Proof That Republican Economic Policies Work Just FINE: Conservative-Friendly Texas Created 38% Of ALL U.S. Jobs In 2010

How’s THIS for a record to run for president on?

CNBC EXCERPTS: RICHARD FISHER, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF DALLAS PRESIDENT AND CEO ON CNBC’S “SQUAWK BOX” TODAY
Published: Tuesday, 7 Jun 2011 | 10:51 AM ET Text Size By: Jennifer Dauble

[….]

FISHER ON CREATING RULES:

“WE’VE GOT TO CREATE RULES AND REGULATIONS HERE THAT ATTRACT CAPITAL AS WELL AS DEAL WITH OUR UNFUNDED LIABILITIES OUR DEFICIT PROBLEMS AND SO ON, JUST AS TEXAS HAS MANAGED TO DO SO RELATIVE TO OTHER STATES IN THE UNITED STATES.”

[…]

FISHER ON TEXAS JOBS:

“SINCE THE RECOVERY BEGAN, 38 PERCENT OF ALL JOBS CREATED IN AMERICA HAVE BEEN CREATED IN TEXAS, AND TEXAS IS BACK UP, IN FACT MY 11TH FEDERAL RESERVE DISTRICT OF TEXAS, PARTS OF LOUISIANA, PARTS OF NEW MEXICO; OBVIOUSLY 96 PERCENT OF THAT PRODUCTION AND THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ARE IN TEXAS OF MY DISTRICT- HAS MORE EMPLOYMENT NOW THAN IT HAD WHEN THE CRISIS BEGAN.”

Obama and the Democrats have relied on a demagogic narrative that Republican policies failed and Democrats offer “hopey changey” for the last three years of what is now an increasingly obviously failed presidency.  The fact that it couldn’t be more false doesn’t stop them from telling and retelling the liberal fairy tale over and over and over again to a wide-eyed mainstream media and anyone else fool enough to believe them.

The difference between California (liberal Democrat) and Texas (conservative Republican) are the difference between long dark hopeless night and bright sunny optimistic morning.  Take for example restaurant chain Carl’s Junior:

Carl’s Jr. chief downplays Texas talk
Written by Henry Dubroff
Wednesday, 02 February 2011

CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder sees advantages in moving the company’s headquarters from Carpinteria to Texas, but a move is not imminent, he told The Business Times.

In a Feb. 2 telephone interview from Houston, where he is looking at the  company’s fast-growing Carl’s Jr. operation, Puzder said he paid a  visit to Texas Gov. Rick Perry earlier in the week and discussed the  company’s growth in the Lone Star State.

But he said that CKE, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardees,  won’t break its lease in Carpinteria or abandon the headquarters in the  near term. “We love California and we’d love to stay,” said Puzder. “Our  heart and soul is in California.”

But Puzder said that long delays in opening stores, California’s  byzantine rules on overtime pay and high personal income taxes could  make a move inevitable. “We feel more like we’re being pushed out,” he  said, adding that “economics may compel us to do so.”

CKE has been growing rapidly in Texas, where it now has 40 restaurants  and expects to have 300 by the end of the decade; in comparison, it has  700 stores in California. “The growth of this company is in Texas, and  the real big question for this company is, where are your restaurants  and where is the growth?” Puzder said.

Puzder also said that Californians leaving the state for jobs and  entrepreneurial opportunities in Texas are part of the reason for its  fast growth in that state. Carl’s Jr.’s brand familiarity is so high in  Texas that the two most recent store openings in the state, including a  unit in Houston, set records for revenue. “Jobs and consumers are in  Texas,” Puzder said. “Our customers beat us here.”

And, yes, CKE moved its operations to Texas.

And yes, a LOT of Californians have beaten them to the Lone Star State.  I showed previously the difference in cost between renting a truck to move from California to Texas versus moving from Texas to California.  At that time, it cost $900 to move from Texas to California, versus $3,000 to go the other way, because all the moving trucks were already in Texas.  That’s a 233 percent difference.

Which matches a national trend, as people are forced to move out of failed blue states to successful red states.

Thanks to the failure of liberalism.

