BLOG SOUP - A little friendly rivalry is fine, but Texas Governor Rick Perry's taking it a bit far. Here's the Sacramento Bee:
Poor Texas. With its high dropout rate, lack of health insurance coverage and economic disparities, the Lone Star State appears to be desperate, or least its governor is. How else to explain Gov. Rick Perry's unseemly radio ads attempting to lure businesses away from California?
"Building a business is tough, but I hear building a business in California is next to impossible," the Republican governor says in the ad. "This is Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and I have a message for California businesses: Come check out Texas."
Yes, come check out Texas. 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.
Texas certainly has some attractions for business, and California certainly needs to work harder to create a friendly place to start companies and grow jobs. But California is creating businesses all the time, partly because of our natural assets – great weather and stunning mountains, beaches and deserts – and an excellent although underfunded system of higher education.
If we invest in that system and protect our environment, our state will continue to create companies such as Apple, Google, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Craigslist, Yelp, Twitter, Sun Microsystems, Genentech, Cisco, Intel and Qualcomm, and the list goes on and on.
Also too: The 850 mile coastline. The tidal shoreline including small bays and inlets is 3427 miles. Plus mountains. And other stuff.
Texas certainly has much to recommend it, not the least of which is some very good people. But it's silly for Perry to diss California. After all, Republicans once ran California. And then they decided to be nasty to Latinos. It didn't work out well for them. There's every reason to believe it won't work out for them well in Texas either.
(Digby is the pseudonym of progressive political blogger Heather Parton from Santa Monica, California who founded the blog Hullabaloo … where this commentary first appeared.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 12
Pub: Feb 8, 2013
