We keep reading all this stuff about how “Texas is moving” and so on.
Well, let us look at recent facts, figures, comparisons.
I just spent a half hour on this, the Internet allows us to find out many things quickly. For simplicity I focus on the two-state comparison of my native California, alleged to be failing, and Texas, alleged to be “moving”. (Nevada ranks poorly in these indices, but that is not the point at hand.)
Where available I compare both to the national average for that stat.
1. Per capita household income, 2010, source US Census:
CA, $43, 104, TX, 39, 493, national average $40,584.
2. Percent at or below poverty line, 2010, same source:
CA, 16.3%, TX, 18.4%, national average 15.1%.
3. Violent crime index, FBI, 2010:
CA, 440.6, TX, 450.3.
4. Kaufman Foundation 2010 report on the ‘new economy’ and knowledge industry jobs, comparing the 50 states and DC,
A., their overall weighted “new economy index” which evaluated about twenty measures,
CA, 7th place, index value 73.3;
TX, 18th place, index value 63.0, and
national average index value of 62.0
B., “knowledge jobs index”, also combining and evaluating a variety of measures:
CA, 13th place, index value 10.7,
TX, 32nd place, index value 8.14,
national average index value 10.00.
Pesky things, these facts.
We already know that Texas is one of the most polluted states, if not THE most polluted and that Texas leads the nation in proportion of residents who lack health insurance – and THAT little statistic is jumping again with the Thumper Brigade’s foolishness about PP, enacted by Gov. Cheerleader, which forced Medicaid to cut off Federal funds to Texas, depriving another 130,000 Texans of basic access to care – mostly, women of course.
Or perhaps not Kevin
Expat:
the loss of funding from the state of Texas to PP will affect mostly women. And the overall cut of $40 Million is estimated to slash Medicaid coverage to 130,000 people. So overall, my estimate is likely to be true, this will affect more women than men, between those two cutbacks.
Just one more front in the War Upon Women . . . .one of many.
Did you read the official state response Kevin? They claim:
I’m not sure that I believe either point Kevin – but one is a government response posted on an American state’s official web site and as such available to be analyzed, critiqued, rebutted and parsed for eternity. The other is an obvious and ephemeral party talking point bounced around the blogosphere to see if it gains any mainstream traction.
Do you not see the contradiction here?
“Others have asked if we’ll still have the capacity to serve Texas women if we exclude abortion providers from the program. The answer is an unequivocal yes.“
Expat:
Oh, we get it, you don’t take the War Upon Women seriously. But the wimmenfolks do, just check the latest polls. They are seriously pissed off, and rightly so.
As for the great (?) state of Texas, they barely managed to balance their most recent budget, had a massive gap like CA’s. Now they have forfeited $40 Million in Federal money, to make a cheap ideological point against PP based upon lies. Where will they make this up? What else will be canceled for this nonsense? Who else will be harmed?
If that statement came from the office of Gov. Rick Perry, then it has no credibility. None.
Then again – why on earth would a caring federal government withdraw funding and cause people, especially women, to suffer?
Oh I do Amy. The talking point says:
Implying all care which is not the case.
Oh I do Amy. The talking point says:
Implying all care – which is not the case.
Expat: why would a “caring federal government” withdraw the Medicaid funds?
Thanks for asking.
They have no choice under statute law, the one governing Medicaid, as the action by Texas violated that law and so brought this sanction upon Texas. The irresponsible, lying, Thumper creeps who run that state brought this result upon their most vulnerable residents.
Expat: something else, I notice you have fought this entire thread over my end comment, without responding at all to the other facts cited above it. So thank you for agreeing with my basic point, which is that Texas as a state is not one to admire these days, under the governance of Gov. Cheerleader, the Pride of A&M.
Expat:
Oh! A rhetoric lesson? Goody!
“Officer, that man just stole my money!”
“Like hell he did. I see a dollar hanging out of your pocket.”
“Sure, he left me a buck, but he took the rent money, and the grocery money, and especially the beer money…”
“What’s that matter? You said he stole your money, and according to Expat’s law, that means he either got it all or none of it. Now move along before I cite Tommy Dog’s corollary at you!”
