Gonzalez wrote about his findings in the Dallas Morning News earlier this month. He makes specific points about the cultural differences between Hispanics in the two mega-states that don’t get nearly enough attention. Here’s part of his essay:

Hispanics enjoy much better statistics across the board in the Lone Star State than in the Golden one.

The relative advantage that Hispanic Texans have in key cultural indicators is strongly related to the state’s dynamic economic growth and small government. But because Texas’ smaller government has allowed civil society to grow organically, there is a strong cultural background that must be considered.

In fact, when factoring in both economic and cultural factors, one can say that California and Texas stand for two completely different faces of the Hispanic experience in America or, more to the point, the Mexican-American experience. The question is whether the two states will continue to lead two different Mexican-American subcultures in the future, or whether one approach will come to be the dominant one nationwide. …

In 2013, Texas’ Hispanic population boasted an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent. That was more than 2 percentage points lower than the national Hispanic average (9.1 percent). More important, it was better than the overall national average of 7.4 percent and only six-tenths of a percent higher than Texas’ overall rate (6.3 percent).

Meanwhile, California’s Hispanics lagged across the aboard. Their unemployment rate of 10.2 percent underperformed all the national averages and was 1.3 percentage points higher than California’s overall unemployment rate of 8.9 percent.

One thing that may account for the lower Hispanic unemployment in Texas is that Hispanics in the Lone Star State are much more entrepreneurial than those in the Golden State. Texas’ rate of Hispanic-owned businesses as a percentage of the Hispanic population is 57 percent, whereas California’s is 45 percent.

Social stats somewhat better to much better in Texas

More from Gonzalez:

Texas’ Hispanics also score favorably on matters to do with the family. This is important, as two-parent households have proved to be the best anti-poverty program ever invented, and illegitimacy stands upstream from many social problems.

And in this key cultural indicator, Texas’ Hispanics also outperform California’s. According to the Census Bureau, the former are less likely to have had a child out of wedlock than the latter, 39.8 percent to 42.6 percent.

The following stats, again from the Census Bureau, are also noteworthy. Hispanics in Texas are 10 percent more likely to be married than those in California (47 percent to 43 percent), and close to 20 percent less likely never to have been married (36.9 percent to 43.5 percent), one-third more likely to have served in the military (4.1 percent to 2.8 percent), and one-third as likely to have received Supplemental Security Income public assistance (2.4 percent to 6.2 percent). …

In terms of religiosity, the General Social Survey does not break down information at the state level but shows that Hispanics in Texas are far more likely to attend church services regularly. One is tempted to assume that California Hispanics are less religious than the national average for Hispanics.

This raises lots of interesting questions, none readily answered.

Are Texas Hispanics more religious and more entrepreneurial because they live in a state that’s far more socially and politically conservative?

Conversely, are California Latinos less religious and more likely to rely on the government because they live in a state that’s extremely secular and in a state where the high cost of housing puts families whose income would be lower-middle-class in most states squarely in poverty?

I’d like to see more analysis of these questions. But whatever the answer is, that’s not the key takeaway from Gonzalez’s research. The headline is that it’s not just student test scores in which Latinos in Texas do better than Latinos in California. It is on many metrics of basic achievement and success — at least if you’re among those who think dependency on government is a bad thing.

Texas suburb is more like Irvine than any other city in CA

Gonzalez’s work helps with key context for the California vs. Texas debate. Another piece that does so is Joe Mathews’ exceptional column from this spring about the Texas suburb that might as well be a clone of Irvine. It breaks with what I see as a stale debate:

It’s insanely annoying how so many California defenders simply ignore basic facts like Texas is creating more middle-class jobs or that Texas’ Latino and black students do better than California’s in K-12 test scores such as the NAEP.

But it’s also pretty telling that so many Californians who tout Texas don’t acknowledge that for lots and lots of people, California’s lifestyle is so vastly more appealing that they’d rather live in a condo here than a 2,800-foot ranch home there.

Read more about the picture painted by Joe’s column here.

By Brian Calle

In this interview with Alexis Garcia, I go beyond the political debate over the president’s signature health care legislation to reveal how Obamacare will hurt local medical device startups throughout California.

