How Sick Is Hillary Clinton?

September 12th, 2016

In case you missed it over the weekend, Hillary Clinton collapsed in pubic.

Here’s the video:

“Her campaign later said that she was overheated and went to rest at her daughter’s apartment. She later came out from the apartment to demonstrate her condition to the media. She did not take questions.”

Yup, nothing at all suspicious there. As Ace of Spades notes: “If someone was unsteady on their feet and needed to be propped up, then buckled and fell, wouldn’t you take that person to the hospital? You would — unless this was a fairly frequent occurrence you had just gotten used to dealing with in-house.”

Team Hillary’s spin is that she just happens to be suffering from a number of completely unrelated health issues that all just happened to occur in a short period of time. The coughing? Allergies. The collapse? That was because she was “overheated.” No, wait, we mean she has pneumonia.

And now she’s cancelled a planned campaign trip to California.

You know what they call someone who suffers a bunch of unrelated illnesses in a short period of time? Sickly. Or just plain sick. If she was a character in a Gothic novel, they’d be asking “Will sickly Mrs. Clinton succumb to the baleful atmosphere of vast, chilly Kickback Manor?”

Here’s a rundown of all Clinton’s numerous recent maladies. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

Even the mainstream media has been forced to admit that it’s a real issue.

Does Clinton have Parkinson’s Disease? At least one doctor thinks so:

Among the Hillary emails released by Julian Assange was one by an aide (Jake Sullivan, if I remember right) giving her a summary on the effectiveness of a drug called Provigil — a drug often used to combat the mental lapses and lack of focus typical of Parkinson’s sufferers.

The video does have a Zapruderish “back and to the left, back and to the left” quality to it. So be prepared to tighten or loosen your tin foil helmet, per your own comfort level.

Nonetheless, much of it seems plausible.

He explains the freeze in front of the crowd many have discussed at 11:15. He says this is a common Parkinson’s reaction to overstimulous — the brain freezes, and needs a sort of ‘reset” to get going again. He notes that she repeats the words her handler says to her during the freeze, which he claims is a common Parkinson’s symptom, echoing the last thing you heard to get your brain firing regularly again.

He also explains the coughing fits. He says this is not bronchitis. Rather, he claims, Parkinson’s patients frequently have swallowing problems. They accidentally swallow food or liquid into their airways, their lungs. This aspirated food and water then causes pneumonia.

He doesn’t say this, but it can be guessed out: Per his theory, Hillary has had this case of pneumonia for a long time because she keeps getting pneumonia due to this tendency towards aspiration pneumonia.

It should be noted that aspiration pneumonia is a common symptom of Parkinson’s — indeed, it’s the leading cause of death among Parkinson’s sufferers.

Here’s the video Dr. Ted Noel put together:

And here’s that painful extended coughing fit she suffered earlier this month:

That doesn’t sound like “allergies” to me. (Here’s Rush Limbaugh on Hillary’s coughing spasm.)

Here’s more on the possibility Hillary has aspirational pneumonia:

I raise this second possibility because of Hillary’s history of neurological illnesses (blood clot in brain, concussion), hints raised on the internet in Wikileaks documents and by others that she may have a neurological disease like Parkinson’s, and her by now well documented history of recurrent coughing fits. This second possibility is that she has an aspiration pneumonia.

Aspiration pneumonia occurs when fluids and food particles that normally enter the esophagus instead enter the windpipe and lungs. It is commonly seen in neurological conditions like strokes and Parkinson’s disease or similar diseases where the nerves to the swallowing mechanism are not working properly. This is especially worrisome because it is likely to recur given the underlying, usually incurable disease process and because it can be a life-threatening event.

I consider aspiration pneumonia to be the more likely cause because it unifies all the pieces of disparate information that are available on Hillary’s medical condition. A diagnosis of aspiration pneumonia raises profoundly troubling implications for her possible election as president.

