Texas vs. California Update for June 27, 2013

Time for another update of just how hard Texas is kicking California’s ass:

  • Chuck DeVore has the skinny on California’s recent “growth:”

    The BEA revised California’s real GDP growth downward from 2009 to 2011 in each of three years by a cumulative 2.6 percent, the third-largest negative revision in the nation.

    In other words, California’s economy shrank an additional 2.6 percent before it grew 3.5 percent.

    So, in the past five years California’s real GDP contracted 0.3 percent, one of ten states where economic activity was less in 2012 than it was in 2008.

    By contrast, the BEA revised Texas’ growth upward by 0.5 percent from 2009 to 2011.

    Texas’ newly revised real GDP growth from 2009 to 2012 was 13 percent.

    From 2009 to 2012, California’s share of the U.S. economy shrank from 13.1 percent to 12.9 percent while Texas’ portion of the American economy increased from 8.2 percent to 9 percent.

  • Walter Russell Mead joins in:

    What should be the Federer vs. Nadal of state-level competition has become a lopsided trouncing: Texas has humiliated its opponent in straight sets. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis is out with its state-by-state economic growth numbers for 2012, and Texas is dancing the two-step all over California’s “recovery.”

  • “Texas and California provide real-world results from the so-called laboratory of democracy — the states. The results aren’t even close. Texas wins and has been winning for years. California, champion of the big government blue state model, is in a death spiral. Texas, champion of the small government red state model, continues to grow and lead the way.”
  • California Democrats lose their supermajority, so they have to get one last “screw you” tax hike in.
  • California’s legislature has the highest salary in the country. (By contrast, Texas legislators make $600 per month, plus a per diem that’s currently $139 for every day the Legislature is in session.)
  • The Nanny State wants to regulate nannies. “Yo dawg, I heard you liked nanny states, so I put the nanny state in charge of your nannies so the nanny state nannies can nanny nannies.”
  • Billionaire Texas Democrat seeks to reform California pensions. Might want to pop some popcorn for this one. (Arnold does indeed give primarily to Democrats, but recently he’s also made contributions to Ted Cruz ($2400 in 2011), Tom Coburn and the RNC, plus a relatively paltry $200 donation to John McCain in 2010.)
  • Remember: If you’re going to kill somebody, it’s far better to do it in California than Texas. “At the pace the state has executed inmates over the last 35 years – roughly one execution every three years – it would take the state about 2,000 years to clear its backlog.” Why is why rail-traveling serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz was executed after 7 years in a Texas prison, but “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez spent 23 years living at the expense of California taxpayers before dying of natural causes.
  • California city of Atwater avoids bankruptcy by the skin of its teeth. Naturally, public employee unions are saying that now is the time to get raises…
  • Speaking of unions, even they are having problems with ObamaCare.
  • United Farm Workers picket United Farm Workers. No, that’s not a typo.
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