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Texas vs. California Update for April 2, 2105

Thursday, April 2nd, 2015

Time for another Texas vs. California roundup. The Texas House passed a budget, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it in any detail yet…

  • Unemployment rates in February: National average is 5.5%, Texas at 4.3%, California at 6.7%.
  • Even though hiring slowed to 7,100 new jobs in Texas in February, it was still the 53rd straight month of positive job creation, and Texas added 357,300 new jobs over the preceding 12 months.
  • A report from the Dallas Fed goes into more details.
  • California institutes mandatory water restrictions due to drought. California is indeed suffering a horrific drought, but it’s imposition of or acquiescence to idiotic environmental restrictions (see also: Delta Smelt) have made things much worse.
  • Some have proposed free market solutions to California’s water problems.
  • Workers comp abuse at LAPD/LAFD. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Add Richmond, California to the list of cities that have radically underfunded their public employee retirement plans. “The shortfall of $446 million works out to about $4,150 for every city resident.” (Ditto.)
  • San Bernardino reveals its bankruptcy deal with CalPERS. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Volokh the Younger examines the legal framework around the California rule (“not only that public employees are entitled to the pension they’ve accrued by their work so far, but also that they’re entitled to keep earning a pension (as long they continue in their job) according to rules that are at least as generous”), as well as its practical effects:

    The California rule distorts what the salary/pension mix would otherwise be, given employer and employee preferences, and given the tax code as it is. Because underfunded pensions are a popular form of deficit spending, public employee compensation may already be too pension-heavy, and the rule makes it more so by freezing pensions in times of retrenchment. The incentive effects of the rule, given the political economy of government employment, may well exacerbate this tendency. And the possible theoretical reasons for preferring a pension-heavy mix don’t go very far in justifying this particular distortion.

  • California runs out of room on death row. Maybe they could subcontract to Texas…
  • Fresno’s deputy police chief busted on drug charges.

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

    LinkSwarm for December 24, 2013

    Tuesday, December 24th, 2013

    Merry Christmas a day in advance!

  • Obamacare’s popularity hits new lows. If you want to save yourself some time, just save that phrase; you’ll be able to use it lots next year as well…
  • Even the uninsured hate ObamaCare.
  • ObamaCare is falling apart before our very eyes. Good.
  • The harsh truth is that the advertising machine behind the Obama administration seems not to really know what normal human beings are like.
  • Medicaid + ObamaCare + Estate Recovery = The feds get to seize your estate. (Warning: DailyKos) But think of the future! Medicaid + ObamaCare + Estate Recovery + Death Panel = Ka-Ching! State government need but speed up your shuffling off this mortal coil to help close those pesky budget deficits to pay for public employee union pensions! It’s a win-win-win! (Well, for everyone but the poor schmuck getting the state equivalent of a pillow over their face…)
  • Via Moe Lane comes the heartening news that ObamaCare stinks so badly that Democratic gubernatorial candidates in deep blue Maryland are trying to distance themselves from it.
  • ObamaCare, like Obama himself, is a miserable failure:

  • ObamaCare brand heroin. Well, they’re both being pushed by people who want to get you hooked and make you dependent for their benefit. But I’m given to understand that a junkie can tell whether the smack is good within seconds; we injected Obamacare into our body politic four years ago, feel horrific side effects, and we’re still waiting for the high…
  • Even Colorado college students are losing their jobs due to ObamaCare.
  • Liberals have a reality problem.
  • Senators Coburn and Feinstein introduce bill to eliminate corn biofuels mandate. It’s a start. They should eliminate all biofuels mandates and agribusiness subsidies.
  • Nancy Pelosi says that being an illegal alien is no cause for deportation. Evidently the purpose of the border patrol is to hand out free lemonade along with ObamaCare application forms and membership cards for the Democratic Party…
  • Job;less claims jump to the highest level since March. “Unexpectedly!”
  • “The country needs jobs, not more jobless benefits.”
  • Wisconsin Democrats conduct with your tax dollars.
  • Speaking of Wisconsin, 70 unions there deceertify. Funny how many union “members” will escape if given a chance.
  • Good: reheated turkey. Bad: Reheated Huckabee Presidential run, which would be the wrong kind of turkey…
  • “If there’s anything that makes women unequal to men, it’s the need to be treated like pieces of china.”
  • Mack Brown goes out with class. Asked his biggest regret, you’d think he’d say Colt McCoy getting injured in the national championship game against Alabama. Nope. “They’d be two things. I would want Cole Pittman back, and I would want the bonfire [tragedy] not to have happened at A&M.” It was time for Brown to retire, but he always conducted his program with class and respect.
  • Outed black supremacist finally out of federal government job. (Previously.)
  • Remake Gilligan’s Island? “Michael Cera as Gilligan.” Die in a fire.
  • Robbie Cooper is hanging up his blogging gloves at UrbanGrounds.