I’m just calling out talking points when I see them.
BTW – with logic like that are you sure you are a scientist?
Expat:
I’m using somewhat absurd reasoning, appropriately, against absurd policies and philosophy.
As for ‘talking points”, I don’t read any. I post my own views here.
Given the budgetary straits of Texas’ government, forfeiting $40 million is an act of either stunning irresponsibility, or of a staggering degree of don’t-give-a-shit for those affected.
I suspect that both explanations apply here.
My points stand, Texas is a poor comparison with California, which we are told – constantly – is the ‘state to avoid at all costs’.
BTW, I just watched a riot of a feeding time in the eagle’s nest. The three kids are starting to peck at each other quite seriously, when fresh yummy rabbit is on the menu.
People are supposed to behave a bit better than a nest of predators. Just sayin’.
Kevin-
See, here’s where you go wrong. I’ve learned from my Fox News-addicted business partner — his name is Jack, by the way, and he’s really a hell of nice guy: sometimes we talk baseball for hours — but I’ve learned from him that everybody spins, and what everybody says is a talking point.
You say the sun rises in the east? Well that’s your spin, that’s your talking point, and I agree with it!
Then, when he really gets mad, he calls me a nihilist.
I feel there must be a hellava Country & Western Ballad to be writ on the subject of talking points.
One man’s talking point is another man’s…
My talking won’t point any more…
I’ll talk your points if you’ll…
But it’s heading for the dead hours of the night and me brain’s all bluthed out.
All care covered by Medicaid will continue to be funded and available – or so they claim.
Any care not funded by Medicaid will be unaffected and presumably continue to be funded as before.
Kevin;
Not if their guide is Ayn Rand’s taillights they’re not.
The trick is not to get mad
Expat: my question stands – with what new $40 million, that they do not have lying around, and from which other line item, to the cost of what other vulnerable group of their people?
They barely balanced the Texas budget, a few months ago.
Just saying “we will cover this” in their current situation is just another lie, one that will harm vulnerable people. Folks on Medicaid do not have options.
BTW – I just read a link in the link that I gave above – it’s about a woman being raped in federal prison – now that is a problem to get concerned about – and the ultimate solution to the root cause isn’t easier abortion.
EP, I just found a couple of your comments hung in the spam filter — I have no clue why (they are almost duplicates of your comment at 6:25) — are you having problems I need to do something about?
They claim not and have stated so officially – nailed their colors to the mast – a bit like a scientific experiment – we’ll see and measure what the results are. Now talking points come and go and serve the momentary goal of moving opinion – they don’t have to stand
Thanks Gunny – I thought I was suffering from fat fingers but felt that I really wanted to contribute so kept plugging. I had no problems after I logged in.
Expat – yeah, we will see. I do not look for anything positive from that gang, appointed by that sleazy god-bothering pay-to-play Governor.
My points stand until you find better sources. I cited and linked to mine, including the US Census and a comprehensive survey of the current state of the tech. economy.
That raises them beyond talkin’ . . . .
EP
roger that
Sorry Kevin – I couldn’t resist – this was at least the third time and topic that you raised the Texas 130,000 – a sure sign of a taking point – and the third time that I simply posted a link to the official Texas rebuttal. No one responded before.
As for your other points – folks seem to be flocking to Texas – a bit like a big science experiment.
Expat: I keep raising it, because I find this horrifying, that a state government would screw so many of their own state’s people, based on such a pack of lies (their ‘case’ against PP) and with such predictably bad results.
The callous economic violence of the right wing pols, is the major moral failing of “conservatism” in the US these days. Vulnerable people are being screwed, to serve nasty ends.
They claim not – and the results aren’t in yet – we’ll see.
Meanwhile folks are still voting with their feet.
Kevin. Texas appears to fare quite well on average income if you take housing costs into account. Poverty rates need to take into account the large number of illegal aliens in Texas, which should also be taken into account when considering that California’s is now above the national mean. CA and TX appear to be similar in violent crime. (an interesting point on crime stats – TX’s violent crime stats in 1992 were lower than California’s, now they are similar)
Texas’s population in 2007 during the last strong year was 23.9M. For 2011 it is 25.9M up 8%. California’s population in 2007 was 37.3M and for 2011 was 37.7M up 1%. The US population increased about 3% from 301M to 311M from 2007-2011.
