Against this backdrop of human misery, what are the Democrats who control the Legislature doing? Focusing on (alleged) animal misery far more than (documented) human misery.

Why? Because animals are people, too — extra-special people.

This article is from the U-T San Diego:

“SACRAMENTO — Backed by strong emotional arguments and a passionate grassroots following, animal welfare advocates have steadily achieved milestone protections in California for cuddly household pets and shiver-inducing predators alike.

“The list of laws is as sweeping as it is long. Mountain lions cannot be hunted for sport. Dogs can be tethered in the yard for only so long. Chickens must have larger cages. And landlords cannot force renters to declaw their cats.

“Another big one may be added this year with the introduction of closely watched legislation to ban orca shows and their captive breeding at SeaWorld in San Diego — one of the state’s premier tourist attractions and a leader in marine mammal research.”

Raising minimum wage is not a job-creation policy

This is hilariously telling about the people whom California Democrats elect to state office. They care most about union members, urban professionals, trial lawyers and environmentalists, and their passions — like animal rights.

This is obvious to insiders who know how the Legislature works, but not to most people. Sure, millions of Californians buy the idea that Republicans are mostly driven by greed, based on what they’re told by the media, and at times by actual evidence. But if these folks looked past the window dressing provided by the Democratic Party — which often goes unchallenged by the media — then what would a hard look at Golden State Dems show?

An absolute lack of interest in helping create private-sector jobs or in trying to reduce the cost of living by making it easier to build housing.

In the Legislature, Dem oomph goes to the interests of union members, urban professionals, trial lawyers and environmentalists.

Yes, there is a push to raise the state minimum wage. But that won’t create middle-class jobs. Unfortunately, unlike the elected Democrats in America’s other megastates — Texas, Florida and New York — the ones in California by and large still haven’t figured out that helping free enterprise is a good thing because it leads to creation of such jobs.

Here’s another way to frame this screwy phenomenon: In California, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom stands out for pro-business views that would be absolutely banal in 98 percent of America. When Newsom argues that businesses are rattled by uncertainty about regulatory and tax changes, he is saying that in processing information, business owners act like human beings.

That this observation can seem like heresy to many in the California Democratic Party is a testament to its domination by sclerotic and slavish worshipers of the state’s screwed-up, anti-growth status quo.

Great, just great.

But you know what? It still sounds cool. As such, it’s not as surprising as it might be that McClatchy’s Washington bureau is reporting that even as the bullet-train project nears death in the nation’s largest state, private investors are excited about the possibility in the nation’s second-largest state and in what soon will be the nation’s third-largest state.

“WASHINGTON — When California Gov. Jerry Brown last week announced his bid for re-election, he renewed his push to build ‘the nation’s only high speed rail system.’

“But California has some competition in unlikely places.

“Both Texas and Florida have plans for systems that would connect their major population centers with fast trains. But unlike California’s plan, which relies heavily on government funding to start rolling, their efforts will be funded by the private sector.

“While the $68 billion California project has earned nearly universal opposition from Republicans, GOP elected officials are lining up behind the Florida and Texas proposals.

“Brown and President Barack Obama had both held up the California project as a model of the country’s infrastructure future. But with legal and political uncertainties clouding the effort, Florida and Texas could have their trains running years sooner.”

Lone Star State seems far ahead of Sunshine State

Texas’ proposal seems much more advanced than Florida’s.

By Joseph Perkins

First came Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Then Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. Now Florida Gov. Rick Scott is taking aim at California, reportedly considering leasing billboard space in selected markets here in the Golden State to take their businesses to the Sunshine State.

“I’m working on putting up a billboard out there that has Jerry Brown’s picture and mine,” said Florida’s follicly challenged governor, at a meeting last week of his state GOP. “It’s going to say,” he half-jested, “‘Same haircut, no income taxes. Number One in teacher quality. Move to Florida.’”

Back here on the Left Coast, the Brown administration was not amused. “The way you build a dynamic economy like California isn’t by running around trying to poach other states,” Riley Ray Robbins, deputy director of communications for the governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), told a Florida newspaper.

Gov. Scott, the former CEO of Columbia/HCA, which he grew into the world’s largest health care provider, begs to differ with Mr. Robbins. “We compete with 49 other states,” he said. “They want more jobs in their state. I want them here. I’m out recruiting every day to get people to come to our state.”

