Why California is Eating Rick Perry’s Lunch

It probably really helped Rick Perry in the last election when he made the bold, and up to this time, unchallenged assertion that ‘Texas is Eating California’s Lunch.’ It gave him credibility, and it gave the pro-business sensible conservative approach to governing a lot of credence.

It’s true. Take a look at how Perry crowed and bragged about how he was leading Texas to a rompfest last October.

From Rickperry.org:

“But most impressively, the state goes out of its way to recruit businesses to its precincts. Governor Rick Perry famously takes “hunting trips” in California for businesses sick and tired of our deadly combination of high taxes and absurd regulation. Even Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s husband recently moved workers from the Orange County office of his CB Richard Ellis real estate company to Dallas. According to the Claremont Institute’s William Voegeli, between 2000 and 2007, California lost 1.1 million people while Texas absorbed 500,000 new arrivals.”

But now that Texas is reporting somewhere between a $15 and $27 billion dollar revenue shortfall, putting it in the same league as California and other cash-strapped states, it seems that the worm has turned. And now that people are looking a little closer to these bold and brash claims, they are finding that Emperor Perry indeed has no clothes on.

From the LA Times:

“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.”

Yikes, et tu American-Statesman?

California dines on Rick Perry’s fine taxpayer-paid cuisine and fine wines, while Rick Perry dines on a  fresh steaming