Redistricting a win for Democrats

Remember how Rick Perry kept braying about Texas not having a budget deficit, and deriding California for having a budget deficit?

Well, it doesn’t take much to fool the Fox News spoon-fed rightwingers….Perry made that claim based on the first year of the current two-year Texas budget cycle, when the budget (showing deficits or surpluses) is not posted until the SECOND YEAR of the two-year cycle.

In fact, Texas’ budget deficit is MORE than California’s budget deficit ($27billion v. $25billion). After the budget cuts, California’s deficit is down to about $15billion.

Once again, we see that Texas is big on mouth but little on action.

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http://articles.latimes.com/print/2011/feb/07/local/la-me-texas-budget-20110207

TEXAS’ FINANCES NOT AS ROSY AS THEY SEEMED

The state prides itself as a model of conservative spending and responsible budgeting. But a new $27-billion budget gap undercuts its image as a business-seducing, fiscally adaptive state.

February 07, 2011|By Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times

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.

In a place where government is already lean, there aren’t many areas to make up that kind of cash. The budget blueprint Texas’ Legislature is mulling would mean layoffs for tens of thousands of teachers, closure of community colleges, and a severe reduction in state services for the poor and those with mental health problems.

Texas has a two-year budget cycle, which allowed it to camouflage its red ink last year, thanks in large part to billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. Now, however, “someone just turned the lights on in the bar, and the sexiest state doesn’t look so pretty anymore,” said California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, with evident satisfaction….

…As if to punctuate the point that Texas has found itself in a California-style mess, a power-grid problem caused rolling blackouts statewide Wednesday as the Capitol was consumed with fiscal crisis….

…The Republicans who dominate the statehouse won’t be closing loopholes that emerged in a recently enacted business tax change, costing the state billions in anticipated revenue….

…”There is no indication that there is going to be a robust economic rebound,” said Talmadge Heflin, a former Republican lawmaker who now runs the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Fiscal Policy. …

…The Texas budget crisis is prompting some experts to reconsider what had been dubbed the Texas Miracle. The state has much lower unemployment than California, but economists note that many of the jobs are low-paying. One out of three wage earners in Texas earns too little to keep a family of four above the federal poverty level, according to a 2009 study by the Corp. for Enterprise Development, a Washington-based nonprofit. That is double the percentage of similarly low-wage Californians.

Such figures call into question whether Texas’ economy has really transitioned into a new 21st century model, or whether it has been buoyed by high oil prices and lots of loosely zoned land where construction of cheap houses endured through the recession….

…Texas lags far behind California in major research universities, patents produced, high-tech infrastructure and venture capital investment, according to the Missouri-based Kauffman Foundation. The foundation’s 2010 ranking of states in “movement toward a global, innovation-based new economy” put California at No. 7. Texas was No. 18.

“Their model is a low-wage economy with greater income inequality,” said John Ellwood, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. “For all the talk of Texas being a high-tech state, they have never really caught up to California.… Look at the big new growth companies. Where is Facebook? Where is Google? Are any of these companies in Austin? No.”

Even Perry’s claims of companies that have decamped from California to lay down roots in Texas appear to be overblown. When the Austin American-Statesman looked into the Texas governor’s boast that there were 153 such companies in 2010, reporters found the claim included California firms that stayed put but maybe opened a Texas branch. The newspaper concluded that Perry’s figure was grossly inflated….

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