A tale of two states…

A tale of two states

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us—in short, the political geography and culture was laid out before us to compare. All that we had to do was open our minds and eye’s, and do the comparison that time and coincidence had afforded us.

Apologies to Dickens for borrowing the best of cliche’s, and the worst of cliche’s, and altering his opening, but it seems as appropriate today as a century ago. It still seems to me that the easiest way to understand two opposing political philosophies is to actually compare and contrast States or regions that ascribe to each, and their related outcomes.

Now, I’m not a political partisan, as I’m not sure I trust political parties at all. And things are far more complex than saying a political philosophy will always result in the same outcomes that had more to do with situation than just partisan politics. But I do believe that different political philosophies (or bends) have different trends, and we can learn a lot by looking at those and their outcomes. Thus we can look at, and contrast, the most “liberal” States in the Union, with one of the most “conservative”, and learn something.

This topic is close to my heart as we’ve moved out from one of the most liberal of Blue-States, California (Massachusets, New York are others), to one of the most conservative of Red-States, Texas (with Utah or Colorado following the theme). For me, the Culture Shock let me learn a lot by looking at them, on reflecting on what the political philosophy has meant to the culture, philosophy, economy, education, and lifestyle. After all, each State leans strongly their own way, and has for a long time. So what has the influence meant?

In California, the concept of appealing to the group is paramount. Conformity is in. The fashionistas follow trends. In fact, trendy is defined by California and New York. You are either in, or “so last week”. This extends from clothing, to housing, to cars, to where you live, to how you live, to laws, to the charities you contribute to, and so on, ad infinitum. In L.A. (and to a lesser extent, San Francisco), you live and die by the latest social fads. Last week was Hummers and this week is a Prius; never mind that the Hummer actually has a smaller ecological footprint than a Prius (when you factor in total costs to manufacture, recycle and destroy the car, and not just look at daily milage) — what really matters is how you’re seen or perceived. And to many, the Hummer is seen as gluttony, and the prius as conservation — so Los Angelicans tend to have both, a Prius for the photo-op, and the Mercedes or Hummer for daily driving. In San Francisco, few can afford cars on top of their housing, so they are a luxury that people aspire to.

Compare this to Texas, where the attitude is far more conservative. People aren’t aspiring to be like their neighbor or “fit in”. There’s much more, “live and let live” social attitude. They aren’t looking for more government to cram the latest fad-law down each others throats, but how to get less intrusion for government, or how to use it more effectively. I’m in Austin now, and and Fashionable means blue jeans and a “Keep Austin Weird” T-Shirt. Cars aren’t a fashion statement; you see a ton of pickup trucks, and unlike SUV’s in California, people actually use them to haul things.

California claims they have a live and let live attitude, but Cali, Boston, NY and many “liberal” big cities have this total cultural arrogance and myopia that they are progressive, therefor right — and the midwest or somewhere like Texas couldn’t be as progressive as they are. In truth, I’ve lived both places. I’m new to Texas, but I’ve talked to dozens of people that brought up how much they like the cultural diversity of the towns, the foods and mixes of things, and so on. While in blue states, they talk about how progressive they are, and then live in gated communities, and think having a illegal hispanic maid makes them culturally diverse. Not that they aren’t diverse — just they think that they are the only ones that are. When you get into smaller towns in Texas, things start to change — just like when you get into smaller towns in California or NY.

There are a bazillion little things to contrast;

In California taxes are huge — it costs hundreds of dollars to register cars, State income taxes, huge property taxes, large state sales tax, and so on. If you can tax it, California does — and they have a huge income base. And they mismanage the money and are always running a deficit on the verge of bankruptcy. They’ve been democratically controlled for like 40+ years — and are corrupt and incompetent government. Texas is nearly as conservatively biased the other way, and has no state income tax, lower sales tax, lower registration and similar or worse issues with things like illegal immigration and even growth (though more recent). You can afford a house in Texas, and while the tax rate is higher, the actual taxes you’ll pay is much smaller to live much better. Which is why one of their problems is dealing with all the California transplants flooding the State.

In education, Texas was the first to institute some mandatory testing and quality control. They are often ranked a few from the top in States, or in cities for education — despite having some of the lowest per capita spending per student. California was trying to teach ebonics (ghetto-slang) in ESL classes (English as Second Language). They have one of the highest per student spending, yet often rank 3rd from the bottom in performance. California schools are a bit of disaster, and they’d be much better if they were more like Texas schools. And it isn’t just Texas, if you compare blue states to red states in general, the blue states get spanked in quality of education, despite much higher spending.

