Texas is the answer to the question Newsom asks below:
“Tech journalist Kara Swisher asked California Governor Gavin Newsom last September about the threat of businesses and residents leaving for greener pastures.
Despite the state’s rising tax burden, traffic, fire seasons, power shortages and a hardening reputation for being business-unfriendly, Newsom offered a serenely arrogant response. “I have experienced this stress and consternation,” he told Swisher. “And I think Governor Brown, former Governor [Jerry] Brown said it best, ‘Where the hell are you going to go?’”
Businesses and families are realizing California is in a death spiral—both figuratively and literally. Murders are up by large numbers in the State. Businesses are closed by order of the Governor, with no way to open up. Folks will either file for bankruptcy or just walk away. California is in a Depression. How bad is it? Even the Rose Bowl moved to Texas! What else has to be said? Oh, the dodgers, played the World Series, not in Los angles—but in Houston!
From The Rose Bowl To Silicon Valley, Texas Is Eating California’s Lunch
Rob Asghar, Forbes, 1/1/21
Tech journalist Kara Swisher asked California Governor Gavin Newsom last September about the threat of businesses and residents leaving for greener pastures.
Despite the state’s rising tax burden, traffic, fire seasons, power shortages and a hardening reputation for being business-unfriendly, Newsom offered a serenely arrogant response. “I have experienced this stress and consternation,” he told Swisher. “And I think Governor Brown, former Governor [Jerry] Brown said it best, ‘Where the hell are you going to go?’”
That would seem to be the philosophy of an abusive or at least neglectful spouse: C’mon, you never had it so good. Yet within a few months, the governor found that the “where,” for many people, was the great state of Texas.
A CNN.com article in early December carried the headline, “The company that literally started Silicon Valley is moving to Texas.” That would be Hewlett Packard, the original garage startup.
alifornia Governor Gavin Newsom, asked about an exodus from the Golden State, has said, “Where the … [+]
Tesla CEO Elon Musk would soon announce his own plans to move to Texas, calling California “complacent” in its efforts to work with businesses. And after tech giant Oracle announced that it was shifting its headquarters to Austin, Texas Governor Greg Abbott crowed on Twitter that “Texas is truly the land of business, jobs, and opportunity.”
But the coup de grace came with the announcement that “the Granddaddy of Them All,” the Rose Bowl game, would be played in Texas today instead of in its 119-year-old home of Pasadena. The relocation of this quintessentially Californian tradition happened because of a hyper-vigilant Covid-19 policy. As New York Times writer Billy Witz reported, “The Tournament of Roses appealed to the state to allow live spectators—it proposed letting 400 family members into the 90,888-seat stadium—but it was denied.”
And so the game has moved to Arlington, where a full 16,000 people will be permitted to attend.
California political and civic figures would scoff at the idea that this suggests something ominous. They’d call it a once-in-a-century occurrence driven by a pandemic. However, even when the pandemic abates, California leaders’ clumsy and inflexible decision-making style will endure.
Here, a state famous for its radically free spirit becomes strangely puritanical. Proud Californians ardently defend their cautious pandemic approach as being “guided by the science,” in contrast to the less restrictive approaches they enjoy condemning in states like Texas and Florida. Yet given the overall trends in these states, California leaders could show a little humility rather than assuming that their crushing Covid-19 restrictions are superior to other states’ approaches to balancing competing societal needs.
California’s problems are to a considerable degree due to the incompetence and tone-deafness in recent years of its Republican Party, as its swift decline has led to the state’s progressive leaders now getting little if any pushback against their weaker ideas.
It’s why the state could pursue a high-speed rail project, run up a huge bill, and have little to show for it.
It’s why Los Angeles leaders see their mounting homeless problem in purely ideological terms, and as a result come up with costly, quixotic plans that try to address income inequality but which solve nothing.
It’s why Newsom can see California wildfires as a chance to beat an ideological drum about how the state and the nation need to do more about climate change. That is well and true, but it leaves aside the job of managing California’s forests competently and finding smarter ways to increase the housing supply in a state famous for NIMBYism.
Adam Carolla, the fiercely libertarian comedian and podcaster, has spent endless hours during the pandemic excoriating Newsom, LA mayor Eric Garcetti and other California politicians. Carolla and a parade of callers to his podcast discuss plans, short-term and long, to finally head off for states whose governments are more competent and less intrusive (even though California has plans to continue siphoning money from the wallets of those who leave).
To be sure, many progressive California politicians and residents will snidely offer to pack their bags or help pay for one-way tickets out. The problem, though, is that once the state further loses ideological diversity, those who stay behind will be in a position to accelerate their utopian projects, likely with ever-worsening results.
“Where the hell are you going to go?” Apparently, there are real alternatives to the Golden State. Its leaders would do well to realize this and adjust.
