Chuck DeVore: TX vs. CA

I listened to an interview with Chuck DeVore today on KMJ Radio out of Fresno.  He was in CA last weekend to speak to the Republican Party convention.

DeVore was a CA Representative who termed out in 2011. He was going to run for County Supervisor in Orange Co. but he moved to Texas when he realized there is no more aerospace industry in CA (an engineer by trade).  He loves the life in the Texas Hill Country.

He had a bunch of good Texas vs. CA facts. 

1:   It is 33% cheaper to live in TX than in CA. Big piece of that is reasonable laws.
2:   His house is 70% bigger for $110,000 less, with acres and a pool.  (We saw that huge difference when we looked in 2004.)   Lots of ex-Californians live nearby.
4:   Californians pay 42% more in taxes  (11.2% vs. 8.2%)

5:   The populations are similar but California's government is 1/3 larger.  That means more regulation.
6:   The Texas Assembly only meets for 140 days every 2nd year.
7.   Texas electricity rates are 2/3 of CA rates (13.01 vs. 9.3 cents per baseline KWh and don't forget how fast the Tier rates go up).  Californians will pay $10 Billion or $265 each more this year for electricity. 
8.  Assembly Members biography:  
     California:  18% of Democrats from private business, the rest were government workers, community organizers or trial attorneys
     Texas:        36% of Democrats from private business, 75% of Republicans from business, with only 19% private attorneys

Some 18 percent of the Democrats who control both houses of California’s full-time legislature worked in business or medicine before being elected. The remainder drew paychecks from government, worked as community organizers, or were attorneys. Texas Democrats are more than twice as likely as their California counterparts to claim private-sector experience outside the field of law.

In Texas, 75 percent of the Republicans who control both houses earn a living in business, farming, or medicine, with 19 percent being attorneys in private practice. Of the remaining four Republicans one is a retired Army officer, one, a teacher, one, a professor, and one, a former staffer for elected officials.

That Texas’s legislature is run by makers and California’s by takers is glaringly obvious from the two states’ respective balance sheets.

9.  See the John Stossell video at link below for more comparisons.
10:  


Chuck DeVore's speech to the California Republican Party's Spring 2013 Convention is here: 
Click to Open Word Document

Electricity rates from EIA:  EIA data