Remember Dr. Drew Pinsky expressing concern about her health and how Team Hillary got Google to hide search results on Hillary’s health. (And they’re still doing it. Even today, Google won’t auto complete “Hillary Health,” only “Hillary Health Care.” Of course, it’s a Pyrrhic victory, since the second search autocomplete result is now “hillary clinton seizure.”)

How bad would Clinton’s health have to get for Democrats to consider replacing her? And would it even be legal to do so at this point? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

LinkSwarm for September 9, 2016

September 9th, 2016

A short LinkSwarm for a short week…

  • Trump up by two in CNN poll.
  • Democrats on the verge of panic. Usual WSJ hoops apply. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • In the course of mocking Gary Johnson for not knowing which Syrian city is which, New York Times actually ends up making a worse mistake, eventually making a correction to their correction’s correction.
  • Conservative State Senator Andy Biggs wins his race for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District by 9 votes over more liberal GoDaddy executive Christine Jones, which will trigger an automatic recount.
  • NHS Rations health care to obese people and smokers. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Muslims in Buffalo, NY Say “F**k America!” After Being Arrested for Food Stamp Fraud.”
  • Muslim immigrants and the decline of Buffalo.
  • Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is an expert in regenerative medicine. And by “regenerative medicine” I mean academic fraud and killing patients. And that’s not all! He’s also a liar of such epic proportions he convinced his girlfriend that they were going to be personally married by the Pope…
  • The Swiss watch industry is doomed. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Nuclear ant colony hell. (Hat tip: Moe Lane)
  • Welcome Empower Texans To The Blogroll

    September 8th, 2016

    Here’s another link I’ve been meaning to add to the blogroll for a while: Empower Texans. Michael Quinn Sullivan’s group (a companion organization to Texans for Fiscal Responsibility) does a good job of covering Texas political news and drawing attention to government abuses.

    Well worth checking out.

    Houston Jury Smacks SEIU With $5.3 Million Award

    September 7th, 2016

    Here’s a rare thing: A union actually being held accountable for breaking the law:

    A Harris County jury on Tuesday awarded a Houston commercial cleaning firm $5.3 million in damages, finding that a labor union’s aggressive organizing campaign went too far when it maligned the reputation of the company. It opens the door for more employers to sue unions over hardball tactics often used in membership drives and contract disputes.

    The jury, by a 10-2 vote, found for Professional Janitorial Service in a suit the company brought nine years ago against the Service Employees International Union, which targeted the company as part of its “Justice for Janitors” organizing campaign and wrongly claimed Professional Janitorial Service had violated wage, overtime and other labor laws.

    The case was the first time that a jury has found against a union in a business defamation or disparagement case, according to a search of legal records by the company’s law firm, AZA of Houston.

    “The jury found what PJS and its employees have known for more than a decade,” Brent Southwell, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “The SEIU is a corrupt organization that is rotten to its core.”

    Snip.

    The trial, which lasted four weeks, represented the first time the SEIU, which has nearly 2 million members nationwide, has had to defend its tactics in front to a jury. Other cases, including a federal racketeering lawsuit filed by the international food, maintenance and cleaning company Sodexo in 2011, were settled before they ever got before a jury.

    Empower Texans has more background on SEIU tactics:

    One of the tactics many unions use to access potential members is “salting,” and the SEIU is no exception. Salting is the tactic of sending a union-affiliate to a targeted employer to apply for, and then accept a position working for the company. Since unions are often prohibited from contacting employees at work, salts do it for them.

    Two of the salts used against PJS were Adriana Menchu and Eleanor Parada; both have been reoccurring figures during the SEIU trial.

    The union used Menchu’s name in various campaigns, lawsuits, and fliers. In one flier she was quoted saying, “They don’t give us gloves or masks to clean. I know a woman who brings her own cleaning supplies from home just so she can protect her health.” Which PJS refuted with their longstanding policy prohibiting the use of any outside cleaning agents unless supplied by the company.

    SEIU fliers claimed that PJS failed to pay Menchu for hours worked, but internal union emails contradicted that statement saying that PJS was trying to “buy” Menchu off by giving her a raise. More evidence that they knew the information they were releasing was false.

