Remember how gun control advocates said violent crime would soar when more people were armed? Hasn’t happened. Both rates and absolute numbers of violent crimes in Texas have been falling since 1991, even as Texas population increased by almost 10 million people. Says CHL bill sponsor Jerry Patterson: “I’d say those who predicted shootouts at four-way stops need to apologize to the rest of us.”
If you’re wondering why more law-abiding citizens carrying guns has coincided with dropping crime rates, the book linked below might have some answers for you…
A big reason is the top-heavy nature of income tax receipts. “Nearly half of the state’s personal income tax revenue comes from the top 1 percent of earners — 150,000 individual tax returns. And personal income tax revenue is 65 percent of total revenue, which means the One Percent provides 33 percent of the state’s total revenue.”
Here’s a handy comparison of Texas vs. California debt ratios using a number of different metrics. You can also look at several different metrics with the general pension tracker tool, put together by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
“During the Great Recession and since, Texas has been America’s jobs engine, creating 34 percent of all U.S. civilian jobs during the last eight years in a state with less than 10 percent of the nation’s population.”
“In 2014, a study by the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that full-career state workers in five states — California, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas and West Virginia — earned more in retirement income than in their final salary.” I’m pretty sure Texas salaries on average were significantly lower than California’s, and that there were less of them…
“Trump is the warning shot. He’s the food riots before the revolution. He’s the stack of letters to the editor in protest over some issue. People do not go from happy to bloody revolt overnight. It’s a process and the early stages are warnings, at least they should be viewed as warnings. If the people in Washington insist on flooding the country with helot labor, despite what’s happening in the election, the people are going to insist on building scaffolds in Washington. The Trump phenomenon is the warning.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“The Hillary Story is far less entertaining than The Trump Story…Clinton is rich, and morally and ethically corrupt. So is Trump. But at least he’s entertaining.” Note: That’s from Jonah Goldberg, with whom Trump has exchanged numerous rounds of insults and putdowns. Goldberg seems much further along the Kubler-Ross cycle than his NRO compatriots…
Larry Correia visits Europe. “I would like to institute autobahn style rules on I-15 in Utah. Sure, a few thousand people would probably die in the first weekend, but after that it would be awesome….The Czechs are a fun people. They have this kind of to hell with it sense of humor that meshes really well with mine. They’re big on long meals and animated conversations. They really hate socialists.”
Research following contestants on The Biggest Loser brings bad news about dieting: “As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.”
Thomas Sowell: “For conservatives especially, there is finally a real choice for a change — and a sharp contrast with Donald Trump. Senator Ted Cruz has a track record that leaves no doubt as to his adherence to conservative principles. And he is as thoroughly versed in the issues facing this country as anyone who has run for President since Ronald Reagan.” (Hat tip: Conservatives 4 Ted Cruz.)
“Moderates will need to abandon John Kasich and unite behind Cruz in order to defeat Trump.”
“The excessive and fawning coverage given to Kasich has deformed the GOP race…Kasich serves as a useful proxy for the media, which leans consistently to the left — a way for them to criticize the GOP without having to do so directly.”
Basketball coach Bobby Knight to campaign for Trump in Indiana. Yes, all the chair throwing jokes have already been made. The Knight/Trump comparisons are apt to a point, but Trump would never have lasted six years at West Point… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
If Republicans end up with a brokered convention, expect Ted Cruz, not Paul Ryan, to win the nomination. “[We’re] learning more and more about who those delegates are now that they’re being chosen. They’re not members of the Washington ‘establishment.’ Instead, they’re mostly grass-roots activists, and many of them want Cruz to be their next president.”
“Ted Cruz on Saturday clinched the support of every pledged delegate in Colorado, capturing all of the final 13 delegates who will go to the national convention in July and demonstrating his organizational strength in the all-important delegate race.”
From Thursday to Saturday, Trump suffered setbacks in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina and Indiana that raise new doubts about his campaign’s preparedness for the long slog of delegate hunting as the GOP race approaches a possible contested convention. He lost the battle on two fronts. Cruz picked up 28 pledged delegates in Colorado. In the other states, rival campaigns were able to place dozens of their own loyalists in delegate spots pledged to Trump on the first ballot. This will matter if Trump fails to win a majority of delegates on the first ballot in Cleveland, as his delegates defect once party rules allow them to choose the candidate they want to nominate.
If Donald Trump is as smart as he keeps telling us, how is it he can’t seem to hire anyone smart enough to know how each state’s delegate selection process actually works?
Hillary Clinton defends Israel against Bernie Sanders. Hillary finally takes the right side in an issue debate, but what do you want to bet that it hurts her, given the naked anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian bias among the Democratic Party’s activist base?
Millionaires are fleeing France. “Polls have shown that about 50% of all French people 18-34 years old, not just the millionaires and billionaires, would leave France if they could.” Why? “Blue model rot, deeply set in across Europe, is pervasive in France.”