Here’s some of the specific reasons why liberalism fails at job creation from another article:

Carl’s Jr. chewed up by California, Moving Corp HQ to Texas

[…]

Indeed, CKE Restaurants, parent of Carl’s Jr., is likely to move its headquarters from Carpinteria, near Ventura, to Texas and is undergoing a rapid expansion of restaurants in the Lone Star State. Right before the budget circus got going Wednesday, CKE CEO Andrew Puzder spoke at the California Chamber of Commerce, blocks from the Capitol dome. Like most of us, Puzder loves California and has no interest in leaving it, but he told harrowing tales about doing business in a state that has gone from an entrepreneurial heaven to a bureaucratic nightmare.

“It costs us $250,000 more to build one California restaurant than in Texas,” he said. “And once it is opened, we’re not allowed to run it.” This explains why Carl’s is opening 300 restaurants in Texas and only maintaining its presence in California. Texas has lower taxes than California, but the reason for the shift has more to do with regulation and with the attitude of the respective governments.

Puzder complained about the permitting process here, where it takes eight months to two years to open a new restaurant compared to an average of 1 1/2 months in Texas. In California, restaurants have to provide new curb cuts, new traffic lights, you name it. The company must endure so many requirements and must submit to so many inspections that it becomes excessively costly – and the bureaucrats are in charge of the project.

Once the restaurant is open, Puzder said, the store’s general managers are not allowed to run the business as if they own it. That’s the key to the company’s customer service approach – allowing general managers to do whatever it takes to make customers happy. But California’s inflexible, union-designed work rules, for instance, classify general managers as regular employees. They must be paid overtime for any work beyond an eight-hour day. They must take mandated breaks at specified times.

If a busload of customers comes to a store, these general managers must sit back and do nothing if they are on a break period. Most states have 40-hour workweek rules, meaning employees are paid overtime after exceeding 40 hours of work in a single week. In California it is based on the day, which limits the ability of managers to work, say, six hours one day and 10 hours the next day. Puzder complains about these industrial-era requirements that impede flexibility and harm customer service.

And California law encourages “private attorney general” lawsuits against private businesses over overtime and other regulatory rules, which has created a huge financial incentive for attorneys to file questionable legal actions against restaurants.

“It’s not like we have kids working in coal mines or women working in sweatshops,” Puzder said. It’s not as if his workers in other states, where these regulatory rules don’t exist, are oppressed, he added. “How does this help us instill entrepreneurial values?” He wonders how all these nonsensical rules teach people about being independent from the government rather than dependent on it.

I’d argue that the rules are designed specifically to impede private enterprise and to hobble entrepreneurship. After all, the unions, trial attorneys and liberal legislators writing these rules believe that government is the answer to most problems and that private industry is a cancer.

“People are just dying to get out there and make money,” Puzder said. “But California is setting a bar here. You can’t work smarter, harder, longer or better.” His company has had to fire hardworking store managers who insist on working longer hours than the state allows. He wants to tell these people, “Come to Texas, and we will hire you.”

The big debate at the Capitol has been whether to pass a budget with tax extensions. Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislators believe the only thing wrong with California is that people here don’t give the state enough of their paychecks. They believe this state has too-few government workers and too little oversight of business.

Democrats offer us a government of the Weiners, by the Weiners and for the Weiners.  They want the Anthony Weiners of the world to have control over your health care, over your pension, over your life.  They want government’s finger in every pie.  They want more taxes, taking a bigger and bigger share of earnings, savings and profits.  They want more regulations.  They want to be able to say who receives and who pays, who wins and who loses, even who lives and who dies.

The Democrat Party and Barack Obama are failing America – to the extent they even want “America” at all.

When you think Democrat policies versus Republican policies, don’t consider Obama’s way overused and frankly demagogic “Republicans drove us into a ditch” analogy; just consider Republican states like Texas and Democrat states like California.  The conclusion couldn’t be more clear.

Democrats Determined To Impose Health Agenda On Nation That Doesn’t Want It

Rasmussen – the nation’s most accurate polling organization – says the numbers are crystal clear: America doesn’t want ObamaCare.

Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.

Half the survey was conducted before the Senate voted late Saturday to begin debate on its version of the legislation. Support for the plan was slightly lower in the half of the survey conducted after the Senate vote.

Prior to this, support for the plan had never fallen below 41%. Last week, support for the plan was at 47%. Two weeks ago, the effort was supported by 45% of voters.

Intensity remains stronger among those who oppose the push to change the nation’s health care system: 21% Strongly Favor the plan while 43% are Strongly Opposed.