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    Posted in Border Control, Economics, ObamaCare, Texas, unions | 3 Comments »

    Texas vs. California Roundup for July 11, 2013

    Thursday, July 11th, 2013

    The hot days of summer are here. Texas is now into its usual 100° summer days. However, if it’s any consolation, Death Valley hit a record 129° in June.

    Texas’ business climate is a lot like our summers: hot, hot, hot! California’s business climate is a lot like Death Valley: Still and oppressive.

    On to the Texas vs. California roundup:

  • Unemployment claims are up in California.
  • You know all that talk of California having a small budget surplus? That doesn’t count the $10.3 billion California owes the federal government for unemployment compensation, an amount that is not expected to be paid off until 2020.
  • Between 2007/8 and 2013/14, “the officially reported unfunded pension liability for state workers through the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) grew from $31.7 billion to $57.2 billion, an 80.1% increase.”
  • He, remember that short-lived BART strike? How horribly were the employees “underpaid?” “BART employees — including management and nonunion workers — earn an average of about $83,000 annually in gross pay, contribute nothing toward their retirement and $92 monthly to health insurance. Their pay and total compensation are both the highest in the Bay Area among transit agencies.”
  • BART’s highest paid employee in 2012? Someone who earned $333,000 and never worked a day that year.
  • California’s coming health insurance death spiral.
  • California writer explains why he and his family relocated to Texas.
  • Did taxes help Dwight Howard decide to leave the Los Angeles Lakers for the Houston Rockets?
  • Rick Perry retiring means the Texas is losing on of its greatest pitchmen to the business community.
  • California, bluest of blue states, forcibly sterilized female prisoners. Well, liberal’s love of eugenics goes back at least as far as Margaret Sanger…

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    Posted in Budget, ObamaCare, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    LinkSwam for May 31, 2013

    Friday, May 31st, 2013

    The season has switched from not Summer to Summer here in Texas, so here’s a hot, humid LinkSwarm:

  • In Europe, youth unemployment is climbing to scary, stratospheric heights. So scary I’m going to swipe their chart:

    Notice how countries that have kept their deficit spending relatively low (Germany and even the UK, where deficits has at least decreased under Cameron) are doing much better than the PIIGS. Again, Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it’s been declared difficult and left untried.

  • Harry Reid calls his close personal friend and business associate Harvey Whittemore (and his wife) “wonderful people.” Oh, and Whittemore is now also a convicted felon.
  • Eric Holder: Obama’s sin eater. “The attorney general has done little in his tenure to protect civil liberties or the free press. Rather, Holder has supervised a comprehensive erosion of privacy rights, press freedom and due process. This ignoble legacy was made possible by Democrats who would look at their shoes whenever the Obama administration was accused of constitutional abuses.”
  • Pentagon Papers lawyer James Goodale talks about just how bad Obaama is for freedom of the press.
  • ObamaCare rates next year in California: “Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.”
  • Britain remains in denial over Islamic terror.
  • The Gang of 8 proposal implements amnesty and gives conservatives nothing in return.
  • Ted Cruz actually tries to fix the bill. Gang of 8 tells him to get stuffed.
  • The Chicago Sun-Times lays off their entire staff of photographers. Including a Pulitzer Prize winner.

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    Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Economics, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare | No Comments »

    Spain IS Beyond Doomed, But It’s Not Practicing Real Austerity

    Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

    Take a look at these charts. Unemployment in Spain is up over 25%, and most have been unemployed more than 2 years. Matthew O’Brien is correct when he says that Spain’s inflexible labor laws contribute greatly to the unemployment, but errs when he says that “austerity hasn’t been the path to prosperity. It’s been the path to perma-slump.”

    Austerity hasn’t failed in Spain. It hasn’t been tried.

