SCV Talk · Archive
Nine years of the Valley’s town square · 2006–2015
SCV Talk
February 8, 2011· scvtalk.com · WordPress (SCVTalk 3.0) · Wayback capture

No Daily Brief today – February 8, 2011

By Jeff — Jeff Wilson

Apologies, mea culpa etc…

But let all us Californians stick a big fat Golden State finger in the direction of Texas, “The Miracle State,” which just revealed that its budget deficit is even bigger than our’s:

The lecturing from Texas leaders about how California wouldn’t be in such a budget mess if its politicians did business the way it is done in Austin has been relentless for years.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry delights in telling tales of his California “hunting trips” — hunting for businesses ready to flee the Golden State.

But the latest budget projections out of Texas have sharply changed the discussion: The Lone Star State is facing a budget gap of about $27 billion, putting it in the same league as California among states facing financial meltdowns. The gap amounts to roughly one-third of the state’s budget.

LA TIMES

Gotta be happy about something right?

Comments (39)

  1. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 8:28 am
    Hmmm… Texas has no state income tax and gasoline is close to 25 cents a gallon cheaper than California. Texas has 27 billion deficit for 2 years! California has 25 billion defecit for 1 year. LOL
  2. NickelDimeFebruary 8, 2011 at 8:56 am
    California has 12 million more people than Texas. That difference is about 6x the population of Nevada (or 2.5x the population of Colorado). Per capita, the gap is much wider in the Lone Star State. In other words, “we suck, but we suck less than those other guys!”
  3. IHeartSCVFebruary 8, 2011 at 9:30 am
    No, what JA is saying is that Texas has a two-year budget cycle so the $27B shortfall is like a $13.5B deficit per year–that makes the amount of state debt per capita less in Texas than what it is in California ($676/person vs. $545/person).
  4. MoneyFebruary 8, 2011 at 8:56 am
    Hey Johnny Boy, when are you packing up and moving? Sounds like a great place for you.
  5. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:13 am
    Went to U of H and lived there 7 years. Loved almost every day of it. (5 days of hurricane alicia was the only bad week)
  6. PetzFebruary 8, 2011 at 8:44 am
    The Germans have a word for that type of pleasure…Schadenfreude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
  7. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 8:52 am
    Now is where someone responds….Yeah…But….. Palin is still stupid!
  8. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 8:54 am
    Time for some good news. Olbermann is going to Al Gores ” Current TV” Which should raise his viewers from 14 to 18 a night.
  9. Timothy Myers SRFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:22 am
    Petz: It is also called hubris. That is why one never wants to gloat over someone else’s misfortune if one even has an OUNZE of superstition. JA: Texas does not have an “income tax” but they have business gross receipts tax (applies to any business including partnerships and LLC’s) that is collected whether a business is profitable or not. For a business that is of average profitability and does all of its business within the state (ie most small businesses) it ends up being an effective income tax of about 14% of profits.
  10. Coastal SageFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:43 am
    That’s how I understand it too.
  11. NickelDimeFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:42 am
    I stand corrected. We suck. Badly.
  12. Timothy Myers SRFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:26 am
    Lived in Dallas area (Coppell) for one year, ten months and six days. (Yes it was like a prison sentence.) When flying to Los Angeles in June of 1996 my Nebraska bride wanted the Captain to notify us of when we had crossed over into the airspace of New Mexico and made good our escape. If you want to know what life is like in the upper middle class enclaves of Dallas google “Jayne Peters Coppell”
  13. Your Web GuruFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:38 am
    My mother’s side is from Lubbock, where the entire region of West Texas smells like a combination of petroleum and cow dung. A cousin who still lives there says that cheap gas is the only “reward” for living there. My father’s side is from Dallas and I have a sister who lives there who couldn’t get out of her house for a week due to power outages and inclement weather. Oh, and Houston is not only one of the most dangerous cities in the US, but also the fattest! I’m the only family member born in So. Cal, and I LOVE it here, warts ‘n all!
