It’s been a while since I did a Texas vs. California update, so this is going to be a meaty one:
The Texas Comptroller has released a 50 state overview of how Texas stacks up to other states. There’s a lot of information to mine there. A few nuggets”
- Texas ranks first as the best state for business, while California ranks 50th.
- Texas ranks as the best state for net migration; California ranks 49th.
- There are area in need of improvement. Texas ranks 49th in states whose residents over 25 hold high school diplomas. California? 50th.
Texas has enjoyed 100 straight months of unemployment below the national average. (Now it’s 101 months, but I can’ find a link right at the moment.)
The previously mentioned California pension reform ballot initiative has been filed.
Can it help California voters avoid pension armageddon?
“Low Taxes And Economic Opportunity In Texas Lead To Youth Population Boom.”
I was unaware that CalPERS owns its own planned community in Mountain House, California, and which it’s invested more than $1 billion in. A community that in 2008 was the most underwater in terms of mortgages in the entire country, and which was estimated to be worth only $200 million at some point. And now their water is being cut off due to the drought. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Speaking of the drought, California is running on empty:
We suffer in California from a particular form of progressive immorality predicated on insular selfishness. The water supplies of Los Angeles and the Bay Area are still for a year longer in good shape, despite the four-year drought. Neither area is self-sufficient in water; their aquifers are marginal and only supply a fraction of their daily needs. Instead these megalopolises depend on intricate and expensive water transfer systems — from Northern California, from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and from the Colorado River — that bring water and life to quite unnatural habitats and thereby allow a MGM or Facebook to thrive in an arid landscape that otherwise would not support such commerce and population. Without them, Atherton would look like Porterville.
Quiet engineers in the shadows make it all work; the loud activists in the media seek to make it unwind. These transfers have sterling legal authority and first claims on mountain and northern state water. If Latinos in Lemon Cove are going without household water, Pyramid Lake on I-5 or Crystal Springs Reservoir on 280 are still full to the brim.
Why then do those who have access to water delivered in a most unnatural way seek to curtail supplies to others? In a word, because they are either ignorant of where their own water comes from or they have not a shred of concern for others less blessed, or both. We will confirm this ethical schizophrenia should a fifth year of drought ensue. Then even the most sacrosanct rights of transferred water will not be sufficient to accommodate the San Francisco and Los Angeles basins. Mass panic and outrage will probably follow, and no one will care a bit about the delta smelt, or a few hundred salmon artificially planted into the San Joaquin River watershed, or a spotted toad that holds up construction of an urgently needed reservoir.
The greens who pontificate about the need to return the San Joaquin watershed to its 19th-century ecosystem will become pariahs. When the taps run dry in Hillsborough and Bel-Air, very powerful people will demand water for their desert environs, which will in fact begin to return to the deserts that they always were as the thin veneer of civilization is scraped away.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Hey, remember how California’s are always saying “Sure, Texas has lower taxes, lower cost of living, and better job growth, but California’s awesomely moderate weather beats Texas’ summer heat hands down!”?
Yeah, not so much this year… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
California legislature votes to reinstate Kelo-like seizure of private property for private development use. Shamefully, 12 Republicans joined Democrats to vote for eminent domain abuse.
“Pension payments are starving basic city services.”
A Marin County grand jury wants more openness about government employee salaries and pensions. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Of the four “minority majority” states, minorities in Texas are doing best.
California farm workers are suing to get the United Farm Workers out of their lives and pockets.
Among cities with high prices and stagnant wage growth, California has the nine worst, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Jose.
Because California homes just didn’t cost enough already, new energy regulations are going to make them even more expensive.
The San Bernardino sheriff’s department has used a “stingray” to capture cell phone communication over 300 times in the past year or so without a warrant.
Apple continues expanding in Austin.
Texas is one of the states General Electric might leave Connecticut for.
California-based retailer Anna’s Linens files for Chapter 11.
California holding company Premier Ventures uses yet another bankruptcy filing to prevent an Akron, Ohio mall from being sold at auction. (Previously.)
Not news: California bankruptcy filing. Still not news: From a fraud judgment. News: For a lawsuit first filed in 1989.
Tags: Austin, California, Chuck DeVore, Crime, Kelo, Mountain House, San Bernardino, Texas, Texas Public Policy Foundation, unions, United Farm Workers, Victor Davis Hanson, Welfare State
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2015 at 9:08 AM and is filed under Austin, Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Texas does not have adequate regulations to protect the workers–that’s why it is first in a place to do business–low overhead, since it is not going to spend any money on the workers. When the Dupont plant was on fire, three employees were gassed to death before they could be warned. The emergency alarms had been out of order for a couple years. For all that, Dupont paid a fine of some $90,000. If people’s lives are worth it to you, choose Texas. I choose CA any day!