By Chris Reed

California’s official embrace of trendy “smart growth” — the policy/religion that assumes it’s best for individuals, communities and Gaia for most people to live in densely packed areas near transportation hubs, so they don’t use devil fossil-fuel cars — was formalized in 2008 with the enactment of SB 375.

Sen. Darrell Steinberg’s brainchild was, of course, reflexively embraced by the L.A. Times’ George Skelton:

The glory that is (not) ‘compact development’

“The measure (SB 375) links regional planning for housing and transportation with California’s new greenhouse gas reduction goal (AB 32) enacted in 2006. …

‘If people are going to drive — and they are going to drive — we need to plan in ways to get them out of their cars faster. That means shrinking — not the amount of housing, not economic development, not growth — but shrinking the footprint on which that growth occurs.’

“Steinberg wants it to occur within a smaller circle around downtown.

“Basically the bill would work like this: Each metropolitan region would adopt a ‘sustainable community strategy’ to encourage compact development. They’d mesh it with greenhouse emissions targets set by the California Air Resources Board, which is charged with commanding the state’s fight against global warming.

“And this is the key part: Transportation projects that were part of the community plan would get first dibs on the annual $5 billion in transportation money disbursed by Sacramento.”

Greens: no more growth ‘in the wrong location’

“‘It’s a watershed moment for the environmental community,’ Tom Adams, board president of the California League of Conservation Voters, told the Assembly Local Government Committee on Tuesday as the panel approved the bill. ‘We realized we had to encourage growth, but growth in the right location. Otherwise, we’d get growth anyway, but in the wrong location.’

“Adams calls the measure ‘the most important land-use bill in California since enactment of the Coastal Act’ three decades ago.”

Five years later, the “smart growth” dream has never been realized in California. There are still seminars and press releases and politicians who promise that change is a-coming. Those behind the hype just can’t offer many concrete examples.

Why? The public just isn’t that into “compact development” and prefers to live in the “wrong location.” Even the powerful incentives that SB 375 provides can’t change this fundamental dynamic.

This is from a recent commentary by Chapman University’s wonderful futurist Joel Kotkin that looked at America’s fastest-growing cities since the recession.

“It was widely reported that the Great Recession and subsequent economic malaise changed the geography of America. Suburbs, particularly in the Sun Belt,, were becoming the ‘new slums’ as people flocked back to dense core cities.

“Yet an analysis of post-2007 population trends by demographer Wendell Cox in the 111 U.S. metro areas with more than 200,000 residents reveals something both very different from the conventional wisdom and at the same time very familiar. Virtually all of the 20 that have added the most residents from 2007 to 2012 are in the Old Confederacy, the Intermountain West and suburbs of larger cities, notably in California. … growth is still fastest in the Sun Belt, in suburban cities and lower-density, spread out municipalities. …

“Nothing in the data …  suggests a revival of the older, dense “legacy” cities that were typical of the late 19th century and pre-war era. Most of the fastest-growing big cities since 2007 are of the sprawling post-1945 Sun Belt variety … .

Suburban sprawl routs unpopular, dumb ‘smart growth’

The anti-smart growth pattern was particularly notable in California, Kotkin writes.

“The other somewhat surprising result is the strong performance of more purely suburban cities, that is, ones that have grown up since car ownership became nearly universal. They are not the historic cores of their regions but have developed into major employment centers with housing primarily made up of single-family residences. These include the city that has grown the second most in the U.S. since 2007: Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb close to the Mexican border, whose population expanded 17.7%. It’s followed in third place by the Los Angeles suburb of Irvine (16.3%); No. 7 Irving, Texas; and the California cities of Fremont (13th) , located just east of San Jose-Silicon Valley, and Oxnard (17th), north of Los Angeles.

