Texas vs. California Update for July 25, 2016

July 25th, 2016

Enjoy another Texas vs. California roundup:

  • June marked the 114th month that Texas was at or below the national unemployment average. Texas also created 246,600 jobs in the service sector.
  • Once again Texas ranks as the best state for business, and California ranks worst. (Hat tip: Fox and Hounds via Pension Tsunami.)
  • Elites watch while California crumbles:

    The basket of California state taxes — sales, income, and gasoline — rates among the highest in the U.S. Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom.

    California depends on a tiny elite class for about half of its income-tax revenue. Yet many of these wealthy taxpayers are fleeing the 40-million-person state, angry over paying 12 percent of their income for lousy public services.

    Excessive state regulations and expanding government, massive illegal immigration from impoverished nations, and the rise of unimaginable wealth in the tech industry and coastal retirement communities created two antithetical Californias.

    One is an elite, out-of-touch caste along the fashionable Pacific Ocean corridor that runs the state and has the money to escape the real-life consequences of its own unworkable agendas.

    The other is a huge underclass in central, rural, and foothill California that cannot flee to the coast and suffers the bulk of the fallout from Byzantine state regulations, poor schools, and the failure to assimilate recent immigrants from some of the poorest areas in the world.

    The result is Connecticut and Alabama combined in one state. A house in Menlo Park may sell for more than $1,000 a square foot. In Madera, three hours away, the cost is about one-tenth of that.

  • CalPERS suffers $30.8 billion annual loss. “CalPERS has notoriously minimized the annual pension contribution for its 3,007 government entities by fantasizing that its superior investments expertise will allow its investments to compound every year without loss for the next three decades at an annual rate of 7.5 percent.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • CalSTRS isn’t doing much better: “The California State Teachers’ Retirement System [earned] 1.4% for the fiscal year ended June 30.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Record tax revenues, yet somehow California is still broke:

    California taxpayers are getting taken to the cleaners, but most of them are completely in the dark about how and why.

    I will pose a quick question: Does it seem strange that California has recorded record revenue increases, yet we also see a record number of tax increases and bond issuances on the ballot?

    In other words, the state’s tax system is collecting massive amounts of revenues, record amounts, yet politicians are still asking for a record number of new tax increases. For taxpayer advocates, it just doesn’t seem fair and seems very strange at first glance as to how this can even occur.

    The truth of the matter is that California’s system of public finance is a complete train wreck and is set up such that no amount of tax revenues collected will ever be enough to satisfy “spending needs.” The so-called baseline expenditure increases are on autopilot and deficit projections are generated despite record revenue increases, a trend projected in the Governor’s May Revise.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • “As we roll toward the November ballot, I’m reminded of H.L. Mencken’s quip that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” We always get it “good and hard” in California given the ever-expanding one-party rule. The worse it gets, the more voters from the GOP high-tail it to Nevada and Texas — and the worse it gets as political competition evaporates. It’s the political equivalent of a death spiral.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Lots of tax hikes are on the California ballot this November, for a variety of different ostensible reasons, but actually for a single reason: Pensions. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Beaumont, California: “Seven former officials were arrested and charged with stealing nearly $43 million during the city’s development boom. Now, residents are learning that the town’s problems go much deeper than the criminal case.” (Hat tip: Gregory Benford’s Facebook page.)
  • “California’s high-speed rail project increasingly looks like an expensive social science experiment to test just how long interest groups can keep money flowing to a doomed endeavor before elected officials finally decide to cancel it.” $68 billion and rising. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Teachers union writes a $10-million check for income tax ballot measure.”
  • “Oakland police officer Malcolm Miller more than quadrupled his $107,627 salary to $489,662 with overtime, benefits and other specialty pays last year — making him Oakland’s highest paid employee for the third year in a row.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “C.C. Myers Inc., one of California’s highest-profile freeway builders, has filed for bankruptcy.”
  • Also filing for bankruptcy: California-based developer Criswell-Radovan, which owns the Tahoe Cal Neva casino Frank Sinatra used to own.
  • One tiny bit of dubious good news for the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California: Now they’re only the second in bankruptcy filings in the nation at 45,000, having been overtaken by the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois at 47,535 filings.
  • Nissan and Toyota battle over Texas. “Both automakers are zeroing in on Texas as a key growth opportunity.”
  • California’s Democratic State Controller Betty Yee fined $2,082 for violations during her 2014 campaign.
  • Rent a security robot for $7 an hour. How many human security guards will be left at California’s $15 an hour?
  • Old and Busted: Participation trophies. The New Hotness: California’s Democratic officials giving awards to their own family members.
  • “Judge throws out ex-L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s plea deal, saying six months in prison not enough.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)

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    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Texas, unions | No Comments »

    Obama: “I’m Voting for Trump”

    July 24th, 2016

    Obama says he’ll be voting for Trump. Although it’s not clear that he’s an American citizen, and thus eligible to actually vote for President.