    One press release read, “Mostly immigrant janitors were instructed to work ‘off-the-clock’ and had pay withheld by the city’s largest locally-based cleaning company, Professional Janitorial Service (PJS), according to a new lawsuit filed today.”

    Never revealing that SEIU was the party behind the lawsuit, or that the union planted the “janitors” they were referring to.

    Parada was another salt frequently used in lawsuits, and was quoted in an SEIU press release about the unfair labor practice suit they filed saying, “We work hard, but PJS thinks they can treat us however they want…That’s why PJS janitors are taking a stand today – so we can have some basic protections.”

    It’s worth noting that until the SEIU came to Houston to unionize janitors PJS had never faced labor violation allegations, had not been investigated by the Department of Labor or National Labor Relations Board, and had not had unfair labor practice lawsuits filed against them. Also, out of the 20 ULPs the union filed against PJS, 19 were dismissed with the last being rectified by simply having the employer post safety signs in the workplace.

    This (Half?) Week in Clinton Corruption for September 6, 2016

    September 6th, 2016

    So right after I put up two separate posts on Hillary Clinton’s corruption, the FBI drops the full (and by “full” I mean “heavily redacted”) summary report on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Jim Geraghty summarizes salient points from the FBI report in Monday’s Morning Jolt:

    1. The FBI investigation began because of a referral from the U.S. Intelligence Community Inspector General. This is not the vast right-wing conspiracy or one of Hillary Clinton’s partisan foes; the IG’s office is staffed by those whose professional duty is to protect our nation’s secrets. Looking at the evidence, they grew concerned that a crime may have or is likely to have been committed. The inspector general, I. Charles McCullough, III, is career law enforcement: FBI, Department of the Treasury, NSA.

    2. The FBI cannot prove conclusively that hostile foreign actors accessed her server; but they did find that “hostile foreign actors successfully gained access to the personal e-mail accounts of individuals with whom Clinton was in regular contact and, in doing so, obtained e-mails sent to or received by Clinton on that personal account.”

    3. As we all know, Clinton claimed she used the private server for “convenience” because she only wanted to use one device. The FBI found 13 total mobile devices used to send e-mails; they asked for them and Clinton’s lawyers said they could not locate any of those devices. The FBI identified five iPads used by Clinton; three were turned over to the FBI. Hillary’s Blackberry phones were off-the-shelf from AT&T stores around the Washington, D.C. area. Apparently Clinton didn’t like upgrades; “According to Abedin, it was not uncommon for Clinton to use a new Blackberry for a few days and then immediately switch it out for an older version with which she was more familiar.”

    No one knows where the old phones are; in two instances, her phones were destroyed with a hammer. This means there are eleven or so mobile phones with God knows how much classified information on them effectively missing.

    4. Clinton was obligated to get permission to use her personal device; at no time did she do so. Everything she has said about her use of the personal device being permitted is completely false.

    5. “State employees alleged that John Bentel, [a senior State Department official, handling IT for senior officials] discouraged employees from raising concerns about Clinton’s use of personal e-mail.” When interviewed by the FBI, Bentel denied anyone raising any concerns, that he had discouraged anyone from raising those concerns, or that he was aware she was using a personal account for State business. This seems implausible. As Clinton herself said to the FBI, it was common knowledge among State Department employees.

    6. This should be thrown in the face of any Clinton defender who cites Colin Powell as an exculpatory witness:

    7. “In 2011, a notice to all State employees was sent on Clinton’s behalf, which recommended employees avoid conducting State business on personal e-mail accounts due to information security concerns.” Clinton said she didn’t recall sending that notice or ever getting any advice on using personal accounts.

    Clinton told the FBI she could not recall or not remember 39 times.

