Regular BattleSwarm readers already know about Tesla, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan moving from California to Texas. It looks like those were just the first pebbles of the avalanches of companies and people looking to get the hell out of the formerly golden state. Eager to enjoy such rarefied amenities as low taxes, sane government, a sane regulatory environment, open restaurants and regular access to electricity, other companies that have recently announced they’re moving their headquarters from Texas to California include:
HPE Inc. is moving its headquarters from San Jose to the Houston area, the enterprise information technology giant announced Tuesday, citing “business needs, opportunities for cost savings and team members’ preferences about the future of work.”
The company’s new HQ will be at the new campus that has been under construction since the beginning of the year in Spring, Texas, just north of Houston. It’s the second time HPE has moved its headquarters in the last three years: In 2018, the company left Palo Alto for San Jose.
CEO Antonio Neri and several other senior executives plan to relocate to Houston, HPE spokesman Adam Bauer told the Business Journal.
The move will be a homecoming for Neri, who spent years as a Hewlett-Packard executive in Houston before the Palo Alto-based company split into HP Inc. and HPE.
“We intend to maintain a robust presence in our historical birthplace of Silicon Valley, including housing the headquarters of Aruba at our San Jose campus that opened in 2019,” Neri said in a statement. “There are no layoffs associated with this move, and we are committed to both markets as key parts of our talent and real estate strategies in a post-pandemic world.”
Some corporate roles will be given the option to relocate to Houston, but no one will be forced to move, Bauer said. One big cost-of-living lure for those who do decide to move to Houston: HPE won’t be lowering the salaries of employees who relocate.
Note that Hewett Packard Enterprise is a separate company from Hewett Packard, from which it split from in 2015. HP makes desktop PCs and laser printers, while HPE provides enterprise equipment, services, high performance computing, etc. Both own buildings in the Houston area from HP acquiring Compaq in 2002.
“We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,” Oracle said in a statement.
“Depending on their role, this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all the time.”
“While some states are driving away businesses with high taxes and heavy-handed regulations, we continue to see a tidal wave of companies like Oracle moving to Texas thanks to our friendly business climate, low taxes, and the best workforce in the nation,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said.
“Most important of all, these companies are looking for a home where they have the freedom to grow their business and better serve their employees and customers, and when it comes to economic prosperity, there is no place like the Lone Star State,” Abbott added.
Texas has no personal or corporate income tax.
Texas has ranked first for attracting California companies for more than 12 years, according to a report by Spectrum Location Solutions. Roughly 660 California companies moved 765 facilities out of state in 2018 and 2019.
“California companies leave because the state’s business climate continues to worsen, particularly with the harsh employment, immigration and spending measures that Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved,” said Joseph Vranich, the author of the study. “I foresee more exits because California politicians have a level of contempt for business that has reached epic lows.”
Unlike Musk, Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison won’t be moving to Texas, but will continue to work from his own private Hawaiian island. Can’t say I blame the guy.
Conservative media pundit Ben Shapiro didn’t move his California company to Texas, he moved it to Nashville. But his reasons why apply just as well:
This is the most beautiful state in the country. The climate is incredible. The scenery is amazing. The people generally are warm, and there’s an enormous amount to do.
And we’re leaving.
We’re leaving because all the benefits of California have eroded steadily — and then suddenly collapsed. Meanwhile, all the costs of California have increased steadily — and then suddenly skyrocketed. It can be difficult to spot the incremental encroachment of a terrible disease, but once the final ravages set in, it becomes obvious the illness is fatal. So, too, with California, where bad governance has turned a would-be paradise into a burgeoning dystopia.
When my family moved to North Hollywood, I was 11. We lived in a safe, clean suburb. Yes, Los Angeles had serious crime and homelessness problems, but those were problems relegated to pockets of the city — problems that, with good governance, we thought eventually could be healed. Instead, the government allowed those problems to metastasize. As of 2011, Los Angeles County counted less than 40,000 homeless; as of 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 66,000. Suburban areas have become the sites of homeless encampments. Nearly every city underpass hosts a tent city; the city, in its kindness, has put out port-a-potties to reduce the possibility of COVID-19 spread.
Police are forbidden in most cases from either moving transients or even moving their garbage. Nearly every public space in Los Angeles has become a repository for open waste, needles and trash. The most beautiful areas of Los Angeles, from Santa Monica beach to my suburb, have become wrecks. My children personally have witnessed drug use, public urination and public nudity. Looters were allowed free reign in the middle of the city during the Black Lives Matter riots; Rodeo Drive was closed at 1 p.m., and citizens were curfewed at 6 p.m.
To combat these trends, local and state governments have gamed the statistics, reclassifying offenses and letting prisoners go free. Meanwhile, the police have become targets for public ire. In July, the city of Los Angeles slashed police funding, cutting the force to its lowest levels in more than 10 years.
At the same time, taxes have risen. California’s top marginal income tax rate is now 13.3 percent; legislators want to raise it to 16.8 percent. California also is home to a 7.25 percent sales tax, a 50-cent gas tax and a bevy of other taxes that drain the wallet and burden business. California has the worst regulatory climate in America, according to CEO Magazine’s survey of 650 CEOs. The public-sector unions essentially make public policy, running up the debt while providing fewer and fewer actual services. California’s public education system is a massive failure, and even its once-great colleges now are burdened by the stupidities of political correctness, including an unwillingness to use standardized testing.
