Off Beat: Perry performs poorly

Not that long ago, Assemblyman Dan Logue was prodding Texas Gov. Rick Perry to run for president.

"This is a candidate that has the Ronald Reagan mystique," Logue told this newspaper last year.

Logue traveled to Texas to marvel at the Perry's job-creating miracle.

Well, the mystique wore off very quickly. Politically, there was no miracle.

Perry went home earlier this month. He's not going to be the next president.

But that's not what Logue predicted last year.

"I think he has a tremendous chance to be the next president," Logue said, in his Nostradamus mode. "This is going to change the game."

Perry initially played coy about his political future, but then he threw his 10-gallon hat into the race. And for a week or two, he was hotter than the sidewalk in downtown Dallas in late August.

Then reality set in. Oops.

It didn't go well for Tex. His debate performances were memorable for the wrong reasons.

His popularity plummeted. He was done.

As for Logue, he'll be running in the redrawn 3rd Assembly District, once he moves back into the district.

No doubt, he won't spend much of his campaign talking about his infatuation with the potential of a Perry presidency.

He'll probably hope nobody brings it up.

By the numbers

The numbers are in from the United States Conference of Mayors, which this month issued its report on metropolitan area economies.

As you remember, Yuba-Sutter is considered to be a metropolitan area, thanks to all that population growth way back when.

The numbers are, as you might expect, not so great in the Great Recession.

In 2007, according to the report, the annual median household income was $47,800. In 2008, when the housing market was really strong, household income rose to $50,700.

By 2010, when the crash was well under way, income was down to $46,300.

Before the recession, there were 42,100 jobs in the metro area. During the recession, that number dropped to 35,900.

And it gets worse: median existing home prices were $129,906 in the fourth quarter of 2010. In the fourth quarter of 2011, they were down to $104,614.

"At the close of 2011, 125 cities and their metro areas had not seen any net job growth. By the end of last year, the economy as a whole had regained only 30 percent of jobs lost from the Great Recession," the report said. "The outlook for 2012 is better."