    Here’s the really galling part, considering the screams of outrage that greet any comment about Clinton’s age or health in this election cycle:

    CLINTON stated she received no instructions or direction regarding the preservation or production of records from State during the transition out of her role as Secretary of State in early 2013. However, in December of 2012, CLINTON suffered a concussion and then around the New Year had a blood clot. Based on her doctor’s advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received. CLINTON did not have any discussions with aides about turning over her email records, nor did anyone from State request them. She believed her work-related emails were captured by her practice of sending email to the state.gov email address of her staff. CLINTON was unaware of the requirement to turn over printed records at that time. Her physical records were boxed up and handled by aides.

    In other Clinton Corruption news:

  • Also interesting about the FBI report is what was left out: “There is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the former secretary of state about emails to and from Clinton aides regarding Clinton Foundation business.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Did Team Clinton destroy evidence? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “I consider the Clinton Foundation to be a charity fraud network. I base this conclusion on my review of extensive data about its operations including the activities of the Clinton family and their friends in Haiti, a nation that has suffered many disasters, both natural and manmade.”
  • “There are only two things I can identify at which the Clinton Foundation excels: putting cash in the bank and spending it.”
  • How can former State Department employee Cheryl Mills be Hillary Clinton’s counsel during the investigation when she was also a material witness and participant in the crimes being investigated? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Ashe Schow notes that you can’t keep track of Clinton scandals without a scorecard. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Hillary Clinton does not sound at all well. No, really. She has like a five minute coughing fit she tries to talk through. The last time I heard someone cough that much, they died at the hopsital later that week.
  • Inside Bill Clinton’s $18 million phony baloney job as “honorary chancellor” of for-profit Laureate International Universities. $18 million is a whole lot of “honorary.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • LinkSwarm for September 2, 2016

    September 2nd, 2016

    Happy Labor Day Weekend, everyone!

  • Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are in a statistical tie.
  • Ditto Rasmussen: Trump 40%, Clinton 39%. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • 538: Don’t Assume The Electoral College Will Save Clinton.
  • Let us celebrate the fall of Alan Grayson with a look back at his greatest hits.
  • Huge food stamp fraud bust in Baltimore. More than half those arrested have names like “Mulazam Hussain.”
  • How the New York Times lies about red state vs. blue state prosperity.
  • Milo Yiannopoulos decries the Islamicization of London and declares he’s leaving.
  • “After a lengthy period of deliberation, the Brazilian parliament has formally removed from office President Dilma Rousseff, the corrupt left-wing populist who has been trying to do for Brazil what Hugo Chávez and his epigones did for Venezuela.” This is at NRO, which has recently installed an AdBlocker blocker, so good luck reading it. If it’s a choice between turning off my AdBlocker or giving up on reading NRO, I’ll give up on reading NRO, even though I subscribe to NRODT. Though I am still trying to figure out which combination of RefControl, GreaseMonkey and cookie deletion that will block the AdBlocker blocker…
  • Would you bite the hand that feeds you? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Is this Indonesian man really 145 years old? He does sort of look it…
  • Lefty science fiction writer John Shirley (who I workshopped with at a Turkey City many moons ago) has penned a piece on why science fiction needs conservatives at Tangent Online. And I’m accurately quoted. The big caveat is that Shirley doesn’t understand modern conservatism at all, doesn’t know what they’re trying to conserve, and doesn’t make mention of constitutional rights or limited government. But at least he’s recognized how Social Justice Warriors are poisoning the field.
  • “Alabama ACLU sues government, claiming pro-Muslim discrimination.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Are Austin’s red light cameras illegal?
  • The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.
  • Newly hired woman explains how she got screwed out of her paycheck by a Silicon Valley startup. She also ignored several early warning signs…
  • Great story from Charles James II on how he made the Texans. “If you need a story to give you hope, I want you to lean on mine. As long as your most valuable measurable is your work ethic, there’s no reason you can’t be successful at whatever you wish to do.”
  • “Everyone was loving Montreal’s family-friendly puppet festival until the prison rape part.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Looks like your creepy Halloween stories are starting a little early this year: “At the edge of dark, dark woods in South Carolina, children have been telling adults that a group of clowns have been trying to lure them into the cluster of trees. They say the clowns live deep in the woods, near a house by a pond.” (Hat tip: Althouse.)
  • Workers tear up sidewalk to free a dog. With heart-tugging photo.
  • Clinton Bilked Taxpayers To Pay for Illegal Email Server

    September 1st, 2016

    This story broke today just after my weekly Clinton Corruption roundup went up, and I don’t want to wait an entire work for it to appear in the next one. (Besides, I’m sure there will be no shortage of Clinton scandals between now and then to cover.)