Rasmussen Reports is continuing to track public opinion on the health care plan on a weekly basis. Next week’s Monday morning update will give an indication of whether these numbers reflect a trend of growing opposition or are merely statistical noise.

Only 16% now believe passage of the plan will lead to lower health care costs. Nearly four times as many (60%) believe the plan will increase health care costs. Most (54%) also believe passage of the plan will hurt the quality of care.

As has been the case for months, Democrats favor the plan while Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are opposed. The latest numbers show support from 73% of those in the president’s party. The plan is opposed by 83% of Republicans and 70% of unaffiliated voters.

Other recent polling shows that Democrats consider health care reform to be the top priority for the president. Republicans and unaffiliated voters see deficit reduction as most important.

Among the nation’s senior citizens, 34% favor the health care plan and 60% are opposed. A majority of those under 30 favor the plan, but a majority of all other age groups are opposed (Premium Members can see full demographic crosstabs).

Support for health care has declined along with President Obama’s approval ratings. For the first time in the Obama era, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index has been in negative double digits for nine straight days.

Despite the decline in support for the health care plan, 50% still say it is at least somewhat likely to become law this year. That figure includes 17% who say passage is Very Likely.

While Senate Democrats this weekend assembled enough votes to begin debate on the plan, many challenges remain. All Republican Senators and several Democrats, for example, have expressed opposition to the so-called “public option.” Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters nationwide say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance coverage is a higher priority than giving consumers the choice of a “public option” government-run health insurance company. Most liberal voters say giving people the choice of a “public option” is more important. But most moderates take the opposite view and say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance is the top priority.

Overall, 46% favor the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option that people could choose instead of a private health insurance plan. However, if the plan encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers, support for the public option falls to 29%, and opposition rises to 58%.

As Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “The most important fundamental is that 68% of American voters have health insurance coverage they rate good or excellent. … Most of these voters approach the health care reform debate fearing that they have more to lose than to gain.”

Other challenging issues in the Senate debate include abortion and illegal immigration. Ever since the House’s passage of the Stupak Amendment which says the “public option” would not cover elective abortions and that recipients of federal insurance subsidies could not use them to buy abortion coverage, the divide among Democrats has been visible.

Earlier polling showed that 48% nationwide favored the abortion ban, but most supporters of health care reform didn’t want to address the issue. Just 13% of all voters wanted abortion coverage mandated in the legislation.

The Democrats are on the wrong side of health care – and every single element within their health care plan.  And yet here they are, determined to ram it through (especially before the public can get a chance to know how truly bad the plan is) and impose it on a country that doesn’t want it.

Obama’s approval is now at minus 15 – his lowest recorded number yet.  Only 45% of the country approves of him, versus 54% that disapprove.

You’d think that would matter.  But Democrats seem on a suicide mission to destroy America and destroy our way of life.  Your key words for understanding why: the Cloward-Piven strategy.  First ruin the country and cause it to implode, then assume total control over a desperate and hungry population by offering government as their only savior.

Elections have consequences.  A foolish America may literally pay for electing Democrats with their country.

Americans need to begin giving Democrats hell, or else Democrats will most assuredly give hell to Americans.

 

911 Caller In Gates Case Gets Death Threats As ‘Racist’: But Who Are The REAL Racists?

It is genuinely sad.  The woman who tried to help by stopping a possible crime ends up receiving death threats and denounced as a racist.

The now-demonized 911 caller never even mentioned the race of the men until she was ASKED by the 911 operator:

911: Were they white, black or Hispanic?

Whalen: Umm, well there were two larger men, one looked kind of Hispanic but I’m not really sure. And the other one entered and I didn’t see what he looked like at all.

And even then she didn’t say that the men were black.

But that doesn’t stop the REAL racists from attacking her.

Lucia Whalen tearfully said, “I was called racist – I was scorned and ridiculed because of things I never said.”  And the people who made her cry, the people who attacked a woman who performed a public service by getting involved and calling the police when she witnessed a possible crime in progress, are the ones who are racist.

911 caller in Gates case hurt by racist label

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — The woman who dialed 911 to report a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Thursday she was pained to be wrongly labeled a racist based on words she never said and hoped the recently released recording of the call would put the controversy to rest.

