.html