    Bill Clinton’s staff used a decades-old federal government program, originally created to keep former presidents out of the poorhouse, to subsidize his family’s foundation and an associated business, and to support his wife’s private email server, a POLITICO investigation has found.

    Taxpayer cash was used to buy IT equipment — including servers — housed at the Clinton Foundation, and also to supplement the pay and benefits of several aides now at the center of the email and cash-for-access scandals dogging Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

    Snip.

    Even as the Clintons got rich and grew their foundation into a $2 billion organization credited with major victories in the fights against childhood obesity and AIDS — while paying six-figure salaries to top aides — Bill Clinton continued drawing more cash from the Former President’s Act than any other ex-president, according to a POLITICO analysis. The analysis also found that Clinton’s representatives, between 2001, when the Clintons left the White House, and the end of this year, had requested allocations under the Act totaling $16 million. That’s more than any of the other living former presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush — requested during that span.

    Well, the Clintons needed more money than all the other ex-Presidents combined because they’re more corrupt than all the ex-Presidents combined.

    using the GSA records, POLITICO pieced together a list of Clinton loyalists who at various times have had their earnings supplemented by federal payments of about $10,000-a-year using funds from the Former Presidents Act.

    The list reads like a field guide to Clinton World.

    It includes longtime Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper, who despite not having a security clearance, any apparent training in cybersecurity or a job at the State Department, in early 2009 helped set up the private email account that Hillary Clinton would use to send and receive classified information as secretary of state. Her use of that system has been dubbed “extremely careless” by the FBI director. Cooper continued working to maintain Clinton’s private email system — including advising her top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, on attempted hacks — through at least 2012, according to emails released by the State Department.

    During some of that period, Cooper was on the GSA payroll, drawing a federal government stipend from February 2011 through 2013, according to the records obtained by POLITICO.

    At the same time, though, Cooper was working with Doug Band, a trusted Bill Clinton lieutenant, and Declan Kelly, a top Hillary Clinton fundraiser-turned-State Department official, to launch a global consulting firm called Teneo. It did lucrative work for foundation donors and entities with business before Clinton’s State Department. And it signed a contract reportedly worth $3.5 million with Bill Clinton to serve as a “honorary chairman” (though the former president ultimately kept only $100,000 of that, according to his tax returns and a source familiar with the arrangement). Teneo also paid Abedin as a “senior advisor.”

    All the while, Band and Abedin were working together to broker meetings between Secretary of State Clinton and donors to the foundation, where Band served as an official until 2012, drawing an annual salary that in some years exceeded $111,000.

    Yet, despite the profitable consulting business and his foundation compensation, Band continued drawing a taxpayer-funded stipend from the GSA until 2013.

    Also receiving a salary from both the GSA and the Clinton Foundation was Laura Graham, who remained in extremely close contact with Clinton’s top aide at the State Department, swapping emails about sensitive foreign policy issues. During most of her time on the GSA payroll, Graham was earning a six-figure salary from the Clinton Foundation, which topped out at $190,000 per year in 2014.

    Cooper, Band and Graham are no longer on the GSA payroll, nor are they working for the foundation. They all either declined to comment or did not respond to questions about the overlap between their taxpayer-funded work, the foundation and the State Department.

    Clinton corruption! You’re soaking in it! And paying for it…

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ and Jim Gegherty’s Morning Jolt.)