    Enjoy this accurate-but-misleading headline on a slow news Sunday.

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    Posted in Elections | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for July 22, 2016

    July 22nd, 2016

    Haven’t been covering the RNC because I have too much going on. So enjoy this LinkSwarm instead:

  • Full text of Donald Trump’s RNC speech. No I didn’t watch it.
  • “It’s telling that so many city leaders hate their state or national governments, but love supra-national governments like the EU. This shows that their real desire isn’t to go it alone in the marketplace, but to create replacement governance structures that are more amenable to their way of thinking, that constitutionally enshrine their preferences, and are insulated from democratic accountability.”
  • Jerry Pournelle on the real problems in the black community:

    An obvious observation, which hardly anyone seems to make, is that blacks suffer less from racism than from poor education. Harvard does not reject black applicants because it dislikes blacks but because they are badly prepared. Blacks do not fail the federal entrance examination because it is rigged to exclude them but because they don’t know the answers. Equality of opportunity without equality of education is a cruel joke: giving an illiterate the right to apply to Yale isn’t giving him much.

    The intelligent policy is to educate black children, something that the public schools of Washington manage, at great expense, not to do. In fact the prevailing (if unspoken) view seems to be that black children cannot be educated, an idea whose only defect is that it is wrong: the Catholic schools of Washington have been educating black children for years. The Catholic system has 12,170 students in the District, of whom 7,884, or 65 percent, are black.

  • Trump takes lead over Clinton according to that notorious right-wing propaganda organ, the Los Angeles Times. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ, who notes “it certainly looks bad for the Beefy Elderly Drunken Crazylady.”)
  • Wargaming the election in November. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Ten reasons Trump could win.
  • Borepatch plays Nostradamus: “Trump 366, Clinton 172”.
  • Michael Moore thinks Trump is going to win. I pay very little heed to Mr. Moore’s opinions, but I admit the possibility that he may have more insight into the day-to-day outlook of blue collar, rust belt Americans than I do.
  • Crony capitalism: “Lobbyists Are Behind the Rise in Corporate Profits.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Sexual violence in Germany has skyrocketed since Angela Merkel allowed more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into the country. The crimes are being downplayed by the authorities, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.”
  • The Nice jihad truck attack wasn’t spontaneous, it had been planned for months. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The EU will likely break its own rules to save Italian banks.
  • Massachusetts Attorney General decides she has the power to unilaterally rewrite the state’s gun laws.
  • How millennials are screwed. That will teach them to dress like idiots and listen to music that sucks…
  • Memphis newspaper forced to apologize over accurate headline on the Dallas police shootings, i.e. “Gunman targeted whites.”
  • Why does Elon Musk get to keep sucking up taxpayer subsidies? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “A talent for teaching simply does not factor into tenure decisions.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • How the Finns kicked the Soviet Union’s ass in the Winter War.
  • Expose a fake Medal of Honor winner? Get fired.
  • The NBA’s Adam Silver goes full social justice warrior over North Carolina refusing to knuckle under over tranny bathroom demands.
  • Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant accuses Democratic State Senator Royce West of stealing endorsement money from him.
  • Welcome to Masdar City, Abu Dhabi’s half-built ghost town of a “sustainable city.”
  • Anti-Trump protester sets self on fire while trying to burn flag. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Remembering the glory of The Poor Man’s James Bond. What red-blooded American teenage boy wouldn’t want to make his own anti-tank missile? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Important legal tip: If you’re going to get naked and drunk and hang out with pigs, make sure they’re your own pigs. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • It’s a bad idea to eat 75 pounds of cocaine. Even if you are a bear. Or Pam.

    With a bonus Waylon Jennings-in-Las Vegas connection.