You are missing a point I have been making for ages. I don’t doubt that California, Mass or Washington DC will continue to produce professional level jobs. Palo Alto is hopping like it’s the dot.com boom all over again. However, the blue state economic model is killing their working class. Industry has been exiting in droves, sometimes to harumphs of how dare they move or outsource or whatever. But they do. Texas is a recipient of those moves. Communities such as Fresno or Bakersfield are struggling and have been for years. I’m somewhat cynical. I think it’s because the Democratic party is primarily a party of educated white collar workers who are happy to see the industries that provide working class jobs move away. They might sniff a bit about outsourcing, but its all for show. No one wants to pay more for their ipads than they do now.
Gunny said something on the other thread about what sort of opportunity do the Rs offer? Simply put, they offer the blue collar worker far more than the Dems do. The blue states quit offering opportunity at least a generation ago save during construction booms, and even then it is the “red” parts of California that provided most of those jobs because the blue parts didn’t want the building. Why kinds of jobs does NY create these days besides ever fewer financial jobs, jobs for lawyers, and jobs for waiters in chi chi restaurants? Texas is providing its working class with more opportunity than California is. That’s why so many people move there. The heat and humidity are bit murderous though on someone like me who grew up in rainy and misty climes.
Tommydog:
Yes, CA does discourage industrial jobs, folks making stuff. My beef with you is, you blame
“liberal Democrats” when the blame goes around on that one.
One factor, I’ve made this point before, was and remains that piece of crap Prop 13. It created a system of funding for local government in which increased (marginal), new revenue for municipal governments, for counties or cities can only come from greater flows of sales tax and the fuel tax. Prop. 13 was sold to the voters as a necessary protection for homeowners, which it was at the time. But they included industrial and commercial property in the caps, which was a fatal error.
The result is, a new factory that makes stuff only consumes more local revenue, to provide local services, but a big box store or retail mall or auto mall is a boon to the city, and provides them with the funds they have to receive, to deal with growth.
Simply put, a factory making cars does nothing for them, but a shiny over-illuminated auto mall selling the cars does everything for them.
You see the same pattern of development based on this reality everywhere in CA, including places like my home town, in southern Placer Co., where the local government is firmly conservative.
And any effort to reform this system runs into the Grover Norquist Pledge, that freezes the minds and removes the cojones from all the Republican politicians.
You always point the finger of blame in only one direction. I don’t. That is a big difference between us.
One more point, worth a long rant but I’ll keep this one short: the GOP may “welcome” development that benefits blue-collar workers but the governmental policies they promote do not benefit anyone except the very wealthy. The tax burden has been shifted dramatically away from corporations and wealthy individuals for thirty years now. The latest Paul Ryan budget would take that process further. Worth an entire thread, that one!
And I have to note: my figures up top prove that Texas compares poorly with California in many important categories, in recent rankings and using the most recent data available.
I think we need to look at firms like Bain Capital and how they have contributed to making the work environment in this country so brutal.
Because nowadays instead of companies being part of the community, they are just investment vehicles for people to buy and sell.
Success and hard work do not count for much in a culture where your company can be sold and you are out of your job.
I do not believe that people fluorish in such an environment.
Tommydog says this
.
How exactly? This is the party that believes that workers should not organize. This is the party that believes that minimum wage workers should be personally responsible to save enough money out of their $15 per hour wages to pay for their own health care and put away enough money for retirement.
Good luck with convincing people about that.
Tommydog:
you claim that the GOP is on the side of blue-collar workers.
But they just endorsed, again, the schemes of Rep. Paul Ryan, working on his Ayn-Rand-inspired economic notions. They promise to even further shift the burden of paying for our government downwards, upon the middle class and working poor, and even further away from the wealthy and the established corporations, which already pay a very low rate of real net tax.
The insiders enjoyed a massive party and indulged in an orgy of deficit spending during the eight ugly years of the Cheney Administration, and now the bill is to be left behind for the middle class and working poor to pay.