California is a ripe target for Gov. Scott and, before him, fellow Govs. Perry, Herbert and McDonnell. Not just because California boasts some 53 Fortune 500 companies, including such well-known brands as Google, Apple, Facebook, eBay, Helwett-Packard and Visa, but also because of perception that the Golden State is not especially hospitable to business.

“Thank goodness for California,” said Scott, noting that the Golden State recently raised its income taxes, while continuing to have the nation’s fourth-highest jobless rate.

No income tax, more jobs

By comparison, the Sunshine State has no income tax. And its jobless rate is nearly two percentage point lower than California’s. “Unlike Florida,” said Gov. Scott, “it is clear California does not have a climate for business to succeed.”

Now, it’s unlikely that the letter writing campaign Gov. Scott launched last month targeting an unspecified number of California businesses will lure any of the aforementioned Fortune 500 companies to Florida.

But it is entirely possible that some of those California companies, as well as some of the state’s smaller, but fast-growing companies, will expand their operations not here in Golden State, where they are headquartered, but in states like Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

The way to defend the state against poaching of its homegrown companies is not with trash talk, at which Mr. Robbins appears adept, but by Gov. Brown and the Legislature taking meaningful steps to improve the state’s business climate.

That means reducing California’s corporate taxes, the nation’s third-most onerous, according to the Tax Foundation, not to the nation’s lowest, but at least somewhere closer to middle.

It also means rolling back the state’s excessive regulations which, according to a report by two Cal State Sacramento researchers, cost the average small business nearly $135,000 (as of 2007), while reducing statewide employment by 3.8 million jobs.

California is coasting on the reputation it once enjoyed as a great state in which do business. Until it re-earns that reputation, rival states will continue to aggressively woo California businesses.

By John Seiler

From the NY Post:

“The city’s hedge-fund executives are flying south — and it’s not for vacation.

“An increasing number of financial firms, especially private equity and hedge funds, are fed up with New York’s sky-high city and state tax rates and are relocating to the business-friendly climate in Florida’s Palm Beach County.

“And they’re being welcomed with open arms — officials in Palm Beach recently opened an entire office dedicated to luring finance hot shots down south.

“’Florida is a state of choice,’ said Thalius Hecksher, global development chief for Apex Fund Services, who moved many of his operations to Palm Beach. “=’It’s organically grown. There’s no need to drag people down here. It’s a zero-income-tax jurisdiction.’”

The improvement in weather also is significant. By contrast, wealthy folks fleeing California for Florida (or Texas) move into worse weather.

Still, the New York situation is another blow against Gov. Jerry Brown’s contention that rich people won’t flee tax slavery in California for someplace that treats them better.

As the tax receipts come in for the state government over the next few months, we’ll know.

More from the Post:

“Federal tax rates are the same in Florida and New York.

“But there’s no state income tax in the Sunshine State. Compare that to New York, where the state and local governments took $14.71 of every $100 earned in 2010, according to state records.

“The only state with a higher rate is Alaska.

“And Florida residents lost 3.31 percent of their income in total taxes, versus New Yorkers, who pay just over 5 percent, according to the National Tax Foundation’s latest report, which used 2009 Census figures.

“That’s a substantial difference in bottom line for those who stand to make millions of dollars a year in income.

“Also, commercial property values are much cheaper in Florida, and New York City will likely become even less friendly to businesses when Mayor Bloomberg leaves office next year, hedge-fund executives said.”

As with leaving California, moving from New York to the Sunshine State means getting a much bigger home, albeit with a little worse weather. But if the bugs and hurricanes get you down too much, with all the money you save moving there, you can take a long vacation in California, then leave before Gov. Jerry shows up to grab your taxes.

Florida, here they come.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — Psychiatrists talk about the progressive stages of grief people experience after suffering a devastating loss in their personal lives, moving from denial to anger to bargaining (i.e., trying to strike a “deal” with a higher power) to depression and, finally, to acceptance.

Political scientists ought to come up with a similar series of “grief stages” for people grappling with a devastating political loss. Case in point: Republicans, who were convinced that voters would grant them the White House after four years of failed Obama administration policies.

