California v. Texas

[ImWithStupid]

or progressive policies v. traditional American Founder's policies...

Low-tax Texas beats big-government California
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
March 7, 2010

"Stop messing with Texas!" That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to Texas' anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democratic politicians as well as Republicans.

His point was that the big-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters' independence and ability to make decisions for themselves.

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state's history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation's second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.

But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress -- or lack of it -- over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.

Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine with referenda was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million -- all originally extracted from taxpayers -- into effective TV ads.

Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California -- almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes -- and no state income taxes -- and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California's year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California's. But its test scores -- and with a demographically similar school population -- are higher. California's once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the meantime, Texas' economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California. Texas is on the way to gain four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment.

This was not always so. In the two decades after World War II California, with its pleasant weather, was the Golden State, a promised land, for most Americans, while Texas seemed a provincial rural backwater. Many saw postwar California's expansion of universities, freeways and water systems a model for the nation. Few experts praised Texas' low-tax, low-services government.

Now it is California's ruinously expensive and increasingly incompetent government that seems dysfunctional, while Texas' approach has generated more creativity and opportunity. So it's not surprising that Texas voters preferred Perry over an opponent who has spent 16 years in Washington. What's surprising is that Democrats in Washington are still trying to impose policies like those that have ravaged California rather than those that have proved so successful in Texas.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: Low-tax Texas beats big-government California | Washington Examiner
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Here's a chart of the cheat sheet in comparison...

California vs. Texas: the Cheat-Sheet

 

[hugo]

What have I been telling y'all in the Palin debates?

One bad thing about Texas..we are pretty tough on murderers, rapists and thieves but don't spend a lot of resources on breast milk squirters.

 

[timesjoke]

lol, never give up on your Palin hate hugo, your making the liberals proud of the way even people like you believe their propaganda. Of course that is why most of you Libertarians voted for Obama in the last election too, you guys seem to believe whatever they tell you.


The real conservatives that have been directing most of the path Texas has taken should be the model for all States, Texas does have a Subsidized Government though from big oil, and that is something most States do not have. The money Texas extracts from the oil sales replaces the tax money they would normally get from the people and businesses.


California is a great example of what the liberals want for the entire Country though, we need to ask ourselves if this is what we really want. If you do not want this then you need to join the Republican party and help to keep it truly conservative. The many fringe parties like the Libertarians can't make up their minds who they want to support and in the last election, they voted for a 100% socialist President to help him get elected. Division and splintering is one of the things that are tearing the fabric of America apart and splintering in the party to these tiny groups can only do the same thing and rip the conservative side apart allowing the Liberals to take advantage of our splintered status.


Do I like everything the Republicans do?

Hell no, but I like what they do over what people like Obama does and it was the splintering of conservative minded people like the Libertarians who made it possible for Obama to be in power now. You don't have to like everything about the Republican canidate to know that whoever it is, they are not as bad as the alternative.

 

[hugo]

It won't surprise anyone when I tell ya TJ has his head up his ass. The taxes on oil producers in Texas produce a whopping 8 cents a day in revenue per Texan. It is about equal to the revenue from alcohol taxes. We don't kill off business in Texas like Alaska and California does. That is the reason for this article. Nor does our government run like the federal government did under Republican GW Bush, a social conservative but economic liberal just like Sarah Palin. At least under Obama the Republican congress fights big government. Too bad once they get power they start doling out the goodies. We need a principled economic conservative as President, someone who will resist taxing corporations in order to mail out a check to US citizens, you know like Palin did in Alaska. You know with policies similar to Hugo Chavez's in Venezuela. In Texas ya gotta work for your money.

TJ also has his head up his ass when referring to Libertarians costing McCain the election. McCain got whupped bad. There was not a single state where if every Libertarian vote had gone to McCain that it would have changed the outcome. I wonder if TJ actually believes his own BS.

 

[timesjoke]

It won't surprise anyone when I tell ya TJ has his head up his ass. The taxes on oil producers in Texas produce a whopping 8 cents a day in revenue per Texan.