How does that benefit anyone, except the fat cat donors to the GOP?
I didn’t say that the Rs were on the side of the blue collar workers; but the Rs will deal with them. They’ll employ them. They’ll negotiate hard on the terms. The Dems would prefer to fantasize about how wonderful they are for the working class, and how if someone were to offer them a job in their state they would make really, really sure that it was a great job with high pay and good benefits, but no, they don’t want any industry that kicks up a little dust and someone might break a sweat on the job (except of course in the gym at lunch or perhaps a kitchen remodel). So, industry exits the blue states, and the Dems heave a sigh of relief, but damn, they’ll fantasize about how great the wages would be if only someone would open a union operation in their state.
gotta run. not much time to play today.
T’dog, I too have no time, after this post.
But I notice that you ignored my point regarding Prop. 13 and its direct role in the de-industrializing of California. That notion came from your side, not mine. And the opposition to reforming it comes from conservatives, not liberals.
You cannot just blame them liberals, and I think you know it, somewhere deep down.
And you also ignored my point about the toxic nonsense known as the Paul Ryan Plan, a scheme to impose a new level of economic violence upon anyone who earns less than a typical investor in the Republican Party (inc.).
You cannot just blame them liberals, and I think you know it, somewhere deep down
The party of “personal responsibility” never ever ever takes any with regard to its own actions.
We have all condemned union excesses here and on CIF. Not once have I heard any of the conservatives say anything remotely negative about corporate excess.
Blame heaped upon liberal policies, upon the working poor, upon government regulation…..everybody except some of the people and or policies that actually caused this recession.
Total disconnect.
Hello folks -
those blue collar jobs you’re talking about in blue states – construction workers, chi chi restaurants, factory workers? Those are your prime sectors that employ illegal aliens.
Porny: yes, this current Administration is the first in a long time to do anything tangible about our southern border. Pew Fndn. estimate is that at least one million fewer illegal residents are now within the US.
The Border Patrol is doubled, and workplace raids have tripled, something that the Party of Bidness does not like to do, upsets the donors who hire all those illegal workers.
But our Tommydog thinks that he can blame the troubles of blue-collar Americans on those fancy-pants liberals. Well, there are some clueless folks on the liberal side – but the serious economic violence towards working Americans comes from the GOP’s donor base.
Kevin. You’ve a logical disconnect. You can’t say that Calif discourages industrial jobs and then bemoan that business doesn’t pay enough property tax. Why wouldn’t increasing such taxes simply not encourage businesses to move elsewhere at an even faster pace? Are you assuming that the rate of exiting won’t be so fast as to diminish tax collections? That might be true in SF or Palo Alto, but what about Fresno, Bakersfield, Redding or even Susanville? I do see the point that the incentives are in place for cities to encourage big box retailers rather than industry, but there’s not much evidence that the industry is wanted to begin with. Even if it was wanted at the local level the state will discourage it. The big boxes at least offer goods more inexpensively.
The war is being waged by the left on the working class. They have successfully driven much industry out of many blue states. Extremely rigid zoning laws have the consequence of driving up home values close in to cities resulting in making ordinary homes unaffordable to many. Slow regulatory processes slow the formation or expansion of operations. My own personal beef – Silicon Valley companies when they expand often move to Texas rather than Fresno, which ought to be able to compete with Texas on wages and housing costs, but the companies simply don’t want to expand here.
Elena, I’m on the board of a small startup funded by some rather casual private equity (there are few thousand PE firms). At the end of December we had 4 US employees and 6 abroad. Now we have 8 US employees and the same 6 abroad. Our fondest ambition is to slam some old dinosaur of a company and perhaps make it a candidate for a Bain turnaround effort. heh heh (wicked growl)
Gotta run again. Fed the pets and off to a dinner meeting. It is getting very busy around here.
Tommy -
Kevin is right in that a good chunk of the economic violence is waged by the right. But i agree with you that the – i’m not going to say left especially, but i will say Democrats – here on the east coast. But not in the form of zoning laws, but in the form of taxes. On property, sales, businesses and fixtures. To fund the Democratic bugaboos of public unions, welfare, and support to illegal immigrants, to name a few. It’s kind of a vicious circle – there’s a tab, taxes are raised to pay it, driving out more business and higher earning taxpayers, raising taxes even more to make up the shortfall….etc.
