In light of the possibility of Rick Perry nominated as the GOP candidate in the upcoming presidential election, the latest Road to the White House 2012: Politics, Media & Technology discussed the continual virtual battle between Texas and California.
CCLP senior fellow Narda Zacchino and Annenberg professor Robert Scheer came to disassemble the myths surrounding Texas being the new California.
Zacchino puts into context some of the claims that Perry has made about Texas. While it is true that Texas has been phenomenal at creating new jobs, they have the highest amount of minimum wage jobs in the country.
“Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the nation and the highest percentage of people without health insurance,” Zacchino said.
Perry also highlights that fact that it is much easier to pass permits of construction in Texas since it is much more deregulated than California. However, Texas lacks many of the environmental laws that California values.
“Texas has the dirtiest air and has the most amount of waste generated. This comes from a report called “Texas on the Brink.” In fact, Texas dumps more carbon pollution in the air than any other state. They very much don’t care about the environment there,” Zacchino said.
Scheer also debunks the myth that deregulation was the reason why Texas didn’t crash during the housing market disaster these past few years.
“The basic problem is housing and it has to do with deregulation. Texas handled the problem better, but deregulation was not the answer. That’s not what saved what Texas. What saved Texas was an anti-banking attitude,” Scheer said.
It is much harder for citizens in Texas to borrow money from the bank in hopes of purchasing a property. “Texas is strictly regulated, you can only get an 80 percent loan and it’s very strict in how they determine the amount,” Scheer said.
At the core though, Texas and California are extremely different. “Texas has the oil, California has the entertainment and wine industry. The national media coverage don’t look deeply enough and they don’t put these things in context,” Zacchino said.
Zacchino is in the process of writing a book on the topic of California against Texas. The tentative title of the book is California: Still Golden.
Read the Daily Trojan article on this panel here.
This article was written by Sammi Wong, Print and Digital Journalism ’14.