“…  Americans continue to move decisively to both lower-density, job-creating cities and to those less dense areas of major metropolitan areas particularly where single-family houses, good schools and jobs are plentiful. …

“Migration numbers for 2010 to 2012 alone hammer home that suburban areas are continuing to attract people, and that the more dense core areas do not generally perform as well. Although their growth has slowed compared to the last decade, suburban locales, with roughly three-quarters of all residents of metropolitan areas, have added many more people than their core counterparts. …

“The urban future will continue to evolve in directions that contradict the prevailing conventional wisdom of a shift toward more crowded living.”

Bad news for Darrell Steinberg and the other Stalinist planners who want to dictate where and how we live. Good news for those who believe in the American dream of a single-family home with a car or two in the sprawl that green schemers so hate.

April 11, 2013

By Ed Ring

“Forget about logic,” Jack advised. “My analytics instructor says that all logic is mere tautology. She says it is impossible to learn anything through logic that you did not already know.”

— Robert A. Heinlein, Tunnel in the Sky

What about facts? There are certainly facts we don’t already know. According to the logic of the labor union spokespersons who relentlessly lobby and negotiate for higher wages and benefits for public sector workers, they are still underpaid because they have higher levels of education than the average worker.

According to the logic of AFSCME Local 3336, the only reason anyone might think public sector employees are overpaid is because of right wing propaganda. Yet it seems the many studies that fund their own analyses come from taxpayer-supported institutions staffed with unionized faculty, or think tanks funded by grants from public employee unions.

But why impugn the sources? Why consider their logic? Why not just present the facts and let journalists, policymakers and voters employ their own logic to form an opinion?

That is what compensation studies from the California Public Policy Center have attempted to do. They have now done public employee compensation studies on four California cities, most recently Irvine, along with Costa Mesa, Anaheim and San Jose. Not only have they presented the data objectively. But for anyone to verify the data and the assumptions, they have made the payroll spreadsheets and analysis available for downloading by anyone who wants to review the data themselves; here are these spreadsheets: Irvine, Costa Mesa, Anaheim, and San Jose.

Here are some facts on total compensation (direct pay plus employer funded benefits) for full time employees of these four cities:

TOTAL COMPENSATION — FULL-TIME CITY EMPLOYEES

Irvine: Total compensation average = $143,691, median = $133,782.
Costa Mesa: Total compensation average = $146,863, median = $146,378
Anaheim: Total compensation average = $146,551, median = $138,442
San Jose: Total compensation average = $149,907, median = $139,634

TOTAL COMPENSATION — FULL-TIME CITY EMPLOYEES NOT INCLUDING PUBLIC SAFETY

Irvine: Total compensation average = $127,115, median = $120,063.
Costa Mesa: Total compensation average = $103,755, median = $95,526
Anaheim: Total compensation average = $122,717, median = $110,792
San Jose: Total compensation average = $120,092, median = $114,923

These figures are for full time workers, unlike the numbers provided by the State Controller on their “transparency” website. Those averages not only fail to include all employer provided benefits in the numerator, but they include every part-time worker in the denominator. Not surprisingly, these “facts” reveal much lower averages. Here are the “average wages for all employees” according to the California State Controller’s transparency website:

CALIFORNIA STATE CONTROLLER’S “AVERAGE WAGE” FIGURES

Irvine: Average wage = $48,506
Costa Mesa: Total compensation average = $72,177
Anaheim: Total compensation average = $56,850
San Jose: Total compensation average = $68,339

Why not let the reader determine which of these “averages” is more representative of reality? For any readers who might argue that the cost of benefits don’t belong in calculations of average or median earnings, we invite them, out of their direct pay, to start paying for 100 percent of their pensions, 100 percent of their retirement health care, and 100 percent of their health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, 401(k) plan, and Social Security and Medicare premiums.

More facts

Here are some additional facts:

Using California’s Employment Development Department’s 2010 report, “Labor Market Trends,” (ref. figure 1), it is evident there are 2.4 million Federal, State and Local employees in California; 12.2 million full-time private sector employees who work for an employer; and another 1.4 million “self-employed” private sector workers. According to the California State Department of Finance, in 2011 the state’s Gross Domestic Product was $1.96 trillion.

So what if every one of California’s 16 million full-time workers was earning total compensation of $143,691 per year — the lowest of our four cities under consideration? Multiplying this average by the number of full-time workers in the state, and comparing the result to the state’s entire economic output might help us ascertain the feasibility of such a feat, would it not?

