Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, December 22, 2010 6:45:32 PM
As Michael Medved pointed out in the first hour of his radio show today, according to census data, Americans are voting with their feet and moving from "blue' states to "red" states. This is an indication that Leftist policies do not work. Leftists will never admit this, of course. They will blame anything and everything else. I’m sure we’ll be hearing that the migration is "rich white racists" wanting to avoid "diversity".
Michael Barone has
this piece in the Washington Examiner.
Texas is the winner in the "vote with your feet" contest.
Its population grew 21 percent in the past decade, from nearly 21 million to more than 25 million. That was more rapid growth than in any states except for four much smaller ones (Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho).
Texas' diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states. As a result, the 2010 reapportionment gives Texas four additional House seats. In contrast, California gets no new House seats, for the first time since it was admitted to the Union in 1850.
California is a disaster.
There's a similar lesson in the fact that Florida gains two seats in the reapportionment and New York loses two.
This leads to a second point, which is that growth tends to be stronger where taxes are lower. Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England.
Altogether, 35 percent of the nation's total population growth occurred in these nine non-taxing states, which accounted for just 19 percent of total population at the beginning of the decade.
Are you paying attention, Sacramento Democrats and RINOs?
Thanks to unexpectedly large gains in state legislatures, Republicans stand to control the redistricting process in 18 states with 204 House districts, while Democrats will control it in only seven states with 49 districts. That doesn't guarantee continued Republican majorities, but it's probably worth 10 to 15 seats.
Good news.
California has great natural resources and still has some great human resources and culture, but the government employee union stranglehold, the reconquistador, envirofascist, and gender confusion attitudes among those in the legislature and various governing boards is driving productive contributors out of the state. Leftists, of course, want to nationalize (and internationalize) their dysfunctional polices so as to prevent people from escaping. That’s their solution, rather than limited government, property rights, free markets, and parental rights.