Texas vs. California Update for March 31, 2016

March 31st, 2016

Lots of Texas vs. California linky goodness, much of it via Jack Dean at Pension Tsunami, who’s been emailing me links of significant interest.

  • Texas continues to grow:

    As last week’s US Census Bureau population estimates indicated, the story of population growth between 2014 and 2015 was largely about Texas, as it has been for the decade starting 2010 (See: “Texas Keeps Getting Bigger” The New Metropolitan Area Estimates). The same is largely true with respect to population trends in the nation’s largest counties, with The Lone Star state dominating both in the population growth and domestic migration among 135 counties with more than 500,000 population.

    Snip.

    Houston, which is the fastest growing major metropolitan area (over 1 million population) in the nation includes the two fastest growing large counties. Fort Bend County added 4.29 percent to its population between 2014 and 2015 and now has 716,000 residents. Montgomery County grew 3.57 percent to 538,000. In addition to these two suburban Houston counties, Harris County, the core County ranked 16th in growth, adding 2.03 percent to its population and exceeding 4.5 million population.

    Dallas-Fort Worth, the second fastest-growing major metropolitan area has two counties among the top 20. The third fastest-growing county is Denton (located north of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport), which added 3.42 percent to its population over the past year and now has 781,000 residents. Collin County, to the north of Dallas County, grew 3.17 percent and now stands at 914,000 residents. Its current growth rate would put Collin County over 1 million population by the 2020 census.

    Travis County, with its county seat of Austin, grew 2.22 percent to 1,177,000 and ranked 12th. Bexar County, centered on San Antonio grew 2.01 percent and ranks 17th.

    Overall, Texas had four of the five fastest growing large counties, and seven of the top twenty. California had none. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • The Austin metropolitan area passes 2 million people.
  • The California Policy Center has a devestating roundup of what’s wrong with California’s economy. To wit:
    • “A now has by far the nation’s highest state income tax rate. We are 34% higher than 2nd place Oregon, and a heck of a lot higher than all the rest”
    • “CA has the highest state sales tax rate in the nation. 7.5% (does not include local sales taxes).”
    • “California in 2015 ranked 14th highest in per capita property taxes (including commercial) – the only major tax where we are not in the worst ten states. But the 2014 average CA single-family residence (SFR) property tax is the 8th highest state in the nation. Indeed, the median CA homeowner property tax bill is 93% higher than the average for the other 49 states.”
    • “California has a nasty anti-small business $800 minimum corporate income tax, even if no profit is earned, and even for many nonprofits. Next highest state is Rhode Island at $500 (only for “C” corporations). 3rd is Delaware at $175. Most states are at zero.”
    • “California’s 2015 ‘business tax climate’ ranks 3rd worst in the nation – behind New York and anchor-clanker New Jersey. In addition, CA has a lock on the worst rank in the Small Business Tax Index – a whopping 8.3% worse than 2nd worst state.”
    • “The American Tort Reform Foundation in 2015 again ranks CA the ‘worst state judicial hellhole’ in U.S. – the most anti-business.”
    • “CA public school teachers the 3rd highest paid in the nation. CA students rank 48th in math achievement, 49th in reading.”
    • “California’s real poverty rate (the new census bureau standard adjusted for COL) is easily the worst in the nation at 23.4%. We are 57.3% higher than the average for the other 49 states.”
    • “Of 100 U.S. real estate markets, in 2013 CA contained by far the least affordable middle class housing market (San Francisco). PLUS the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th.”

    It’s like a whole bunch of Texas vs. California roundup statistics all in one big green ball of fail. Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • “California’s 50% [minimum wage] increase would eliminate nearly 700,000 jobs—which means higher unemployment for the poor and least skilled in particular.”
  • Why did Carl’s Jr. flee California? Taxes, regulations and lawsuits.

    CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder told the Wall Street Journal in 2013, “California is not interested in having businesses grow.”

    The article points out that many factors, including local building regulations, make one community less desirable than another for businesses.

    For example, it takes 60 days in Texas, 63 in Shanghai, and 125 in Novosibirsk, Russia for one of CKE’s restaurants to get a building permit after signing a lease. But in Los Angeles, Ca. it takes a whopping 285 days.

    Puzder added, “I can open up a restaurant faster on Karl Marx Prospect in Siberia than on Carl Karcher Boulevard in California.” The street in California is ironically named for the restaurant chain’s founder.