As it turns out, if every one of California’s 16 million full-time workers earned $143,691 per year in total employer paid compensation (pay and benefits), it would amount to $2.3 trillion, 17 percent in excess of California’s entire economic output. This means that if California had no net exports and no business investment — elements that typically comprise at least 30 percent of GDP — paying everyone what the average local government worker makes would still consume 17 percent more than the state’s entire economic output.

Average total compensation

Here’s another fact:

AVERAGE TOTAL COMPENSATION, FULL-TIME, CALIFORNIA, PRIVATE SECTOR: $63,361

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and as reported in the Sacramento Business Journal, the average annual salary for a worker in California was $51,910 in 2012. To convert this into total compensation, using generous assumptions, add 7.5 percent for employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare, plus a 3 percent matching contribution to a 401(k), plus $500 per month for health insurance benefits, and you get $63,361 per year (don’t forget there are 2.4 million government workers who pulled the BLS statistics upwards). That is an absolute best case.

This means that the average worker for the City of Irvine, which has the lowest paid workforce among the four cities considered in the CPPC studies so far, is making $143,691 per year in total compensation, compared to the average Californian, who makes at most $63,361 in total compensation.

At the risk of Robert A. Heinlein turning in his grave, let’s now indulge in some logic.

Maybe, just maybe, their allegedly superior levels of overall educational attainment don’t justify municipal bureaucrats (not even including public safety) making average total compensation that is approximately twice as much as the total compensation earned by the average full-time private sector worker in California.

Maybe, just maybe, when public sector unions clamor for even higher levels of compensation and benefits because “public employees need to be able to afford to live in the communities they serve,” they might consider the fact that their relentless lobbying and negotiating for more pay and benefits, combined with their relentless lobbying and negotiating for more laws and regulations in order to expand their membership base of public employees, is the reason that nobody can afford to live in these communities.

And maybe, just maybe, public employees will renounce their union agenda of more taxes, more regulations, and more benefits for themselves, just enough to allow California’s economy to recover. Maybe they will take it upon themselves to oppose their union agendas that, if unchecked, condemn California to an immediate future where the rich play with movies and software, the poor collect entitlements, and the government employees are the only middle class left.

After all, despite Heinlein’s nearly 60-year-old vision, there is no tunnel in the sky, at least not yet. No M-class planets to escape to. For that matter, there are still no blue water floating city states beckoning just off the coast. But the interstate highway system is alive and well.

Ed Ring is the research director of the California Public Policy Center, and the editor of UnionWatch.org

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

Can tacking a $3 surcharge on all traffic tickets in California cure spinal cord injuries? Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, apparently thinks so.

Wieckowski’s proposed AB 190 would tack on a $3 surcharge to every traffic ticket in California to generate $11 million in annual funding for stem-cell research to cure paralysis — or rather budget paralysis for heroic causes that produce little other than symbolic hope for paralysis victims and jobs programs for the highly educated.

It is difficult to know what paralysis AB 190 would cure: the physical debilitation caused by spinal cord injuries or loss of funding for what is called “Roman’s Law” in California.  Roman’s Law keeps the funding going for the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Research Act that, in turn, subsidizes the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Program at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at the University of California, Irvine.

The Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act was enacted in 2000 and was named after Roman Reed, who in 1994 tragically became paralyzed after a college football accident.

Seven other states provide funding for spinal cord damage research by traffic violation surcharges, including Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, New Jersey and South Carolina ($100 per each DUI conviction).  The aggregate results of all these programs have not yet produced a cure or treatments other than exercise programs and improved surgical techniques for paralysis victims.

Renew Funding?

Funding for the California Roman Reed Program has been ongoing since 2002 and now is up for renewal.  But the state is broke and the Legislature doesn’t know where to get the money for a program that would symbolically keep politicians elected, but would otherwise serve mostly as a jobs program.  Like much of California’s state budget problem, funding often goes to hollow activities that, upon investigation, are found to be nothing but jobs programs.