Discouraged political activists have been expressing denial, anger and depression. Currently, they are going through a stage that should be termed “fantasy,” where they advocate ideas that will never come to fruition and pretend there’s a quick, fun solution to deep political problems that will be solved over time and through hard work and vision.

For instance, more than 675,000 Americans, representing all 50 states, have digitally signed online petitions with the White House calling for the secession of their respective states from the union. The Obama administration had created the “We the People” online petition system to encourage the public to more directly participate in the nation’s governance by suggesting ideas that the administration should pursue.

As of Wednesday, petitions from seven states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — each had hit 25,000 signatures, the threshold to prompt a “review” by the White House. As the Daily Caller reported, “Launched Nov. 7, the day after Obama won re-election, the [initial secession petition, started by someone in Louisiana] set off an Internet-driven cascade of disaffected Tea Partiers and other conservatives looking — as one petition organizer told The Daily Caller via a ‘direct message’ on Twitter — ‘just to do something, anything, to show we’re not going away quietly.'”

This certainly fits the “just do something” parameters, but the Obama administration will no doubt provide some three-minute review of the petitions and issue a bland statement calling for the continued unification of our country. This secession movement is typical, perhaps, in a world where many people are fixated on Facebook and Twitter.

There’s nothing unserious about secession, despite the idea having been sullied by the unpleasantness of the mid-19th century. It’s the ultimate check and balance on an out-of-control central government, but powerful nations rarely let the unruly provinces break away without bloody struggles. This idea, a temper tantrum really, is not going to happen in a country where, despite the temporary frustration, people still happily spend their weekends at the shopping malls.

Texas Republic

One opinion writer argued that Texas could pull this off. Of course, it could, technically speaking. But it won’t happen because the federal government owns more and bigger guns than even Texans. States are diverse and complex places. Even in Texas, Obama received more than 41 percent of the vote. At the same time, in California, which gave Obama a stunning 59 percent of the vote, most counties went for Mitt Romney. It would be hard to disentangle our nation based simply on state boundaries — despite the simplistic blue state vs. red state breakdown so common among media analysts.

A number of people happy with the election results have filed their own online petitions with the White House “We the People” system, calling for the secession petitioners to be deported.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry dismissed the secession idea, despite his differences with the feds. Secession, then, would be widely opposed even in places where the idea might sprout.

For those of us living in California, secession would mean something even worse than we have now, given that our leaders are further to the left than most elsewhere. For example, the new cap-and-trade system to fight global warming, the first (and, let’s hope, last) in the nation, got started this past week, with an auction of government-issued greenhouse-gas “allowances” that even the Air Resources Board admits will lead to significant “leakages” (i.e., job losses). The folks who crafted this system would have even more power with California outside the Union.

Break up California

The better idea for frustrated Californians (aside from seeking a new home in Oklahoma City or Abilene, Kansas), is to reconsider the notion of breaking our state into more hospitable segments.

Consider that Sacramento County, for example, has a land area not that much smaller than Rhode Island, and a population about 50 percent larger. San Bernardino County is larger, geographically, than nine states. Who says that California, which spans nearly 800 miles north to south, needs to keep its current configuration?

I’d create several California states. Coastal California would run from Los Angeles County through Sonoma County and would offer little to hinder the liberal experimentation popular in places such as San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles. Those living outside this state presumably would be free to visit on weekends and enjoy the cultural amenities, but as nonresidents wouldn’t have to pay for the nuttiness.

My Southern California would include Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties. This state would be politically competitive, but conservative leaning.

So, too, would be my Inland California, which would include most of the vast Central Valley and the Sierras. I would throw the most-northern counties into the already proposed state of Jefferson — reflecting an old-time secessionist movement that would combine portions of Northern California and southern Oregon, a collection of mountainous areas with little population and a distinct culture.

There would be more harmony, and fewer complaints by people on either the left or right, who could find it easier to live under political leadership that better reflects their values and priorities.

It’s a fun thought experiment, an act of silliness that can help forlorn conservative-minded California voters cope with a grievous political situation. But, sooner or later, we need to move on from fantasy and accept the world as it exists so that we can pursue serious ideas to save our state from the abyss.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity; Write to him at: steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.