    This Week in Clinton Corruption for September 1, 2016

    September 1st, 2016

    Another week, another Hillary Clinton corruption roundup. Remember, this is only what I had time to compile among all my other work, blogging, writing, etc. Cataloging Clinton corruption could easily be a full time job…

  • This week brought still more evidence that Hillary lied about her emails. (Clip and save that preceding sentence, as I’m sure you’ll be able to use it again.) “Approximately 30 of the 14,900 deleted emails recovered by the FBI from Hillary Clinton’s private email server may involve the 2012 attack on Benghazi, Libya, State Department lawyers said on Tuesday.”
  • She even sent out classified emails after she left office. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • The FBI is also gong to release the report that led to the Hillary non-indictment. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • 25 questions Hillary Clinton must answer under oath by September 29. This is another outgrowth of the Judicial Watch lawsuit. It being Hillary, I’m betting she finds some way to finagle out of it, or push it back after the election.
  • Legal loophole let’s state Democratic parties launder big money from federal donors over the legal limit right back to Hillary. Hillary’s the candidate of the fat cats, by the fat cats, and for the fat cats. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Hillary Clinton doesn’t discriminate: If you’re willing to give her large sums of money, she’s willing to take it, even if you’re on the terror watch no-fly list.
  • There were also at least five felons among Clinton Foundation donors.
  • Former Clinton campaign operative dishes the dirt. “She sleeps approximately 18 hours a day.” Usual anonymous source caveats apply. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • A record number of voters dislike Hillary Clinton.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Dr. Drew Pinsky’s show on headline News cancelled right after he says he’s gravely concerned about Hillary Clinton’s health. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • More Dr. Drew on Hillary’s health.
  • “Recent search engine results indicate Google, whose CEO is a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is suppressing negative search results about the Democratic party’s presidential nominee.” Indeed, the fervor with which Hillary’s backers and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) attempt to suppress discussion of Hillary’s health issues suggests there’s something deeply damaging there…
  • What a Dick

    August 31st, 2016

    Anthony Weiner got caught sexting pics of his crotch yet again, this time with his child lying next to him. So his wife, Hillary Clinton’s all-everything functionary Huma Abedin, announced they were separating.

    Now, I don’t want to kick a guy when he’s down, so let us pass over this family tragedy in respectful sihahahahahha!

    Sorry, couldn’t type that and keep a straight face. Weiner deserves not only all the criticism and cheap dick puns he’s getting, he deserves a never-ending stream of cock punches to go with it.

    So let’s roast this Weiner.

    How freaking stupid do you have to be to get caught doing the same stupid, sleazy thing you’ve already been caught doing for a third time? That’s like a thug repeatedly robbing the same convenience he’s already robbed before, despite the fact his wanted posted is hanging behind the counter. Each incident has been more sad and squalid than the last. Carlos Danger and Sydney Leathers at least sound like they could have come from one of those James Bond porno parody novels from the 60s; his latest boner is like something from one of those trashy reality shows where two cheating spouses scream at each other in front of a whooping audience. At this point, you have to assume Weiner’s getting off on the humiliation.

    He also finally deleted his Twitter account, which is like closing the barn door five years after the cow has burned down not only Chicago, but every other township in a 200 mile radius.

    And then there’s his wife. Maybe she welcomed the latest scandal as a chance to stop answering questions about her familial Muslim Brotherhood connections and how she helped aid and abet her patron’s felonies.

    “She may not know what’s best for herself, but she apparently knows what’s best for Hillary Clinton. I mean, she’s in line, she’s chief aide now. She’s presumably gonna be Hillary’s chief of staff. But she has not been chief of her husband’s staff, obviously.”

    What is it about the Clintons that makes them attract such a deranged freakshow of damaged courtiers and cronies to their orbit? It’s a shambling parade of the morally deformed and emotionally crippled. And there’s a good chance they’ll pitch their tent on the White House lawn come January…

    Texas vs. California Update for August 30, 2016

    August 30th, 2016
  • A new ranking of Freedom in the 50 states is out. Texas ranked 28th (too low, IMHO) while California ranked 49th:
    • Texas:

      Texas’s fiscal policy is very good. It is a fiscally decentralized state, with local taxes at about 4.5 percent of personal income, above the national average, and state taxes at about 3.6 percent of income, well below the national average. However, Texans don’t have much choice of local government, with only 0.36 jurisdictions per 100 square miles. State and local debt is above average (with the biggest problem being local debt burdens), at 23.1 percent of income, but it has come down slightly since FY 2011. Government subsidies are below average. Public employment has fallen significantly below average, at 11.8 percent of private employment.

