Thursday, May 17, 2012

How California's budget blunders led to my divorce from the Golden State (Chuck DeVore moves to Texas)

Over the weekend California Governor Jerry Brown announced the grim news that the Golden State’s budget deficit had almost doubled to $16 billion – more than 17 percent of the new budget year’s $92.6 billion spending plan.

Immediately, protesters descended on the state Capitol to demand more welfare spending in a state that already hosts one-third of all of America’s welfare recipients.

As a California state lawmaker for six years, this cycle is all too familiar. The liberals who run California tax more, spend more, regulate more, and drive up the cost of doing business, and then are shocked when tax revenue plunges as productive taxpayers leave the state.

For 13 years, before being elected in 2004, I worked as an executive in California’s once-vibrant aerospace industry.

Last September, Northrup Grumman, the last major aerospace company headquartered in California, picked up its operations and tax base and moved to Virginia.

Three months later, I left too, heading to low-tax, liberty-loving Texas.

My divorce from California was long in the making: call it a case of irreconcilable differences. I constantly warned that the nation’s biggest state was spending too much, that its meddlesome regulatory climate was choking off job creation, and that its “green” energy policies were driving out manufacturing. I was called a nag and ignored.

Concerned for my family’s financial viability, we packed up and left for greener pastures. continue here

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