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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »

    Turkey: Here Come the Death Squads

    July 21st, 2016

    “Turkey will temporarily suspend the European Convention on Human Rights after announcing a state of emergency following the attempted coup.”

    After all, you can’t very well let pesky documents stand in the way of your liquidating your political enemies.

    The Turkish Parliament also passed an Enabling Act national state of emergency giving scumbag Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers in the wake of the Reichstag fire failed coup.

    But I don’t think it’s going to be five years between the Enabling Act and Kristallnacht in Turkey. I suspect the death squads are probably rounding up Erdogan’s enemies right now…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »

    Faster, Erdogan! Purge! Purge!

    July 21st, 2016

    Evidently Erdogan’s previous purges were just the beginning. Now he’s declared a three month state of emergency and really cranked up the purge machinery.

    He fired all university deans and suspended 21,000 private school teachers in yet another reaction to an ever-more-suspicious coup.

    And he was just getting warmed up:

    A total of 50,000 civil service employees have been fired in the purges, which have reached Turkey’s national intelligence service and the prime minister’s office.

    The government has also revoked the press credentials of 34 journalists because of alleged ties to Gulen’s movement, Turkish media reported.

    Authorities have rounded up about 9,000 people — including 115 generals, 350 officers, 4,800 other military personnel and 60 military high school students — for alleged involvement in the coup attempt. Turkey’s defense ministry has also sacked at least 262 military court judges and prosecutors, according to Turkish media reports.

    There are even calls to kick Turkey out of NATO, given the severity of the purge. Hell, even John Kerry is saying it, and he’s no Colin Powell.

    Claire Berlinski says that things in Turkey are getting bad:

    It’s hard to overstate how sinister this turn of events is for Turkey. Mass trials are already underway. Defendants have been escorted by men brandishing weapons. They are not soldiers, nor are they wearing police uniforms. While Islamists weren’t the only faction of Turkish society opposed to the coup, the coup has unleashed all of Turkey’s Islamist psychopaths, sociopaths, criminals, and thugs; they have been verbally authorized to walk the streets and defend the nation against coup plots. The government has suggested it should be easier for people to acquire guns so they can defend the nation against coups. (It was not difficult to begin with.) Just as nationalists and police from Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party were recently unleashed against the Kurdish population in the southeast, they have now been emboldened to pursue any and all dissenters in Turkey.

    So far, Turkey’s 15 million Alevis, the country’s largest minority, have been a target of the surge in Sunni Muslim excitement. AKP mobs have reportedly entered Alevi districts and suburbs chanting “Allahu ekbir,” and, “The AKP has come—where are the Alevis?” A memorial to the largely left-wing and Kurdish victims of ISIS’s October 10 bombing in Ankara has been attacked, as have Syrian shops and the offices of the Kurdish-focused HDP. Until now, many Turks have tacitly assumed the military to be the guarantor of last resort against the prospect of spiraling violence, but the military is now too discredited to play that role. Turks are frightened, and with good reason.

    Berlinski also voices an ideas I’ve heard kicking about: That the coup might have been so badly bungled because coup plotters were forced to launch it early:

    According to Ahmet Sık, a journalist who was arrested after writing a book that charged the Gülenists with extensive infiltration of the Turkish state, the weekend coup was indeed headed by Gülenist officers who had been planning to stage it before a promotions meeting in August, when they were due to be dismissed. Their plans were discovered, he writes, and they knew they were to be arrested at 4am on Saturday morning. He believes the officers, aware they had been rumbled, decided to attempt the coup early on Friday night. This would explain why the coup was so poorly planned. Consistent with this, Erdoğan has acknowledged he knew of “military activity” at least seven-to-ten hours before the coup.

    This is not incompatible with my theory that Erdogan had advanced knowledge of the coup and let it happen to consolidate his own power.

    Remember: Erdogan said that all he wanted was the same powers as Hitler. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    Instapundit Glenn Reynolds says that what Erdogan is really doing is “eradicating the last remnants of the secular Turkish state, as he proceeds to turn Turkey into, instead, an Islamic State. As he builds an enormous palace, consolidates power, and elevates Islamists over secular types, it almost looks as if he’s trying to restore the Ottoman Empire with himself in the role of Sultan. In fact, Erdogan has made that comparison himself.”