Still, the state legislature is dominated by Democrats. California is not on a trajectory toward recovery; it is on a trajectory toward oblivion. Taxpayers are moving out — now including my family and my company. In 2019, before the pandemic and the widespread rioting and looting, outmigration jumped 38 percent, rising for the seventh straight year. That number will increase again this year.
I want my kids to grow up safe. I want them to grow up in a community with a future, with more freedom and safety than I grew up with. California makes that impossible.
What Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Chuck DeVore said of his own exodus from California remains true:
As with most of the tens of thousands of Californians who have moved to the Lone Star State annually in recent years, we did so for opportunity borne of greater freedom: lower taxes, greater private property rights and less government to tell you what to do.
Before the move, our household had also grown as we took in my wife’s parents. Lifelong New Yorkers, they were in declining health and clearly could no longer live on their own. With four adults and two children in an Irvine home designed for a smaller family, it was clear the arrangements could only be temporary.
But the supply of housing had been constrained for so long in California that prices were simply out of reach. This was largely due to restrictive zoning, heavy environmental regulatory burdens and lawsuits. If we were going to take care of my in-laws, it was likely not going to be in California.
Snip.
So we sold our house in Southern California and moved to Texas, settling in the Hill Country about 25 miles southwest of Austin. Our new home was 70 percent larger (with 12 times the property) than our California home, and it had a swimming pool — all for $110,000 less. Most importantly, the ground floor had two extra bedrooms and a bathroom for my in-laws — not having to walk upstairs was a significant factor in our home search.
We’ve found Texans to be a friendly, liberty-loving bunch. Though where we moved, it seems half the neighborhood hails from California, with the number of friends we have from the Golden State moving to the Lone Star State growing by the year.
California still has great weather and a beautiful coastline, but the remaining advantages it had over Texas (dynamic high tech and entertainment industries, great restaurants, etc.) are all eroding away due to gross Democratic Party mismanagement.
Let’s hope that Californians fleeing the state for Texas leave their dysfunctional politics behind.
Tags: Antonio Neri, Austin, Ben Shapiro, California, Chuck DeVore, Democrats, Hewett Packard Enterprise, Houston, Oracle, Texas, Westlake (Metroplex)
Here’s our challenge, and we need to discuss it at length. How do we keep Texas, well, Texas?
For too many consecutive election seasons, I’ve seen our already purple state slide to a slightly bluer hue. The D’s have threatened to “turn Texas blue” and always failed … but they haven’t given up, and incremental gains continue.
Cruz almost lost to freaking furry-ass Beto, for crying out loud. That margin of victory was too slim. Especially for Texas. Moreover, it wasn’t so long ago our state was helmed by Ann Richards. Was that a one-time lucky shot (thanks to Williams’ quip “relax and enjoy it”)? I’d rather not rest on our laurels.
The D’s have the money and patience for the long game here. Plus if they win once, it won’t be considered “close” thereafter. They’ll happily proclaim 51% is a “solidly blue” state, and in the self-fulfilling psychology of the electorate, the next election will be 53%, then 57%, and then we are California. Sure, by that point the left coast will be Venezuela, but won’t make our blue-state status any happier.
How do we keep Texas red? How do we make it redder? It’s hard enough with Silicon Valley, Hollywood, every major news outlet, and the rest with their thumb nakedly on the scale for the other side. Just treading water is getting harder … and we need to aim higher than simply keeping what we have. Like Patton said, we’re “holding” nothing.
One suggestion: take Democrat talking points and translate them into Spanish, then run ads on every station that will carry them. Puberty blockers? Latinx? Abortion up to and after birth? Disgust for Catholic values? Show our Tejano friends what it means to be a Democrat. Add in playing footsie with the cartels, shipping every job possible to China and elsewhere.
If we couldn’t keep America, America we won’t keep Texas, Texas.
Unless Texas secedes.
Get ready for Venezuelayzation.
This was a war.
This was a war of traitors from within.
They stabbed us in the back.
We played nice.
We lost.
We are back to before 1776.
Want America back?
Bleating won’t do.
You know how it’s done.
The American way.
Some things never change.
100,000 years ago somebody, for sure, tried to enslave or kill our ancestors.
They didn’t.
Or we wouldn’t be here.
You know why.
That’s how it’s done.
We’ll just have to do it all again.
We know how.
We have the tools.
We have the tools because that’s who we are and because this was foreseen by the Founding Fathers.
And written down in the Constitution.
The Constitution the lefto-pukes are now using as toilet paper.
We know better.
Let’s get to work.
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On the flip side, the weather in much of TX is problematic. When I lived in Austin, when I would complain about how hot and humid it was, I was reminded that at least it wasn’t Houston, even more humid, and occasionally visited by hurricanes. Eventually, I took a job in Phoenix, where I found the summers more tolerable. And wasn’t, in my experience, subject to fire ants. Of course, I hadn’t taken into account the effects of state income taxes, and my “raise” disappeared on April 15.