Stem cell treatments have slightly improved motor function in those suffering from paralysis due to strokes and injuries, but these are anecdotal cases.  It is not known yet whether such cures would be worse than paralysis.  Recent research has shown that stem cells are the leading suspects in causing cancer.

The Roman Reed Program is, however, highly “profitable.”  In addition to the $11.5 million in research grants awarded and $1.6 million in graduate student scholarships, it attracted $63.8 million in new National Institutes of Health federal funding to California over the last 10 years.

With the federal government staring at future insolvency mainly due to entitlement programs, it is uncertain if the Roman Reed Act would attract further federal funding.  California already provides $300 million a year in funding for stem cell research under Proposition 71, passed in 2004, and funded with $6 billion in general obligation bonds that add to the state budget deficit.

Renewal of the funding would help defray the $251,031 salary of Oswald Steward, director of the Reeve-Irvine Center.

General Fund Broke

The Roman Reed Act monies would be better spent going into the state general fund, which provides money for Medi-Cal.   Most victims of spinal cord damage end up on Medi-Cal and Medicare anyway due to the large initial costs of treatment ($775,000).  But then, why not just call it a Medi-Cal tax?  But if it would be a Medi-Cal tax, then what is the reason for imposing it solely on traffic offenders?

Defunding the Roman Reed Act (AB 750 and AB 1794) would not be a symbolic vote against all those victims of paralysis in California. Rather, it would be way of saying that we already are funding for their care through the state general gund, which is in need of major surgery because the state is broke.

So hitting California drivers with a surcharge on any traffic tickets would mostly be a contrived deadweight tax for another jobs program for the highly educated.  Is it a fair policy to enact an insidious program of transferring wealth from California’s struggling households to fund high-tech jobs?  All that we are doing is taking jobs and college scholarships out of the private sector and transferring them to the public sector so that politicians can claim credit and buy votes.

In a therapeutic culture, politicians are prone to lead the public into thinking they can cure everything, from tragic spinal cord injuries to the state budget.  Maybe a Greek sense of tragedy would help us deal with both while further pursuing stem-cell research through private-sector venture funding.

By JOHN SEILER

A surprising duel is taking place in the 48th Congressional District in California, which centers on Irvine and includes Tustin, Laguna Beach, Laguna Hills and other cities. It’s between sitting Rep. John Campbell, a Republican, and Irvine Councilwoman Beth Krom, a Democrat. As a member of the editorial board at The Orange County Register, I joined in interviewing both of them.

This is one of the most well-off districts in the country, even in the midst of the current recession. It’s the home of the University of Irvine (mascott: anteaters) and the clusters of high-paying, high-tech companies that have grown up around it, especially in medical devices and telecommunications switches. It’s a major global exporter.

The 48th long was represented by Chris Cox, who went on to become the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the 2008 economic meltdown. Rep. John Campbell has represented the 48th since winning a special replacement election in 2005.  Before going into politics, he ran several car dealerships in Orange County. From 2000 to 2005, he served in both the Assembly and the Senate in the California Legislature.

Campbell easily won re-election to the House in 2008, with 56 percent of the vote.

But in 2010 there’s some question about his re-election chances because of an ethics investigation in late August. Reported the September 2, 2010 Los Angeles Times, the Office of Congressional Ethics referred Campbell to the House Ethics Committee for investigation for allegedly holding “fundraisers in December [2009], around the time of crucial House votes on the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system since the Great Depression. President Obama signed it into law in July.”

Meet Beth Krom

Opponent Beth Krom has been an Irvine councilwoman since 2000 and served four of those years as the city’s mayor. According to her biography on the city’s Web site, “Krom has brought her experience as a teacher, a business owner, a community volunteer and a mother to her work on the Irvine City Council. It was the fight to defeat the El Toro Airport plan that motivated Beth Krom to run for City Council….

“During her term as Mayor, Beth Krom also led the effort to create a residential and commercial Green Building Ordinance — the first of its kind in Orange County.”

Krom was eager to debate Campbell. But he replied, “Our positions are well known and clear. There’s often more theatrics than substance.”