    It looks like, thanks to the coup, He’s already a good way there.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | No Comments »

    FWISD Backs Down On Tranny Bathrooms

    July 20th, 2016

    I haven’t been able to focus much time on the issue, but parents in Ft. Worth have been fighting a tranny bathroom policy unilaterally imposed by ft. Worth ISD superintendent Kent Scribner over their objections.

    Good news! After Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a ruling stating that the new rules violated chapters 11 and 26 of the Texas Education Code, Ft. Worth ISD has finally backed down on their tranny bathroom plans.

    After the uproar of parents, citizens, and students in Fort Worth over the past 3 months, the Fort Worth Independents School District (FWISD) has reversed its dangerous transgender guidelines that allowed boys into girls’ showers, locker-rooms, and bathrooms. The school district issued new guidelines today with significant changes that should go a long way to better protect all students in FWISD.

    Among the policy changes:

  • An explicit affirmation of parental rights: “Parents are partners with educators, administrators, and the board in their children’s education. Parents shall be encouraged to actively participate in creating and implementing education programs for their children. Texas Education Code § 26.001(a) unless otherwise provided by law, a board, an administrator, an educator or other person may not limit parental rights. Texas Education Code § 20.001(c).”
  • The critical recognition that “A parent is entitled to full information regarding the school activities of the student, except as precluded by Texas law.”
  • The replacement of rules about restroom and locker-room access. The previous rules have been replaced with the statement that accommodation requests will be “reviewed and addressed on a case-by-case basis based upon the particular circumstances of the individual student and school facilities.”
  • The removal of an unlawful requirement that punished school officials for notifying parents if their child showed transgender behavior.

    • Here’s a hint for the Social Justice Warrior crowd: Ft. Worth, like most Texas cities, is not going to take your culture war shenanigans lying down.

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    Posted in Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »

    Twitter Bans @Nero Permanently

    July 20th, 2016

    Twitter says it has banned Milo Yiannopoulos, AKA @Nero, permanently. They’re claiming that it was over “harassment” of actress Leslie Jones, who appears in the failing feminist Ghostbusters reboot. Though nowhere (as far as I can tell) has Twitter actually revealed the tweet that brought the ban, much less proven that it’s “harassment.” (Maybe Jones objected to Yiannopoulos’ description of the cast as “unsexy lesbian janitors“.)

    Speaking of which, Yiannopoulos has now reviewed the movie:

    In this film, by contrast, the enemy is all men, while the government ends up playing dad. Every man in the movie is a combination of malevolent and moronic. The chick ‘busters shame the mayor so much they end up getting government funding at the end. Like all feminists, they can only survive by sucking on the teat of Big Government.

    Also this: “The weak, Twitter-style feminist quips come off as lame, unfunny, and resentful.”

    Then again, maybe Twitter just wanted to ban the world’s most famous gay conservative and any excuse would do. Remember that Twitter started banning conservatives after they appointed radical feminist Anita Sarkeesian to their so-called “Trust and Safety Council,” whose only role seems to be to silence conservatives.

    Perhaps conservatives should contact Twitters advertisers and ask that their ad dollars be spent elsewhere until Twitter stops censoring conservatives.

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    Posted in Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »

    Erdogan Purges Everyone

    July 19th, 2016

    If my own alternate conspiracy theory about the coup doesn’t convince you that Recep Tayyip Erdogan had at least some foreknowledge of the failed Turkish military coup, then the speed with which he’s purged vast number of political enemies may.

    Overnight Turkish president Erdogan’s counter-coup witch hunt continued, when thousands of police officers were suspended on Monday, widening a systemic purge of Erdogan’s enemies first in the armed forces and then judiciary after a failed military coup, now focusing on the interior police force, and raising concern among European allies that it was abandoning the rule of law. Turkey’s state-run news agency says the nation has detained or suspended 20,000 personnel across the country, following Friday’s foiled coup attempt.

    Anadolu Agency says a total of 8,777 employees attached to the ministry were dismissed, including 30 governors, 52 civil service inspectors and 16 legal advisers

    Thirty regional governors and more than 50 high-ranking civil servants have also been dismissed, CNN Turk said. Thousands of members of the armed forces, from foot soldiers to commanders, were rounded up on Sunday, some shown in photographs stripped to their underpants and handcuffed on the floors of police buses and a sports hall. Several thousand prosecutors and judges have also been removed.

