Compare New York and California to Texas.

Texas

Compare the two liberal states below to the conservative state of Texas at Texas has created 80% of american jobs in 2008, rejects stimulus spending money and calls for National Tea Party says Palin approved Governor Perry...-"Here is actual letter Governor Perry sent to Obama concerning stimulus money. Also, see Texas is Number One Exporting State for 7th Consecutive Year and Chief Executive Magazine Ranks Texas Top State for Business for 4th Year in a Row"

Abstinence-based education in Texas is working. Teen pregnancies down 24% and abortions down 41%. and Study comparing states who took the Bush administration's abstinence funding vs those who did not and Texas Governor Rick Perry proclaims April as Abortion Recovery Awareness Month!!!!

California

"Green" California leads the nation in job losses...and Czech president says unlike Gore he is able to listen to competing theories...

WHY CALIFORNIA IS IN FAST LANE TO INSOLVENCY

June 30, 2009, was fiscal meltdown day for the state of California, says the Sacramento Bee. The Legislature had not passed a budget, tax revenues were plummeting, the state controller was paying bills with IOUs and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was poised to announce a third furlough day each month for state workers.
That very day the state Department of Transportation signed off on purchasing $1.7 million worth of new trucks and truck bodies:

• That spending came on top of $2.6 million on truck expenditures by Caltrans during the previous five months, even as the state's fiscal crisis deepened.
• In February, the Department of General Services, state government's primary purchasing agent, spent another $1.2 million on 50 new hybrid Toyota Priuses.

A Bee investigation has found that most of those new vehicles -- as well as scores more purchased in recent years -- sit unused for months and even years.
A Caltrans spokesman blamed its purchase of unused new trucks on the state's "changing priorities" and "fluctuating workloads."
A spokesman for the Department of General Services (DGS), which bought the 50 hybrid Priuses, said the state didn't want to miss a factory cutoff date to purchase 2009 models. In addition, he said, the departments that initially wanted them may have changed their minds after the governor signed an executive order directing all departments to reduce their vehicle fleets by 15 percent.
All the excuses sound lame, says the Bee. The state's fiscal house of cards was collapsing but the state's purchasing agents were conducting business as usual. Any budget-conscious business or household confronted with the economic challenges of California would have curtailed unnecessary expenditures.
It would have delayed or even canceled the purchase of 50 brand new Priuses at $24,000 each or $4.3 million worth of trucks for which there was no immediate need. Officials in charge of buying cars in California just kept on buying. That explains, in part, why California remains mired in a fiscal mess, says the Bee.
Source: Editorial, "Why state is in fast lane to insolvency," Sacramento Bee, October 27, 2009.
For text:
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/2283719.html
For more on State and Local Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=40
New York

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

A new study by the Empire Center for New York State Policy that shows middle-class people leaving the state in droves is one more piece of evidence that proves taxes have an effect on behavior, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to the study's authors, E.J. McMahon and Wendell Cox:

• Between 2000 and 2008, the Empire State had a net domestic outflow of more than 1.5 million, the biggest exodus of any state, with most hailing from New York City.
• The departures also have perilous budget consequences, since they tend to include residents who are better off than those arriving.
• Statewide, departing families have income levels 13 percent higher than those moving in, while in New York County (home of Manhattan) the differential was even more severe.
• Those moving elsewhere had an average income of $93,264, some 28 percent higher than the $72,726 earned by those coming in.

Other findings:

• In 2006 alone, that swap meant the state lost $4.3 billion in taxpayer income.
• Add that up from 2001 through 2008, and it translates into annual net income losses near $30 billion.

Although McMahon and Cox suggest that no single reason can explain a million migrants seeking their fortunes across state lines, the Journal says blame should be placed on New York's notorious state and local tax burden:

• According to the Tax Foundation, between 1977 and 2008, New York has ranked first or second in the country for its state-local tax burden compared to the U.S. average.
• In the years considered by the Empire Center study, New York's state and local tax burden ranged between 11 percent and 12 percent of income.
• The peak year for taxes, 2004, was followed by the peak year for departures -- as New York lost nearly 250,000 people to other states in 2005, and that's before another big tax hike this year.

Source: Editorial, "Escape From New York," Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2009; based upon: Wendell Cox and E.J. McMahon, "Empire State Exodus: The Mass Migration of New Yorkers to Other States," Empire Center for New York State Policy, October 27, 2009.
For text:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574499772371161800.html
For study:
http://www.empirecenter.org/pb/2009/10/empirestateexodus102709.cfm
For more on State and Local Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=40"
And in comparison to sex ed in Texas see: New York Health Department admits abstinece is best and condomns even if used "correctly and consistently" only "help reduce the chance of infection"

Blue State Exodus

Update 11/12/2009: This seemed applicable here. Found this interesting article titled Blue State Exodus:

".....Net migration, both before and after the Great Recession, according to analysis by the Praxis Strategy Group, has continued to be strongest to the predominately red states of the South and Intermountain West.

This seems true even for those seeking high-end jobs. Between 2006 and 2008, the metropolitan areas that enjoyed the fastest percentage shift toward educated and professional workers and industries included nominally "unhip" places like Indianapolis, Charlotte, N.C., Memphis, Tenn., Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Fla., Tampa, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo.

 The overall migration numbers are even more revealing. As was the case for much of the past decade, the biggest gainers continue to include cities such as San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. Rather than being oases for migrants, some oft-cited magnets such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago have all suffered considerable loss of population to other regions over the past year.

Much the same pattern emerges when you look at longer-term state demographic patterns. A recent survey by the Empire Center for New York State Policy found that the biggest net losers in terms of per capita outmigration between 2000 and 2008 were, with the exception of Louisiana, all blue state bastions. New York residents lead in terms of rate of exodus, closely followed by the District of Columbia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and California"