With a trembling voice, Lucia Whalen, 40, said she was out walking to lunch in Gates’ Cambridge neighborhood near Harvard University when an elderly woman without a cell phone stopped her because she was concerned there was a possible burglary in progress.

Whalen was vilified as a racist on blogs after a police report said she described the possible burglars as “two black males with backpacks.”

Tapes of the call released earlier this week revealed that Whalen did not mention race. When pressed by a dispatcher on whether the men were white, black or Hispanic, she said one of them might have been Hispanic.

“Now that the tapes are out, I hope people can see that I tried to be careful and honest with my words,” Whalen said. “It never occurred to me that the way I reported what I saw be analyzed by an entire nation.”

Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas acknowledged that the police report contains a reference to race, but said the report is merely a summary of events. The arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, has said his information on the race of the suspects came during a brief encounter with Whalen outside Gates’ house; she contradicted that Thursday, saying she made no such description.

The arrest of Gates for disorderly conduct in his own home by a white police officer sparked a national debate over racial profiling and police conduct. The controversy intensified when President Obama said police “acted stupidly” when they arrested Gates, his friend.

Gates has said he was outraged and has demanded an apology from Crowley; Crowley said he followed protocol and responded to Gates’ “tumultuous behavior” appropriately.

Whalen, a Harvard alumni magazine employee who is a first-generation Portuguese-American, said she lived in fear during the immediate aftermath of the arrest when she was dogged for comment and maligned based on the information attributed to her in the police report.

“The criticism at first was so painful I was frankly afraid to say anything. People called me racist. Some even said threatening things that made me fear for my safety,” said Whalen, whose husband, Paul, put his hand on her shoulder in comfort her as she spoke. “I knew the truth, but I didn’t speak up right away because I did not want to add to the controversy.”

She said she felt more comfortable speaking publicly after the tapes were released. She refused to answer any questions about the police report or what she saw that day.

“I am proud to have been raised by two loving parents who instilled in me values including love one another, be kind to strangers and do not judge people based on race, ethnicity or any other feature than their character,” she said. […]

“I was called racist and I was a target of scorn and ridicule because of the things I never said,” she said. “The criticism hurt me as a person, but it also hurt the community of Cambridge.”

Lucia Whalen was raised by her parents to love one another, to be kind to strangers, and to not judge people based on their race, ethnicity, or any other feature but their character.  Martin Luther King would have applauded her as everything he wanted to see in an American.

But the “Civil Rights” movement was long-ago hijacked by people who actively despise Martin Luther King’s prescription:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Unfortunately, we now have men like Henry Louis Gates, Jeremiah Wright, and the close personal friend of both men, Barack Obama.  And they are men who seem to have King’s standard turned completely around.

Watch Henry Louis Gates and tell me that he isn’t consumed by race and by racism, as opposed to concentrating upon the content of anybody’s character:

Here’s another little racist gem from Henry Louis Gates:

GATES: Probably. I didn’t know until — in 1959 we were watching Mike Wallace’s documentary called “The Hate that Hate Produced.” It was about the Nation of Islam and I couldn’t believe — I mean, Malcolm X was talking about the white man was the devil and standing up in white people’s faces and telling them off. It was great. I mean, it’s what black people did behind closed doors, but they would never do it in — I mean, they were too vulnerable to do it, say, where they worked, at the paper mill or downtown, as we would call it. And here was a guy who had the nerve to do that, and I think if I had been a character in a cartoon, my eyes would have gone Doing! — like this. I couldn’t believe it. As I sat cowering in a corner of our living room, I glanced over at Mama and her face was radiant. I mean, this smile — beatific smile started to transform her face. And she said quite quietly, “Amen.” And then she said, “All right now,” and she sat up and she said, “Yes.”

Gates describes his and his mother’s experience with hard-core racism – the labeling of an entire race of people as “devils” – as a spiritual epiphany bordering on a religious experience.  And what chance did Sgt. James Crowley have when a 911 call reporting a possible break-in have when he encountered such fanatic racist zeal?

And there’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Sgt. James Crowley – who appears to be a model police officer – thinks anywhere nearly as poorly of black men as Henry Louis Gates thinks of white men.  And it has been Gates who has made the incident not only racial but racist since the moment he first laid eyes on Sgt. Crowley.  Because Gates was a racist since long before the two men ever met.

