Paint Creek, Tex. — In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family’s secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance.

“Niggerhead,” it read.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) doubled down Monday in his opposition to expanding Medicaid under President Obama's healthcare law, even though opposing it could cost his state $90 billion.

At a press conference where he was flanked by other conservatives, Perry argued expanding the health insurance program for the poor would make Texas “hostage” to the federal government.  

“It would benefit no one in our state to see their taxes skyrocket and our economy crushed as our budget crumbled under the weight of oppressive Medicaid costs,” Perry said at the state capitol.

Allowing the expansion, in the case of Texas, would insure 1.5 million low-income Texans and bring $90 billion in federal funding to the state over the first decade, according to estimates.  

Texas has the highest share of uninsured residents in the United States — about 29 percent of its adult population — and confronts billions of dollars worth of uncompensated hospital care every year.

In 2011, Perry signed a voter ID law that counts handgun permits as an acceptable form of identification, but not student IDs. Courts later found the law “was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose” and “has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans.” This was further proven when the Supreme Court allowed Texas to implement the policy for last November’s midterm elections, and it disenfranchised hundreds of eligible voters and more than doubled the number of people forced to cast a provisional ballot — the majority of which are never counted.

Under Perry’s leadership, Texas further beefed up it’s already growing border militarization — famously sending the National Guard down to the border in 2014 where the armed officers found themselves “fighting boredom” as border crossings dropped to the lowest level they have been in years.  

He also advocated for deporting the thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America who crossed the border in 2014, despite the fact that many of them had valid asylum claims.  

Perry has said he’ll oppose any comprehensive immigration reform — which would enable hundreds of thousands of Texans to come out of the shadows — until the border is deemed “secure.”

There are a thousand legitimate reasons to detest the man without distorting the truth like you just did.