    California’s labor regulations may also play a role in a company’s desire to seek alternative locations. In that same interview with WSJ, Puzder said his company had spent $20 million in the state over the past eight years on damages and attorney fees related to class-action lawsuits.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • Justice Scalia’s death dooms the Friedrichs vs. California Teacher’s Association lawsuit.
  • “If a Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research’s estimate is accurate, public pension debt in California is even worse than feared. Preliminary calculations from a forthcoming SIEPR study peg the unfunded retirement tab for state and local government employees at more than $1.2 trillion.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Texas unemployment rates drops to 4.4%.
  • San Bernardino’s bondholders get screwed so the bankrupt city can continue sending money to CalPERS. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • California’s colleges are so money-hungry they’re screwing in-state students out of admissions so they can charge more to out-of-state applicants, including those who wouldn’t normally be able to get in. Sort of like the UT admissions scandal, but less politically connected and more widespread and money-grubbing… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • But there’s one type of student California admissions isn’t keeping out: antisemites. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Even the supposed beneficiaries of California’s high speed rail fantasy have become disillusioned with it.
  • A hot relocation to Texas rumor just in: “Plano – new home of Toyota Motor’s North American headquarters – has been mentioned as a possible relocation site for a Wichita-based subsidiary of conglomerate Cargill.”

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    Posted in Austin, Democrats, Economics, Supreme Court, Texas, unions, Welfare State | 3 Comments »

    Legendary Nazi Commando Otto Skorzeny Was Secretly a Hitman for Mossad

    March 30th, 2016

    This is a pretty amazing story:

    On September 11, 1962, a German scientist vanished. The basic facts were simple: Heinz Krug had been at his office, and he never came home.

    The only other salient detail known to police in Munich was that Krug commuted to Cairo frequently. He was one of dozens of Nazi rocket experts who had been hired by Egypt to develop advanced weapons for that country.

    HaBoker, a now defunct Israeli newspaper, surprisingly claimed to have the explanation: The Egyptians kidnapped Krug to prevent him from doing business with Israel.

    But that somewhat clumsy leak was an attempt by Israel to divert investigators from digging too deeply into the case — not that they ever would have found the 49-year-old scientist.

    We can now report — based on interviews with former Mossad officers and with Israelis who have access to the Mossad’s archived secrets from half a century ago — that Krug was murdered as part of an Israeli espionage plot to intimidate the German scientists working for Egypt.

    Moreover, the most astounding revelation is the Mossad agent who fired the fatal gunshots: Otto Skorzeny, one of the Israeli spy agency’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s personal favorites among the party’s commando leaders. The Führer, in fact, awarded Skorzeny the army’s most prestigious medal, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, for leading the rescue operation that plucked his friend Benito Mussolini out from the hands of his captors.

    Skorzeny really was that scary a badass, and late in the war many allies feared that he would be leading “werewolf” guerrilla forces against the occupation of Germany, which never really materialized.

    You can read more about him here, though that site might possibly be out on the fringe (in more ways than one).

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    Posted in Military | No Comments »

    Scott Walker Endorses Ted Cruz

    March 29th, 2016

    This won’t hurt Ted Cruz’s chances:

    Washington (CNN)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker formally endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, saying he is “a strong new leader” and “constitutional conservative.”

    “After all these years of the Obama-Clinton failures, it’s time we elect a strong new leader and I’ve chosen to endorse Ted Cruz,” Walker told conservative radio host Charlie Sykes on Newsradio 620 WTMJ Tuesday.

    If you asked me in 2015 who I think had the best chance of winning the Republican nomination, I would have said it was Walker, given how how handily he beat the unions in the Wisconsin recall. Shows you how much I know…

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans | No Comments »

    Hillary’s Email Scandal: Worse Than You Thought

    March 29th, 2016

    The Washington Post has a long piece up on how Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal unfolded. Though quite restrained by the standards of the blogsphere, it paints a devastating portrait of Clinton and her aides not only blithely unconcerned about security, but plotting to bypass security and accountability from the get-go:

    Hillary Clinton began preparing to use the private basement server after President Obama picked her to be his secretary of state in November 2008. The system was already in place. It had been set up for former president Bill Clinton, who used it for personal and Clinton Foundation business.

    On Jan. 13, 2009, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton registered a private email domain for Hillary Clinton, clintonemail.com, that would allow her to send and receive email through the server.

    Snip.

    They were aware of a speech delivered by Joel F. Brenner, then chief of counterintelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, on Feb. 24 at a hotel in Vienna, Va., a State Department document shows. Brenner urged his audience to consider what could have happened to them during a visit to the recent Beijing Olympics.

    “Your phone or BlackBerry could have been tagged, tracked, monitored and exploited between your disembarking the airplane and reaching the taxi stand at the airport,” Brenner said. “And when you emailed back home, some or all of the malware may have migrated to your home server. This is not hypothetical.”

