Perry's trip upsets Californians!!

Is California nicer than Texas? I would say yes, yes to that too. The only thing Texas has over California cheaper living as far as land and residential. But for people who have (teenagers), particularly, kids. Texas is not a good place to raise children, the drugs are like full fledged supply and demand. Just learned parents can give their children alcohol in their presence and it's not a crime or a case of unfit parents. Or ruled as a case of unfit and danger to a child. Go to, Texas department of safety and transportation.com. Plus, here in Texas there are talks right now to put in laws for HIGH SCHOOL students to carry concealed handguns. Imagine a student getting drunk with parents, and going to school with a handgun. You have what they call script doctors that provide prescriptions for the drug codeine w/ premithosine, slang: syrup.

Script doctors are legal doctors holding legit positions that prescribe illegal scripts for drugs...

Perry's trip upsets Californians

Governor, newspapers attack job-poaching visit that starts Sunday.

By Jonathan Tilove
jtilove@statesman.com

California, here he comes.

Gov. Rick Perry will head Sunday to the Golden State bent on poaching businesses in high tech, bio tech, finance, insurance and film.

During a four-day swing through San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Orange County, Perry will also hold a reception for Californians who responded to recent radio spots he ran in California inviting businesses to "come check out Texas".

That meager $24,000 ad buy - which, like the upcoming trip, was paid for by TexasOne, a public-private partnership that markets Texas - quickly reignited the long-simmering feud between the nation's two most populous states over which is the better place in which to live and do business.

On Tuesday, California Gov. Jerry Brown rose to the bait, dismissing Perry's paltry radio ad buy as not even "a burp; it's barely a fart."

But Perry's gambit drew a more furious reaction in other quarters.

"Actually, we think it's more than a fart", the Sacramento Bee newspaper editorialized Wednesday. "It's a cry for help. Perry can't create jobs, he can only steal them from other states. His campaign for the Republican presidential nomination was a joke. His beloved Dallas Cowboys haven't been in the Super Bowl since 1996."

Mocking Perry's invitation to "come check out Texas", the Bee wrote, "Check out a state that ranks dead last in the percent of its population with high school diplomas. Come check out a state that is last in mental health expenditures and workers' compensation coverage. Come check out a state that ranks first in the number of executions, first in the number of uninsured, first in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted and first in the amount of toxic chemicals released into water."

And then, as the coup de grace, the paper said, "As the late Molly Ivins said of her native Texas, 'It's a low-tax, low-service state - so shoot us. The only depressing part is that, unlike Mississippi, we can afford to do better. We just don't.'"

But Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said in a Wednesday evening appearance on Fox's "O'Reilly Factor" that, "When you compare the two states, there is really no reason why entrepreneurs should stay in California. [some text missing] cent higher taxes, 33 percent bigger government", said Rollins. "Texas is the country's job engine, and it's been the case for many years now."

Ultimately, Perry's bottom-line defense is that, if Texas is such a terrible place, why are more than a thousand people a day - including many Californians - moving to the Lone Star state?

For much of its existence, California was the end-point of the American dream, the place people from every other state moved in search of a new start. As recently as the late 1980s, California was gaining more movers than it was losing, and Texas, amid the oil glut, was losing folks to other states.

But since the 1990s, California has been losing population to other states and has grown only because of immigration, according to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey. Texas is growing through both immigration and the movement of people from other states.

"Texas really has been the single big demographic survivor of what has been called the decade from hell, while California took some big hits", said Frey. "Texas gained four congressional seats from the 2010 census counts while California came up empty for the first time since statehood."

Still, the decline of sky-high housing prices in California has slowed Texas' advantage.

"Is California nicer than Texas? I would say, 'yes, yes, yes and yes'. That's why I stay in California. But for families, in most cases, the answer is 'no'", said Joel Kotkin, the author of "The Next Hundred Million: American in 2050", who has written prolifically about [some text missing] Texas and the rest of the South.

"If you're in Hollywood, if you're one of the Illuminati of Silicon Valley, you can't beat California", said Kotkin. But, for the masses, "there's massive unemployment, a third of the welfare caseload in the country and the highest rates of poverty."

Even as out-migration from California has slowed, Kotkin said those leaving places like Los Angeles remain mostly middle- and working-class families seeking more affordable, family-friendly places.

Kish Rajan, director of the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development in California, issued a statement suggesting that poaching another state's businesses is not very effective public policy. He noted that "business relocations only account for 0.03 percent of annual job losses in California."

On top of that, Fox's Bill O'Reilly questioned, "Is it fair for a governor of one state to go after business in another state?" Why not stay home and tout your own state, he said, "rather than going into California saying, 'you pinheads, you idiots, we're smarter than you are, come over here.'"

Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson agreed that Perry's move might be seen as "clownish" and beneath the dignity of a governor. But Jillson said that Perry keeps his eye on Republican primary voters in Texas and in the L-shaped stretch of states from the upper Midwest, down to Texas and east across the South, who he would rely on in another presidential run and for whom tweaking California is all good.

Besides, said Jillson, "Texas was eating California's dust for so long, now that Texas has bragging rights in terms of the pace of growth", it might simply be hard for Perry to resist.