Red State Job Engine

Via NewsBusters:

The establishment press will never tell their readers, listeners and viewers that the five best-performing states in job growth through the first eleven months of this year, as well as nine of the top eleven, have relatively conservative Republicans occupying their respective governors’ mansions. If these eleven star performers had only performed as well as the rest of the nation, over 300,000 fewer people would be working, and the unemployment rate would be at least 0.2% higher.

As will be seen after the jump, the list, based on date released today by Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, includes several against which the Obama administration has undertaken significant job-killing or job-deferring actions (i.e., these states have outperformed despite the handicaps, and would have done much better without them):

I wanted to say something about Rachel Maddow’s “debunking” of Texas jobs,

and that is that she skews her stats on this a bit. Firstly however, minimum wage laws (which play a part in this waxing of the numbers) play a big roll in keeping people unemployed. This isn’t my main point however, here are some points made elswhere:

But there’s no escaping it. The number is real. Which means that if you care about putting people back to work at a time when nearly 14 million in this country are unemployed, maybe Texas has something to teach us.

Unfortunately, that’s not the posture many commentators have taken. Instead, when the data from Texas emerged — touted first by Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas — conservatives were quick to celebrate, embracing the jobs tally as powerful evidence of the superiority of Republican ideas as well as proof that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would make a good president. But that’s overly simplistic.

Meanwhile, those on the liberal end of the spectrum immediately set out to shoot the numbers down. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, for instance, held up a giant bologna and mocked the notion of a “Texas miracle.” That view, however, is too cavalier….

To be sure, Texas is not without lots of problems. And its remarkable employment growth is not without attendant concerns. But for those on the left to dismiss the state’s jobs story out of hand, just because Republicans have embraced it as a showpiece, is counterproductive and foolish.

(LA Times)

While the LA Times article struggled a bit, but ended up shining at the end, the following is what Maddow and the LA Times writer didn’t fully account for:

In her column for The Daily, Reason Foundation’s Shikha Dalmia delves into Gov. Rick Perry’s record and writes that Texas “has one of the lightest personal tax burdens in the country and a low cost of living, which are hugely attractive to out-of-work Americans. Their flocking to the state has bumped up Texas’ unemployment rate to 8 percent, prompting Rachel Maddow to jeer on the air that Perry’s jobs record is not a whole lot better than many other states. What she refuses to see is that while in those states high unemployment is due to anemic job growth, in Texas it is due to robust population growth. If anything, Texas offers proof that people prefer jobs, even low-paying ones, to lavish social benefits — repudiating the liberal tax-and-spend economic model.

Just wanted to include a quick rebuttal to Madcow’s many, many  mistakes.

 

 

-And the Lie of the Year is (*drumb roll please*)

Via Gateway Pundit:

The left leaning Politifact released it’s “lie of the year” today. This year the group decided that, “Republicans voted to end Medicare,” was the biggest lie beating out Barack Obama’s laughable line, “We’re better off today than when I took over.” Democrats even made horrible dishonest ads showing Rep. Paul Ryan pushing grandma off a cliff over the lie.

RAINBOW SIX (Occupy Wall Street the Terrorists)

Via HotAir:

No, just kidding. These guys aren’t OWS. For one thing, none of them takes a dump in public or on a cop car, and no one gets raped. Also, as Frank Fleming points out, they’re wearing suits and they’re racially diverse, which is pretty much smoking-gun proof that they’re not OWSers. What’s identical is the message: For the second straight day, the Occupiers’ class-warfare ethos gets a starring role in a sure-to-be-blockbuster piece of entertainment — and once again, they’re cast as the villains. No wonder liberals are upset. How annoying to be reminded that domestic terrorism isn’t solely the province of wingnuts by people who are supposed to be on your side.

Smaller or Larger Government? Equality or Prosperity?

For context:

The following comes from a discussion elsewhere on the Web, and should serve as a great reminder to the deleterious effects of larger (more regulatory) government vs. a smaller form of it:

The main point is that one party has people in it that are for small government — people like Ron Paul, Larry Elder, and the late Milton Friedman (a libertarian “god” of sorts). In the other you have people who want to grow government larger, and larger, and larger. California is a microcosm of the effect this has on businesses and regulating people’s lives. However, this drive to regulate people and their lives and to grow government, has, in every case, increased the possibility of government intrusion by force into the lives of ordinary people, which increase the risk (again, this is provable in history) of detention and death.

Which is why most libertarians vote Republican, they want smaller government. A great example is the housing market crisis. Some people are under the impression this was caused due to an easing of regulation. Not true. In fact, it was government-regulating banks to loan to people it would previously not. Why is this? Because the left wants [material] equality, the right wants people to prosper. One offers the most freedom, the other forces one person to pay for another. Here is an a small sampling of 2012 regulations from California that is helping businesses make the choice in moving to other states:

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  • In addition to mandatory insurance coverage, eligible female employees can take four months pregnancy disability leave, under provisions of SB 299.
  • The independent contractor law, SB 459, is worth discussing with a legal or h/r expert, because the rules are so tough and potentially expensive. That $5,000 to $25,000 fine is PER INCIDENT.
  • Employees can take up to 30 business days in a year for donating organs or bone marrow. SB 272 clarifies the law a bit.
  • Company dress codes must accommodate transvestites and cross dressers under AB 887.
  • Companies operating in multiple states must offer the same insurance coverage for same-sec couples and domestic partners as they do married couples in California.
  • Five new laws change workers compensation insurance. Check with your insurance carrier.