  14. Jeff (But not the one that runs this blogFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:57 am
    You have warts, I’ve never noticed any warts on you
  15. Coastal SageFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:11 am
    Central Houston has hostile/aggressive drivers who make Santa Claritans look absolutely passive. As a more serious problem, women geologists, engineers and MBA’s in the oil and oil related industries have had a long battle for their rightful place in the business. Just when they started to make progress, their employers began hiring hordes of Middle Eastern immigrant men for those same jobs. These men’s wives wear the headscarf, and in many cases the full hijab, burqa, niqab or chardor and are “stay at home” wives. When assigned to a Middle Eastern male supervisor, who will evaluate the woman employee’s job performance on subjective criteria, the women geologists, engineers and MBA’s are terribly disadvantaged by many of their supervisors’ latent hostility towards the concept of working professional women. While Texans love to complain about being overrun by Mexican immigrants, so powerful is the oil industry the topic of discrimination against the “Daughters of Texas” by immigrants working for the oil and oil related high tech companies is a taboo topic, in terms of public discussion.
  16. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:59 am
    Make that 6 bad days! I had one rough night in the Harris county jail after a brief rendezvous with a midget hooker. Wait scratch that! undersized hooker
  17. Coastal SageFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:53 am
    Coastal Texas Trivia: Texas’ 14th Congressional District, represented by Ron Paul, runs along the coast from the heavily industrialized Galveston Bay, through the suburbs around NASA, for the entire length of the beach town of Galveston Island, through the vaunted alligator bayous of Brazoria State Park, through the coastal oil and chemical plants near Lake Jackson, through the territory of a controversial nuclear power plant, across the coastal cattle lands heading south, through the dioxin tainted EPA Superfund site at Tres Palacious Bay, through chemical plants hidden among little coastal towns, into the ranching and farming center around Victoria and into Aransas County which contains retirement and sport fishing communities and the coastal estates of several billionaire Texans. I had originally assumed Rep. Ron Paul and his libertarian views derived from truly rural Texas. Instead, I found his “coastal” district to be dominated, in terms of employment, by big imposing facilities associated with the oil, gas, chemical and nuclear power industries. By and large, the local fire departments are volunteer departments. In terms of the absence of “municipal improvements” like sidewalks, curbs, storm drains and flood control works, the 14th District is reminiscent of 1950′s era California communities from Eagle Rock to the Central Valley. Rep. Paul’s district is truly a libertarian paradise, which makes me toy with rethinking the merits of my own libertarian views. Perhaps I’m too spoiled by Southern California local governments’ focus on building cadillac quality municipal infrastructure like roads, sewers and storm drains which prevent flooding.
  18. Samuel AdamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 1:15 pm
    Ron Paul is the one BAD thing about Texas…
  19. Coastal SageFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:17 am
    Pardon me for being protective of Keith Olbermann’s reputation. He’s a fellow New Yorker and Cornell grad. He had about 1 Million viewers per night on MSNBC. As to the new channel, it’s only available on HD cable, so it’s hard to predict how many people will view his new show. Personally, I think that signing on with this obscure TV channel is a waste of Keith’s intellect.
  20. Samuel AdamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 1:17 pm
    Or an affirmation of it.
  21. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:43 am
    No matter what stat you put out the bottom line is the people of Texas pay less taxes. Pretty sure you do not want to argue that point. http://taxfoundation.org/publications/show/27023.html
  22. Coastal SageFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:21 am
    Clearly, in terms of personal income tax, Texas is a far less expensive place to live and work than California. However, I recently noticed that annual real estate taxes as a percentage of fair market value are higher in Texas than in California.
  23. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:25 am
    The Texas Gross reciepts tax is for utility companies only. They have a Franchise Tax which believe you are referring to??
  24. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:33 am