“New York taxi drivers to be banned from flirting with or ejaculating on passengers.” One of these things is not like the other/One of these things just doesn’t belong…
Indeed, Obamacare is the fail that keeps failing: “As a result of the ACA, between 4 million and 9 million fewer people are projected to have employment-based coverage each year from 2017 through 2026 than would have had such coverage if the ACA had never been enacted.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Great news! The Nigerian Army has rescued rescued 800 Boko Haram hostages. That’s compared to the number of those hostages rescued by the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag, which is (stops, counts, carries the one) Zero.
Donald Trump suggested targeting the families of terrorists. Putin’s Russia does exactly that.
The Obama Administration treats Little Sisters of the Poor worse than Exxon, Visa and Pepsi, all of whom have health plans lacking the abortion mandate. Then again, as Instapundit noted: “To be fair, that was basically because they hate those groups and wanted to punish them.”
Xi Jinping has accumulated more power than any leader since Mao. “He has been fighting dissent with even more ruthlessness than he has been waging war on graft. Not since the dark days after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 has there been such a sweeping crackdown on critics of the party.”
Belgium’s current crises sounds an awful lot like where California is headed: Expensive government that’s congenitally incapable of solving problems.
David Brin says the Amendment that most protects the right of citizens to film interactions with the police is the Sixth.
Rob Ford was more than just a loud-mouth drunk. “Ford was a political pragmatist who simply didn’t give a damn what anyone thought about him other than his constituents. It was that gumption that endeared him to hundreds of thousands of Torontonians.”
This nifty little map shows you where CHL/LTC owners are in Texas by zip code.
Hint: Everywhere.
Liberals in big cities should just get over their hyperventilating that a lawfully armed citizen might be somewhere near them, since the map shows it’s pretty much a constant certainty. Even the University of Texas at Austin, about which so hand-wringing over campus carry has been conducted, already shows 191 CHL/LTC holders in the 78705 area code.
Happy Leap Day, everyone! Enjoy a yuge LinkSwarm, and if you’re in Texas or another Super Tuesday state, take time to dig out your voter registration card for tomorrow.
The Case for Cruz: The Math. “In the states where Cruz is ahead of Rubio in the upcoming Super Tuesday, he is either beating Trump or within striking distance. In the states where Rubio is ahead of Cruz in the upcoming Super Tuesday, Trump has a huge lead. Rubio doesn’t lead in a single state.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Our cultural elites just can’t figure out why those ignorant gun- and religion-clinging redneck freaks of JesusLand keep flocking to Trump when he says he love them. It’s an insoluble mystery…
Trump University was a scam. “Many people believe that higher education is a de facto scam. Trump University, Donald Trump’s real-estate institution, was a de jure one.”
DNC vice chair steps down to support Bernie Sanders. An understandable move, given the DNC is so far in the tank for Hillary under Debbie Wasserman Schultz that supporting Sanders is probably looked on as akin to treason… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Mark Steyn lays out some grim election analysis: “No one loses as expensively as Republicans.”
720,000 taxpayers have their tax form information stolen from the IRS. Our country is in the very best of hands!
Merkel must have a political death wish: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday defended her open-door policy for migrants, rejecting any limit on the number of refugees allowed into her country despite divisions within her government.”
Stratfor analyses China’s new military facilities on Woody Island. “While the media’s response to China’s actions on Woody Island suggests that they represent a watershed moment in the militarization of the South China Sea, in reality they are neither surprising nor particularly meaningful.”
The truth about the MiG-29. Longish but interesting piece. Turn out the Soviet super fighter was very good at basic fighter aircraft maneuvers, but had poor avionics that severely limited the pilot’s situational awareness.
Beloved, innocent man shot down by Seattle police. And by “innocent” I mean “a convicted rapist with a gun, crack and heroin.”
“Turn down the fucking music.” “The more and more you attempt to compensate for the fact people have no social skills, making the music so loud conversation is impossible, the more and more intelligent and competent people you will drive away.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Tomorrow (Saturday, February 20) is the South Carolina Republican primary. (Democrats don’t vote in South Carolina until next Saturday, February 27). Current polls have Ted Cruz gaining on Donald Trump. (Hat tip: Conservatives 4 Ted Cruz.)
A small LinkSwarm going into the weekend:
Remember Hillary’s big lead in Nevada? As frequently happens to items owned by the elderly, she seems to have misplaced it.
The most trusted states in the union have Republican governments, while the least trusted ones are run by Democrats. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Venezuela’s socialist government is so desperate they’re trying a few “too little too late” reforms, like “replacing a leftist sociologist who has denied existence of inflation” with a businessman and raising the price of subsidized gasoline. Problem is, since they’re socialists, gasoline is still heavily subsidized compared to market prices.
