Posted by
Defend America on Sunday, March 07, 2010 10:45:47 AM
Low-tax Texas beats big-government California
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
March 7, 2010
"Stop
messing with Texas!" That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on
election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey
Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to
Texas' anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to
national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democratic
politicians as well as Republicans.
His point was that the big-government policies of the Obama
administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and
fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also
as an intrusion on voters' independence and ability to make decisions
for themselves.
No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential
candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his
10 years as governor, the longest in the state's history, Texas has
been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay
heed.
They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast
Texas, the nation's second most populous state, with the most populous,
California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United
States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past
half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third
Hispanic.
But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic
progress -- or lack of it -- over the last decade. California has gone
in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the
legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San
Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Low-tax-Texas-beats-big-government-California-86681467.html