“The war is being waged by the left on the working class…”
That’s pretty funny, Tommydog, considering the week I’m having. My organization, where I’ve worked for 18 years, just this week announced it was cutting the regular part-time hours of all staff in one location. They didn’t have to do this, they have $500,000 in unfilled hours in other locations, and are hiring an $128,000/year manager for my location. Almost all workers have gone from 25-33 regular part-time hours to 19 part-time hours. Why? Because according to our collective agreement, you don’t have to pay benefits under 20 hours.
Who’s affected by this? A single mother, who saved her whole life and just bought a condo, because she had a regular job. Or another woman, who’s had cancer twice in 3 years. If the cancer returns, she will have no long-term disability insurance, and she’ll die in abject poverty.
Think about people like them just once before you blithely talk about the war the “left” is waging on the working class.
Oh, and Tommydog, the single mother went from 33 regular hours/week to 6 regular hours. Any suggestions how she might pay for her condo? This afternoon she told me she signed a legal agreement saying she wouldn’t sell for one year after purchase.
Thoughts eagerly awaited.
No, more specifically Rhode Island. We’ve been through this before. NY and NJ and probably many other states have been very aggessive in addresssing these issues.
Elena -
Mass and Ct have some big problems too.
Thats wonderful that you employed 4 more people since December. Demand must have picked up in that field. As I believe it has everywhere.
As demand picks up there will be more hiring, but it is a painfully slow process.
I don’t know too many democrats who believe that we have to keep “old dinosaurs” alive. But your definition of old dinosaur may differ from mine. For example, I think the car industry was well worth keeping alive in this country. I think the econimic impact of letting it die last year would have been catastrophic.
Other companies and industries – sure, there is a natural life to most things. Big box stores were all the rage a few years ago, now I note that many are going out of business and smaller businesses seem to be taking their place.
But the result of companies being bought and sold is employee insecurity, and that has a damaging effect on our economy too.
Not sure what the answer really is. Just would like some acknowledgement that if corporations really are people then they are stakeholders in the community too.
Amy, yes, NY and NJ still have big problems. My point was – they are being addressed.
Here in NJ it is a slow process. No quick simple solutions are in sight. How can there be when the bill states have to pay for unemployment and medicaid has been so high?
But unlike the very disfunctional federal government, at the state level both sides are talking to each other. We have a republican governor who may be combative but is also excellent at deal making.
Sure, many deals are “crap sandwiches” but that’s today’s economic reality.
And thats the take away word here. Reality.
Good thread here. I really only have time today for this one post – the national head of my new company is in town, for one day plus I teach tonight.
Tommydog, there is no logical disconnect in my point to you. Businesses do not make their decisions entirely on tax rates and I’m sure you know that. But the incentive for CA’s local governments, under Prop. 13, is to avoid manufacturing development and go entirely retail. That is where the dysfunction lies and it affects development decisions regardless of the personal ideology of the local pols. Our dear friend Chief Wiley has written some very sensible remarks on this score. (He is loopy and even offensive on other subjects, but he does deal every day with the realities of local governance.)
You continue to ride your hobbyhorse about liberals and development, without looking at the structural problem – and where it came from. The roadblock on reforming that is also coming from the Right. There is zero incentive for, and every cost incentive against, a California city or county encouraging a new manufacturing facility. They have to spend more on services but receive zero marginal revenues to cover those added costs. The incentives in other states work differently, and so, many of them welcome manufacturing.
And I have to remind you: you have touted Texas so constantly to us on these threads, that I had to respond with the facts. Texas compares very poorly with California, right now on a variety of measures. And the quality of education really does matter to employers too (that is a drag on Nevada’s development, a big one!) and on that front also, Texas is falling behind under Gov. Cheerleader. Their support for education is eroding steadily, falling behind national trends.
Gov. Cheerleader and his Thumper pals do not want an educated population. It would undercut their religious mission.