    Spain last ran a budget surplus in 2008, and since then it has engaged in deficit spending. In 2012, Spain’s budget deficit was 9.4% of GDP, and this year it will be 10.6% of GDP.

    Remember, real austerity isn’t trying to tax-and-spend your way to prosperity. Real austerity is cutting budgets until outlays match receipts. Estonia bit the bullet and balanced its budget, and its economy is now growing at a steady clip. Meanwhile, governments all across Europe continue to try the same deficit spending Keynesian pump-priming, and keep having the same recession. In most of Europe, “austerity” has meant digging their own graves more slowly rather that stopping digging.

    And European elites refuse to stop digging because their power and perks all stem from swaddling voters in an unsustainable cradle-to-grave welfare system.

    If all this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Europe makes the same mistakes, gets the same results, and keeps doubling down on stupid, content to keep the farce running as long as they possibly can. Instead actually of solving the interrelated problems of debt, unsustainable entitlements, and the Euro, the Euroelite seem content to preside over the world’s slowest, most boring train wreck. Yes, it’s a pity the train is sliding inexorably toward the chasm, but there’s such fine vintages to be had in the saloon car, and it offers such a magnificent view of the coming crash…

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    Posted in Budget, Economics, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Assault Weapons Vital Topic Among America’s 23 Million Unemployed

    Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

    Hempstead, N.Y.: All across the country, millions of unemployed Americans expressed relief and gratitude that Obama finally addressed their most important issue at last night’s Presidential debate: assault weapons.

    “I’m glad Obama is finally tackling assault weapons,” said Barbara Rheems, taking a brief pause from brushing her teeth in the 1998 Honda Civic that has been her home for the last three years. “I think that’s the greatest concern facing our country.”

    “Thank God Nina Gonzales had the courage to ask about assault weapons,” said Richard Smith, an unemployed construction worker, speaking from the cot in his mother’s basement. “I can’t think of a single more pressing issue.”

    “Assault weapons terrify me,” said mother Gladys Castle, who was busy preparing an “Obama soup” made from pilfered ketchup packets for her three hungry children. “I’m afraid that at any moment they might burst out of closets and gun safes and start shooting people.”

    “Well it’s about time someone dealt with America’s biggest challenge, which is reinstating the Clinton-era assault weapons ban,” said Tom Feller, who spoke to us from behind his homemade cardboard WILL WORK ANY JOB/HAVE CHILDREN TO FEED/GOD BLESS sign. “The fact is that Americans just don’t need a weapon that has any two of a folding stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, or a flash suppressor, and it’s high time we moved to disarm ordinary Americans citizens who purchased such weapons in a completely lawful manner.”

    A CNN poll of America’s unemployed showed that assault weapons were far and away the most pressing issue this election, with 78% citing them as their biggest concern, while those who said that their top issue was forcing Catholics to pay for contraception were a distant second at 19%.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns | 4 Comments »

    New Pro-Romney Ad: “The Dinner Table”

    Sunday, October 7th, 2012

    Take a gander at the latest ad from American’s for Prosperity:

    Not only does it work for me, it has a subtle, minimalist brilliance that not only makes it stick in the mind, but makes it hard to fight. What are liberals going to say? “No, unemployment isn’t high?” “No, middle class families aren’t suffering?” “No, it’s all Bush’s fault?” “No, let’s keep doing the same thing?” The very lack of dialog all but eliminates attack vectors against it, and any attacks against it will only make more people watch it.

    I got this via Ace of Spades who, strangely enough, doesn’t like it. A commentator suggests that it’s because it stresses feelings over facts. But if facts and figure by themselves swayed the majority of voters, Obama would never have been elected President, and would stand no chance now.

    If you have liberal friends on Facebook, chances are that they’re not forwarding links that show how objectively great a job Obama is doing. No, what they’re doing is forwarding links designed inflame fellow liberals with what horrible people Republicans are by focusing on the stupid things said by a few Republican office-holders. (Todd Aiken before, Paul Broun this week.) It’s meant to distract from Obama’s manifest failures by making the opposition evil incarnate. Political ads play on emotions because playing on emotions works.

    Which isn’t to say it’s the only advertising you should be doing. But as part of a larger advertising strategy I think this particular ad is very effective.

    You know what they could do to make liberals really crawl of their skin? Do the exact same ad with a black family.

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    Posted in Economics, Elections, Media Watch, video | 1 Comment »

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