Tech pipeline to Texas: Tax money, people flow out of Bay Area

Austin is looking to be a favorite alternative to SF.  Housing in Austin is CHEAP.  I think the quality of life is much better.

Along with household names like Google, Apple, Dropbox and Oracle — which all recently built or expanded major campuses in Austin — nearly two dozen Bay Area tech companies also reportedly relocated to Texas or opened outposts there since 2014. Thousands of residents made a similar trek throughout the 2000s, taking roughly $1 billion in taxable income out of California and into the Lone Star State, according to a Chronicle analysis of Internal Revenue Service data.

Texas’ growing tech sector doesn’t mean the Bay Area’s is faltering; Silicon Valley is still the heart of the industry. It also doesn’t mean the state’s economy is hurting; most forecasts show strong job growth and shrinking unemployment in California. The expansion of Bay Area firms into Texas does, however, reveal a strong business pipeline between the two regions, particularly for companies trying to escape California’s high taxes and the Bay Area’s soaring cost of living.

U.S. Supreme Court blocks Obama carbon emissions plan

Hooray!

On a 5-4 vote, the court granted a request made by 27 states and various companies and business groups to block the administration’s Clean Power Plan. The move means the regulations will not be in effect while litigation continues over their legality.

The brief order from the justices said that the regulations would be on hold until the legal challenge is completed. The court’s five conservatives all voted to block the rule. The order noted that the four liberals would have denied the application. A U.S. appeals court in Washington had turned away a similar request on Jan. 21.

Too bad it's not permanent.

Fun with numbers: The real story behind the unemployment report

When a Republican is elected to the White House, all of a sudden the MSM will wake up and discover how deceptive the unemployment numbers are.  And then without even blinking, it will all be the new President's fault.

On the surface, the January jobs numbers appear to be "not bad." There were 151,000 jobs created, and the official unemployment rate dropped below 5%. But the story inside the numbers is really, really awful.

Just terrible.

Never Bet Against The Capitalists Part II

This story expounds on something I mentioned in an earlier post.  In that post, I quoted a magazine that mentioned that the fracking technology was getting better and more efficient.

Now, another story with more WOW! factor on the American landscape of shale oil.  Should the Saudis and Russians give up?  I really, really think they should consider something besides what is almost like a brute force DNS attack.  Some of the American producers have break even costs of  $22.52?  $23.40?  This is almost hard to imagine!  And it's a LOT of oil.

Yes, American Capitalists can keep this game up for a LOT longer than anyone ever thought possible.

According to a report by the Bloomberg Intelligence analysts William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove, Saudi Arabia may have its work cut out for it as it will be far harder to kill many U.S. E&Ps than analysts originally thought.

The reason: a break-even model for the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shows that oil production across five plays in Texas and New Mexico may remain profitable even when WTI prices fall below $30 a barrel, according to a 55-variable Bloomberg Intelligence model for horizontal oil wells.

The Eagle Ford's DeWitt County has the lowest break-even, at $22.52, followed by Reeves County wells targeting the Wolfcamp Formation, at $23.40. The diversity of breakevens highlights the hazard posed by looking for a single number, even within a play.

These counties together produced about 551,000 barrels of liquids a day in October. Taking into account drilled but uncompleted wells boosts the number of potential survivors to 19. The wide range of break-evens undermines efforts to come up with a single threshold for U.S. shale producers.

It's not pretty out there at all, but this story is nothing short of astonishing.

But I called it. I knew from past history, unless they tilt the board, whole countries with more money than anyone can imagine can not compete against Capitalists.

America....has won.

California's evaporating gas tax

I'm sorry guys, but you can not eat your cake and have it, too.  Grow up!

Last month, the California Transportation Commission said the state would cut transportation funding by $754 million — a 38% decrease. Why? Because revenue from the state's levies on gasoline sales, which provide much of that funding, plummeted as gas prices dropped and more fuel-efficient vehicles proliferated. Those falling prices cut the state's gas excise tax revenue from 18 cents a gallon two years ago to 12 cents last year, and revenue is expected to sink to 10 cents in July. Every penny in revenue lost per gallon means a $140-million drop in transportation funding.

As a result, not only will no new projects be funded, but more than 200 projects already in development also would be de-funded or delayed. In Los Angeles County, for example, the cut could jeopardize the purchase of new light-rail cars, the construction of a pedestrian bridge at the Burbank Airport Metrolink station, and the widening of State Route 138 in the Antelope Valley.

Put in toll booths.

Will Environmentalists Force California to Choose "Dirty" Energy Over Clean Nuclear?

When are the CA'ians going to stop listening to the radical environmentalists?

On Sunday, Breakthrough Institute co-founder Michael Shellenberger and former Missouri Botanical Gardens head Peter Raven, published an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle explaining that those people who are concerned about the future of climate change should be in favor of keeping the Diablo Canyon plants open. Why?

"Diablo Canyon produces twice as much power as all of California’s solar panels, 24 percent more than all of its wind, and 40 times more than its largest solar farm," observed Shellenberger and Raven. "Also, Diablo Canyon provides power to 3 million Californians on a patch of land the size of three football fields. Achieving the equivalent from a solar farm would require 145 times more land; from wind, 500 times more."

Interestingly, an article today on the controversy in Mother Jones points out that California's "rate of reducing carbon emissions is slower than the national average—a 7.5 percent reduction since 2000, compared with 9.6 percent nationwide." Replacing Diablo Canyon reactors with natural gas plants would make that record even worse.

Why California gasoline is so expensive

So, the author tries to determine the "evil" profit and who is to blame for the high price.  The answer?

They only have themselves to blame.

We begin with taxes. California’s combined state and federal taxes add 59 cents to each gallon of gas at the pump. That’s 11 cents above the U.S. average, reports the American Petroleum Institute.

Subtracting 11 cents in higher taxes from our 73-cent gouge gap leaves 62 cents of unexplained cost.

California has tacked on about 12 cents in fees for its “cap and trade” market and low-carbon fuels standard. This gets us to 50 cents.

State regulators also mandate a pollution-reducing blend that costs more to produce, although how much varies by refiner. When you compare the U.S. average for reformulated gas to California’s, the unexplained gap narrows further by 20 cents. Notably, the public overwhelmingly supports such environmental costs.

To review, taxes and environmental mandates directly account for 43 cents per gallon of the 73-cent cost we paid Monday above the U.S. average, leaving us with 30 cents to go.

Market forces — meaning profits for somebody — generally explain this 30 cents per gallon. If you guessed that regulators play a role here, too, go to the head of the class.

So, the crux of the story,without being a jerk about it, is "just live with it and shut up, because this is what CA wants."

Yeah.  Whatever.