A tax, is a Tax, is a Tax, some higher then others but still is a tax hugo.

My point was that the taxes collected are a source of income Texas gets that most States do not get. They use that income that would normally have to come from the people. Some of the oil related taxes in Texas:

$0.01 per quart of automotive oil imported or sold in Texas

Crude Oil Production Tax-Oil production tax: 4.6% (.046) of market value of oil

Diesel Fuel-$0.20 per gallon of diesel fuel

Gasoline-$0.20 per gallon of gasoline

Liquefied Gas Tax-$0.15 per gallon; Prepaid users: based on mileage and registered gross weight of vehicle

Natural Gas Production Tax (same oil companies pay this)-Gas: 7.5% (.075) of market value of gas. Condensate Production Tax: 4.6% (.046) of market value of gas.

Oil Well Service Tax-2.42% (.0242) of taxable services

Petroleum Products Delivery Fee- (many rates, depands on the amount of fuel carried, for example $11.75: 5,000 but less than 8,000

Coastal Protection Fee-The tax rate on returns for transfers after September 1, 2005 is 1.333 cents per barrel of crude oil or condensate.

TJ also has his head up his ass when referring to Libertarians costing McCain the election. McCain got whupped bad. There was not a single state where if every Libertarian vote had gone to McCain that it would have changed the outcome. I wonder if TJ actually believes his own BS.

I never said it was "just" the Libertarians who got Obama elected, usual liberal tactics of inserting things and meaning I never said to redirect attention away from the true point.



I said it was the splintering of the basic beliefs into several tiny parties that made an election of someone like Obama possible. These Libertarians who would normally have supported a Republican canidate were standing on the outside and decided to vote for Obama, if they had instead been a part of the larger party that most directly represents most of their stated values, they would have supported McCain who was the least socialist.

Libertarians supported Obama, but the real question is why? Why did they depart from everything they usually believe in and vote for the socialist?

Libertarians are just one example of the many splinter groups who have struck out on their own and have together made the liberals stronger. Only by sticking together can the socialist agenda be defeated. Splinters like Libertarians help the Liberals.

 

[hugo]

Let me get on topic, not waisting time addressing a loon who thinks a group that makes up lkess than 1% of the voters could have turned the 2008 election around. Someone needs to take third grade math again.

Now, we Republicans see all this as more, much more, than the rest: of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny. Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will, and this Nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. And, so help us God, that is exactly what a Republican president will do with the help of a Republican Congress.

Barry Goldwater 1964 speech accepting the Republican nomination. Too bad GW, MCCain and Sarah aren't in that mold

The best way to describe my views is a Goldwater/Reagan Republican. Too bad there ain't many left.

 

[timesjoke]

Let me get on topic, not waisting time addressing a loon who thinks a group that makes up lkess than 1% of the voters could have turned the 2008 election around. Someone needs to take third grade math again.

If they are so insignificant, why do they bother to be different?

Every political expert agrees that it is the independents who are now deciding the elections.



These many groups do tend to be mostly moderate and conservative minded people (at least that is what they say) that without their splintered groups would be part of the Republican party. Collectively, these groups hand more races to liberals than anyone else because their normal vote would be for the conservative canidate if they were a Republican but because they want to feel as though they are different, they will waste voted on someone who cannot win or even jump ship and vote for a pure socialist like the Libertarians did in the last presidential election. Many times these independents even refuse to vote at all and again, this is a vote "FOR" the Liberal canidate






NEW INFO



Based on new reforms started in Texas two years ago, Texas is now reducing their prison population:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6770360.html

State Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, and state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, worked across partisan lines to implement the “reinvestment movement” in 2007, which they say is just starting to show results. The program invests state funds in drug, alcohol and mental health programs to treat offenders rather than just prisons to house them.

So Texas is now starting to turn to reforms?

Will Texas be the new California in a few years?

And why did these conservatives vote for liberal ideas?

Does this mean these guys are all socialists?