    At the time, Clinton had just returned from an official trip that took her to China and elsewhere in Asia. She was embarking on another foray to the Middle East and Europe. She took her BlackBerry with her.

    Snip.

    Few could have known it, but the email system operated in those first two months without the standard encryption generally used on the Internet to protect communication, according to an independent analysis that Venafi Inc., a cybersecurity firm that specializes in the encryption process, took upon itself to publish on its website after the scandal broke.

    Not until March 29, 2009 — two months after Clinton began using it — did the server receive a “digital certificate” that protected communication over the Internet through encryption, according to Venafi’s analysis.

    It is unknown whether the system had some other way to encrypt the email traffic at the time. Without encryption — a process that scrambles communication for anyone without the correct key — email, attachments and passwords are transmitted in plain text.

    “That means that anyone could have accessed it. Anyone,” Kevin Bocek, vice president of threat intelligence at Venafi, told The Post.

    The Post piece is well worth reading, even if it avoids the conclusion already drawn by everyone not already a Hillary Clinton backer: She set up a private server to avoid legal accountability while doing back-channel deals with foreign powers that directly benefited herself, the Clinton Foundation (but I repeat myself), her friends and cronies.

    Then there’s this: “Because Clinton did not use desktop computers, she relied on her personal BlackBerry.” Wait, a high ranking government official in the 21st century “doesn’t use personal computers”? Who is she, your grandmother that complains she can’t play solitaire because you closed the games directory on Windows 95?

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    .50 BMG vs. Peeps

    March 27th, 2016

    Enjoy this traditional Easter offering of a .50 BMG round vs. a long row of Peeps. It’s hardly a fair fight…

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    Posted in Guns, video | No Comments »

    Bomb Blast Targeting Christians in Lahore Pakistan Kills 56

    March 27th, 2016

    Another day, another Jihad suicide bombing:

    An explosion ripped through a crowded Pakistan park where Christians were celebrating Easter on Sunday, killing at least 56 people, officials told AFP.

    About 150 people were injured when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in the parking area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in the eastern city of Lahore, officials told Reuters.

    The explosion reportedly occurred just outside the exit gate and near rides for children.

    A police superintendent told Reuters most of the dead were women and children.

    The Pakistani ISI has supported jihad as an instrument of state policy since at least the creation of the Taliban. It’s tempting to call the increasing number of in-country jihad attacks as blow-back, except I’m not entirely sure how much (if any) the ISI and their deep state allies really care about the deaths of Pakistani Christians…

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    Posted in Jihad | 1 Comment »

    That “Cruz Adultery” Story is Ludicrous

    March 25th, 2016

    It looks like someone in Donald Trump’s orbit fed the National Enquirer a Ted Cruz adultery story originally peddled by Marco Rubio allies.

    The story is pretty much laughable, not only for the fact that it’s deeply out of character, but also that it strikes me as logistically impossible.

    Has no one ever seen Ted Cruz work on the campaign trail? The man’s a campaigning machine with a grueling schedule that would kill lesser mortals. When the hell is Cruz supposed to find time to have an affair? When on earth is he supposed to find time for one mistress, let alone five?

    It’s almost as ludicrous a theory as Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls never being shot dead and secretly collaborating on a comeback album with Joe Biden.

    Edited to add: Texas Monthly editor Erica Grieder finds the story as ludicrous as I do.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans | No Comments »

    48 More Waco Bikers Indicted

    March 25th, 2016

    Another update on the aftermath of the Waco shootout:

    A Texas grand jury indicted 48 more bikers Wednesday in connection with a May 2015 shootout outside a Twin Peaks restaurant that left nine dead, bringing the total number of people facing felony charges to 154.

    Prosecutors in Waco announced that all the bikers indicted are charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, meaning they’re accused of being complicit in the shooting that also left 20 people injured. They face 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

    McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna won indictments against 106 other bikers in November. In a statement Wednesday, he did not rule out more indictments in what he called “an ongoing investigation.”

    Six of the 48 people newly indicted have not been arrested, and their indictments remain under seal. But Reyna and the McLennan County district clerk’s office confirmed they were facing the same charge as other bikers. A spokeswoman for Reyna did not respond to a question about whether the grand jury declined to indict in any cases presented.

    Reyna has been harshly criticized by attorneys who say he’s prosecuting dozens of bikers who were at the restaurant only for a peaceful gathering of motorcycle clubs.

    Snip.

    Prosecutors have not indicted anyone specifically for murder in the nine deaths. The organized criminal activity charge incorporates allegations that every person indicted was responsible for the deaths and injuries that ensued in the gunfire.