    LOL This should be harder. http://www.cnbc.com/id/37516043/ http://www.cnbc.com/id/37516039 Read and learn. Looks like some people on here watch to much msnbc
  25. Timothy Myers SRFebruary 8, 2011 at 12:58 pm
    Franchise tax was replaced by the gross receipts tax because it did not apply to pass throughs. This is how I make my living JA. I know from whence I speak.
  26. KevitivityFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:27 am
    I wonder how Texas will attempt to deal with it’s budget issues. Will it raise taxes and continue to grow government?
  27. Your Web GuruFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:33 am
    I smell secession.
  28. Coastal SageFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:27 am
    Texas’ state government suffers from the same problem as that of California and many other states: A rapidly increasing mega-cost of Medicaid, an arrogant entitled state civil service contingent, and an aggressive lobby to slash both the state budget, the local government budgets, and all state and local taxes.
  29. ToddFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:11 am
    The “people” of Texas pay less taxes, but only because the corporations doing business in Texas pick up the slack. If we had the oil production that Texas or Alaska have, or if we had the gambling that Nevada has, we’d have less taxes too. But our base is largely agricultural and service. Taxing food (subsidized by the USDA) is a no-no. If we levied a penny extra tax on a pound of lettuce, the state could recover $72 million alone. On lettuce. By itself. If we added 1/10th of 1% of a tax on all agriculture in the state, we’d have an additional $7.8 Billion in revenues for the state.
  30. Coastal SageFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:31 am
    Todd, I agree with you 100% on the issue of a sales tax on food, so that everyone would share in the cost of operating state and local government. However, if you look at Margaret Thatcher’s era of budget cutting in Britain, she was forced to back off when attempting to levy some sort of tax on Britains “on the dole”. I believe it was a poll tax, and it went nowhere. That would probably be the case in California, especially with the “sweetened beverage industry” regularly running commercials on TV channels like CNN to build awareness of and opposition to any taxes of “foods” including their products.
  31. Joe GrandeFebruary 8, 2011 at 11:48 am
    If the California deficit went down, that would make me happy. Knowing that Texas has a higher deficit is a yawn. I don’t care about Texas, I don’t live in Texas, I don’t want to live in Texas, I retired rather then move to Texas.
  32. Bill ReynoldsFebruary 8, 2011 at 12:04 pm
    As a native Texan, one thing I like about Texas is that it’s a “right to work” state, where workers can make their own decision on whether or not to join a union.
  33. john adamsFebruary 8, 2011 at 12:41 pm
    Watch this video on learn http://video.foxnews.com/v/4529073/is-the-president-clueless-about-how-the-economy-works/
  34. Timothy Myers SRFebruary 8, 2011 at 1:01 pm
    A native Texan? With apologies to Lou Gossett Jr: “The only things that come out of Texas are steers and queers, boy!!!”
  35. Bill ReynoldsFebruary 8, 2011 at 3:00 pm
    Wow, what an original zinger, Timmy. Can’t we get past such vitriolic discourse… per your Messiah’s beckoning?
  36. Timothy Myers SRFebruary 8, 2011 at 4:14 pm
    It’s a joke Bill!!!! (And a darn funny one too.)
  37. MikeFebruary 8, 2011 at 1:08 pm
    A product of the Jim Crow-era south. That explains so much.
  38. ScottEFebruary 8, 2011 at 1:22 pm
    No mater what stat you quote, isn’t the article about the current budget deficit and not what has happened historically? Are there stats for what will happen in the future? LOL, this should be easier. But seriously folks, quoting whatever happened in 2010 or prior has,well, exactly no bearing on where things go from here if you’re facing a current budget deficit … does it? I’m trying to imagine telling a client looking to me for advice on how his business will deal with a projected future shortfall by saying, “Don’t worry about it bucko, you’ve had some great years! Also, I didn’t read (in Jeff’s comments) any claim that California is better (and ND underlined the point), just that Texas is currently in pretty much the same boat and should not be handing out smug advice as if they weren’t (aren’t?). And yeah, Sarah Palin still is stupid.
  39. CCFebruary 8, 2011 at 2:17 pm
    Statistics are fun

Preserved as part of the SCV Talk Archive. Text is presented as originally published; presentation has been standardised for readability. The original capture is available at the Internet Archive.

Support