Opinion

California paper goes after Texas Governor on regulation – gets it wrong

The explosion of a fertilizer factory in West, Texas has re-ignited an ideological debate: does the U.S. have too much regulation or not enough?

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Texas Governor Rick Perry responded harshly to a cartoon in the Sacramento Bee that showed the governor saying that “business is booming in Texas” with “low tax” and “low regs” banners behind him. In the next frame is a giant explosion, seemingly intended to refer to the West explosion that killed and injured so many Texans.

The governor said, “While I will always welcome healthy policy debate, I won’t stand for someone mocking the tragic deaths of my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans. Additionally, publishing this on the very day our state and nation paused to honor and mourn those who died only compounds the pain and suffering of the many Texans who lost family and friends in this disaster.”

The Bee’s editor, Stuart Leavensworth defended the artist Jack Ohman’s  tasteless work saying that Mr. Ohman “made a strong statement about Gov. Rick Perry’s disregard for worker safety, and his attempts to market Texas a place where industries can thrive with few regulations.”

What the cartoonist and editor both fail to mention, probably due to their decidedly progressive ideological alignment, is that the regulations that would have prevented the West explosion, were already in-place, were of a federal nature and the federal government, not Texas’ had failed to keep the plant in check.

California has lived under decades of over-regulation and still gas lines explode killing residents, power plants brown out causing the elderly to heat stroke and die. The idea that the government is the answer is very Californian.

When Texas’ governor starts taking their most profitable businesses, California’s only response looks a lot like the President’s: attack, attack, lie and attack.

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Rich Mitchell

Rich Mitchell is the editor-in-chief of Conservative Daily News and the president of Bald Eagle Media, LLC. His posts may contain opinions that are his own and are not necessarily shared by Bald Eagle Media, CDN, staff or .. much of anyone else. Find him on twitter, facebook and

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6 Comments

  1. It is CA – home of the overtaxed, land of the uninformed, and supporter of the illegal, gimmedat crowd. It may also be suggested that IL, NY, and NJ are mirror images.

    1. How right you are about NJ which is why my dream is to get outta here. Like I always say; the only reason NJ hasn’t been swallowed into the Atlantic is because it leans so far Left.

  2. I’d still rather spend a lifetime with no a/c in California than a week in El Lamo Texas! Thought they were going to secede…?

  3. Ya know, Steve, anyone that can be so flipant & disrspectful about the deaths of 10 First Responders & 5 other hard working Americans really should be sentenced to a life in a place known to most often be removed from reality. Keep in mind that YOUR tax dollars paid for regulations & oversight of them at a Federal Level. We lost a way of life that is only found in small town, USA. Along with lifetime friends & neighbors that we shared backyard cook outs, ball games, birthdays & sang with in the Choir on Sunday mornings. Children lost their fathers. Fathers lost children…Sleep brings nightmares instead of peace.

    So, Steve & others that my actually share your feelings, go ahead…enjoy a lifetime with a Govenor called ‘Moonbeam” & I pray that a horror such as this is never a part of it.

  4. Kudos to Governor Perry! Though not a Texan I respect anyone who stands up to the Left and call them out for their evil doings.

    If California keeps going as it is its going to be stiff competition for Sodom and Gomorrah at the Judgment.

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