I was also surprised by an article I read a day or two ago, which had TX as the biggest energy importer in the country – ahead of even CA. Surprised because of all the oil and gas they produce. CA earned their position in that area legitimately – through horrible policies that shutdown energy production, made expansion costly and almost impossible, while shoveling billions of dollars to feckless “green energy” pipe dreams. TX doesn’t have an excuse, except that much of it is either too flat, or too dry, for much hydro power. But the state is easily big enough that nuclear or hydrocarbon based generation facilities could be built far enough out that no population centers would be endangered.
Still, I am looking for a nice income tax free state for a couple years to cash out a lot of locked in real estate appreciation. I kinda liked Austin, when I lived there, but it appears to have gone downhill significantly since I left a bit over 20 years ago. We shall see. WA also has no state income taxes, and is a lot more convenient. But it now has horrible gun laws, while TX Dems to be moving in the right direction there. Lived in a very nice part of NV for awhile a decade ago, but the state seems to have taken an abrupt left turn recently. We shall see.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Texas will soon be another 3rd world cesspool just like California, accelerated by the influx of liberals from California and elsewhere. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I don’t hear signs of Google leaving.
California had a 60/40ish Blue/Red split. Many of those leaving are conservatives who can’t keep their heads down any longer.
While New Hampshire has already been lost to Blue for national elections, the republicans flipped the exectuive counsel and both Senate and House of reps this November. Gov Sununu is doing his best to get the message out:
https://www.insidesources.com/leaving-a-high-tax-state-for-new-hampshire-leave-your-politics-behind-sununu-says/
Despite a collapse in credibility mass media influence, reinforced by social media, is deepening and slowly and inexorably spreading. As Democratic party operatives and propagandists they have the ability to shape perception of both issues and individual politicians to the detriment of Conservatives.
On climate change (for example) too many Americans are intellectually, culturally and *emotionally* incapable of deviating from the approved narrative; in similar fashion they find a guy like Ted Cruz, whose image among these people is forever fixed, impossible to support.
It is these Americans who are emigrating from Democratic strongholds and will be used to politically colonize Conservative states. In my view little/nothing can be done to change their fundamental political dispositions (though it is useful to try) but one way or another the propaganda messaging must be effectively countered, rendered ineffective or ceased entirely.
Yesterday, my son who works in Phoenix, was chatting with a female coworker who moved to Arizona last year from the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. Like my son, the girl grew up in the “Valley” part of LA.
Recently, her fiance relocated from LA to Phoenix to move in with her.
Thirteen adult members and two children in the girl’s family made the same move to Arizona in 2020. Five adults in her fiance’s family are planning to
move from LA to Phoenix in 2021. That’s 14 taxpayers gone from Cali this year, with 5 more on the way out….just from two families.
Nearly everyone I know near retirement age has an escape plan to get away from this high tax – crappy service model of government.
California’s one-party dictators should be alarmed at the exodus of taxpayers, but I doubt they are. As far as I can tell, those Democrat crook bastards would rather rule unchallenged in an impoverished, totalitarian crime-ridden third world hellhole than share power in a prosperous peaceful society.
Consider this (I just learned yesterday):
• There are more Trump voters in California than Texas.
• There are more Biden voters in Texas than New York.
Every state is far more purple than one would expect. Few states are deep blue or deep red.
But this isn’t an opportunity to “turn California red” because despite the numbers they’re nowhere close to parity. Texas is a different story.
More along this vein:
• There are more Trump voters in New York than Ohio.
• There are more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts.
• There are more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi.
• There are more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.
Sources:
• https://xkcd.wtf/2399/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#Results_by_state
It’s tempting to think, “what if we entice just the Trump voters to leave CA and NY?”
But … a Trump voter in those states may be closer to a Texas Democrat than a Texas Republican. Susan Collins and Olympia Snow are good where they are, a firewall against certain organizations going to the blue tribe, even though we often feel they’re RINOs.
Californians are zealots. Despite the fact that the state and most municipalities have been run almost exclusively by Democrats for over over 20 years, they do not attribute its failures to Democrat policies. I’ve lived here my entire life (still do) and it breaks my heart to see what has happened to this beautiful state. Keep control of your schools – stay active in the PTA, run for local school boards, teach if you can. They will make gradual changes through donations, speakers, events – gently introducing liberal ideas at first and then insisting upon them. Liberal doctrine is fully incorporated into the curriculum here, and once you’ve lost the kids, you’ve lost the future. If that is not your interest or expertise, stay involved on local planning boards and commissions, local library, etc. Getting involved is the only way.
@Howard
Even with all the moves, CA still is 39M and TX 29M, so it is not surprising that there are more Trump voters in CA than in TX.
Further, you might be interested to know that in the 2018 US Senate race, native Texans broke for Beto while imports gave Ted Cruz his winning edge.
Right now I would say that the new arrivals are more likely to vote R, and that includes a not insignificant number of minorities also fed up with CA. I hope that continues, but as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future success.
@370H55V
Good points.
I’m surprised to see more Biden voters in TX than NY.
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