    Bloomberg summarizes as follows: more than than 7,500, including more than 6,000 soldiers from various ranks detained by police, Turkish PM Binali Yildirim says in televised remarks. Those detained include 755 judges and prosecutors, 650 civilians and 100 police officers. Separately, about 9,000 from the Interior Ministry, 3,00 judges and prosecutors and 1,500 staff members of Finance Ministry have been removed from duty.

    In total, approximately 20,000 political opponents “purged” just days after the conclusion of the failed coup.

    At the same time speculation that the terribly planned “coup” was anything but came from the European Commission itself. As Reuters adds, the swift rounding up of judges and others after a failed coup in Turkey indicated the government had prepared a list beforehand, according to EU commissioner dealing with Turkey’s membership bid, Johannes Hahn, said on Monday.

    “It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage,” Hahn said. “I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.”

    Turkey may restore the death penalty so Erdogan can liquidate his political enemies the state can execute the coup plotters. The EU, in turn, says that restoration of the death penalty would mean kissing Turkey’s already slim chances at EU membership goodbye. I wonder how much, at this point, Erdogan actually wants EU membership, which might interfere with his plans to fully Islamacize Turkey. Indeed, Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party floated, then withdrew a new Islamist constitution.

    Then again, maybe it’s all about the Mustafas:

    That is just normal operating procedure for Erdogan, who started as a penniless youth in a slum and is now allegedly a billionaire. When prosecutors found millions of dollars in cash while investigating his associates and sons, Bilal and Burak, for bribery, corruption, fraud, money laundering, and gold smuggling, 350 police officers and all the prosecutors involved were simply removed from their jobs. Only interested in his relentless Islamization of Turkey, Erdogan’s core party followers evidently attach no value to democratic principles or legality as such and think it only natural that he and his sons should have enriched themselves on such a huge scale.

    Edward Luttwak is another observer who feels (like myself) that the “Gulenist” plot angle is just a red herring:

    When Erdogan foists the blame for anything that goes wrong — including his very own decision to restart the war against the country’s Kurds — on foreigners, the United States, and you-know-who (the “Saturday people“), his followers readily believe him. That is also true of his wild accusations of terrorism against the U.S.-based Turkish religious leader Fethullah Gulen, once his staunch ally. Having previously blamed Gulen for an aborted corruption investigation, which he had described as a “judicial coup,” Erdogan is now blaming Gulen and his followers for the attempted military coup as well. That could be true to some extent, but Turkish military officers scarcely needed Gulen to egg them on: They blame Erdogan and his AKP followers for dismantling Ataturk’s secular republic; for having built up the murderous Sunni extremists of Syria who are now spilling back into Turkey to conduct suicide bombings; and for deliberately restarting the war against the country’s Kurds in 2015 for crass political reasons — a war that is costing soldiers’ lives every day and threatens the survival of Turkey itself within its present borders. (Kurds are a net majority in the eastern provinces.)

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 1 Comment »

    Theresa May Gets Cracking

    July 18th, 2016

    David Cameron was in a no-win situation after the Brexit vote, but new PM Theresa May is a probably in a no-lose situation. If Brexit is successful, she gets to take the credit. If it fails, she can point out she was a Euroskeptic carrying out the public’s will against her own wishes.

    May has named chief Tory Pro-Leave campaigner Boris Johnson as her foreign minister. Michael Gove stabbing Johnson in the back for his own chance at the Downing Street probably doomed Gove’s bid but made Johnson (who the London establishment hates) a more sympathetic figure. May naming him foreign minister not only pleases the Leave faction, it also works as a case of “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

    (More of May’s ministerial appointments can be found here, but I’m not even going to pretend I recognize all these names.)

    May had already made the laudable decision to to close the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    Brexit now has an official deadline of December 2018. It appears that everything is over but the shouting long, draw-out, painful EU negotiations.

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    Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

    My Thoughts on a Trump-Pence Ticket

    July 17th, 2016

    With the Turkish coup news, I didn’t have time to post my reactions to Donald Trump tapping Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

    Here they are:

    And this is weirdly apropos:

    Trump could have made a lot worse choices, and a lot better choices. This was a safe, non-controversial choice rather than a swing-for-the-fences choice, and I doubt it moves the needle at all.

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