Rick Perry says Texas is going to be really happy getting nuclear waste to store in Texas, when he is Secretary of Energy?

What a sick s.o.b.

"the people of Texas are not happy. Only the billionaires. "

Well of course.  :)  We can't expect people who don't live in the real world to care about it, and because the entire system is essentially oriented towards money in the US, candidates for high office are often taken from this group.

So we get a revolving door of billionaires, multi-millionaires, magnates, etc, etc managing the nation's economy, as anyone would, with what they know.  Unfortunately, what many of them know is very little outside their areas of expertise.  Certainly they can't be expected to have any understanding of how Mr & Mrs Average live, so if there are issues they rely on being told about them.

But if a large amount of their time is spent preparing to hold their jobs at the next election (ie, getting campaign funds in) how much can they spend listening to issues and doing their real jobs for the people who vote for them?  'Less' is the fairest answer I can give and I can't see anyone being happy with that - including, perhaps, the politicians themselves.

Here in Florida, a large corporation wanted to build a residential development on a barrier island.  In county commission meetings, many residents opposed the idea against the clear will of the commission.  The locals finally got enough signatures to have development of the island brought to a vote in which it was voted down on the basis that there were not enough evacuation routes leading away from the island.  The County Commission then worked around the referendum by doing something such as changing the emergency evacuation requirements (something like that) saying, "The people don't know what's good for them."  That pretty well sums up what I think most politicians believe.  They don't care what we think is good for us because we don't know any better.