    Dallas attorney Don Tittle said Wednesday’s indictments appeared to center on bikers who weren’t members of the two major clubs present — the Bandidos and the Cossacks — but rather part of smaller “support clubs.” Dozens of Bandidos and Cossacks have already been indicted.

    DA Reyna seems to be working on the novel (to America, anyway) theory of “collective guilt,” that if he can just get a grand jury to indict every member of every motorcycle club present at Twin Peaks that day merely for being in a motorcycle club, that will make up for his inability to charge any individual with murder.

    That’s not going to fly. Quantity is absolutely no substitute for quality in the criminal justice system. Ten months after the Twin Peaks shootout, public officials seem no closer to determining who killed who that day, and what role law enforcement overreaction and incompetence played in those deaths.

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    Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »

    Texas vs. California Update for March 24, 2016

    March 24th, 2016

    Time for another Texas vs. California update:

  • California’s underfunded pension debts put it $175.1 billion in the red. “More than 51 percent ($89.9 billion) of the negative $175.1 billion consists of unfunded, employee-related, long-term liabilities.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • A initiative to hike California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour has made the ballot. Also known as the “Send as much business as possible to Texas” act.
  • Speaking of which, Texas’ unemployment rate fell to 4.5% in January.
  • Germany and Sweden have lower median incomes than Texas. Indeed, were Germany and Sweden to join the union, they would instantly be among the poorest states.
  • Big Government advocates in California are fighting to renew a “temporary tax” on all those millionaires earning $250,000 or more a year. “The extension measure is again supported by the California Teachers Association and Service Employees International Union.”
  • California traffic fines have turned into a huge tax on the poor. “California is filled with people who are one traffic ticket away from losing their means of independent transportation. They get a ticket for a busted taillight or a small-change moving violation. On paper, the fine is $100, but with surcharges, it adds up to a lot more.” Which is why they’re having an amnesty to pay a reduced rate on outstanding tickets. But there’s a catch: “The practice of throwing in extra sources of revenue is so ingrained in Sacramento that there is a $50 amnesty program fee.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Fresno’s pension system “is the only public pension program in California – and one of only a few in the United States – that has a surplus instead of unfunded pension liabilities.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “When unfunded pension, medical and other liabilities are formally included on its balance sheet, the [Orange County] Fire Authority’s debts exceeded its assets by $169 million for the fiscal year that ended in June,” the Register’s OC Watchdog wrote. “That’s a plunge of more than 680 percent in its ‘net position,’ or more than $420 million, over a single year.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • California has a problem cutting pensions even when they’re going to convicted felons. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Assisted suicide becomes legal in California June 9.
  • How long will California continue to consider itself part of the United States? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Over 200 BART employees earned over $200,000 a year in total compensation.
  • California’s already long-delayed and already over-budget high speed rail fantasy is planning to put much of the initial segment underground due to community and environmental concerns. Problem: Digging those tunnels will probably cost $1 billion a mile.
  • California short-hauler Total Transportation Services Inc. files for bankruptcy.
  • “The parent company of Carl’s Jr., founded in Anaheim 60 years ago, is relocating its California headquarters to Nashville, Tenn.”
  • Kohl’s is closing nine stores in California, out of 18 total closing nationwide (none in Texas).
  • On the other hand, Sports Authority is closing slightly more stores in Texas (24) than California (19). Meh. I liked the stores more when they were Oshman’s…
  • California’s Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide Inc., which manufactures and sells fuel systems and storage tanks for vehicles fitted for compressed natural gas, filed for bankruptcy. The fact the company has already gone through two reverse splits suggests long-running troubles…
  • Of course, being in Texas won’t prevent some municipalities of spending like they’re in California: San Antonio to spend almost $100,000 on a toilet.
  • Likewise, Houston’s credit rating been downgraded by both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s due to “the city’s large unfunded pension liability.” Maybe former Houston Mayor Annise Parker should have spent more time on trimming expenses and fixing crummy surface streets than suing churches and tranny bathrooms…

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    Posted in Democrats, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Most 538 Scenarios Show Trump Failing to Clinch 1,237 Delegates by the Convention

    March 23rd, 2016

    For all that Donald Trump has roiled this primary season, he’s still far from clinching the nomination. In fact, the consensus scenario over at FiveThirtyEight shows him falling short at 1,208 delegates. More discussion of their methodology is here.

    Note, however, that they had Trump picking up 4 delegates from Utah, when he actually picked up zero, meaning here’s already fallen (slightly) off their projected pace.

    Trump could still win on the first ballot of the convention without an absolute majority of delegates going in, but that’s far from a sure thing. We could very well be headed for a brokered convention, and then all bets are off.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans | No Comments »

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