Now add another racially biased man who “acted stupidly,” Barack Obama.  From the LA Times on July 25, 2009 (page A18):

Describing Crowley as an “outstanding police officer,” the president said: “Even when you’ve got a police officer who has a fine track record on racial sensitivity, interactions between police officers and the African American community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding.”

That’s nice, Barry.  Are you saying that even an outstanding (white) police officer is still racially biased, or are you saying that the African American community is so trapped in racism – like Obama’s own close personal friend ‘Skip’ Gates – that it doesn’t really matter how racially sensitive a white officer is?

Obama once said of his white grandmother:

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know – there’s a reaction in her that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”

Maybe Obama is saying that Sgt. Crowley, as a “typical white person,” has his racism “bred into him”?  (Didn’t Jimmy the Greek get fired for saying something about racial “breeding”?).  Perhaps THAT is why Obama was so quick to jump to the conclusion of racial bias – even right after admitting that he didn’t know any of the facts of the case – in his now infamous press conference?

Let us not forget, in the first Jeremiah Wright sermon Barack Obama ever heard he heard Wright describe a world where “where white folks’ greed runs a world in need.“ And something clicked for Obama so powerfully that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright became his pastor, his mentor, and his spiritual leader for the next 23 years.  And Barack Obama voluntarily submitted himself and his family to plenty of sermons demonizing the white man in the years since.

I listened to the tapes of the hateful sermons that came out of Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church, and I couldn’t get past the question, “How could Obama stay there for so long?”  Obama said that none of those hateful messages impacted him, but there is little question that they in fact affected him deeply.

This isn’t about whites vs. blacks.  There are plenty of decent people of both races.  Take a black female police officer who stood by her fellow police officer, was appalled by the racist displays she saw, and said, “I voted for Obama.  I will not vote for him again.”

And there are plenty of slimebags of both races too.  A Boston police officer who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Gates arrest called Gates a disgusting racist slur which I shall not repeat in an email.

There are racist white people.  There are racist black people.  And God knows we don’t need any more of either.  The question is, who showed their racism in THIS case?  Lucia Whalen and Sgt. James Crowley, or Henry Louis Gates and Barack Obama?

This isn’t about whites vs. blacks.  Rather, it’s about a terribly bitter attitude that holds on to racism and officially institutes that racism into social policy – this time just in reverse.  It’s perfectly okay to embrace naked racism, as long as you are a member of a “minority.”  It’s okay to embrace a “wise Latina” who thinks her decisions are better than those of a “white male”; but a white male who thinks the same of a minority be destroyed.  It’s okay to have a “Black Caucus” in Congress; just don’t you DARE have a white one.  And as a result the racism of that white Boston cop is rightly damned; the racism of a black Harvard African-American Studies professor is wrongly celebrated.

During his campaign, Barack Obama presented himself as a man who transcended race, and stood as the man who could heal any and all divides.  He spent 23 years in a racist church that demonized ‘white America,’ but we believed him because he gave a nice speech.  He selected a racially biased “wise Latina woman” who trampled on the rights of white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut.  But that doesn’t appear to matter, either.  And now he’s demonstrating that he holds the same racially biased attitutudes as his “friends.”  And he doesn’t transcend anything.

That shows in a CNN survey of African-Americans and how they feel about race relations.

“During the 2008 election, 38 percent of blacks surveyed thought racial discrimination was a serious problem. In the new survey, 55 percent of blacks surveyed believed it was a serious problem, which is about the same level as it was in 2000.”

It is frankly amazing to consider that Barack Obama – the first black president of the United States – hasn’t done ANYTHING to change the racial attitude of African-Americans.  And the only possible conclusion is that this president has utterly squandered a truly historic opportunity due to his own increasingly apparent personal inadequacies.

I most certainly think race relations has become a serious problem due to Barack Obama.  Because he could not help but drag the ghosts of too many men like Jeremiah Wright and Henry Louis Gates with him.  And Barack Obama may have the political intelligence to say the “right” things in the future, but – to quote one of his speeches – they will be “just words.”

When Obama, Gates, and Crowley (who is reportedly bringing a lawyer and a union representative to the meeting) get together for a “beer,” you can bet that there will be a lot of empty and hollow “just words” floating around.  This entire meeting is nothing more than a political attempt by Obama to fix his own major screw-up.