Governor Rick Perry of Texas talks a good free enterprise system. But when he can’t get socialist-style relief for his state’s corporation-made disasters, guess what he turns into?

So in the past few weeks, it’s been hard in New York City to tune into the morning TV news without having Rick Perry in your face.

He’s there been all over the screen, in advertising paid for by Texans, to ask New York businesses to pull up stakes and move to Texas.

Governor Perry is dangling lures in front of New York business the way Anthony Weiner dangles his…but I’m getting off track here. Perry is talking about no taxes. He’s talking about no meaningful regulations on business. He’s telling “bidness” people they’ll grow fatter and richer than a wet dream in the mind of Croesus if only they fire everybody in New York and come down his way.

Don’t believe me?  Go here.

Now all this would be fine. New York would suffer a tragic loss of masochistic business owners and senior executives who don’t mind the humid heat in Houston that could give a shovel full of desert silicon an incurable case of wet rot.

He’s also no doubt trying to lure business people who don’t mind the crappy schools in Texas, where school boards seek to outlaw critical thinking as part of the Texas program to grow adult ignoramuses.

He’ll probably also lure folks who are amorous of “Palmetto bugs” – those are cockroaches the size of Wladimir Klitschko’s fist – that fall out of trees on peoples’ cars and heads, as well as infesting kitchens and attics. Hey, if you or your wife or your kids find a few Palmetto bugs in sexual congress in the china cabinet, you can always say it’s a sign of good luck.

As I said, masochistic New Yorkers-turned-Texan could enjoy the “good life” there. Umm, except for a the little matter of what happens when the setup there gets you into deep trouble.

See, not long ago a fertilizer plant blew higher than a cowboy on loco weed in a Texas town called West. Turns out, there was enough explosive stuff stored there to kill 12 citizens, injure hundreds more, and flatten homes, businesses (perhaps some lured there by Governor Perry), a school, and probably a whole lot of outhouses. Now Governor Perry wants the rest of us non-Texans to pay for it.

This might not have happened had “business-friendly” Texas chosen to regulate plants where explosive chemicals are used and stored.

Didn’t happen.

It might have been avoided if Texas demanded enough liability insurance so that the insurance companies themselves would inspect the plant and threaten to cancel the insurance if the plant didn’t get safe fast.

Didn’t happen.

Or even, if Texas had a reasonable tax structure, like most states, the Texas treasury might have been able to handle the under-$35 million Texas needs to fix the mess – at least until next time. Hell, in New York City alone we spend more on that on subways in a month. Or is it a week? Whatever. In any case a reasonable tax structure didn’t happen in Texas, either.

So why should the citizens of the other 49 states reach into their pockets to help out Texas, when Texans won’t reach into its own pockets? I mean, it just might sound to some people like a bunch of lazy or greedy Texans are demanding welfare to fix up their own mess.

And that's why Governor Perry is crying like a baby with something disagreeable in his diaper.

So the citizens of West are screwed. And I do hope, when the survivors of West figure out that it’s their own governor that screwed them, they – may I borrow one of your own phrases, Governor? – I hope they treat Rick Perry real ugly.