      Texas’s land-use freedom keeps housing prices down. It also has a regulatory taking compensation law, but it only applies to state government. The renewable portfolio standard has not been raised in years. Texas is our top state for labor-market freedom. Workers’ compensation coverage is optional for employers; most employees are covered, but not all. The state has a right-to-work law, no minimum wage, and a federally consistent anti-discrimination law. Cable and telecommunications have been liberalized. However, health insurance mandates were quite high as of 2010, the last available date. The extent of occupational licensing is high, but the state recently enacted a sunrise review requirement for new licensure proposals. Time will tell whether it is at all effective. Nurse practitioners enjoy no freedom of independent practice at all. Texas has few cronyist entry and price regulations, but it does have a price-gouging law, and Tesla’s direct sales model is still illegal. The civil liability system used to be terrible, but now it is merely below average. The state abolished joint and several liability in 2003, but it could do more to cap punitive damages and end parties’ role in judicial elections.

    • California:

      Although it has long been significantly freer on personal issues than the national average, California has also long been one of the lowest-scoring states on economic freedom.

      Despite Proposition 13, California is one of the highest-taxed states in the country. Excluding severance and motor fuel taxes, California’s combined state and local tax collections were 10.8 percent of personal income. Moreover, because of the infamous Serrano decision on school funding, California is a fiscally centralized state. Local taxes are about average nationally, while state taxes are well above average. Government debt is high, at 22.8 percent of personal income. The state subsidizes business at a high rate (0.16 percent of the state economy). However, government employment is lower than the national average.

      Regulatory policy is even more of a problem for the state than fiscal policy. California is one of the worst states on land-use freedom. Some cities have rent control, new housing supply is tightly restricted in the coastal areas, and eminent domain reform has been nugatory. Labor law is anti-employment, with no right-to-work law, high minimum wages, strict workers’ comp mandates, mandated short-term disability insurance, and a stricter-than-federal anti-discrimination law. Occupational licensing is extensive and strict, especially in construction trades. It is tied for worst in nursing practice freedom. The state’s mandatory cancer labeling law (Proposition 65) has significant economic costs. It is one of the worst states for consumer freedom of choice in homeowner’s and automobile insurance.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • Texas tops yet another list as the best place to work and live.
  • “This notion of California as a land of outsiders is being turned on its head, our state’s dream repackaged – often with the approval of its ruling hegemons – as something more like a medieval city, expelling the poor and the young, while keeping the state’s blessings to the well-educated, well-heeled and generally older population”:

    California has been bleeding people to other states for more than two decades. Even after the state’s “comeback,” net domestic out-migration since 2010 has exceeded 250,000. Moreover, the latest Internal Revenue Service migration data, for 2013-2014, does not support the view that those who leave are so dominated by the flight of younger and poorer people.

    Of course, younger people tend to move more than older people, and people seeking better job opportunities are more likely to move than those who have made it. But, according to the IRS, nearly 60,000 more Californians left the state than moved in between 2013 and 2014. In each of the seven income categories and each of the five age categories, the IRS found that California lost net domestic migrants.

    Nor, viewed over the long term, is California getting smarter than its rivals. Since 2000, California’s cache of 25- to 34-year-olds with college, postgraduate and professional degrees grew by 36 percent, below the national average of 42 percent, and Texas’ 47 percent. If we look at metropolitan regions, the growth of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees since 2000 has been more than 1.5 to nearly 3 times as fast in Houston and Austin as in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Even New York, with its high costs, is doing better.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit, who also notes “I remember talking to the Investor’s Business Daily folks a few years ago — they were headquartered in Marina Del Rey, a lovely place but one where they were constantly visited by inspectors, tax people, etc., all posing problems. When they opened an office in Texas, the state and local government people were all ‘tell us if we can help you.’ Very different experience.”)