(Orange County Register)

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Everything the growth in government touches (which is typically from the left… or, the right embracing the foundational thinking of the left [like Bush working with Kennedy to increase the size and focus of the Dept of Education]). This regulation causes friction between government and regular people. As more and more regulations are added, the increase in the possibility of armed persons coming to your door increases — like this example of natural foods markets being raided: REASON TV Rawesome Foods Raided… Again!

So persons that *REALLY* want to effect the political spectrum and possibly decrease the size of the government the most would want to vote Republican (like Milton Friedman, Larry Elder, and Rand Paul [Ron Paul’s son]). And this decreases the abrasive aspect of government and the regular Joe meeting. Congress — for instance – should meet for 3-months during the year, and do less of this:

“Federal agencies publish an average of over 200 pages of new rulings, regulations, and proposals in the Federal Register each business day. That growth of the federal statute book is one of the clearest measures of the increase of the government control of the citizenry…” James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martins Griffen; 1994), 1.

“All forms of the liberal agenda interfere with the rational relationship between human action and the conditions of life by disconnecting outcomes from adaptive behavior. Government welfare programs of all kinds disconnect the receipt of material benefits from productive behavior and voluntary exchange, and from those normal developmental processes that lead to adult competence. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other federal and state welfare programs divorce an individual’s material security and emotional well being from his economic and social connections to his community, and replace them with a marriage to government officials. In particular, welfare programs disconnect the individual’s security and well being from two of his most reliable resources: his own initiative in producing and exchanging with others, and his social bonds to members of his family, church, neighborhood or village. The liberal agenda’s takeover of countless individual and community functions, from early education to care of the elderly, has had the effect of alienating the individual from his community and robbing both of their essential mutuality. In the economic sphere, especially, the liberal agenda’s rules have become strikingly irrational. Countless restrictions dictate what the ordinary businessman and professional may or may not do regarding hiring procedures, sales and purchasing, health insurance plans, retirement plans, safety precautions, transportation policies, racial and ethnic quotas, immigration matters, liability rules, and provisions for the handicapped. Endless paperwork adds to the already crushing burden of confiscatory taxation. Licensure requirements needlessly prevent workers from entering new fields in which they are willing to work hard and risk much in order to make life better for themselves and their families. Unnecessary and unjust restrictions in the freedom with which individuals can run their economic lives are the hallmarks of the liberal agenda. But the social pathology of collectivism extends well beyond the economic realm. While children can be happy in dependent relationships with parents, adults cannot be happy in any mature sense in dependent relationships with government welfare programs, no matter how well intentioned or administered. The reasons for this are developed more thoroughly below and occupy a major portion of this book. Stated briefly, however, the large-scale dependency of the adult citizen on governments is always inherently pathological and always profoundly detrimental to…” Lyle H. Rossiter, The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness, p. 71.

Cal Watchdog adds to the idea with the most recent businesses leaving:

Waste Connections, a Folsom-based garbage hauling and landfill company, said last week it is busting a move for Texas. Santa Barbara-based Superconductor Technologies Inc., which develops advanced superconducting wire, also confirmed this week it is leaving for the Lone Star State.

After California’s ongoing budget imbroglio, there is arguably no greater crisis facing our once Golden State than the continuing exodus of homegrown companies like Waste Connections and Superconductor Technologies. Yet, lawmakers in Sacramento are doing next to nothing about it.

In fact, Waste Connections CEO Ron Mittlestaedt actually warned state officials back in August that his company was thinking about relocating to another state. Those officials failed to step up and dissuade the Sacramento region’s largest publicly traded company from leaving.
Higher Taxes

Mittlestaedt echoed the lament of all too many California CEO’s that the state is inhospitable for business. It “has the highest tax rates in the nation,” he told the Sacramento Bee this week, “and they’re going higher.” And California is not only fiscally broke, he said, but also “structurally.”

By that, he was referring to the state’s hostile regulatory environment. As when the Legislature this year neglected to pass a measure that would have made it easier for Waste Connections and other landfill operators to move trash around the state, while doing no harm to the environment.

Superconductor Technologies CEO Jeff Quiram said in a statement that the company’s goal of becoming “a leader in the superconducting wire industry recently reached the inflection point where it was time to make a move.”

Translation: The cost, the hassle of doing business in California has risen to such a level that aspiring companies like STI cannot grow their businesses the way they can in competing states….

…read more…

Other posts referencing these issue worth checking out: