Voting With Your Feet

California is a beautiful state. As a teenager I remember being enthralled by the Beach Boys and the lifestyle they talked about–beautiful beaches and surfing most of the year. At that point I was not smart enough to realize what the water temperature is along most of the California coast. At any rate, for a long time California was a very desirable place to live. Now–not so much. Taxes, the high cost of living, the homeless problem, crime issues, and generally poor leadership by the state politicians have taken a toll on the desirability of making California your home.

Yesterday Fox Business reported the following:

The smart money may be sticking together and sticking it to California.

Oracle is joining Tesla and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in moving some operations to Texas, detailing the move in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday.

“Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas. We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work. Depending on their role, this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part-time or all of the time. In addition, we will continue to support major hubs for Oracle around the world, including those in the United States such as redwood City, Austin, Santa Monica, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, among others, and we expect to add other locations over time. By implementing a more modern approach to work, we expect to further improve our employees’ quality of life and quality of output” the SEC filing noted.

While the move signals working remotely is here to stay, it also signals more corporations could be becoming disillusioned with California.

The article notes that earlier this month, Hewlett Packard Enterprise also announced it was moving its headquarters to Houston. Tesla is also moving. The high taxes and bad government in California are driving businesses out of the state. This will result in a loss of tax revenue, tax increases for people and businesses who remain in the state, and eventual bankruptcy for the state. Unfortunately, depending on who controls Congress, the rest of the country may be asked to pay for the mistakes of California.

 

Aren’t We Tired Of These People Yet?

On Thursday, Townhall.com posted an article about speaking fees collected by Bill Clinton during the time that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. You have to hand it to Bill and Hillary, regardless of what in the world goes on in their marriage, they know how to wash each other’s hands financially. She had amazing profits on cattle futures while he was leading Arkansas, and he had amazing speaking fees while she was Secretary of State. Wow. What an incredible coincidence.

This is the chart from the article that tells it all?

Note the last sentence before the numbers. Company representatives say the speeches were unrelated to any lobbying efforts. Sure they were.

A recent Wall Street Journal article reports:

Mr. Clinton also had a large payday from Oracle Corp.: a total of $500,000 for two talks given or approved while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. He gave one in October 2012 as the company was urging the State Department to increase the number of skilled-worker visas being issued, lobbying reports show.

Oracle, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Microsoft Corp., whose co-founder Bill Gates has suggested eliminating the visa cap altogether, paid Mr. Clinton a total of more than $1.1 million for speeches during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure.

Mrs. Clinton has long supported increasing skilled-worker visas, known as H-1B visas, as did her husband when he was president. The issue has remained mired in the broader congressional debate about immigration.

In 2009, the Biotechnology Industry Organization lobbied the State Department to get diplomats to oppose rules against genetically modified foods. In December, Mrs. Clinton sent a cable to diplomats telling them to “pay particular attention” to countries considering biotech regulation and to push an “active biotech agenda” that would “protect the interests of U.S. farmers and exporters,” according to a copy released by WikiLeaks.

Five months later, the biotechnology group paid Mr. Clinton $175,000 to appear at its convention. After Mrs. Clinton left the State Department, she also spoke at the trade group’s convention, earning $335,000.

Seriously, haven’t we had enough of Clinton scandals? Do we really want to go through this with a President Clinton again?