  • “IRS Data: More Americans are relocating to Texas.” Though why an article datelined El Paso, and quoting only El Paso experts, uses a photo of Austin’s skyline to illustrate the story is a mystery…
  • The California Teacher’s Association: the worst union in America:

    Seen as a national leader in the classroom during the 1950s and 1960s, the country’s largest state is today a laggard, competing with the likes of Mississippi and Washington, D.C., at the bottom of national rankings. The Golden State’s education tailspin has been blamed on everything from class sizes to the property-tax restrictions enforced by Proposition 13 to an influx of Spanish-speaking students. But no portrait of the system’s downfall would be complete without a depiction of the CTA, a political behemoth that blocks meaningful education reform, protects failing and even criminal educators, and inflates teacher pay and benefits to unsustainable levels.

    Also this:

    According to figures from the California Fair Political Practices Commission (a public institution) in 2010, the CTA had spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on political campaigning—more than any other donor in the state. In fact, the CTA outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the tobacco industry combined.

  • California state appeals court rules unanimously that, yes, public employee pension benefits can indeed be reduced. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • The court giveth, the court taketh away, as the Vergara lawsuit ends with a whimper, meaning teachers unions can screw poor kids in California for the immediate future.
  • Meanwhile, California’s Democrat-controlled legislature passes a bill to get their fingers on private retirement funds create a plan to create a pension for private employee who don’t have one. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • No, it’s just to create more opportunities for graft through taxation. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • California’s cap-and-trade program is a colossal failure, and it may take the high speed rail boondoggle down with it:

    California concluded its most recent cap-and-trade program auction last week. Out of 44,268,323 metric tons of carbon dioxide credits offered for sale by the state Air Resources Board, only 660,560 were sold, 1.5 percent of the total, raising a paltry $8.4 million out of a hoped-for $620 million. Last May’s auction was almost as bad, raising $10 million out of an anticipated $500 million.

    California’s carbon dioxide cap-and-trade auction program was expected to bring in more than $2 billion in the current fiscal year that ends June 30, 2017, a quarter of which is earmarked for the high-speed rail project narrowly approved by voters in a 2008 ballot initiative. As a hedge against uncertainty, a $500 million reserve was built into the cap-and-trade budget. But, with the August auction falling 98.5 percent short, the entire reserve was consumed in the first of four auctions for the fiscal year.

    It gets better:

    In the meantime, the High-Speed Rail project, currently promised to cost “only” $68 billion to run from the Bay Area some 400 miles south to Los Angeles may be looking at $50 billion in overruns. To fund the costly train, which was sold to voters as not costing a dime in new taxes, the expected revenue stream from cap-and-trade has been securitized, putting the state on the hook to Wall Street for billions in construction money advanced on the promise of future cap-and-trade revenue.

  • California spends $1.5 billion for Chinook salmon.
  • The corrupt city of Maywood, California hired an engineering firm whose employees were so hard-working they put in 27 hour days.
  • The collapse of high-end California wine merchant Premier Cru, a $45 million wine Ponzi scheme.
  • Three skilled nursing facilities in Humboldt County, California to close because they can’t find enough nurses. Humboldt County is up on the Northern California coast.
  • The Inland Empire in Southern California, still reeling from its foreclosure crisis, saw the biggest jump in income inequality in the state at more than 40 percent. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Toastmasters International to move from Orange County, California to Colorado.
  • And least you think Texas is complete immune from pension worries, the Employees Retirement System of Texas is set to run out of money as well…in 2063. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • If California farmland overvalued?
  • California judge faces recall over being being too lenient to a sex offender. If the recall succeeds, liberals may very well regret setting this precedent…
  • California Governor Jerry Brown may push “green” initiatives, but he’s more than happy to take money for doing regulatory favors for Chevron and Occidental Petroleum. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • From 2010: California’s abandoned wind farms.