A friend is a Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at UALR– he points out the same holds true in his profession. California is an embarrassment, and Texas is quite good and well known — and he considers himself a liberal professor. And I’ve heard others talk about various specialty disciplines as well. California does well in top-named specialists, and areas like plastic surgery, but if you look at general quality overall, things don’t look as good.

California was one of the first states to support the unconstitutionally mandated 55 MPH federal speed limit. Texas is the first state to raise the speed limit to 80 MPH in rural areas. In town in Cali, there will be 4 lane major roads with 35 MPH speed limits, and in Texas I see regular roads with 60 MPH limits. Yet, traffic accidents aren’t as much a problem in Texas as Cali — and I much prefer driving in Texas in general.

Cali roads suck — lousy traffic and bad planning almost everywhere. They did stupid things like red-light cameras which are shown to increase rear-end accidents, or they have traffic impedding HOV (carpool lanes), and so on. While in Texas, they suck a little less — and are building more, and adapting more, earlier in the process. Now a lot of that is rate of growth and not the fault of politicians or philosophy — but some is. In California I watched them argue for 10+ years about putting one bypass in Laguna area because of the blue-footed ugly-bird habitat, ignoring that there were a bazillion of the damn things just south of the border. While in Texas, I’ve seen much more reasonable compromise, like you can have this land for that, if we can have this land protected over here in trade. In Austin they complain because it takes 30 minutes to drive 15 miles across the center of town in the two-hour long rush hour. In California they giggle at that kind of freedom from congestion, in non-rush hour.

Californians refused to let a power plant be built in their pristine state for 30+ years — then they exported their power production (and related pollution) to neighboring states and patted themselves on how clean they were getting (while ignoring line-losses and how much they increased polution by exporting it) — then they whined when rates went up and they were gouged for their own incompetence. Texas was one of the states that built more power plants and exported that power. Yet, I’ve backpacked through the Sierras and seen how both areas hand the environment, and Texas does a far better job of making it accessible to people, making it more valuable. And I think more people really care as a result. Austin has like 10%+ of all land set aside, and parks everywhere. If anything, I see more outdoors types in Texas than in Cali. But in Texas you do things — you fish, hunt, boat, ski (wakeboard), hike, bike, and use and enjoy the land. In California, I always had the impression that they’d put big fences around the environment and lock it away from humans for its own good, or only allow people to go there when they’ve passed a class on environmental sensitivity training, and how not to hurt a black bears feelings when it is attacking you. You have big nature areas in California — but they’re big and often far away — except for beaches (which are more a freak of geography than real planning). And at the beaches of California you have the liberal nazi’s trying to make all sorts of new rules so that you can’t actually use it. They’ve even outlawed smoking in a natural ashtray probably because of the fire hazard with all that sand water.

Just like California exported power problems, I think Texas exported their crime problems. Texas is known for being tough on crime, and not afraid to actually put a few of the worst elements to death. The results — Texas has crime problems, but so far, Texas feels a lot less crime ridden than California. But I need to check more stats. Texas raised the costs for criminals, so they are more likely to stop or leave. California on the other hand is “senstitive” to their plight… with the resulting spikes in crime.

I can go on and on. There’s a lot to contrast, and I need more time to fully absorb the cultures and ramifications. I certainly don’t think it is black and white — or as simple as California/Blue-state = bad, and Texas/Red-state = good. And I live in Austin, the bluest part of a red-state, versus living all over California. But still every time I go and visit California (or most big liberal cities), there seems to be this attitude that they know what they’re doing, how backwards the red-states are (or red areas of their own state), and Texas is a State that is targeted for mocking. Yet, the things they mock them for, they are often as good or better than the Blue States in. (At least from what I’ve seen). And this isn’t just California and Texas — I’ve seen the same when I’ve been in Colorado or Utah versus say New York or Chicago or DC or Cleveland and so on. I think if the Blue-Staters were as open-minded (Liberal) as they claimed, they’d realize they could learn a lot from those states and opposing philosophies, and they could be tolerant (instead of just claiming to be), they might learn even more. I’ll write more on what I see — but for now, I see that the stereotypes and hate-labels by the left, were just the misinformed rantings of the ignorant or biased.