The gubernatorial debates between Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman bear him out on that. On the other hand, the debates for U.S. Senate between Republican Carly Fiorina and incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer, although testy, have been informative to voters. So, it depends. I suspect that a Campbell-Krom debate might have been one of the better ones, especially useful to local voters.

We’ll never know exactly how a Campbell-Krom debate would have gone. But some sense of what was lost can be gleaned by my matching their positions here.

Ethics cloud

Asked bout the ethics investigation, Campbell replied, “I can’t say too much more. There haven’t been any allegations of wrongdoing. There still aren’t. There was no wrongdoing.” He said the investigation won’t be wrapped up until after the election.

He added, “There are no allegations. No charges. There’s no difference between the people who were released [from being investigated] and those who moved on.”

A major charge from Krom was that Campbell has not been active enough in the local community. “Campbell never came to City Hall, or attended a city function,” she said.

“I’m home almost every weekend,” Campbell replied. “I hear the opposite everywhere we go.”

Obamacare pro and con

As throughout the nation, a big policy difference between the two was Obamacare. “All Americans should have access to basic health care,” insisted Krom, who backs the president’s health-care reform that was passed by Congress in February. It grants access to health care to almost all Americans. “Everybody has a connection to the healthcare system.”

Krom went so far as to support the single-payer system, under which the government runs a single insurance pool for everyone. “It’s an equitable way to fund health care,” she said. “Government’s role is to create a well-functioning society.”

“I want to repeal it,” Campell said of the Obamacare bill. “I like virtually none of it. I’m one of 13 co-sponsors of Paul Ryan’s Road Map,” which would restructure health care by expanding tax credits for coverage. “People will have control over that. Directionally, Obamacare is the opposite of where we want to go. We should be connecting people more with their own health care.”

He pointed out that in areas of health care not heavily controlled by the government, such as cosmetic surgery, “the price is going down.”

How would President Obama react to attacks on his health-care program? “If Republicans take a majority in one house or another, the most likely scenario is that none of the appropriations of Obamacare will be funded,” Campbell said. “Then there’s a budget standoff. If that happens, we can have that confrontation. I’m hopeful we can win the debate on health care again.”

Bringing home the bacon

Another charge against Campbell is that he doesn’t “bring home the bacon” to his home district. The 48th District is a major “donor county,” paying into the federal treasury a lot more than it gets back.

Krom charged, “Campbell is ‘anti-earmark,’ but didn’t bring anything back to the district. There have been too many years of not living in the district. There are major infrastructure needs. Government can and should be an instrument of civic improvement.”

“I don’t believe the people of this district elected me to be an ATM, to give them 50 cents on the dollar back,” Campbell said. “They elected me to create and reform the policies of the federal government that are good for the country. The main issues are the debt, the deficit, jobs and the economy.  I’m not going to bring back $500,000 to fund a swimming pool.”

Extending the Bush tax cuts

A sharp disagreement also existed on extending President Bush’s tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, 2010, in just two months. Republicans have insisted that all the tax cuts be extended. President Obama and Democrats have said they want to exclude wealthy people from any extension. That major disagreement has prevented a federal budget from being passed so far, even though the 2010-11 fiscal year began on October 1.

“I did not support reducing taxes at the top of the economic ladder,” Krom said.

Campbell backed extending the tax cuts to everybody and went further, saying, “They should be permanent. Right now there is a lot of uncertainty. Government is adding to the uncertainty.”

War and peace

Curiously, Krom and Campbell have similar positions on the Afghan War. Although Campbell earlier voted for the war, this year he was one of seven Republicans in the House who voted to end the Afghan War.

Krom said, “Afghanistan was the most irresponsible action.” Of both the Afghan and Iraq wars, she said, “Those wars are the albatross around the necks of the American people. It’s very easy to get into them, very hard to get out of them.”

When I asked her whether America should follow the stipulation in the Constitution that wars should be launched only after Congress declares war, she replied, “Yes.”

John Seiler, an editorial writer with The Orange County Register for 20 years, is a reporter and analyst for CalWatchDog.com. His email: writejohnseiler@gmail.com.